Sam Parr: How I Built One Business to Sell and Another to Keep Forever | Entrepreneurship | E373

22:29I recently had Dr. Amy Shaw on the podcast, and we played this ranking game where basically I had her stack rank, the number one way to get energy in the day. And I gave her all the common things that we hear about, cold plunges, saunas, sunlight, walks, and she talks about this 30 grams of protein breakfast. So I threw that in the mix and it was the number one way that people get energy in the day is having 30 grams of protein in the morning. Now, I was like, okay, I've got to do this for 2026. It's part of my New Year's resolutions, but I'm not really a breakfast person. There's no way I'm sitting down and making a 30 gram protein breakfast.

23:05I don't have any time. And that's where Huel makes it easy. They've got their black edition, ready to drink plant-based meal. I love the chocolate flavor. Each one has 35 grams of protein, around 400 calories. It's packed with 27 essential vitamins and minerals. It's a complete balanced meal, not just a shake. It's not just protein. I get all the other good stuff that my body needs for my breakfast. So if you want to be like me and get your 30 grams of protein in the morning with Huel, there's a limited time offer. grab Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15 % off online with my code profiting at Huel.com slash profiting.

23:39Again, that's Huel.com slash profiting. You got to use the code profiting at checkout to get that 15 % off for new customers only. And thank you so much to Huel for partnering and supporting our show. A lot of the creator entrepreneurs that listen to the show, everybody is hot on growing their newsletter. So what are some of the big tactics that you use to grow your initial newsletter? We grew to 100 ,000 subscribers without spending one cent in marketing. It was all through writing blog posts that would go viral on Reddit or Hacker News. And so one of the easiest ways to get popular for a newsletter is to make a decision on where your market already exists and what content can you create that gets popular on that channel and then you siphon them off into your newsletter.

24:23For example, we knew that a lot of people who were in... Do you remember what Soylent is? You know, Soylent? Is it like a food or something? Yeah, yeah. I've heard of Soylent. Yeah. It's kind of like Slimfast for nerds. It's like a meal replacement for engineers. And the hustle was a tech and business newsletter. So I was like, well, a lot of nerdy engineers are going to want to subscribe because that's who I am. And that's who I'm writing for. And so I wrote an article about how my friend, I paid him$2 ,000 to live on Soylent and only Soylent for 30 days. And I was like, okay, so this is content that those types of people will like, it will go viral in the subreddit called Soylent on Reddit.

25:01And so I would create content that would go viral there. And that's how I got my first 100 ,000 subscribers. So if you want to kickstart, you have to find out where's the audience already living and what are they consuming? And how do I break into their attention and bring them over to my platform? The second thing that works really well is we took an unserious game, which is newsletters, very serious. And because of that, we crushed it. No one at the time, other than the skim and Morning Brew. And arguably, I know how Austin operates. It was really just him and I or our companies that were taking it the most serious.

25:32Because what we did was we calculated how much money each subscriber is worth to us. And then we went and spent money on Facebook ads to acquire a customer to bring them onto our platform. And at the time, no one was doing that. So I would highly recommend... First of all, you should get to 10s of 1000s of subscribers organically so you know that your content is good enough to keep someone. Then you do a bunch of calculations to figure out what's your customer worth. Then you decide how much can I wait to get my payback from buying ads. And then you go and buy ads anywhere you can, where you can acquire a customer for the value that you have already predetermined.

26:07Does that make sense? Yeah, totally makes sense. And then talk to us just for people who are unfamiliar in terms of how you monetize your newsletter. Like what were the different avenues that you monetized it? We got our first probably 15 million in revenue from one source only. ads in the newsletter. And our theory was we could get to something like 40 or 50 million in revenue via ads in the newsletter. That was wrong, by the way. The number is way higher. You could definitely get to like 100 million just on advertising. And then I was like, once we get to like, I don't know, hundreds of thousands or a million subscribers, we can launch different paid newsletters and paid communities.

