Sam Parr Reveals How He Grew The Hustle And Why You Shouldn’t Take Outside Funding | #Marketing - Ep. 58

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Speaker 2 This is the Russell Brunson Show.

Speaker 2 What's up, everybody? This is Russell. Welcome back to the show.

Speaker 2 Excited to have someone who I've been watching for a long time over the last couple of years do a lot of really cool businesses, a lot of things.

Speaker 2 But this is actually the first time I've had a chance to meet him in person and talk to him. His name is Sam Parr.
He's the founder of The Hustle, which a lot of you guys know about.

Speaker 2 He's got a great podcast called My First Million, another business called The Hampton. I'm excited to talk about all those things with him.

Speaker 2 But Sam, thanks for jumping on and finally excited to get to know you and actually meet you in person for the the first time.

Speaker 1 Hey, I'm excited to be doing this.

Speaker 1 You can check my account. I've used ClickFunnels and

Speaker 1 I don't know. I think I've gotten my Tukama Club record.
I think I've made over a million on using ClickFunnels.

Speaker 2 Have you submitted for the award yet? We need to get it to you.

Speaker 1 No, I did not.

Speaker 1 But I definitely have achieved a few things on ClickFunnels. And so I'm happy you made that and I'm happy to be here.
Well, that's awesome. Thank you.

Speaker 2 I know it's funny on our side. It's like we've, I think we've we've awarded over 3,000 Two Cup awards now, which is like exciting.

Speaker 2 But the number of people who never submit is probably double that, which drives me crazy because I like bragging about the number. So I'm going to add it to 3,001.

Speaker 2 I'm counting yours as officially in there now.

Speaker 1 We've done, I've done over a million across a couple accounts, but I for sure did, like, I used to use ClickFunnels. I still do, as like my MVP.
And, uh, and I've done six figures a couple of times.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's so cool.

Speaker 2 Well, thank you for being a, for, for using the platform, man. I appreciate that.
So I'm first got familiar with you guys, with you specifically with

Speaker 2 your newsletter, The Hustle. But I'm curious, like, before that, I don't know your history prior to that.

Speaker 2 Like, how did you get into entrepreneurship and get into this whole world back at the very beginning?

Speaker 2 Where'd your path start?

Speaker 1 I'm from Missouri. And in Missouri, all of my family were small business owners.
They didn't call it entrepreneurs. They just, my parents actually started a fruit stand.

Speaker 1 That was their kind of their first business and parlayed that into something a little bit bigger. But I grew up in Missouri.
I was a Division I athlete,

Speaker 1 or I wanted in college or in high school, I wanted to be a Division I athlete, and I became one. And so that's why I moved to Tennessee.
I went to a small,

Speaker 1 I ran the 400-meter dash. So I used to be fairly fast, not anymore, but I used to be.
And

Speaker 1 in college, I was studying accounting and music business. And I knew I was going to start a business.
I thought it was going to be like a blue-collar like lawn care company.

Speaker 1 I wasn't sure, but my first business was a hot dog stand. And so I had eventually like a bunch of hot dog stands.
I think, did you write a book on how to like?

Speaker 2 I didn't write a book. Perry Belcher wrote one, but we had a client who's a multiple Two Column Cup winner who teaches people how to start hot dog stands.
So it was kind of interesting.

Speaker 1 So I probably bought one of those things, but that's what I had. It was called Southern Sams,

Speaker 1 Wiener's as Big as a Baby's Arm. And

Speaker 1 I would sell hot dogs like crazy. And then I learned about a company called Air Bed and Breakfast in 2012.

Speaker 1 And I cold emailed the CEO and I was like, you guys can improve your site if you do this, this, and this.

Speaker 1 And he was like, yeah, whatever, but that's awesome that you had the initiative to like have this list of how I could do better. Do you want to interview for like an entry-level position?

Speaker 1 And I said, hell yeah, I do. Come.
And he said, come to my office on Monday. And I lived in Tennessee.
And he was like, I live in the Bay Area. And I was like, I don't even know what the Bay Area is.

Speaker 1 I've never been west of Missouri. I was like, I don't, Silicon Valley, is that like Hollywood? I don't know what that means.

Speaker 1 And so I basically dropped out of school and I moved out to join Airbnb as one of their early employees.

Speaker 2 And I, how early was it in the company?

Speaker 1 Was it like how many years?

Speaker 1 Not that early, like 200 or 150 people. Okay.
I think they had raised a Series A, maybe. This was in 12, 2012.
I think they were founded in 10. So they were two years in.

Speaker 1 Not that early, but early enough to be like an early adopter.

Speaker 1 And I, back then, so I'm completely sober now, but back then I had a drinking issue and I'd been arrested for DUIs and fighting and all this stuff. And I lied on my back, on my resume.

Speaker 1 Like they said, like, do you have a criminal record? And I said, no. And they caught me.
And so I had moved out to San Francisco to do my thing.

Speaker 1 And the day before I'm supposed to start, they're like, we don't hire liars. You're out.
And so I was out in San Francisco with nothing. And I was like, I got to make this work.

Speaker 1 I dropped out of college. Like, I got to do something.
And so I started a small internet business that was acquired for like $100,000 after a little bit of time.

Speaker 1 And then I started this thing called HustleCon, which was a conference.

Speaker 1 And that conference led to me starting the hustle, which I ended up scaling and selling for many tens of millions of dollars in a fairly short amount of time.

Speaker 2 That's so interesting. That was the thing that got you to move and then it fell apart.
So the first business that you sold for 100 grand,

Speaker 2 what was that business? It was

Speaker 1 some, so when I was

Speaker 1 interviewing at Airbnb, I stayed on an Airbnb and I met a guy who had an idea for a roommate matching app. And I was like, hey, can I join you?

Speaker 1 And so we created a roommate matching app and it was basically Tinder for roommates, which is obviously stupid. It should have just been Tinder for Tinder because like Tinder wasn't that popular yet.

Speaker 1 We were like, oh, this is like a really interesting way, this swiping thing. That's kind of cool.
Let's do that for roommate matching, which is the worst, like the worst business ever.

Speaker 1 Like dating would have been way better. And so I started a roommate matching app and I sold it.

Speaker 1 And I think we got like 30 grand up front and then like a salary and then like some bonuses at the end of one year.

Speaker 2 You know, what's funny is one of my business partners, his daughter just found her roommate on a roommate app. I wonder if it was your app, if it's still right now.

Speaker 1 I think they should, I think they shut it down. Okay.
Or I don't know. This was in, this was in 2014.

Speaker 2 There's one out there because, like, he literally, this, uh, he told me this like two weeks ago. He's like, Yeah, we couldn't find someone, a roommate.
So there's this app and we download it.

