Sam Parr

Raising Normal Kids After a Major Exit

Sam Parr is the co-host of My First Million podcast and the founder of Hampton, a community of entrepreneurs and founders. Sam previously founded the Hustle, a business and tech newsletter that was acquired by HubSpot for reportedly $27 million in 2021.

Parr emphasizes the importance of branding, especially for established entrepreneurs:"I think that brand, you know, Peter Thiel has that book. What's his book called? Zero to one. And he has this whole chapter on like competitive advantages. And one of the competitive advantage is brand, I think he says."He argues that branding is about creating a feeling or an idea, not just about direct ROI:"I think that it is hard to understand because it's not, it doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of like conversion rate or in terms of like direct ROI. It's about what it makes you feel."

The Power of Community in Business

Parr's latest venture, Hampton, focuses on building a community of entrepreneurs. He shares insights on the challenges and rewards of this business model:"The bad part about a community business is that you can't grow it too fast. Otherwise, it gets ruined. And so we throw away so much revenue, people who have applied to join and we say no."He emphasizes the importance of utility over exclusivity:"I have to trade off of utility where like this actually makes your company or your life better."

The Reading Habits of a Successful Entrepreneur

Parr reveals his unique approach to reading and learning:"I buy the book and I buy it for Kindle and I read it on my Kindle. And then I download it illegally as a PDF and I upload the PDF to chat GBT. And then I ask it questions as I'm reading."He also shares his strategy for retaining information:"I usually will write a blog post. I call it an essay. It's not really an essay. It could be like a 500 word thing and just says, here's what I just learned from this book."

The Myth of "Fail Fast"

Parr challenges the popular advice to "fail fast":"I kind of think that's stupid. Like it's a lot better. Like just succeed. Like whenever, like, I think that fail fast is they justify it for like, I missed my shot on goal. It's okay. And I'm like, no, it's not okay."He argues for a more nuanced understanding of failure and success:"Messing up on small things every once in a while is good, okay? But you have to be right more than you're wrong.

NOTABLE QUOTES:

"I'm nervous. I'm incredibly nervous for my child growing up in a wealthy household. That freaks me out."

"If you want to be a winner, you got to win more than you lose."

The full transcript of the podcast can be found below:

Sam (00:00.781)

nice.

Auren Hoffman (00:03.8)

Hello fellow data nerds, my guest today is Sam Parr. Sam is the cohost of the My First Million podcast and the founder of Hampton, a community of entrepreneurs and founders. Sam previously founded The Hustle, which was a business and tech newsletter that was acquired by HubSpot for $27 million in 2021. reportedly, I'm sorry, reportedly, Sam, welcome to World of Death. Good, great to see you. Great to see you again. Now, one of the things that always troubles me is like,

Sam (00:21.236)

Reportedly.

Sam (00:26.55)

What's going on man, how are you?

Auren Hoffman (00:33.684)

What advice do give to a founder about branding? feel like us founders, we just don't understand branding that well.

Sam (00:39.594)

I think it's way more important than people realize. think that I'm not particularly an expert on it, but I think the bar is low in the internet world. But I like to study the experts, and so I hopefully have learned a thing or two, but I'm definitely not the expert. I think that...

I think that brand, know, Peter Thiel has that book. What's his book called? Zero to one. And he has this whole chapter on like competitive advantages. And one of the competitive advantage is brand, I think he says. And then I think he says something like this chapter is going to be short because frankly, I don't understand it. Does he say something like that? And I maybe understand it a little bit, but I can't imagine more than Peter. But.

Auren Hoffman (01:02.69)

Zero to one, one of my favorite books.

Auren Hoffman (01:18.87)

Yep.

Sam (01:27.88)

I think that it is hard to understand because it's not, it doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of like conversion rate or in terms of like direct ROI. It's about what it makes you feel. And I think that a lot of startups, particularly if you're a second time founder where you like, you know, you're going to follow through on something and you know, you're going to build a big business. think they don't spend time on

branding because I think that that is like a procrastination thing. They think that like and I agree if you're like a new entrepreneur and you spend too much time on branding, I'm like, dude, just make a product that people actually like. But if you are like proven that you can do that, or you're going to be attempting to do that, I think you should put more emphasis on the brand than you more than you likely think you should. Does that do you know what mean?

Auren Hoffman (02:17.57)

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because in the B2C world, when B2C companies buy other B2C companies, they never kill the brand. They always keep the brand going. know, they always keep Instagram, keep YouTube, Procter and Gamble. Doesn't have like Procter and Gamble toothpaste or something like they have crest. But in the B2B world, when they buy things, they sometimes kill the brand. They'll say, now it's the...

Oracle marketing cloud email solution or the Salesforce market. They kind of kill this old brand that people loved. If you remember Echo Sign, Jason Lemkin's company, they rebranded Adobe Sign, but somehow there's something different in the B2B world than the B2C world.

Sam (03:03.722)

Yeah, and I have a strong opinion on that, which is B2B people, they get silly. So a lot of B2B people think that a human being is one human from nine to five and another human from five to midnight. And that's obviously false. I can be on this podcast, which is a B2B podcast, but I can make silly jokes and we can have a good time and we can talk about silly fun stuff. A human being is a holistic person, but the nerds...

want to convince you that that's not the case. And I try to I'm like, and that bothers me. You know what I mean? Like, there's a reason why like the Joe Rogan's of the world have excelled, which is like you could have very, you know, he has Bernie Sanders on his podcast or some other presidential candidate, and also he'll like make silly fart jokes. Like you can you can do all of it. And like a B2B company doesn't have to like be crude, but they can be

Auren Hoffman (03:53.198)

Yeah.

Sam (03:59.316)

If they want to be silly, they could be silly, you know what mean? You could be a lot of different things. You don't have to be so uptight. And I think that's a struggle because no one wants to get fired. And I think that we should take a little bit more risk, though. And the risks I'm suggesting oftentimes aren't even that big.

Auren Hoffman (04:09.239)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (04:15.96)

Yeah, they don't sound that big at all. Now, it's pretty easy to find out if someone's like a good engineering hire. I can figure out if someone's a good engineer very, very quickly, but it's much, much, much harder to figure out if someone's a good at marketing. Like, how does one do a better job of evaluating that?