26:46And that's what we did. We owned this thing called Trends. I totally screwed up. I charged$300 a year for I should have charged way more money. That's not a good pricing structure. And so we are making millions through that. But the year we sold, we are probably going to do 18 million in revenue, we are probably going to do probably 12 to 13 million just in advertising and then another six via subscriptions. I know with podcasts, it's really standardized in terms of the CPM, right? So the average CPM is like $25 to$35. We made no money, by the way, on podcasts. Really? Yeah. With the hustle or with...

27:20So the hustle owns My First Million. You made no money? Do you want to know how much money my podcast made this year so far? How much? Guess. In sponsorships. How many downloads do you have per month? 400 ,000. Oh, I don't know. Seven figures, maybe. Right? I made$1.2 million already this year in sponsorships, just on my show. Because I have a podcast network. Yeah, this year. This year so far. This year so far. Okay. So you're killing it at monetization. I'm really good at that. We were not good at it. So I sold my first million to HubSpot. I think we were doing 300 ,000 downloads a month. 370 ,000.

27:56I think we did the month we sold. Now we do many millions a month. We were doing something like$10 ,000 a month in sales. Oh my God. That's so crazy. It's so crazy how you could specialize. We specialized in newsletter advertisements. we did not specialize on podcasts. And my team, we did not know how to do it. We still had to learn how to do it. It's so funny. I meet people like that every day where I'm like, you get this many downloads and you only make this much. To your point, you just really need to know what you're doing. We didn't know. I didn't know. So how are newsletters still just out of curiosity in terms of is there like a standard CPM or because there was no competitors were you guys just selling at flat rate and whatever you wanted?

28:34I was still doing HustleCon every year, but I started the hustle as it is now in 2016, in April of 16. And by that June, that was when I first started selling ads. That June, I made$30 ,000 that month. And I'd sold the first ad to this guy named Chris at Wealthfront. Chris Martinez, you probably haven't heard of me since then. Thank you for buying my first ad. And I think I made up the number. I think I said, how does$20 per 1 ,000 sound to you? And I said, if that doesn't work for you, I'll give you your money back. And that's what he accepted. So for some reason, we stuck with$20 per 1000 cents.

29:12And so we had multiple ad units in the newsletter we had. I think we just called it a native ad. It was in the email. And that would be 150 words. I think we charged$25 to$30 per 1000 cents. And then we had other ad units that would be cheaper. I would have to do the math. But each time we hit send, maybe we were making who I don't remember$45 per 1000 cents. And so on a million subscribers, you're looking at something like$45 ,000 every time you hit send. It's crazy. It's so similar to podcasting. You got basically add slots in your newsletter. It's the same thing. The difference is newsletters were so much easier to grow.

29:56Podcasts are very challenging to grow. If I said, hey, I need you to create a new podcast from scratch. You can't use your name and it has to be the new industry. It would be really hard to do that. It would. It is. My podcast, MFM, we're pretty popular. Every day, I'm like, I can't believe this works. It still shocks me. Now, if we were to do that with a newsletter, if you told me you have to go do that with a different newsletter, I'd be like, yeah, it's going to take me six months, give me a quarter of a million dollars and I could get to 100 ,000 subscribers. Easy. It's not that hard. It's far more formulaic.

30:28Podcasting is oftentimes, in my opinion, a little bit magic in a bottle. It is. I feel like it's great timing, getting on the right platforms. But now with YouTube, I feel like it's a little bit... Way easier. Yeah, it's way easier. Okay, let's play a game. Let's play a game called Path to$100 Million. So I know on My First Million, you're often like riffing with Shine on$100 million business ideas and paths. So I'm going to give you an idea for a business that an entrepreneur listening in might take on. and you can say, is this scalable to$100 million or not? And then what your path to that$100 million would be, okay?