Speaker 2 So someone's doing it as a thing still, which is kind of interesting.

Speaker 1 So there's like five or ten businesses that every entrepreneurial college kid starts. It's like, it's like,

Speaker 1 yeah, it's like laundry, like on-demand laundry, and then it's like a roommate matching app and then it's like a college craigslist it's like there's like five or ten things that like every like 21 year old who's entrepreneurial does and that was that's usually one of them that's awesome and then you went and started the hustle so um the hustle the the event and it used to call hustle con how many is that what they tell me about that event was that event you ran for a while or was it just a one-time thing no i so my goal was to uh like start a big company i wanted to start i wanted to like my goal was to make 20 million dollars by the age of 30 that was my goal and i was like how am i going to get get there?

Speaker 1 I didn't know. I didn't have a plan.
And so I created this event called HustleCon and I made about 60 grand in six weeks. So it was basically like an entrepreneurial conference.

Speaker 1 And I was like, that's kind of cool. Let's do it again.
And so I did it again and I made like $250,000 in a very short amount of time.

Speaker 1 And I was like, this is great, but conferences stink as your like as your business, it stinks. Like you, you do it now with the funnel hacker live and that's cool.

Speaker 1 But when it's your main source of income, it's not awesome. And

Speaker 1 but I was like, I but I grew up my email list from zero to 10,000 people in like two months. And I was doing some math and I watched you and I watched Andrew Warner from Mixergy do interviews.

Speaker 1 And I saw like what you did with email. I saw what my friend Noah Kagan did with email.
And I was like, I'm pretty sure I can build a media company with email only.

Speaker 1 And I pitched this idea to a bunch of people and some of them I cold emailed like executives at media companies and they laughed at me. They're like, this is stupid.
But I'm like, I don't know, man.

Speaker 1 I think I can get 5 5 million people on this email. And I think they'll open every day.
And I think that can make like $100 million in revenue.

Speaker 1 I'm like, I'm pretty sure you could build like a $500 million, billion-dollar company with just email. And the premise was simple.
And we started it.

Speaker 1 And I sold the company in year four or five when we were doing about $20 million in revenue.

Speaker 1 But my best friends had a company called Morning Brew, and they are now in the 100 million in revenue range. So my premise was right.

Speaker 1 But the early premise was social media is going away, like in terms of reach. So back then, if you posted an article on Facebook, you could get tons and tons of views.

Speaker 1 And I was like, no, that's going away. Everyone knows that.

Speaker 1 Email is like a pirate ship and every email I get is a little bit of wind in my sail.

Speaker 1 If I just build this email list to be huge, I can own my destiny and I can create an entire news company, media company off the backs of this.

Speaker 1 I just have to create content that's so good that people want to read it every single day. And that's news, which I love.
And it's business news, which I also love. And I was like, let's do that.

Speaker 2 So cool. So, walk me through the model of the hustle then, because in my world, everyone understands building email lists to sell their products, but they're not doing it the way you did, right?

Speaker 2 You're building a media company, how you monetize it, and all that stuff. I'd love to understand the model better.

Speaker 1 Here's the thing: so, you, so the way you started is not where you are now. You're a proper product builder, you have an amazing company, but like I was inspired by you.

Speaker 1 I was like, all right, this internet marketing information product person, could I mix those tactics with like the Silicon Valley ethos? I don't know, like whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 1 I was like, because all the Silicon Valley guys, they poo-pooed email and they thought that like long form copy, you know this better than anyone, they laugh at it, right?

Speaker 1 They think like, oh, this landing page is so ugly. This is nonsense.
And I was like, no, like I could, this guy is a bootstrap guy.

Speaker 1 He's bullied this big thing, which means every cent he spends has to be ROI driven. Whereas if you raise $100 million, you can blow a lot of money and not be efficient.

Speaker 1 And like the efficient way is definitely the better way. And so, I was like, What if I have a 1500-word text-only email, and that's like someone's news? And if I can get

Speaker 1 a million people a day, if I can get a million subscribers and half of them open, so if I get 500,000 high-net, higher net worth, like coastal high-earning income young people to read my newsletter, man, I think I can charge like

Speaker 1 $80, $100 per 1,000 opens.

Speaker 1 And that was the model. And so when I sold, we were going to do about 20 in revenue and maybe 14 or 15 million was going to come via advertising in my newsletter.

Speaker 1 So the old analogy was basically if you'd go to BuzzFeed, you'd see ads on their website. My ads were just in the newsletter and I didn't even have a website.
And so I had a team of

Speaker 1 12 people and they were each a salesperson that had like a $1.5 million quota, and they would sell ad space to WeWork Salesforce.

Speaker 1 HubSpot eventually bought us because we used to sell ad space to them, and we would sell so much of their software that they wanted to own the thing. And so that's how the business model worked.

Speaker 1 It was basically a cost per thousand cents.

Speaker 2 That's awesome. So then, so every, it was every day you're setting up.

Speaker 1 Which is not a fun business model, by the way. Like selling pro selling products is better.

Speaker 2 I think there's a hybrid where both sides could be cool. You know, having your own media and also having your own products.

Speaker 1 Yeah, which, which, I mean, but I just did what you did. Like, I just, most things that I have done, I have just copied you.

Speaker 1 That's amazing.

Speaker 2 Okay, so when you were doing it, you were sending out just one email a day, 1,500 words. Did you have a team that were curating content or were you guys doing it through?

Speaker 2 How did that publishing side work?

Speaker 1 I just wrote an email every day where it was like your smart friend tells you the business news that you need to know. And I would just write them.

Speaker 1 I just I I was selling ads and I was writing an email and I wrote I got good

Speaker 1 like people probably admire you and your writing and your content creation and but they don't realize that if you make it your job you can create one or two or three blog posts a day if you like really like bubble down

Speaker 1 for sure like you just gotta get you got to get what it takes weeks or months to get in the groove but once you get in the groove like i could bang it out and so basically between like

Speaker 1 a 9 a.m and like 2, I would build the business. So I would grow our subscriber base.
I would sell ads. And then from like 3 to like midnight, I would write the email.

Speaker 1 And so,

Speaker 1 but really quickly, I think in the first year of business, maybe we did half a million. In the second year, we did, let's say, two and a half million in revenue.

Speaker 1 So somewhere between 500,000 in revenue and

Speaker 1 or somewhere around 500,000 in revenue, I hired a team. And so I didn't have to write the email every day.
But

Speaker 1 we had like really great journalists. So a lot of the guys who wrote for me or worked for me are all like pretty popular now.

Speaker 1 So if you know Trung, if you know Trung fam on Twitter, he's got like a million followers on Twitter. We found Trung before he even had Twitter.
And some of your listeners maybe know Trung.