Sam (04:33.094)

I asked them what content they consume and they'll so I usually ask I say, Hey, every morning when you go on the internet, where do you go to and why and what's interesting about that? I then will ask them, like, if they say they go to Reddit, I say what subreddits and why. Another thing that I tend to do is I call it the bottom fourth of the resume. And so I'll ask, let's say if they studied philosophy, I don't really know anything about philosophy, but I'll be like, all right, cool. What was the best class?

Auren Hoffman (04:50.958)

Yeah.

Sam (05:02.57)

And if they can't tell me an interesting story about a thing that they spent potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars and four years of their life on, if they can't tell me a good story or like convince me why it's like a good thing to study, then they're just not that interesting of a person. And if they're not that interesting of a person, then they're probably not going to be good at that job.

Auren Hoffman (05:20.568)

So storytelling is kind of a key piece of, because that's something I think you could maybe interview for us as being the abilities to tell stories.

Sam (05:27.464)

Yeah. Yeah, or the ability to have taste and having taste is hard, but like, you don't always have to be the best storyteller, but you have to understand what the best story is. Do know what I mean? So like, you don't always have to do the job the best, but you have to be at least pretty good. And you got to be able to say like, no, trust me, this is like, this is a hit. Like you hear you, you feel this emotion, you see how that makes people feel. That's a hit. That's what we want people to feel. I'm not always the best storyteller.

teller, I'm pretty good though at like seeing like, no, that's the thing. That's the angle. That's a pretty cool angle. And so I think that I asked you about the bottom part of the resume and asked him about what they read, or what they consume.

Auren Hoffman (06:09.262)

Is your way of like, is, is, is, is kind of enthusiasm important? Like if they can make it somewhat contagious or something.

Sam (06:16.118)

Hell yeah. Yeah, yeah, contagious. That's the whole thing. I'm on a Ralph Lauren kick right now. Have you ever?

Auren Hoffman (06:25.782)

I can tell for those of you not watching on video, I can see it right here.

Sam (06:30.078)

I'm yeah, and I bought into it. So I'll tell you why I'm on a Ralph Lauren kick. So Ralph Lauren, the entrepreneur, I like the brand as well. But the entrepreneur Ralph, he grew up in in the 1940s and 1950s in the Bronx as a Jewish kid, but he was obsessed with the American dream. He changed his name from laugh Ralph lift shits to Ralph Lauren, because he wanted like a very American name because he was fascinated with the classic traditional America. And

Auren Hoffman (06:37.133)

Yeah.

Sam (06:56.874)

he does such a great job. reading his books of selling me on the American dream and selling me on class and selling me on timeless. And it just so happens that the way he expresses that feeling is via clothing. And so I love these people that do a really good job of selling me a feeling or an idea. And it just so happens that our software, our product or whatever, it's just one little piece of helping you get into that into that mindset. Do you understand what I'm saying? And so

Auren Hoffman (07:10.382)

Mmm.

Auren Hoffman (07:25.238)

Yeah, totally.

Sam (07:26.484)

And so like, let's say the American dream Ralph Lauren style or Ralph Lauren's way of branding that could be used for homes, it could be used for cars, it could be used for clothing, it could be used for a variety of products, but he's selling this lifestyle. And I think that with a lot of b2b stuff, you aren't necessarily selling a lifestyle or you don't have to be, I think but you should be selling a feeling.

Auren Hoffman (07:51.358)

I love like that friend that is like super into something. And then they take you on that journey with them. They're like, these are the best dumplings in the world. And they kind of describe it. And then they bring you in and these, maybe the dumplings actually aren't that great, but like when you taste them with your friend there, you think they're the best dumplings in the world. Like you have this like incredible experience because you're seeing it through their eyes. Correct. Yeah.

Sam (08:01.845)

Yeah.

Sam (08:13.866)

Because that enthusiasm is contagious. And so I like being around those people.

Auren Hoffman (08:20.108)

Yeah, they're amazing to be around. It is rare though. feel like that is like, people are like, yeah, know, it's that like, it's this positivity that it's like, maybe less cool when you're smart or something.

Sam (08:32.852)

Well, I think to get really philosophical, but I think that the world wants you to be vanilla. They don't want you to stick out. And particularly at a company, oftentimes you don't want to stick out. You don't want to get fired. And so we do too bad of a job where you'll ask a coworker or an employee, hey, do you think that this thing that we're doing is good? And they'll say like, no, I think like maybe like it's not the right way to do it. And I'm like, well, why the hell didn't you speak up and like tell me because I will listen to you. I'll follow your feedback. And so like, it's a really hard thing to pull off.

Auren Hoffman (08:42.712)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (08:56.137)

Hey, hey, totally.

Sam (09:01.034)

But you have to create a culture where these interesting ideas kind of surface.

Auren Hoffman (09:05.154)

Now you built kind of a mass media brand and now you're building a more kind of exclusive brand with Hampton. Maybe you went, you know, let's say like now you're kind of building like a new Ralph Lauren ish thing. Like how are they the same and kind of how are they different?

Sam (09:21.462)

So my first company was called The Hustle. I don't know how many people read it a day, but maybe three million people a day and we sold it to HubSpot. I liked it. I love news. I love Ted Turner. He's the guy who started CNN. I found him to be very romantic. Like the idea of like a Southern guy from Georgia kind of taking over New York media.

Auren Hoffman (09:37.047)

Yeah.

Sam (09:44.107)

And I thought that that was really like novel and romantic. I really loved that idea. And I was from Missouri and Tennessee and I moved out to San Francisco and I was like, I want to take over the news scene. like, like, you know, I felt invigorated and I wanted like this, like edgy, cool, unique vibe. And we brought that to newsletters. And at the time everyone thought that newsletters were silly. I talked to one executive of a huge media company, an entrepreneur who you definitely know.

Auren Hoffman (09:52.078)

Yeah.

Sam (10:11.222)

And he was like, this is never going to make more than a million dollars a year. And a lot of these businesses in my space, I told I sold too early, but a lot of the peers in my cohort, they are doing 80 or 90 million in revenue. so like the bet was right, but I sold too early. But and so what I learned with the hustle was it was awesome. I just wish that I could have monetized an audience differently than advertising, because that's an exhausting way to make a living. I think that

Auren Hoffman (10:22.37)

Yeah. Yep.