31:05We're talking about newsletters. So a newsletter just for the construction industry. My general answer is most businesses can get to$100 million in revenue. You just gotta tinker. You also have to figure out the right business model, but also you have to figure out the right timeline. So if you give it enough time, almost everything can get there. So for construction, B2B newsletters are so much more profitable than everything I've ever done. So I would copy this company called Industry Dive. Industry Dive is a B2B newsletter business that sold to this company called Informa for maybe$800 million, I believe.

31:40And so what I would do is I would start with construction. I don't know what the TAM is, but I would imagine I could create a daily newsletter that sends six days a week for construction companies. I would probably target someone who's the decision maker on buying products that equal, I think, tens of millions of dollars. So for example, if you own a company that builds 500 houses, or you create a subdivision or something like that, I would create a newsletter where I would act like it was a high school yearbook. And so what that means is that that industry, I don't know how big it is, but I would make it feel very small.

32:16And my editorial philosophy would be name as many names and as many companies as humanly possible, I would be like the Yellow Pages because in that industry, they're not used to probably getting a lot of clout or whatever. And they probably would want to see their friends or businesses or people who they recognize or themselves in this newsletter. And so they would be more often to tell their buddies. It would make me feel like a high school yearbook where it'd be like Derek in New Jersey, who runs a 500 person company. He has said the following about the current market. I would get like a quote from him and I would probably have a 1500 or daily newsletter for business owners of construction companies.

32:54And I think I could probably get that business to 5 million in revenue. And then I would create more newsletters that are tangentially related, but not exactly the same thing. So instead of construction companies, it would be like... Plumbing or something. Plumbing, yeah. Plumbing is a great example. And the reason I would do this is because the vendors of those companies... So if I created an HVAC newsletter, the vendors of an HVAC company, They have to spend a certain amount of money. The people making the actual AC, they need more customers. And there's not that many places that you can spend money for advertising to reach that demographic.

33:29It's a very hard group of people to reach. So my business would be, which industries can I enter where there's enough people buying ads, but it's really hard. They can't spend it on Facebook. And so that's what I would do. And then I would layer in a paid community and a conference. I know for a fact I can get to 100 million in revenue because other people have done it. So we were just talking about CPMs for newsletters and the hustle was pretty broad. So you had like a$20 CPM, what you're talking about. But because this is niche, you might be able to charge a couple thousand dollars CPM because they're getting exactly who they want instead of three out of the thousand people you're targeting on a broad newsletter.

34:05It's very easy to do the math. So the math is basically, I'm just making this up. I don't know anything about this industry. But if I had an HVAC newsletter that sent a daily newsletter that talked about the industry and news for the HVAC industry, my friend owns a HVAC business in Missouri that does$100 million in revenue. And I have to imagine he buys$30 million a year worth of HVACs that are air conditioned units that he installs into people's home. And so I would go to the advertiser that says, I reach people like this. How much are you willing to spend in order to sell HVACs to a client that would potentially buy$30 million a year worth of your company or of your products?

34:40So it's a no-brainer that you spend a million dollars a year to reach this audience. You know, whatever. So good. Okay. So let's go to the next one. A car wash franchise. Well, I would want to have a shtick. So in order to build that, I would have to say, who am I going after? Am I going after families that have children and their children are going to come and sit in the lobby? Am I going after dads who have high-end weekend cars and they want them super highly detailed? So I would make a decision like that. And then I would sweat through every single detail of the user experience. And so let's say that my shtick is this is going to be family friendly.

35:23So that means I would paint the car wash in a very colorful way. And I would have tchotch skis. I can't say that word. I would have stuff all over the place that kids could play with. I would have coloring books. I would make it a place where you want to go because your children can sit and jump off the walls and have fun for 30 minutes while you get your car cleaned. The model for that would probably be franchise. Get as many units as I possibly could. But I would probably sell founding or annual memberships in order to fund expansion to new cities. And I know that you like blue collar roll-ups.