Speaker 1 He's like a comedy guy on Twitter. And then like, I had another guy named Zach Crockett, who he now is the host of

Speaker 1 a podcast for Freakonomics, which is a popular podcast.

Speaker 1 Anyway, we hired really young, like 23, 24-year-old, ambitious writers who are really funny and interesting, and we had them go and find the content and write it every day.

Speaker 2 That's so cool. Then,

Speaker 2 how did you build the list? Like, what was your process? What did that look like?

Speaker 1 The first 100,000. So, in one year, we got between 100 and 150,000 subscribers, and that was all organically.

Speaker 1 And so, what I would do is I would go to subreddits that I think my audience would be hanging out in, and I would write articles that would go viral there.

Speaker 1 For example, I paid my friend to live on soylent do you remember soylent

Speaker 1 wait

Speaker 1 like the slim fats for nerds type it was like a it was like a a supplement that had like all of your nutritional infrastr like calories yeah yes i bought it one time it was okay yes i 100 remember that now yeah it's not not that very good it's not great but it was like popular and i'm like well i'm gonna pay someone to live off that for 30 days And I wrote an article, like 30 days living on Soylent.

Speaker 1 And so I would just write timely, great articles.

Speaker 1 And I would, but I would write them in such a way that I thought with a good chance that they were going to go viral in a particular subreddit where my customer was.

Speaker 1 And then I would get like half a million people to come to my website in like 30 days. And I had a really good pop-up that said, like, oh no, not another pop-up.

Speaker 1 Okay, look, while you're here, here's what this is. The hustle is actually a daily newsletter with news and business stuff.
But I wrote this blog post to get your attention.

Speaker 1 Now that you're here reading it, you might as well give me your email. Like, I wrote these like really good posts.
And

Speaker 1 like, we did another one where I had a friend that was plagiarizing people and turning books into Kindle books that he would sell and he was making like 60 grand a month.

Speaker 1 And I was like, that's horrible. I don't like that.
But I'm going to write an article explaining how this is done because Kindle should catch this.

Speaker 1 And that article got like 2 million views and I got like 20,000 subscribers. And that's how I grew the first 100,000.

Speaker 2 So you're writing the article on the blog and then promoting it on Reddit and other places like that or you're posting the the articles on Reddit?

Speaker 1 The first one. Okay.

Speaker 1 And then once I understood what my LTV was,

Speaker 1 so I was earning roughly $10 per subscriber or something like that per year.

Speaker 1 And once I learned that, then we started advertising. And back then, I don't know what it is now, I could acquire an email newsletter subscriber for $1.50 on Facebook.
Oh, wow. And so

Speaker 1 I wish I didn't know. I didn't understand math back then.
Like, I didn't understand like there's like a rare window when like you can acquire customers for cheaply.

Speaker 1 I was 25, like, I was silly, but I should have emptied the bank account into that. But I spent money on Facebook ads in order to grow from 100,000 to when we sold about 2 million.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Dang, it's 2 million people. And then HubSpot bought it.
At that point, were you out of the business or were you tied into it after

Speaker 2 the purchase?

Speaker 1 I had a really good executive team that was doing all the work. And when I sold, I basically told them, I'm like, I'm out.

Speaker 1 And they, where they were cool with it. And I think they preferred it because

Speaker 1 like back then, I mean, I'm kind of

Speaker 1 wild and I was really wild then. And so basically

Speaker 1 the hustle, we owned a bunch of stuff, including our daily newsletter, but we also owned a bunch of podcasts. One of those podcasts being My First Million.
And they were like, just do the podcasts.

Speaker 1 And I said, yes, sir, that sounds good to me. And that unexpectedly blew up.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Interesting.

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Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 with HubSpot taking over, they just keep running the same way, but now they're just advertising their own stuff, or they still sell advertising for other people, or how did they shift when they take it over?

Speaker 1 So the year we sold, we went into the year, we were going to do, let's say, I think $18 million in revenue. And so we went into the year with like $4 million in revenue already booked for advertising.

Speaker 1 And I sold the company on February 4th. I gave back all of that money.
Because HubSpot was like, look, we're, at the time, a billion-dollar company. Like, I don't want your teaching.

Speaker 1 yeah, they're like, I don't even want to report on our P ⁇ L what advertising is because I don't want an analyst at Morgan Stanley to think, oh,

Speaker 1 you guys are in the advertising business. What's this? And so

Speaker 1 they gave it all back. And the way that they make money is just through leads in the same way that ClickFunnel probably,

Speaker 1 ClickFunnels makes money from your personal newsletter. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so that's what they do.

Speaker 2 Interesting.

Speaker 1 And then they also, it turned into this thing called HubSpot Media, which is my, the hustle. But now they have like 30 or 15 podcasts, of which My First Million is one of them.

Speaker 1 And it's one of the largest business or it's for sure one of the largest business podcast networks, but it might be one of the larger podcast networks in the country. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Interesting. So then you so

Speaker 2 so that podcast was already part of your business and they acquired that as well. It wasn't something you spun out later.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no. I owned it

Speaker 1 and or the hustle owned it. And at the time, I forget how big we were, like 600,000

Speaker 1 downloads and views on YouTube a month, or maybe even, maybe even 350,000. And over the last 12 months, including some of our clips, like we've gotten like 90 or 100 million.

Speaker 1 So like it grew a lot.

Speaker 2 Interesting. So they own that now? Are you an employee of that? Are you a partner on that? Or how does that work?

Speaker 1 So they own the IP. I sold the IP.
And then they pay MFM Media, which my partner Sean and I own. And so they pay us a performance.

Speaker 1 So based off of how many downloads and views it gets, that's how much I get paid.

Speaker 2 Okay, gotcha.

Speaker 1 So I guess I'm a vendor.

Speaker 2 You're a

Speaker 2 hired gun, hired host.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the way that I explain it to my family, they're like, wait, do you work there? I'm like, not really.

Speaker 1 I'm Howard Stern and they're Sirius Radio. Like I have like a contract.
I have like a talent contract.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's really cool. Interesting.
You keep doing that for a long time, or what does that part of your life look like?

Speaker 1 You know, I've done it. How long have I been doing it?

Speaker 1 It was,

Speaker 1 I started doing it in 19.

Speaker 1 I never didn't, I didn't want to, I don't, I didn't want to be a podcaster. The podcast was Sean's idea.
And I started doing it because one day one of his guests didn't show up.

Speaker 1 And I was like, I'll just like step in and riff on with you. And we did good.
But I'm sort of his, I'm like the straight man. And he's like the, he does most of the talking.

Speaker 1 And I never wanted to be a podcaster, but I don't know if I'm going to keep doing it for, you know, I always say like, I'll reevaluate at the end of the year.