Auren Hoffman (10:36.94)

Yeah.

Sam (10:41.462)

You know, there's only there's two ways to monetize an audience to either sell your own stuff or your sell someone else's stuff. And I would rather have done the first one. And so when I was thinking of which products and services I could make with Hampton, I had a friend who he's now my business partner by the time he's my friend. And we used to like share everything with each other. We would share like our net worth, our income, our relationship issues with that. And it kind of changed my life. And I was like, let's just do this for all types of people. And that was the idea for Hampton.

Auren Hoffman (11:09.804)

Yeah. that's so cool. And it's, but in something that's like more exclusive, like it's a little bit harder to join or there's gates to join, et cetera. Like building a brand is, is also is different. Maybe it's a little bit more aspirational. you didn't, I don't know that like Rolls Royce is advertising on the Superbowl or something. like how, how does one kind of think about building the brand there?

Sam (11:36.618)

That makes it really hard. So there's brands that have pulled it off, like a Louis Vuitton or like some of these luxury goods, like they're able to advertise a fair bit. But the crappy part about, so first of all, would say with a community, I know that it looks like we are trading off of like cool and exclusive. That's not my goal because cool and exclusive, if you screw it up, it can go away. It's fickle. I have to trade off of utility where like this actually makes your company or your life better.

Auren Hoffman (11:40.662)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (11:54.573)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (11:59.19)

Yeah, it's fickle.

Auren Hoffman (12:06.381)

Yeah.

Sam (12:06.654)

And so our, and so we remind our team all the time, don't trade off this cool nonsense. This will go away or it could go away. You trade off utility. Like this is actually awesome. Yeah. It actually has to be like a great product, not just a brand. and so the, but the crappy part is, is that like, we've done just a very small amount of paid advertising, but like, we don't want to do paid ads, even though that would grow our company more. It kind of makes you look bad.

Auren Hoffman (12:16.206)

helpful.

Auren Hoffman (12:36.192)

Yeah, totally.

Sam (12:36.348)

So the so the bad part about a community business is that you can't grow it too fast. Otherwise, it gets ruined. And so we throw away so much revenue, people who have applied to join and we say no. And it breaks my heart because we probably have like 60 million dollars in revenue right now and we don't. But you just kind of have to do that in hopes that that will pay for, you know, pay dividends in the long run.

Auren Hoffman (12:59.97)

The part of the community I imagine is you've got to call a certain number of people. You essentially have to like fire a certain number of customers that are not adding well or maybe even negative add to the other people in the community. And if you're running like a software company, you'd never really like fire your customer or maybe you would, but it would be a pretty extreme event to go do that.

Like how do you, that, that's obviously makes it building a community business a bit harder because you have this kind of like forced churn in it. How do you, how do you think about that?

Sam (13:31.734)

It makes it awful, to be honest. mean, like a lot of people see the success of Hampton on the outside and they think like it's easy and stuff or I don't know if they think that, but maybe. But like these are the constant battles we have all day, which is like, how do you like grow the business without ruining the product? And so the number one metric that we care about is retention. And so if we nail retention, we'll eventually make a lot of money. But yeah, it's like it is a very hard part of the business.

Auren Hoffman (13:33.475)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (13:45.249)

Yeah.

Sam (14:01.326)

you just have to, yeah, you just gotta make the sacrifice of like, I knock on wood. hope this is going to work where we're going to lose all this money or not. We're not losing money, but like, we're to turn away all this money on purpose that it's going to pay off in the long run. And I hope it, I hope it does. And I'd be honest if I'd say that I'm certain that it will, but like, I have to do a lot of work and a lot of faith to make sure that it, we pull it off.

Auren Hoffman (14:26.094)

Now you mentioned that you wish you didn't sell the hustle. I have a kind of a similar thing where I wish I didn't sell live ramp. What?

Sam (14:33.376)

How big is live ramp now, by the way?

Auren Hoffman (14:35.438)

line ramp is maybe 600 million, 1.5 billion market cap company. and, and I think if we were still running it, hopefully it would be much bigger than that. It was, was almost 40 ARR. We sold it for three 10. and, and, and so the, but yeah, I mean, in some ways, like I wish we were, you know, wish I wish what I knew.

Sam (14:47.37)

How big was it when you sold it?

Auren Hoffman (15:04.374)

a year later, I knew because then we wouldn't have sold it, but I didn't know that at the time. Sure.

Sam (15:07.978)

Well, can I ask you one more question? Because this is context. Were you wealthy before you sold it?

Auren Hoffman (15:15.338)

No. So that was the big thing. Like it changed my life and I had kids and now I could take care of my kids. was pretty, it was funny because my wife had a company that sold like six months later. One of my other friends that I was involved with had a company that sold six months later. If those had sold six months before, I would have never also never sold because then we would have had enough also to maybe take care of our kids.

Sam (15:41.558)

Yeah, well, that's what I was going to say. So I don't regret selling. I would have done the same thing over again. What I regret was not being wealthy in advance. Like, like, you know, like it's such a cool company and it was such a cool idea and it had legs to run and get big and it's exciting. But, know, I didn't I for the first two years, I think I paid myself $50,000 a year. And then this third year, maybe 150. And then the fourth year, I paid myself a lot.

Auren Hoffman (15:47.682)

was not being wealthy at the time. Totally.

Sam (16:09.27)

And so I started like making money in the fourth and fifth year, but I sold it in year four or four between four or five. And I wish I had been wealthy. I wish I didn't have to sell it. And so I don't regret it, but I regret like it would have been nice to like, for example, had I run the business differently, I would have paid myself a whole lot more money and not have acted. I sold it a little bit defensively as opposed to being on the offense.

Auren Hoffman (16:20.76)

Yeah. Yep.

Auren Hoffman (16:37.42)

Yeah, but like it's probably, you could have maybe done a secondary and sold 30 % of it or something. And yeah, there, there could have been other options and I probably could have done that too, but I didn't really like think it all through at the time. Yeah.

Sam (16:48.83)

I didn't think it all through either. I didn't think it all through. I had an offer and I liked the company and the offer ended up being like, we made a lot more money than like what the headlines have said because this bunch of things kind of worked out. But I don't regret that. just wish, I also wish I would have owned the company when I was older. So I started the business like roughly at age 25 and I was pretty immature.