36:02I don't like that. You don't like them. Oh, I thought you did. I think it's cool. I think it's cool, but I think it's so much work. Okay. You'd rather build a newsletter and make$100 million. Even though I'm a yuppie, I think the grass is always greener. I think it's very romantic to hire blue-collar guys because I enjoy being with the everyday man. But the reality is that I don't probably want to be around them as much as I think I do. I didn't mean to ruin your band. No, no, no. I want to hear the truth. I thought you liked blue collar roll-ups, but you're not Cody Sanchez, apparently. I like the idea of going out hunting, but I don't want to go sleep outside in the cold.

36:38It sounds romantic, but in practice. It's way easier to sit on your laptop and write newsletters. Have you ever been around a bunch of blue collar guys? I grew up with them. They're a bunch of degenerates. I don't want to spend too much time with these morons. Yeah, I hear you. They're hung over all the time and stuff like that. It's hard work. Okay, so let's do the next one. an AI-powered personal trainer app. I think this might be the hardest of all of them. Coincidentally, it's also not the least blue collar, but it might be the hardest of all of them. That's a hard space. How would I get it to 100 million in revenue?

37:12You have to have a co-founder that has a huge Instagram audience or YouTube audience who's a fitness influencer. So in order to make this work, I would have to either be the famous influencer, which I'm not, the fitness influencer. That would be cool if I was ripped enough to be a fitness influencer. but I'm not. And so I would have to be the nerd who like actually creates the product. And then you'd have to team up. I would find someone and be like, I'll give you half the company, but to get distribution for those for an app, it's one of the hardest things I think to do. So I would probably have to team up with someone.

37:46Hello, young and profiters. Running my own business has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done, but I won't lie to you. In those early days of setting it up, I feel like I was jumping on a cliff with no parachute. I'm not really good at that kind of stuff. I'm really good at marketing, sales, growing a business, offers, but I had so many questions and zero idea where to find the answers when it came to starting an official business. I wish I had known about Northwest Registered Agent back when I was starting Yap Media. And if you're an entrepreneur, you need to know what Northwest Registered Agent is.

38:17They've been helping small business owners launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They literally make life easy for entrepreneurs. They don't just help you form your business. They give you the free tools you need after you form it, like operating agreements and thousands of how-to guides that explain the complicated ins and outs of running a business. And guys, it can get really complicated, but Northwest Registered Agent just makes it all easy and breaks it down for you. So when you want more for your business, more privacy, more guidance, more free resources, Northwest Registered Agent is where you should go.

38:49Don't wait and protect your privacy. build your brand, and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com slash yapfree and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at northwestregisteredagent.com slash yapfree.

39:11Hello, Yap gang. I know my young and profiting listeners want bigger businesses and a better life, and the new year is the perfect moment to reset and commit to your growth. But let's be real. You can't build an empire if your finances are all over the place. That's why getting into it QuickBooks is one of the best first moves you can make this year. They've got powerful money management tools built right into their platform, and they have them for every stage of your business, whether you're a solopreneur or a small business. And I love that QuickBooks helps you get paid faster, pay bills smarter, and even gives you access to funding when opportunity pops up.

39:45So QuickBooks can help you with bookkeeping, can help you with getting paid, can even help you with projections and understanding where your business is at financially. Plus, QuickBooks Money Solutions reduces manual work by half and keeps your money and your books perfectly synced. That means less time staring at spreadsheets and more time actually building the vision that you started with. That's the upgrade that every profiting entrepreneur needs. Start the new year strong, take control of your cash flow with QuickBooks Money Tools. Learn more at quickbooks.com slash money. Again, that's quickbooks.com slash money.

40:16Terms apply. Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments Incorporated, licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services.

40:27Happy New Year, Yap Gang. I just love the unique energy of the new year. It's all about fresh starts and fresh starts not only feel possible, but also feel encouraged. And if you've been thinking about starting a business, this is your sign. There's no better time than right now. 2026 can be the year that you build something that is truly yours, the year where you take control over your career. and it starts with Shopify. I've built plenty of my own businesses on Shopify, including my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. So it's a two-day workshop. People buy their tickets on Shopify. And then my Mastermind subscription is also on Shopify.