Speaker 1 But I, I don't particularly like, like, it's really, it's a lot of work. How many episodes do you do?

Speaker 2 We do it two a week.

Speaker 1 It's how long have you been doing that?

Speaker 2 A long time, but 90% of mine are just me talking. So I don't, I don't do many interviews.
So it's easier because I can just set up a mic and just go, you know.

Speaker 1 But do you do you write in advance what you're going to talk about? No.

Speaker 1 I hate doing that. Aren't you nervous?

Speaker 2 You guys pre-write all this stuff in advance?

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no, no. So half the time we have a guest, half the time we don't.
But if we don't have a guest, I'll spend an hour in advance just like taking notes.

Speaker 1 I just right here, I just take notes. I'm like, here's like a bullet.
And then like half the time, I don't even bring any of this up. I just, we, I follow, you know, we follow the energy.

Speaker 1 But I I find it very stressful. The bigger the audience, so like some of our episodes will get 2 million downloads.

Speaker 1 And I find it incredibly stressful.

Speaker 1 Like, I just don't want to say the wrong thing. Yeah.
Do not get nervous about it.

Speaker 2 Interesting. No, I don't.
But what's okay, this is interesting. So I don't know if you follow personal development world.
Do you know what Earl Nightingale is? Of course.

Speaker 2 Okay, so I just bought his entire estate from his widow. And so I had a chance to fly down.

Speaker 1 You did it with Napoleon Hill. You talked about this on Instagram.
I saw this, right?

Speaker 2 You did it with Napoleon Hill and this, right yeah like we bought napoleon hills estate now we're buying this anyway see i'm i'm collecting anyway yes i'm collecting all these old books and people but earl's was fascinating because he was the radio personality voice for a generation right like my dad listened to earl nangale when he was growing up every night on the radio teaching personal development but what's crazy is the radio back then the laws were like you had to get things approved before you could say them because there was no

Speaker 2 you know if someone's got a mic and they're hot and half of america's listening to it you can't just say stuff so um what i acquired is these boxes and boxes of every one one of his shows.

Speaker 2 So, he would sit down and he'd pre-write the entire show, type out the entire show, then he'd sit there and he'd read it over the air. So, think about that.
Like, I like, we're so lazy nowadays.

Speaker 2 Like, I'm saying I have an outline or I have a couple of thoughts, and I just go, but for them, he had word for word so that the radio, so that the radio commission could approve it.

Speaker 2 And if he deviated from it, he could get in trouble for like saying things that weren't anyway. I was like, it was so much harder back then.

Speaker 1 I think, like, I always, I, I, I always get like a little sense of being a fraud where it's like, I need to like I want to be a someone who's making cool companies and occasionally talks about like the stuff I'm doing not the other way around like I talk and whatever do you

Speaker 1 do you ever feel that way because I mean ClickFunnels is is bigger than any company that I've built so far so you kind of have some some great street cred but do you feel uh like i want to talk less and build more um yeah i i mean i i yes i'd rather be building all the time.

Speaker 2 I'm very introverted too. So I don't, my natural default is not that, but like the podcast is nice because it inspires people, gives them tools and motivate.

Speaker 2 And like, you know, I use it as a tool to like train people for free on how to use, just understand marketing, understand business, and understand, you know, like just from this loan, people are going to understand, like, oh my gosh, I can start an email newsletter.

Speaker 2 I didn't even think about that. You know, so it's, it's just, it's a good tool to keep getting our members just different ways to use it.

Speaker 2 Because, you know, you could use the platform to do a million different things and everyone's got different models on how they use it.

Speaker 2 So it's just inspiring people to like, okay, I could use it for this or for this.

Speaker 1 And anyway,

Speaker 1 that's cool.

Speaker 1 How big is this pod?

Speaker 2 I actually have no idea.

Speaker 2 I should probably find that out. We've been doing it for a long time.
So I first started, it was called Marketing Your Car, and I would drive my work, my office back every day.

Speaker 2 It was like a five-minute podcast. I did like 350 episodes that way, and then we transitioned it.

Speaker 2 And we transitioned, we finally hooked up analytics, but I'm not 100% positive.

Speaker 1 What's crazy, so our podcast, okay, so I think we have, someone will will have in the audience will have to look this up, but I think we have 800,000 subscribers on YouTube and

Speaker 1 including audio. Every podcast that we do for sure gets 150,000 people watching it and then upwards of like, let's say, 2 million if it goes viral.
And when we started,

Speaker 1 it was so janky that Sean would take one earbud and I would take one earbud if someone like we would want to like talk to someone who called in and we would record sitting around a table on an iPhone.

Speaker 1 And now I'm recording just in my office. I think I have $2,000 worth of equipment.
Nothing like crazy. Maybe less, honestly, maybe $1,000 worth.
And it's just insane.

Speaker 1 It looks like you have a fancier one, but it's just insane that a podcast can start so janky and

Speaker 1 continue to be janky, to be honest. And it still reaches like so many people.
And that kind of

Speaker 1 boggles my mind because I used to think that email is the strongest marketing channel. I've changed.

Speaker 1 I think podcast is because when you listen to someone in your ears for 40 minutes, you are very intimate with them.

Speaker 1 And there's been times where I've said stuff that I don't even remember and someone off the street will like tell me all about it. And I'm like, I said that.

Speaker 1 And so it's just crazy how much people listen.

Speaker 2 I completely agree. It's like my philosophy is the same thing.
It's like if I move people from short form to long form, like long form is when you get their

Speaker 2 mind share, you know, versus the other things, you're getting a glimpse of attention.

Speaker 2 But yeah, when someone spends 45 minutes with you twice a week,

Speaker 2 it changed. And I think about the podcasts I go deep with, like, I feel like I have such close relationships with those people who I've never met, you know, and that's the power.

Speaker 2 In fact, it was interesting when we have our high-end masterminds, like we have a 50 and a $250,000 mastermind groups. And what's interesting is like the majority of those people

Speaker 2 were podcast listeners for a long time first. It's not people who got me off email or saw an ad.

Speaker 2 It's like they went through some process, got on the podcast, listened to me for a year, and then they invested and came in. That's the highest end clients I've found come off of the back of that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like, I think I've always been surprised at how much influence a podcast can have.

Speaker 1 To this day, it still shocks me.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Okay, I want to shift.
I want to ask you a little about your, I don't know how much this newer business or whatever, but it's interesting. So you have a company called Hampton, and

Speaker 2 I run Masterminds in your circle, and this is like a different variation of this, I think. And so I don't understand it completely, but I love you to explain what it is.