Auren Hoffman (16:53.772)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, same, yeah.

Sam (17:18.198)

I don't think I was a very mature 25 year old. If I ran the business now, I think I would have like killed it because because because media dude, think about this. We had a daily email that went out six days a week. So I have a deliverable like every day and it's like pretty hard. And each time we hit send on an email, it would be like $100,000. And so like, it felt like very stressful, but it didn't have to feel that way.

Auren Hoffman (17:33.464)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (17:39.234)

Yeah, wow.

Auren Hoffman (17:45.44)

Interesting. Now, what advice would you give to founders about like preserving their own brand identity, also preserving their own identity post exit, like kind of post exit advice?

Sam (17:56.938)

I didn't really have that. I think some people have that issue with their like, am I without this thing? I didn't have that. The way that I saw it was, you know how people say like this company is my baby. I think my baby is my baby and I think my company is my job. And so like I was fairly good at like being like, have you ever heard of negative visualization?

Auren Hoffman (18:08.716)

Yeah, okay

Auren Hoffman (18:18.766)

where you like kind of like specifically look at the negative to help you understand the positive or something.

Sam (18:24.978)

Yeah, you like have these like you like sit down and meditate and you're like my children has cancer. My mother just died in my arms. I just lost my leg and I can't ever run ever. Like you like you like picture all the worst things in the world. And then you open your eyes and you think, well, that's not true. I'm OK. Like I'm so grateful. Like isn't life beautiful? And I can't.

Auren Hoffman (18:30.413)

Mm-hmm.

Auren Hoffman (18:37.334)

Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (18:46.995)

interesting. So it's like a, it's like a helpful way of like thinking of that life and stuff.

Sam (18:51.446)

Yeah, it's basically like imagine all life is horrible and it makes you appreciate what you have. I used to do that all the time with the company of like, just assume this is going to go out of business next week. I kind of because I did that, I was like, OK, if it goes away, whatever.

Auren Hoffman (19:08.482)

Now, do you do that with your personal life too? you visualize like something, you know, a terrible plane accident or something or those types of things?

Sam (19:17.212)

Yeah, yeah, I do it. And that's actually a lot harder. But yeah, but like, try to think, just, I work my ass off at trying to be like grateful to what I have. I mean, I don't know what your background is, but like, I didn't grow up around a lot of this stuff. And so I have to pinch myself and realize that the conversations that I'm having with a lot of people around how you had a company that you sold for $310 million and, but we're bummed out about X, Y, and Z. I tried to remind myself like, you know, like I'm what

Auren Hoffman (19:41.55)

Exactly. High class problems.

Sam (19:44.79)

And I don't like when people say, that's a first world problem because first world problems are still problem. And it's OK to have a and it's OK to have a problem when you're like, wealthy and successful. And I don't want to diminish that. But at the same time, I want to remind myself like, know, I could be worrying about many other things and that because particularly if you live in New York and Silicon Valley, where you're only around like ballers and we're all complaining about like trivial shit. And I have to remind myself, I'm like, you know, like

Auren Hoffman (19:49.998)

Of course. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (20:02.967)

Exactly.

Auren Hoffman (20:08.718)

Holy.

Sam (20:14.624)

There's some nurse, single mother nurse who's like saving someone's life right now, you know, and then while she's gotta worry about like, you know, taking care of her kid at home, like that's actually way more important than like these trivial things I'm worrying about.

Auren Hoffman (20:27.502)

How you give it like work for people who are like kind of worried about keeping up with the Joneses and stuff like that? Like, how do you help them think about those things?

Sam (20:34.998)

I've been lucky that I have this podcast called Moneywise and My First Million. So I'm able to talk to all these really wealthy people. And I have to remind myself that just because you have a lot of money doesn't mean you're going to be happy. And that I think that when I see a lot of rich people with a lot of stuff, I think I definitely have to fight jealousy or like when I meet you and you sold your company for three hundred and ten million dollars and that's more than mine. I'm like, well, I want to do that. But I have to remind myself that like

Auren Hoffman (20:38.445)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (21:01.143)

you

Sam (21:05.354)

That's not what's important necessarily. What's important is like, you happy and are you a good parent? And so I always have to remind myself that constantly. But yeah, I definitely fight urges of like, yeah, I have a one year old.

Auren Hoffman (21:10.072)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (21:13.538)

You have any kids?

How do you think about that? Like, how do you think about that on the parenting side and stuff?

Sam (21:23.264)

For one, I'm nervous. I'm incredibly nervous for my child growing up in a wealthy household. That freaks me out. I stay up all night. I've been reading books on dynasty families and things like that and wondering about charity and is it even worth it to give your kids money? Is it not worth it? So I'm like.

Auren Hoffman (21:28.056)

You're ner- about what? okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (21:44.428)

Yep. Yeah. Do you want to fly business class or not? Like all these other things? Yeah. Yeah.

Sam (21:48.326)

Yeah, like how do you want to fly like and my takeaway by the way is currently I think it's hard to live a fancy life and I'm not like you will automatically almost always have a spoiled kid it seems. Just but but all my learning has been academic not realistic because my kids brand new. But so with that I'm nervous about that I'm I also have come to the conclusion that it's important for your child to see you work at least 30 hours a week.

Auren Hoffman (22:15.288)

Yes.

They will get, they will benefit a lot from that for sure. Yeah.

Sam (22:18.079)

You know it.

Like some type of, however long a school day is, like you should be doing something like that long. Potentially more. Yeah, whatever it is, like some amount of work. And having a kid makes you realize a little girl. Having a little girl has made me realize that the things that I thought were important about business and making money and chasing status, which I was all about.

Auren Hoffman (22:24.95)

Yeah, yeah, potentially even more to see a little bit of. Yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (22:35.694)

You have a girl or a boy? Yep.

Sam (22:48.438)

That's just way less important after you've have some type of financial security. It's just not. It's just it's just insignificant when it comes to like being a good parent. Do you know what I mean? And, you know, like particularly seeing my wife pregnant when she we miscarried before we had my first kid and like no amount of money fixes that problem. And there's a whole bunch of like stuff with your kid that money and power and influence and likeability. That shit doesn't matter.

Auren Hoffman (23:00.013)

Yeah.