41:02I built my site quickly in just a couple of days. Payments were set up super easily. And none of the technical stuff slowed me down like it usually does because Shopify is just so intuitive. And this choice of using Shopify helped me scale my masterclass to over$500 ,000 in revenue in our first year. And I'm launching some new podcast courses and can't wait to launch them on Shopify. Shopify gives you everything you need to sell online and in person, just like the millions of entrepreneurs that they power. You can build your dream story using hundreds of beautiful templates and setup is fast with built-in AI tools that help you write product descriptions and edit photos.

41:38Plus marketing is built in so you can create email and social campaigns easily. And as you grow, Shopify can scale right along with your business. In 2026, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash profiting. Go to shopify.com slash profiting. That's shopify.com slash profiting. Yeah, fam, hear your first. This new year with Shopify by your side. I want to move on to talk about Hampton. And I also want to talk about your sale of the hustle. So you actually built Hustle and Hampton very differently. From my understanding, you really built the Hustle to sell it, whereas Hampton is more of a legacy business that you want to run for a long time.

42:29Is that accurate? My dream is that my daughter will work at Hampton. My daughter is going to be too soon. And my dream is that she'll work here. That's so cute. What makes you want Hampton to be more of a business that you have forever compared to the Hustle? My now current co-founder, Joe, he's in the other room here. When I was in my mid-20s, he was the wealthiest person who I knew. And at that time, I asked him, how much does he spend every month? I think he told me$60 ,000. And I googled, how much money do I have to have to be able to spend$60 ,000 a month and never work again? And I think the number was like$20 or$25 million.

43:11But I was like, I'm going to have a goal. of can I make$20 million by the age of 30? And so I built the hustle in order to hit that goal. So I knew I was going to sell it. That was the plan the whole time. And I did. I hit the number by 31 because I sold it when I was 31. So I was off by a year. That's awesome. That was my goal because I grew up feeling poor. When I ran the hustle for the first handful of years, I paid myself like two grand a month. I felt very poor along the way because of my alcohol stuff that I had to eat prior. I literally felt like a homeless guy some days. And I was like, I want to not be fearful and I don't want to feel insecure.

43:46So I built the hustle to sell. But what I noticed is my goal isn't really money anymore, but the people who are really wealthy, and when I say wealthy, I mean money, but I also mean relevant or largely impactful to the world. They do the same thing for many decades, a lot of times. And so I realized that huge growth and huge money, if you do it right, it should compound. And so a business like Hampton, I think that it can last 50 to 100 years. And I think that if I love something enough, which I do, then I should never want to sell. I should want to keep on doing it for a long period of time. And so it was a combination with Hampton.

44:24I want it to last for so long because A, I'm not motivated by money, but if you want to make money, like you have to be able to do something for many decades. B, I want my children to work here because I think it'd be so exciting to be able to have an excuse to spend time with them. And the last thing, C, is that I just like doing it. I enjoy this. My company, the way that I set it up, it's just an excuse for me to have fun and be around people who I love and like co-workers who I'm inspired by. And if I do that right and make this my playground, I don't want to get rid of it. I'm actually a member of Hampton.

44:54And so I joined about a year ago. I've absolutely loved it. I thought it was such a genius idea when I came across it. There's other things out there, but not at the scale and the quality that you're doing it. But what did you feel was the gap or the need for entrepreneurs in terms of community? Because there's so many masterminds and conferences out there. What did you want to do differently? Well, thank you for being a part of it. And thank you for saying that. It's really nice. The gap was basically there's YPO, which is a company that does what we do or we do what they do. And they probably have 30 ,000 members.

45:28But the majority of members are a little bit more blue collar, not blue collar, but old school. So it's people who have inherited a family business or who own real estate companies. and that's wonderful. That's great. And then there's Vistage. Have you ever heard of Vistage? Mm-mm. Vistage is a company in our space. They probably do 800 million a year in revenue. They're huge. Oh, wow. It's massive. It's a massive company. And they do what we do or we do what they do. And they are mostly for blue collar. So like someone who owns a plumbing or HVAC business. And what I noticed is that for the internet space, a lot of these communities, they were a little borderline scammy or a lot of them are like kind of bro-y, which I didn't particularly identify with.