Speaker 2 And I have probably a lot of follow-ups afterwards.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so

Speaker 1 I was trying to think of like what business to launch after I sold the hustle and I settled on this one because it kind of fits my preferences and my skill set. But basically Hampton is

Speaker 1 if you're an entrepreneur of a company that does somewhere between 20 and 50 million a year in revenue, a lot of times you're lonely where you live and you want to be less lonely and you want to have a peer group of people who you can talk to about the company, the company and if it's you got to lay people off or if you're succeeding and you don't know what to do with your money, if your wife and you are having issues, like these are issues that if you live in, let's say, Boise or Nashville, maybe you're a little bit of a freak, like amongst your friend group.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, some of your friends might work a little bit more normal jobs than you. And so you're like, I don't really have anyone to talk to.
And we wanted to help solve that.

Speaker 1 And so what Hampton is, is

Speaker 1 we're live in 12 different cities. And the first thing that you get is a group of eight people who you meet with every single month with a facilitator who guides the conversation.

Speaker 1 And then you have your local chapter, which is one above that. So let's say in New York, I think we have 170 members and we'll host 400 of events throughout the year.

Speaker 1 So you can meet other people in New York or Atlanta or

Speaker 1 LA or SF, wherever we're in. And then we have the network, which is our online community.
So you could post like, who's got a good lawyer that they love and trust. And so that's sort of like the

Speaker 1 pyramid of value and of what the products are. But the main thing is your core group that meets once a month.
And my goal,

Speaker 1 I think I can get, you know, like one of my competitors is this company called Vistage. They have roughly 50,000 members.

Speaker 1 And I think that a company, a company like Hampton, my goal was to find a company that can last for 100 years.

Speaker 1 Vistage was launched in 1963. YPO, which is a competitor, was launched in 1958.
My goal is to like, how can I create something that can last that long and also be a multi-billion dollar company?

Speaker 1 And so it's not going to scale quickly like a ClickFunnels, but i think we can grow it like 30 a year for like you know 30 years

Speaker 2 interesting i was in uh eo for a little while so that's my only version i've been in this kind of seminar similar similar yeah what's the what's the pricing strategy how do you guys charge for it

Speaker 1 so at first i did what a lot of silly entrepreneurs do i just made it up on what people are willing to spend but uh now it's roughly twelve thousand dollars a year okay and then

Speaker 2 the growth like because if they're if it's just similar to to EO, like when I joined EO, there's like a bunch of Boise, I think they call them forums or groups or whatever they were, right?

Speaker 1 Forums

Speaker 1 is your monthly group.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So for you, do you have to go city by, because you can't just launch it nationally now.
You get one dude in Nashville, one guy in Boise and doesn't work, right?

Speaker 2 Like, so you go city by city or how do you roll out the chapters?

Speaker 1 It's been a huge pain in the butt because when I launched the company, we

Speaker 1 were still kind of in the COVID world. And my customers were like, I would love to meet virtually, like online for my monthly meetings.
And we said, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 That makes it so much easier for me. And I launched it that way.
And we had like

Speaker 1 15,000 people apply to join the waitlist really quickly. And so we created core groups.
That's what we call it. Instead of four and we say core,

Speaker 1 virtually. And then obviously the macro environment has changed.
And over the last two years of us being in business, people have wanted in real life way more.

Speaker 1 And so we basically have been like crushing it virtually. But now we're changing the whole business.
So we're basically going to destroy our company and build it all in real life. And so

Speaker 1 we had a, we made a big pivot about four months ago to in real life.

Speaker 1 And so we're, we found the 12 cities that we have that have the most density and we've created core groups and chapters in those 12 cities.

Speaker 2 You have to fly into the cities to do that or no?

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no. They live there.
They live there. So

Speaker 1 and that makes it really hard. It's a huge moat if I can pull it off, but like it's really hard.
Knowing what I know now, I would have launched city by city, like no doubt.

Speaker 1 And I think had I done that, I think I would be at like 30 million in revenue in two years.

Speaker 1 But I,

Speaker 1 you know, I made a big mistake. And so we're fixing that mistake now and giving our customers what they want.
Interesting.

Speaker 2 How do you facilitate the monthly meetings with each group?

Speaker 2 Is there a facilitator or do you facilitate? What does it look like?

Speaker 1 No, so we train moderators.

Speaker 1 to like so we have like for example in the first meeting everyone does a life walk where they tell you the top 10% and the top the top 10% and the bottom 10% of their life so you can get to know them and then in meeting two you're gonna do this other thing and then in meeting three you're doing this other thing and then in meeting four five six seven eight nine ten whatever it gets into a flow where we go through MITs it's called the most important thing so you come here's the most important thing I have on my plate right now the group can criticize me and I can ask questions and I can get feedback

Speaker 1 that's what the typical meeting looks like and it's all moderated by someone but in the future we're actually going to test having

Speaker 1 member-led groups so there will be no moderator so it's a group of eight people with similar sizes and types of businesses who lead their own meeting yeah how long how long the meetings go

Speaker 1 about three hours okay

Speaker 2 interesting

Speaker 1 What do you think?

Speaker 1 What am I missing? Because you've been doing this forever.

Speaker 2 Well, my model is different, but yours is really interesting because ours are,

Speaker 2 we do, you know, the groups will come come like three times out to Boise and we and I'm facilitating groups which I really enjoy because I get a lot of value from the the members

Speaker 2 but that we don't have like the monthly in-between stuff which I think is really powerful

Speaker 1 yeah the difference is is that you know I'm I'm gonna judge I don't know if this is the truth I have a feeling they're coming to learn from you

Speaker 2 Is that right?

Speaker 2 I would say initially, yes. After they are in the group, no.

Speaker 2 The group self-facilitate, like the the way that I facilitate means, like we're in this room, actually, and each person has a chance to get on stage and share the number one thing that's working for them and then get their feedback on questions.

Speaker 2 And most of it's actually facilitated by everybody else. I just kind of hang out and take notes for myself.

Speaker 1 Well, then it sounds like actually our models are a bit similar. Yeah.
And I would love to share notes on the best way to lead a meeting because it's an art and it's really hard.

Speaker 1 And so our thing was, I just like in the back of my head, I was kind of like, wouldn't it be funny if in the next 10 years, I can get 15,000 members to join?

Speaker 1 And if 15,000, like our average company does around 25 million in revenue. So let's say each company has

Speaker 1 100 employees and I'm able to get 15,000 people. That's 1.5 million employees of the companies who are members.
And I'm like, that's kind of interesting. Like, could I help these CEOs

Speaker 1 get just a little bit better and impact those 1.5 million people?