Sam (23:17.31)

It doesn't matter at all. And so it kind of like is like a unique situation to feel helpless. And I kind of enjoy it in a weird way. Like, it's kind of nice to like be like, I'm nothing.

Auren Hoffman (23:27.086)

On I have these kind of cold theories on, on wealthy kids. The first one is I think what you, the ideal situation is you want to get like super wealthy right before your kids are born and have all this wealth until they're like five or six years old. Cause it's super helpful when they're little. And then you want to, yeah, exactly. Like you want to be able to afford that. Right. Exactly. Then you want to like magically lose it all. and go back to like, just a normal middle-class lifestyle.

Sam (23:43.666)

Yeah, like a night nurse is like the greatest thing on earth. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (23:55.95)

until they're like 20 and then you want to like magically get it all back. No, like it's impossible. That's the opposite because most people like get wealthier over time. Right. So they're like, like

Sam (24:00.758)

Is that what you're doing? like, do you?

Sam (24:07.518)

What age did you cross some type of threshold where you were like, feel comfortable?

Auren Hoffman (24:12.622)

How old are my kids? Let's say around 40.

Sam (24:14.313)

Note you.

Sam (24:19.368)

And so then your children were not babies.

Auren Hoffman (24:22.442)

No, well, I had kids, my first kid when I was 37. Yeah, yeah, so they're still pretty young. Yep.

Sam (24:25.618)

Okay, they were, you know, toddler age. Yeah, well, but I do think it's possible to dial it back a little bit, but maybe I'm being too naive.

Auren Hoffman (24:35.264)

It's definitely possible. One of the other things I've seen is that, you know, as you, we, we know a lot of people who are also very fortunate people and their kids are amazing. And some of them are teenagers, some are in college and you meet them. so there are ways to, there are ways to, I'm much, when I was younger, I was much more worried about it. Like you are now.

And I constantly, and my wife and I constantly talked about it. What are we going to do better? How are we going to do this? How are we going to make sure our kids aren't spoiled? We can't, talked about it like all the time. Like it was, it was like a topic conversation, like almost every dinner was like that kind of, that kind of acute, like, what are we going to do? And nowadays we're just like much less worried about it because we see so many other people who have been able to make it happen. Doesn't mean we'll make it happen. but there's just like so much evidence that it's possible to do it.

Sam (25:30.686)

Yeah, well, I think that's rooted it. Did you grow up in a wealthy family or neither did I. And so I just assumed that every rich kid was unhealthy. And my wife grew up around wealthy people in a very successful family. And she was like, no, that's not true. all like most like she's like, you love all of my friends, right? I was like, yeah, there's like eight of your friends that I think are like some of the best women I've ever met in my life. And she was like, you know, they're all rich, right. And I was like, you're right.

Auren Hoffman (25:41.005)

Mm-hmm.

Auren Hoffman (25:47.256)

Right, right.

Auren Hoffman (25:56.909)

Eh!

Sam (25:58.536)

Like what if I just like, and so this is like a thing. This is a story we like make up.

Auren Hoffman (25:59.822)

Totally. Yeah. I mean, there are screwed up, there are screwed up people who are wealthy or screwed up people who are poor. They're screwed up people in middle class. They're screwed up people everywhere. And there are, there are, there are non-screwed up people everywhere too. Like it's just, it's, it's, it's, I don't know where the correlation is, but yeah.

Sam (26:07.688)

Well, and then she'd be like...

Sam (26:14.932)

I don't know either. It should be like, Sam, you know that like eight, you know, like six of your friends are like drug addicts. I'm like, yeah, that's right. Like, there's like no, there's no, I don't think there's a correlation, but we make up the story, but I think it's okay to be paranoid.

Auren Hoffman (26:29.912)

Correct. We record stories in our head. Now you are a student of communities and you studied a lot of communities before starting Hampton. What did you, what are the types of communities that you studied?

Sam (26:44.822)

So when I started the hustle, I like did this math. I'm like, you know, I think if you have this many subscribers and you charge this much money for ads, I think you could get to 100 million in revenue. And people laughed at me and I'm like, guys, like, do you believe that is this the going rate for advertising? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, all right. Are there this many people in the world who'd want to subscribe to this? Yeah. But still that number doesn't work out. It's the same way with community where there's a lot of there's a lot of my goal with the community. I wanted to build a multi-billion dollar company.

And there was a lot of like people who are like, this can't be possible. And so I actually found a bunch of them. So I'll give you, maybe two examples. so there's one company called world 50. Have you heard of world? So I have there. They recently sold. So, I was able to, or yeah, or yeah. And they sold for 2 billion or between one and a half and two, forget the exact number, something like that.

Auren Hoffman (27:27.278)

It's amazing. my God. I love that company. Amazing. Such a successful company. Yeah. For like the second or third time, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Sam (27:44.95)

It's a company where if you are basically a fortune 5,000 executive world 50 stands for a 50 person community. So they have a CFO community, a CMO community, a CIO. And if you're a fortune 5,000 executive, you join this community and you get access to an online community. And then you also go to a variety of events and maybe you get one or two perks, but something like that. It costs ranges between 50 to 80,000 a year.

and they are doing well over a hundred million dollars a year of EBITDA. So we're talking like maybe at this point 150, could be 150 million and or more. The data that I saw was three years old. And that company sold for roughly 15 times that hundred million plus profit. There's another company called Vistage. Vistage, what Hampton is doing is very similar to Vistage. They have

Auren Hoffman (28:24.056)

Probably more. yeah, yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (28:36.065)

eBay, yeah.

Sam (28:42.966)

something like 40,000 small business owners who are members. They do meetings once a month with your core group and they charge around one to 2000 a month depending on your company size. They are doing like $200 million a year in EBITDA. So Vistage, Vistage is, Vistage in World 50 are two communities, but there's like maybe three or four or five more communities that I know of that are multi-billion dollar companies. So.

Auren Hoffman (29:00.312)

amazing. Yeah.

Sam (29:11.87)

It's shockingly big. It's just that when a lot of people think of communities, they think of like small business, like free communities, and they don't realize that like some of these things could be substantial. Now the downside, those companies that I just mentioned, Vistage is 70 years old or 60s, I think it was launched. World 50 was launched in 05. So like they're not new and so it takes a while to grow.