46:04and I just thought that there was nothing for people who were in the internet space, who were young or at least young thinking and who already were past survival and now still more thinking about thriving. So someone like you, no matter what happens, you're gonna go somewhere. You're gonna kick ass in life. But you've probably been building this business for a handful of years and you had your head down for three, four, five years, however long, and then you looked up all of a sudden and you're like, oh my God, this is amazing. It's kind of working. I still feel scared that I can go out of business or I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing, but it's working.

46:38And the unfortunate situation is after years of having my head down, I finally have looked up and I've realized I've outrun all my peers and there's no one around me. And I need other people who are like me. Otherwise, I'm making five, 10, 20, $50 million decisions all by myself. And that's when mediocrity tends to creep in because you don't have anyone to push you. You'll talk to your team and your staff, but they're not gonna be honest with you. They don't wanna be fired. Your spouse, your husband, your boyfriend, your wife, your girlfriend, they don't really know everything about your business.

47:07They know about your personal baggage, but not about your business. And the people who know about your business, who you work with, they don't know too much about your personal baggage because you don't want to mix that. And so you're making all these decisions by yourself without anyone to push back. And so the gap was we wanted to solve that problem for this very particular internet type of young thinking entrepreneur. And I know that there's specific requirements to get into Hampton. So what made you want to put those requirements in place? And how do you make sure that people are engaged in the community through their journey of joining Hampton?

47:40We put requirements in place because it kind of stinks. We turn people away all the time. We actually turn way more people away than we let in. But you have to have requirements in order to make it great. We had a rule early on was we will never trade off cool, meaning I don't want Hampton to be something people want to join because it's cool. I want them to be something that they join because it has utility. Talking to one another, a lot of women know this, and they've been trying to convince men for years. Talking about your issues helps. That makes you feel better and you can actually solve problems and it feels good to get it off your chest.

48:15We want people to come to Hampton because we're solving that problem. We're helping them make more money or we're helping them build a better business or feel better about their life. Now, how do you get people engaged? when I first started the company about three years ago, I was like, I don't want to build a business off of my reputation. I want to build the business so it can grow without me. And about six months ago, I kicked myself in the head and I was like, that's the stupidest thing ever. Use my brand, what am I doing? And so lately, I've been leaning in way more to where it's sort of like a cult and you need a cult leader, unfortunately, and I'm a little bit of that leader.

48:49And so to get people more engaged, we've noticed the more I lean in with my personality, the more people get bought in. And so we're kind of leaning in on that more than we ever have to get people engaged. One way we get people engaged is every single person who applies to Hampton, who fits our requirements. We spend a lot of time interviewing them. And what a lot of people realize is back here, we have our staff. They're actually watching all of the interviews. And then we have a meeting at the end of the week to talk about who we want to let in, who we don't want to let in. So we go through this huge vetting process.

49:18Oh, wow. So when I was interviewed, other people were watching that at the same time? Yes, we record all of them. And we tell you recording. I don't know what people think. I knew that people were reviewing it. I thought you meant live, like watching it or something. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not live. But me and my co-founder, we've had tens of thousands of people apply. We have watched 100 % of all the interviews. Wow. 100%. I'm not exaggerating. 100%. And we have these meetings over here in our office over here where people like we like debate, like, should we let this person in? Should we not let this person in?

49:48What's the situation? I don't entirely understand their business. Let's Google it and like research it to figure out if it's legit. We do that for everyone. And because we do that, I actually think we need to tell that story better about how much work we do on every single person we invite. But once they realize all the work we do, I think they take it a lot more serious. Yeah. And quality control. I mean, it's helpful for people in the community because everybody that you're engaging with is somebody who's really done a great job in their business and has value to share. So that is awesome. Can I ask you a question really quick?