Speaker 1 And that was kind of the math. And I was like, it's kind of funny.
I would be like, it's like the Illuminati a little bit. Like you're like helping, you're like helping these people make.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I was like, I wouldn't be manipulating them, but like I have insights into how they're all making decisions.
And I'm like, that's kind of powerful. And that's really fascinating.

Speaker 1 It seems really fun. And so that was the idea.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 How did you launch? Is it mostly from the podcast and media companies you launched these or you do you have a different strategy how you're selling access to it all?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 originally I worked on it for about 10 months without telling anyone. I would just DM my friends and see if they wanted to join.
And then I launched it on the podcast.

Speaker 1 And on the first day, we got like 100,000 people coming to the website. It was a lot.
And

Speaker 1 it was all through the podcast.

Speaker 1 And just

Speaker 1 like last month was the first time we started spending on marketing. So, but we still spend,

Speaker 1 I think our budget's $15,000 a month. Like, we're not spending anything.

Speaker 1 And so it was all organic.

Speaker 2 I've seen, there's a group called Speakeasy that's, that's, uh, they just launched a chapter here in Boise.

Speaker 2 This may be helpful for you, but they, they actually borrowed our office for it. And so they did a free event.
They brought everyone in Boise in.

Speaker 2 They facilitated, I don't know, they do the whole event. And at the end of it, they're like, hey, if you want to be part of this, then there's a monthly thing.

Speaker 2 And they signed up like half of the rooms signed up from that one kickoff event here in our office. And they're doing that city by city, kind of doing, it feels like you could do

Speaker 2 a similar model um i don't know how big the business is um

Speaker 2 uh but they like i said they have a boise chapter now which is which there's not anything that happens in our in our neck of the world so it's kind of fun to see something like that happening um but i think they're in i don't know i don't know 10 15 20 cities right now but that's how they're they're filming initially just doing like one big free event everyone's inviting all their entrepreneur friends to come in the thing and they have a bunch of stuff happening and then they make a pitch at the end and sign them all up at one i feel like you could do something really similar to that just hit you know these local events in each city.

Speaker 1 Growing isn't the hard part.

Speaker 1 You know, the hard part is keeping the

Speaker 1 integrity of the community and of the core group. And so, because what we're asking for is like pretty big.
So the way that I want to grow is through retention.

Speaker 1 And so like a good retention rate is like 90%.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I'm getting, it's, it's predominantly men and I'm getting like grown men in a room and they're like crying in the first like meeting.

Speaker 1 Like that's like a it's like a life-changing thing and it's like a pretty serious thing.

Speaker 1 Like this is like, it could be heavy Like I'm in a core group and like there's people that have like gotten divorces and like we know about it before their spouse knows about it and we're like talking through the pros and cons.

Speaker 1 Like it's like a big deal. And

Speaker 1 what we need to do is make sure that people come with a sense of seriousness.

Speaker 1 Like you are explicitly saying that you are going to support your group and be there and be there emotionally, be there to make introductions. Like it's like a big commitment.
And

Speaker 1 so that's hard.

Speaker 1 And selling that idea to someone is easy. Getting you to

Speaker 1 buy into this for a decade,

Speaker 1 it's like hard.

Speaker 1 You actually,

Speaker 1 you have a great book, one of your dot-com secrets on like cult building or something like that.

Speaker 1 It was like it speaks to this.

Speaker 1 But one and another premise that we have, and this is important for anyone listening, which is like, my opinion, if you're a tech guy, obviously

Speaker 1 go do AI. But I'm not that.
And so I was like, what do I think is going to grow along with AI? I'm pretty sure it's going to be loneliness and people craving in-real life experiences.

Speaker 1 I think they're going to kind of go in tandem. And so

Speaker 1 I think that a company like Hampton, which is, it's just like the newsletter. My newsletter, I said people laughed at it.
In real life communities or whatever I'm building, people laugh at this too.

Speaker 1 They're like, this sounds like a cute project. I'm like, no, man,

Speaker 2 I think this can be a multi-billion dollar thing if you you do it right um and that's kind of what i'm hoping and what i'm working towards that's really cool i remember when i did eo i did it man i did it right after the 2018 market crash the group i got into everyone is like on the brink of bankruptcy and so i ended up staying because like it's just a bunch of people who are like they get together and drink and talk about how their wives have left them and their businesses have failed and i was like on the upward i had a bad had a bad group but i do remember the process was fasting because they brought me in and it was like we did similar like a timeline exercise there's like three or four meetings i had to go to be trained before they let me actually into the group which was really fascinating thing that that so by the time you show up like you know the rules and the standards and um I don't know if if you do similar stuff like that but I thought that was kind of an interesting way to get you prepped it's you know I think that like there's like businesses tend to have like one or

Speaker 1 there's like three categories of problems I think that a business has like on one hand it's like a technological a tech problem which is like can you actually physically like build this technology so it could be like

Speaker 1 a cancer curing drug. Like if you can physically build that, then that's going to be the greatest thing ever.

Speaker 1 Or the second problem is like

Speaker 1 a demand problem, which is like, you've invented this interesting widget, but like, does anyone even want it? You got to go and prove that out. I don't know.

Speaker 1 And the third one is like operational, which is like, for example, yeah, if you can get this cab or this guy to my doorstep in five minutes after I click like, I'm ready to go.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I would love that, but it's really hard to pull off.

Speaker 1 My business is in an operational my we have an operational we have operational issues which is I can convince someone to sign up for this I just got to make sure that I make this a seamless smooth experience for all types of people and like having in real life meetings like you're describing like pre-training having it across the country that's really hard and so I'm still we're building we're building that and once we build it I think it's gonna be awesome are a bunch of your people still running the virtual versions then if they're not in one of the main cities or

Speaker 1 Yeah, but my goal is to like slowly pull them apart. Like, I'm like,

Speaker 1 if they love their group, I'm like, all right, have fun. But when you're ready, like, let's get you into

Speaker 1 an in-real life group.

Speaker 2 Interesting. And people paying the same for the virtual as they were, as they are for the in-real life.

Speaker 1 No, in real life, retains way better. But

Speaker 2 the cost is the same, though, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 we'll see. Like, do you know, have you heard of Vistage? Yeah, yep, for sure.
So they do like 200 million a year in EBITDA. Really?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then, have you heard of World 50?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 1 World50 is this, World 50 is actually similar to your mastermind, but it's for Fortune 500 executives.

Speaker 1 They do about 180 million a year in EBITDA.

Speaker 1 Like communities like this, like the ones you have, like the ones I have, I think people, I don't know if you felt this way with some of your stuff where people were like dismissive or they didn't understand the math behind it.

Speaker 1 I don't think people understand that these things can be bigger than they appear. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's interesting. I've never looked at it from like a way to because for the most part, my higher-end ones are tough because

Speaker 2 I'm facilitating the majority of it.