Auren Hoffman (29:29.9)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (29:35.95)

20 years old, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (29:41.24)

but you can grow it effectively, can grow it profitably, you don't have to raise money oftentimes, right? In fact, maybe raising money will maybe even like make it worse, right?

Sam (29:50.26)

I think it's bad. think I spoke to Chief. Chief is a chief.com. It's a community mostly for female executives. And I think that the CEO there, I think she's a really good leader. I've talked to her a bit. I think she's fantastic. But the problem was, is that they raised a hundred million dollars in VC funding. And when you do that, you have a obligation to grow really fast. And I think that she could have built a...

Auren Hoffman (30:09.496)

Wow. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (30:17.976)

Right, then you're going to make these quality decisions like we talked about earlier and you're going to go for the revenue as opposed to the quality, make some short-term decisions.

Sam (30:27.262)

Yeah, and I think that she could have built a huge business without taking any of that money, but she lived in New York and maybe was like inspired by people who I frankly think that was a bad decision. And so that sucks.

Auren Hoffman (30:33.068)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (30:39.904)

Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I think I feel like I'm seeing so many businesses recently where you meet these founders. They've got, they've got a great idea. And so that, but their default is still like raising money and so many cases, it seems like the wrong decision to go do that.

Sam (30:47.199)

So.

Sam (30:56.246)

It seems like the wrong decision because when you ask them, I'm like, Hey, have you done the math? Do you realize that like, like, you know, this is crude to talk about, but it's the truth. It's like, you know, you're going to get richer if you don't raise money and your lifestyle is going to be better. And also the third point, which is more important to the customer, the product will probably be a little bit better. and so it's like a win, win, win. It's just, it was easy for me because I had an audience. So, it's easy for me to talk about, and criticize, but I don't know. I feel like.

Auren Hoffman (31:08.919)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (31:14.051)

Yeah.

Sam (31:25.694)

a company like Chief, they would have took off no matter what. And I wish they would have not raised funding because I think the world needs their product.

Auren Hoffman (31:31.598)

We kind of, live in this time now where it's the bowling alone time. We're less likely to know our neighbor. We're less likely to do, have a religious attendance. You know, people are kind of like in some ways like starving for community. is that just part of being human? Like is community just something that we all humans want?

Sam (31:51.822)

Yeah, and remote made it more challenging. And so we're pivoting our company. We're actually, so the way Hampton works is you join and you have access to an online community where you can talk to like thousands of members. But we have, have a monthly meeting where you meet with eight people who have a similar size. Well, it used to be digital. Now we switched it all. So where it's happening in person, which is a logistical nightmare, but I think it's a way better mode. And so we're actually switching. And so we actually already have groups meeting in real life right now.

Auren Hoffman (32:07.713)

in person.

okay.

Sure.

Sam (32:22.018)

and people are begging for it. They're like, I'll drive an hour to go, once a month. Like I, I like, and I'm one of those people, by the way, I'm like, I, we built Hampton remotely with remote, a remote team all over the country. I regret it. I'm like, man, we should have all done it in New York. yeah, it was a huge error.

Auren Hoffman (32:26.818)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (32:40.75)

Yeah, interesting

Now, you're also kind of because of hustle and stuff, you're kind of a student of media. What are some of like what what what is like the independent media companies you really admire the most today?

Sam (32:57.999)

Sam (33:02.439)

think in which category

Auren Hoffman (33:05.262)

I mean, you've studied all, just like you study communities, you've studied so many media companies over the years.

Sam (33:14.166)

So I like companies that take money from their customer and not from just the advertiser. I think that makes a huge difference.

Auren Hoffman (33:20.3)

Yep. So this may be an event that's involved or there's some other type of thing or.

Sam (33:26.002)

Yeah, like I'll give you an example of the hustle. we, SoFi was an advertiser, but, but their CEO don't quote me on this, but I have to Google it. Something happened with their CEO where he did something not cool. I forget exactly what he did. So I don't even want to say it, but something that was in the headlines where it was like lame, like where you read it you're like, you're not a good person if you did what you were accused of. And I remember our team was like,

Auren Hoffman (33:31.416)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (33:43.448)

Yeah.

Sam (33:54.802)

you can't talk about that. And I'm like, no, I'm talking about this. And I don't give a shit about their revenue. Like, you know, they can go after themselves. Who cares? We're talking about this. And then I remember one of my coworkers was like, but I sold them the ad and I'm not going to get paid my commission. And my heart broke because I cared about her, but I don't give a shit about SoFi, you know? And so I was like, man, this sucks. Like this is like I'm like, I will make you happy before the audience because I because I care about you. So anyway, I care about companies that

Auren Hoffman (34:03.895)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (34:11.675)

Okay, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Sam (34:23.766)

the are paid for by their their by their customers. So I like the information. I love

I love flash and flames, you know flash and flames.com. So flash and flames is my absolute favorite blog on media and B2B media companies. It's run by one guy and it charges, he charges $400 a year and he produces three or four articles a week and I pay him money and I get a great service that I look forward to. he makes probably just barely enough money to make a, make an income. and I love that. So I love flash and flames.

Auren Hoffman (34:35.052)

No, I've never heard of them.

Auren Hoffman (34:42.665)

okay.

Auren Hoffman (35:01.648)

my gosh, that sounds so cool.

Sam (35:03.126)

That's for sure my favorite one.

Auren Hoffman (35:05.774)

I so it's kind of this like artisanal like media in a way.

Sam (35:11.17)

Yeah, but the goal is not to be artisanal. He's probably like a 65 year old or 60 year old and he's like, I just love this stuff. I'm just going to write about it. And so I love the idea where the editorial team is like pirates and they don't owe anyone anything. I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. So I like the Wall Street Journal. pay money for that. And do know who I shockingly love? I love Business Insider. I really like, I love Fast Journal.

Auren Hoffman (35:13.004)

Right.

Auren Hoffman (35:16.588)

Yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (35:35.493)

interesting. I'm surprised. Okay. Yeah. You pay for it? Okay. Okay.

Sam (35:40.086)

Yeah, I pay $100 a year for it. I try my hardest to pay for things that I like. think that I think that we have to incentivize that type of behavior. So I actually like Business Insider. And I read Reddit like crazy. But I don't really read, by the way, any political news. I'm like, fairly not up to date on politics. It makes me. It makes me very stressed. What I hear, I'll give you kind of like my media journal.