50:20Of course. Who's been the best person you've ever had on? The best person that I've ever had on the show ever. My favorite interview that I've ever had is Gary V. Yeah, he's cool. I interviewed him in person at his office. When? Probably about a year ago. That's awesome. And because I'm a marketer, we just had so much to riff on. And it's somebody that I've really looked up to. Who's your favorite? You know, Gary, I've probably hung out with him three or four times. I'm not friends with him. I would say we're acquaintances. but I admire the hell out of him. I've had dinner with him a couple times and I am like starstruck when I'm with him.

50:55He's amazing. So I would say he's one of my favorites. Jesse Itzler was really special to me. He's pretty cool. Dharmesh, who's the founder of HubSpot. He's a multi-billionaire. Oh, I gotta try to get him. Man, Dharmesh is a special human being. Dharmesh is a person who I admire through and through all facets of life. Most recently, we had Will Guderian. Will wrote this amazing book called Unreasonable Hospitality. and he used to run this restaurant called 11 Madison. It's one of the best restaurants in the world. You know, the TV show, The Bear, how they have like a fancy, it's like they looked up to Will in that show in order to see how to run a restaurant.

51:30I had him on recently and I loved talking to him. He kind of blew my mind and changed my opinion that my business and everyone else's business should be all about hospitality. And so that was really good. That sounds so interesting. I'm pretty sure he's on our list of coming up. So I'm excited about that. Somebody who I interviewed recently, this is my second time interviewing him, Grant Cardone, even though he gets so much slack online, I love him. He's always so nice and he's so smart and he just always makes for such a great interview. So it's just funny how sometimes people just get a bad reputation online, but then in reality, they're like amazing humans.

52:08I've never met him, but I do agree. He does not have a wonderful reputation. Yeah, you're like, no comment. I've never met him, but yeah. If you met him, I feel like you'd change your mind. That's kind of how I feel about him. I haven't met him, so I can't say what he's like in real life. But that's cool. I'm happy that you get to talk to him again and get to meet people you admire. Okay, so I'm going to ask you two questions. You can answer them however you like. It doesn't have to be about anything that we talked about today. So what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

52:40One thing. Your biggest piece of advice. I have to say two. Can I do two? Yeah, that's fine. The more, the merrier. I think the first one is to pick a good spouse or partner. I picked, or she picked me a little bit, but my wife, this sounds like it was a financial decision. It wasn't, but she was the most profitable thing that I've ever done. Picking a really good partner, a life partner, it's not a financial decision, but it's the greatest financial decision I ever made because she's kept me on track and helped me up when I wanted to quit, which was often. So that's really important. But the second thing, a mistake that I made, I read a lot.

53:17I read a ton of books. When I was younger, I tended to read one book over and over and over again, and I would master the techniques. And I think that's a significantly better way to consume information. And so if you're listening and you tend to read a ton of different business books, I would stick to only three or four classic ones. So like Robert Cialdini's, his book Influence and a few others like that. And I would master them and I would consume no other books. Like I wouldn't read any extra stuff. I would just master the one or two books every single year that could really move the needle for my business.

53:54So good that you could teach it back to someone. That's really, really good advice. Reflecting on my past of how I've consumed books, the ones that I've read over and over again are the ones that I've actually implemented in real life in terms of the advice that I read that actually sticks. There's an overemphasis on breadth of knowledge and not depth. And I think depth is where real value is created. And I tend to read for entertainment, so I justify that breadth is good. But the reality is, is that it's far better to be an expert at a very narrow thing than it is to be a generalist at a bunch of things.

54:27And so I think that you should not follow your ego and read to read lots of books, but read to master one or two topics. Okay, what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can be beyond business, finance. What is your secret to just having a wonderful, successful life? I set goals in these categories every year. Family, fitness, finance, and fun. And if you're religious, you can add a faith. You can do faith. I get pretty intentional about setting goals in those categories. And I meet with my wife once a month where we talk about them and to figure out, Are we on track for what we wanted to accomplish this year?