Speaker 2 Makes me think about it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but you kind of have the best of both worlds, right? Like you own ClickFunnels, which is highly scalable. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you have your masterminds, which

Speaker 2 are scalable but very cash-rich.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and like, frankly, if I had to guess,

Speaker 1 your masterminds make way more cash than a scaled startup, so it doesn't really matter. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Interesting.

Speaker 1 But yeah, they could be, these things can be big. It's just,

Speaker 1 it's a grind.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Is it

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 with you promoting on the podcast, like, do you, does HubSpot get a percentage of that since they're on the podcast? Or is it just that you do whatever you want? Or like, is there any you're getting

Speaker 2 you can scroll out all the businesses you want without having to worry about

Speaker 1 yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because like it's not like an ad. Like I'm the podcast, I'm talking about my life.
Uh, like I'm saying, I launched this thing. Here's what it is, and um,

Speaker 1 yeah, I have a big audience, but I can't launch all the businesses I want because I'm always nervous, and maybe I'm wrong, but I'm a nervous very much so of um like uh

Speaker 1 wearing out my audience. Like they would get confused, like wait, does Sam do this thing or does he do this other thing? And he does it.
Like, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 But also, I just think that in order to build like a

Speaker 1 kind of a legacy creating product or a company, you need to focus for like decades.

Speaker 1 You know, I think I sold my last, I'm very happy I sold the hustle because

Speaker 1 I was poor and suddenly I wasn't poor. Like

Speaker 1 that was great.

Speaker 1 But like I truly, I messed up the compounding part. Like having like a business that truly compounds is like the greatest thing ever.
And like

Speaker 1 one decade in, two decades in, like you really can start seeing some of the benefits. And so I hope that will be the case with this.

Speaker 1 Is ClickFunnels something that you'll own forever?

Speaker 2 I think, I mean, ClickFunnels, so we had an offer four years ago that we turned down.

Speaker 2 And at the time, it was tough because there was ClickFunnels and there was Russell and everything was like all together. Over the last four years, we split it separately.

Speaker 2 So Russell and the coaching business is separate from the software. So in theory, I could sell one without the other.
So there may be a potential that we could do that when we get bored.

Speaker 2 But right now we still really have fun.

Speaker 2 But I do, you know, I think I'm going to be in the Russell business forever, but the ClickFunnels business, you know, who knows what, you know, what could happen there.

Speaker 1 And you guys kind of did it the right way, which is like, if I had to guess, ClickFunnels has allowed you to profit along the way.

Speaker 1 Whereas a lot of people, myself included, I was a little little bit of a martyr.

Speaker 1 Like I didn't pay myself a lot of money because I was like, oh, the CEO should eat last and like, which is, which is so, which is kind of true, but like I paid myself like nothing, right?

Speaker 1 And so I was like, I have to sell in order to get paid. And obviously that, that was foolish.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we built, we built ours where we had to have X amount of money in the bank based on our hard cost. You know what I mean? Like that was the number.
Then everything above that we distribute out.

Speaker 2 So yeah,

Speaker 2 it's been nice.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and it's that, I think, allows you to do something for a much longer period of time.

Speaker 2 And it was nice because we never took on outside funding.

Speaker 2 So we could do dumb decisions or smart, you know, whatever it was, but we didn't have anyone we ever had to report back to, which has been, which has been really nice.

Speaker 2 A lot of friends I know have taken on equity or whatever throughout the process, and it shifts everything. They can't distribute all the profits.

Speaker 2 They can't do, you know, like, then it's like, as soon as you take that first round, then you have to work towards some liquidation of it or else you kind of get stuck.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're, you have a duty. And I think that

Speaker 1 that makes it way more hard, like way more challenging. And I always tell people, I'm like, most things in business are reversible, most mistakes.
Taking capital might be the one where it's like

Speaker 1 you kind of can't undo that. Maybe you could, but it's so hard that you'd probably just start from scratch.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's funny, like when we got started, I didn't know what, you know, it was my first time being a startup founder.

Speaker 2 And we were like a year in, and everyone was telling us, like, take money and all the, you know, we get hit up by everybody. And then, um, do you know Rand Fishkin, SEO Moz? Yeah.

Speaker 2 So So he came to Boise and spoke in an event about them raising cash and capital and told me that. Yeah, well, he got screwed.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but it was funny because he was, I guess his best friend lives here in Boise and they were doing this little event.

Speaker 2 So he was telling everyone the story about it, like as if it was this great thing, because he was still actively running at Moz at the time.

Speaker 2 And then afterwards, I had a chance to, you know, wait in line, ask him a question. I was like, kind of told him what we were doing.
And he pulled me aside and was like, dude, do not take on.

Speaker 2 And I gave me this warning. I was like, oh.
And then fast forward five years later, he was out of the business. He wrote the book Lost and Founder.

Speaker 2 And I read the whole story and i was like um but it was because he told me not to was literally why we never did and uh i told him later i was like you have no idea like this one conversation shifted i think the degree of happiness my life so anyway it's kind of interesting yeah i i i'm i i think i'm not like dogmatic against venture capital i think that some companies need it i think the best analogy i heard was

Speaker 1 vc is rocket fuel and

Speaker 1 If you own a car, it doesn't matter how fast it is or how cool that car is or how much you love that car. Cars should not run on rocket fuel.
And cars are, or rocket fuel is for rockets.

Speaker 1 And just know that if you're taking this fuel, you better make a rocket, not a fast car. And what I realized was I think I like fast cars a lot more than a rocket.

Speaker 1 And there's a world where you could have a ClickFunnels company and maybe have both.

Speaker 1 I think that I also sold my company for a lot less money than what you see

Speaker 1 big tech companies say in the headlines. And I made way more than most of my friends who raised the money and sold for a lot more than me.
And so like.

Speaker 2 Because you didn't have anything before the sale, right? The acquisition was the first cash event?

Speaker 1 So the last year, so the first two years, I basically paid myself

Speaker 1 $2,000 a month, like nothing. And my business had millions in the bank.
And so I was foolish not to do that. But the last year, I started paying myself a lot.

Speaker 1 And then my wife, very coincidentally, I told you the Airbnb story. She worked at Airbnb as well.
And it went public like the year before, a few months before I sold. And she killed it.

Speaker 1 And so we did well there. And then

Speaker 1 the sale put us in like a new, a new stratosphere.

Speaker 1 And so it was like overnight.

Speaker 1 Well, like her thing happened in like December and then I got the money in February. So it was like a three-month thing where like life changed.

Speaker 1 And frankly, it took about four years to get used to it. And so I think there's like a big difference between people like you who make it along the way.
Have you ever had a big liquidity event?