Auren Hoffman (35:45.292)

Yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (36:00.022)

Yep, that's very healthy. That makes you happier.

Sam (36:08.574)

or my media way of living is I read probably one to two books a week. Not because I'm trying to read fast, but like at night when we put the baby down at seven 30, I just, we just don't turn the TV on and I just like to sit there and read. And then what I do is I buy the book and I buy it for Kindle and I read it on my Kindle. And then I download it illegally as a PDF and I upload the PDF to chat GBT. And then I ask it questions as I'm reading like, Andrew,

Auren Hoffman (36:22.764)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (36:36.43)

that's cool. So you make it you make kind of an interactive conversation with the author while you're reading it.

Sam (36:38.345)

where I'll be like, I'm reading this.

Sam (36:46.118)

Yeah, and the reason I always say it this way is like, I do download it illegally because I need it in PDF format, but I always pay for the book, so I'm not stealing.

Auren Hoffman (36:51.955)

Okay, she paid me. It's interesting. So have you used like notebook LM at all?

Sam (36:58.12)

Yeah, so I just I've been using chat gbt, but everyone said notebook lm is better and so I and it is totally better So what I do is I download the pdf I upload it to notebook lm or chat gbt previously and i'll be like, i'm reading this great book by david nassau about andrew carnegie andrew carnegie lived in the 1800s and so the dollar signs so the dollar figures are kind of hard for me to understand so i'll be like hey, he built the keystone bridge, know, how much how much money did he use in today's money to like

Auren Hoffman (37:00.898)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (37:19.351)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (37:25.74)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sam (37:26.678)

You know what I mean? Or, you know, he references his mother, but I forget what did his mother say to him when he was a kid? Like, like I use it for that reason.

Auren Hoffman (37:33.518)

That's cool. And have you tried to like, okay, you have the book that you put in PDF, but like that, that author probably has like 50 podcasts that they've done in the book and a whole bunch of other types of like nuance and maybe a few other articles around that. And maybe a few other like Andrew Carnegie, like Wikipedia things you could, could you like, have you ever decided to like throw all of that into notebook LM and give this like,

Sam (37:47.349)

Yeah.

Sam (37:51.412)

Yeah.

Yeah, so if you particularly if you read history a lot of the books that you can find for free on Google Scholar Because they're out of copyright and so I'll upload those and you could also upload YouTube videos You just type in the YouTube video in there and so I'll have like an air so like for example, I'm obsessed I go through like obsessions. Just finished like an obsession with the Kennedy family. And so I actually read seven books on different Kennedy members I upload all of them and I'll be like

Auren Hoffman (38:05.112)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (38:14.188)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (38:19.948)

You know, and Ethel Kennedy just died, so which is very recently. I mean, we're taping this October 14th. was the first week of October 2024. Yeah.

Sam (38:23.264)

when did she die?

Sam (38:29.558)

wow, RIP. didn't know that. so I like Joe Kennedy, JFK's father, he set up these amazing trusts. And I'm reading about JFK Jr. So he's the grandson of the patriarch. And I'm like, damn, he still had money. That's crazy that they the money went to the grandkids. Tell me about the trust that Joe Kennedy said he set up. And how much was it that JFK Jr. had? Do you know what I mean? Like I get like I can.

Auren Hoffman (38:41.741)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (38:49.902)

okay.

Auren Hoffman (38:54.082)

You know what's cool is like, yeah, cause if you're reading like sometimes I'll do that in a theme as well. While I start reading a theme, as you mentioned, like all the Kennedys and if you're reading all the kids, like you may also even have like a world war two piece of the theme and a cold war theme and like a, and, know, you could put it all in a book because they're all kind of feed off one another.

Sam (39:12.114)

Yeah, and the World War Two stuff is actually another great example. I've done that before where like, I'll be like, dude, I still don't understand this. Why was Hitler angry at this group of people? like what's that you have to tell me the background of like World War World War One, not World War Two. Like, I don't understand all this. like, know, like, give me context here. Like, what what was the angry like? don't know where this hate come from. And they'll have to explain these complicated topics, but they use my sources in books.

Auren Hoffman (39:23.661)

Right, right.

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (39:37.198)

interesting. That's cool. I, I'm to start doing that too. I'm to start like, know, this is a great idea because I read a lot as well. and just like having a chat with the author when I was younger, I sold my first company for not that much. I decided I was going to go like create my own masters on foreign policy. so I would read a book, every week I'd read a book and then I would email and it was usually some obscure book.

And then I would email the author who is like some, you know, like professor at like, you know, Florida state or something. And I would say, Hey, I just read your book. would you mind like, if I could, I take you out to lunch, I'll come and take you out to lunch. And they were always so flattered because like the only one who read their book were like the people they assigned it on class. and I would just like quiz them. And, but it obviously was like, took a lot of time. I'd like fly to Florida. would like, you know, it just looked at massive amount of time and money to go do that. Like.

Sam (40:28.726)

Dude, that's so funny.

Auren Hoffman (40:32.886)

Now I could just like have a conversation with their, with them on, on a chat GPT or a notebook LM. And it's like way more effective.

Sam (40:40.21)

You and I are very similar. So Google, Google, Google this Google the anti MBA book club. So that's my website. I used to own a book club called the anti MBA, because I wanted to get my MBA, but I didn't want to go to school. And so I read a book a week. And then I would have an expert on the book's topic come in and talk to me and 20 of my friends. We did the exact same thing.

Auren Hoffman (40:46.637)

Okay.

Auren Hoffman (40:53.24)

Uh-huh.

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (41:03.152)

my gosh, I love it. that's so hilarious. And was it, was it a business or was it just like for fun? Okay. got it. So like people like also like they got their anti-MBA with you. Okay. Yeah.

Sam (41:10.749)

The business.

Sam (41:16.752)

Yeah, where it was like, we're gonna do the same thing, but it's gonna be free. Because and I was like, the education is part of it, but like the network is the other part. So like, come here and we'll network and

Auren Hoffman (41:26.572)

Yeah, if you read a book a week, which isn't like crazy, it's a lot of work, but it's in crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam (41:31.574)

It's actually a lot of people think it's harder than it is. For me, it's like an hour a day. I can get one a week.