55:07For example, I love gilded age architecture. And I was like, I really want to go on a tour. Let's make a point to do this. Or I really wanted to visit this region of the country and I wanted to see this one monument. I've always wanted to do that. We have to schedule it and we have to do it. But then there's finances and then there's fitness. And so I have those four categories where I create goals and I'm pretty relentless about getting after it and hitting those goals. I think an issue a lot of people make is they don't write down goals. And if they do, they don't write them down the right way.

55:39A goal needs to be time-bound. It needs to be achievable. And it needs to be super specific. I think that writing down goals is sort of like if you went to a trainer and you were like, I want to be fit. The trainer wouldn't just tell you what to do. They would say, well, do you want lots of muscle? Do you want to be able to do the front splits? Do you want to be able to run a fast 5k? Like, what do you want to do? because if you tell me what you want me to do or what you want to do, then I can create a plan and we can get you to where you want to go. But I can't optimize for a goal that doesn't exist.

56:09And so I don't think people do goal setting the right way, but I think they should. Yeah, I also think that that consistency in terms of like meeting with your wife once a month about it and going back to it. A lot of people set goals, but then they never go back to them. Well, because oftentimes people set too many goals and they don't remind themselves enough of them and they aren't focused. And I think a lack of focus, I tell my team, distractions are loud, really loud. You can't listen to them. And goals allows you to put blinders on and focus on the one or two things that you set. You don't go to a grocery store while you're hungry.

56:42You can't look at new opportunities and stuff like that while you're like scattered. And like, you have to be focused. I think focus is a huge underrated trait. I think that's a challenge that I have in my life. But I'm like all about focus and patience. Sam, this has been such an awesome conversation. Thank you so much. I feel like I've got so much to cover with you. I'd love to have you come on another time and just talk about, I had like 20 other questions to ask you. I like talking with you. If I'm invited back again, I would love to do this again. You make me feel very comfortable. You're really good at that.

57:12You're a very good podcaster. It's hard to find people who do that. You're very talented. Thanks, Sam. Thank you for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast. Thank you.

57:24You know, Yap Bam, I knew that Sam Parr was going to be an amazing interview, but that totally exceeded my expectations. Now, in this episode, we focused a lot on entrepreneurship and his journey, and I hope he comes back on because I really wanna dive deep on copywriting, community, networking, and all that good stuff with Sam. When I think about this conversation, one of the biggest takeaways that I have is be different. He talked about differentiation. He talked about how he believes it's better to be different than just better, and that's a testament to his own journey. He launched an email newsletter when everybody told him it would fail.

57:57He got really good at it and he scaled it so big that HubSpot bought it for multi-millions of dollars, like$30 million. He won by zigging when everybody was zagging. The other lesson that I learned from him is that you've got to be the node of your network. Being the node of your network gives you power. He built community with HustleCon and he also built community through a book club that he launched via Craigslist. And he did this for a silly reason. He just wanted to make friends. Later, that book club generated almost all of his best friends, he told us. And so it's just so powerful to think about being the node of your network.

58:35And lastly, one of the most important lessons, I think, from this conversation is that when it comes to being an entrepreneur, you don't need to just build for an exit. So many of us feel like in order to be a successful entrepreneur, you've got to exit your company. You can build to sell, and you can also build to run. You can create a legacy company that you just love to run forever, one that you can pass down to your kids generation after generation. You do not only need to sell your company to be considered a successful entrepreneur. And I just think that's such an important thing for us entrepreneurs to hear because so often we feel like our success is tied to our exit.

59:10Well, that's it for today's show, Yap Fam. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. If you listened, learned, and profited today, make sure you drop us a review on Apple, Spotify, or CastBox wherever you listen to the show. If you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and be sure to drop us a comment. Give me your favorite takeaway from today's episode in the comments. I'd love to hear from you. This is your host, Pala Taha, aka the Podcast Princess, signing off.