Speaker 1 Or it's always been

Speaker 1 along the way. So people, people like you who make it along the way versus people like me who it's

Speaker 1 it was like a lumpy it was like a it was like nothing and then boom uh i think that like the people like me are like broken more than like the people like you because you're like used to it because you're waiting for the

Speaker 1 that's that's interesting was it when the when the deal with hub saw happened was it pretty quick or was it like a longer-term thing and it goes like all that kind of stuff you know what i mean like a traditional stuff so it was pretty great um i i'm very proud of myself for how i handled this and i would encourage everyone to do this but um basically they emailed me in like october i think it was october and they were like hey uh what's going on like we would love to talk about a partnership and i replied back are you emailing me because you want to buy me Just say yes and we'll cut to the chase.

Speaker 1 And they replied, yes. And I replied that night.
I said, great. Thank you so much for your honesty.

Speaker 1 Let's get to it. Here's a list of all the reasons why you should not buy us.
And I made a Google Doc and I made a list of all the things that I think could have came out in due diligence.

Speaker 1 Nothing major, but like

Speaker 1 in this month, we made a mistake and churn was high, or I don't know, or like whatever. And

Speaker 1 I said, here's a list. Is any of this a red flag? And he said, nope, all looks good to me.
And I said, all right, let's do this. And we signed an LOI like three weeks later.
And then I closed.

Speaker 1 So they initially contacted me in October. I signed a 90-day,

Speaker 1 what's that window called? Like a due diligence window.

Speaker 1 And then we closed on the 90th day.

Speaker 2 That's awesome.

Speaker 1 It was very fast because selling to HubSpot, like, They care, they're a huge company. A, like, they have resources to like a, they have a team of people just for buying companies.

Speaker 1 B, they're worth so much money, they care way more about their reputation. They're not going to like nickel and dime me over stuff.

Speaker 1 Um, and so it was like, they were like, look, I, your company is small for us. Like,

Speaker 1 we, you could tweet about us and hurt our reputation a lot more than this company is even worth. So we're not going to mess with you.
And they did mess with me. They were wonderful to work with.

Speaker 1 And so the whole thing was like maybe

Speaker 1 four months from cold email to deal closing.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 And it was miserable, by the way. It was so hard.

Speaker 2 Were you trying to sell at that point? Or do you have any like that you're working towards or you were just kind of just doing the business? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I was building a company to sell. I was building it to sell.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I did not go to market, but people were always messaging me because We were one of the like hot companies because no one thought email was interesting.

Speaker 1 And then all of a sudden they did think it was interesting. And it was basically me and Morning Brew were the only two companies that were at scale.

Speaker 1 So there was only two options if you wanted to buy a newsletter company. And they sold to Business Insider

Speaker 1 in December and I sold in February.

Speaker 2 Interesting. Have you seen a lot of people since they've been hearing your story popping up newsletter companies?

Speaker 1 Is it everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone. And it's so much harder now.
Man, so we started,

Speaker 1 I don't know if you like pay attention, but you could tell me what ClickFunnels' open rates are.

Speaker 1 I started HustleCon at 14 and I started the hustle in 2016. And open rates were way higher.
And the cost to acquire a customer on Facebook was way lower.

Speaker 1 And then word got out, like you've been talking about this for 10 years. I'd been talking about it for five years.
People finally started listening and the competition is way harder now.

Speaker 1 It's way harder. I don't know what it costs to acquire a customer anymore, but I know it's a lot more expensive and I would bet.
And I bet open rates are way,

Speaker 1 way down. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, it's funny because I've been doing this for

Speaker 2 almost 25 years now. And back in the day, email was insane because you get like 95% open rate and like 80% click-through rate.

Speaker 2 Anyway, so I got spoiled for the first four or five years of

Speaker 2 my existence.

Speaker 1 And back then, no one was running email newsletter, you know, and you know, so for me now, every time I see the numbers, I'm always like depressed based on my vision of what we did 25 years ago, but it still works it still works and i think email ebbs and flows like um when i started it it was not popular but five years before i started it it was very popular now it's uh right when i sold it was very popular it's since gone down a little bit but there's like all these platforms y'all uh

Speaker 1 beehive convert kit whatever so they've made it way easier But most newsletters are really bad or they don't innovate.

Speaker 1 Like it's kind of like it's a lot of people, like, there's a lot of people that just copy what we did, or maybe they copy what you did. I think when we came out, we are kind of, I mean, it's email.

Speaker 1 It's not like we're flying to Mars. It's not like the most like innovative thing, but like within our world, it was very innovative.

Speaker 1 And I think that there's still, people still need to come up with some more interesting angles than what a lot of people are doing right now.

Speaker 2 Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 Interesting. Well, dude, this has been really fun.

Speaker 2 I feel like I want to hang out with you more often. So, and hopefully.

Speaker 1 I would love to hang out with you.

Speaker 1 By the way, this is like an honor for you to ask me questions I'm telling you I've read dot-com secrets I've like I was I've been following you since I was probably 19 I'm 36 now maybe how old was I like I remember you winning a Ferrari.

Speaker 1 Yeah

Speaker 1 So like I've and then I followed you way before I way before you launched ClickFunnels and then I signed up for click funnels right when you launched it and it looked like you made it with play-doh It was like all these bright colors and it was crazy

Speaker 1 And so I've been a fan and customer of yours for so long.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's so cool. Well, dude, I'm glad we finally got to meet up and hopefully we'll do more stuff in the future and

Speaker 2 open a Hampton group here in Boise. I'll join it.
It'll be fun.

Speaker 1 Yeah, man. Thank you for everything you do and total honor.
And

Speaker 1 I think I said this when we were offline. You were doing this because you like hurt your leg or arm or something.
So I hope you're feeling better.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. I was at a wrestling tournament.
I tore both my biceps off of the bones. So I had to get, you probably can't see, but I had double arm surgery, got them reattached.

Speaker 2 It's been four months post-surgery now, and I'm doing all the rehab and stuff. But yeah, I'm feeling a lot better now.

Speaker 2 Well, God. I'm actually next week and start drilling, start wrestling again.
So

Speaker 1 good.

Speaker 1 And I actually got into wrestling a little bit because of you.

Speaker 1 I became acquaintances with Ben Askren, seen him do his thing. And

Speaker 1 you got in the UFC, but I remember seeing like, wait, Russell Brunson Russells? What's this about? And I started following Bo Nickel and all those guys. So you've been a very inspiration with me.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's crazy. Well, very cool, man.
Well, if I can ever do anything for you, let me know. And

Speaker 2 yeah, hopefully, if you come back out to Boise for one of Nathan's events, let me know too.

Speaker 1 I'll be there.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 2 Awesome. Thanks.