Auren Hoffman (41:37.004)

Yeah. If you read a book a week, you will, you will like, you're in whatever, in something you're interested in, you will learn way more than someone getting their masters. Like way more. So if someone's getting your masters in like ancient European history, if you cared about ancient European history in that year, you would learn like two, three, four times more than that person. Cause they're just like, they're just.

They're just not, they're just kind of getting, cause you could kind of move around in the way you want to know, or this, this book seems interesting, or you could stop the book in the middle. Cause you're like, this book sucks. Right. So you just have way more leeway until like actually getting smart.

Sam (42:08.565)

Yeah.

Sam (42:14.046)

And Notebook LM will give you quizzes too.

Auren Hoffman (42:17.695)

that's cool. So that really help you. Cause that's one of the problems I have over reading so much is like, I forget like 90 plus percent of what I read. Like within like two months, sometimes I don't even remember reading the book. Yeah, that's a great idea.

Sam (42:18.238)

Which is pretty awesome. that's why.

Sam (42:32.638)

Yeah, so quiz is helpful.

Yeah. So what I like to do is, I use notebook LM. and then I also, I, I, usually will write a blog post. I call it an essay. It's not really an essay. It could be like a 500 word thing and just says, here's what I just learned from this book. Yeah. Just like, here's five interesting antidote. Like when I read Warren Buffett, I was like, starting at the age of, 50, he started investing a lot more into brand. And so he actually bought Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola made him more money than anything he'd ever done.

Auren Hoffman (42:50.52)

just to force you to remember it.

Auren Hoffman (43:05.027)

Yeah.

Sam (43:05.056)

Like that's like one little story like that, but five of them.

Auren Hoffman (43:08.198)

Okay. All right. I should because I feel like even if no one reads it, I feel like that would help me like retain some of the knowledge.

Sam (43:13.078)

Yeah.

Yeah, and actually if you go to the Anti-MBA right now, my blog, I wrote one on Ralph Lauren and I just said like, here's 20 good quotes from the book. it's not like, yeah, it could be simple.

Auren Hoffman (43:22.818)

Yeah, okay. So it's kind of simple. Yeah. And there are things you may be highlighted along the way. And are you reading the physical book? Are you reading like the Kindle or are you listening or?

Sam (43:28.691)

Exactly.

Sam (43:34.934)

I do three at a time. I do when I go for walks, do audio. And that's usually something that's entertainment. So a lot of fiction. then, yeah, because if there's a good voice actor, it's kind of like you're listening to a movie and then like, I love that. And then for my book between like 730 and 10 o'clock at night, that's usually physical.

Auren Hoffman (43:39.681)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (43:44.312)

Okay.

You fiction audio. Interesting. Okay. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam (44:00.276)

And so right now I'm obsessed with like Ralph Laurence. So like as my wife will be sitting there, she'll be like, she likes to together Lego. She'll be putting the Legos and I'll just sit in there with my book, just like reading and we'll like talk occasionally like back and forth. So that's a physical book. And then in bed, that's a Kindle.

Auren Hoffman (44:16.238)

Okay, got it. Okay, cool. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, so many people have so many interesting habits. Now, I think at some point, I read this, I read like a interview with you while ago, where you said in the past, your goal is to retire with $20 million. Okay, now you're, you made your $20 million, which is a lot of money, right? And, but now you're still working super hard. You're still working crazy hours. Like what changed your mind?

Sam (44:42.396)

It wasn't necessarily the retire in the typical sense. It was basically like I grew up with not a lot and I wanted to feel this sense of security. And I asked a whole bunch of wealthy people how much money they spent per month. And the richest person told me that he spent like eighty thousand dollars per month or something like that. And I was like, all right, so three percent of that equals like something like or, you know, if I only spent three percent of a lump sum, that would be like 20 or 25 million dollars.

Auren Hoffman (44:55.222)

Uh-huh.

Auren Hoffman (45:07.382)

Right. Yep.

Sam (45:11.796)

and you could still live like a really lavish lifestyle. At that point, I'll feel like secure, I think that was my hypothesis. And so I was like, all right, that's the number I'm going to try and hit by 30. Because if I can just remove like the stress of money, then I won't be nervous anymore. And I'll only focus on like doing good in the world. Now that premise was it's not fully true because like for some reason.

Auren Hoffman (45:13.933)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (45:32.396)

Right, because then your tastes move up, you know. Yeah.

Sam (45:34.386)

your tastes move up and the goalposts always move. so and so but that brings us to a whole different discussion, which is like basically the answer is it's never enough. Like humans always want more. That said, it definitely helps. Like it definitely made me worry a lot less. But and the reason I'm working is because I went from working to make more money to working for fulfillment to where like this feels good for my soul. And like war.

Auren Hoffman (45:42.19)

Correct.

Yeah. Yep.

Sam (46:00.788)

warriors can't just like sit around all day like men have to go and contribute and like You know, we're all built to do something and like I think most men I mean women maybe as well. I don't know. I'm only speaking from a man's perspective I feel like we are we are obligated to like produce for the world and I feel like I have that deep sense of like obligation

Auren Hoffman (46:19.404)

Now, there are some people who are like content with a certain amount of success and then they kind of cap out on their ambition. They don't need anymore. They're very happy and they go get a winery or something like that. And then there's others who just like kind of keep going and or would never stop. Like there's no level that would ever kind of stop. Like, is there a way of like identifying those people early on or

Sam (46:50.198)

think I only know one person like that who I have a friend named Jack Smith. He sold his company called Vungle. You maybe know Vungle. He sold it for $800 million when he was 29 or 30. And he was like, I have enough. I don't want to do business ever again. And he's happy. And he's the only person I've ever met who made money and walked away successfully.

Auren Hoffman (47:03.982)

Amazing.

Auren Hoffman (47:18.924)

Interesting. know tons of people, tons, more, more, almost most of the people I know who made money kind of like they, they, you know, they might quote unquote angel invest in a dabble in, you know, real estate or something like that. But they like, have their little winery. They go do these other things. They

Sam (47:21.566)

Well, maybe...

Sam (47:35.582)

What's their average number of net worth that they made to walk away?

Auren Hoffman (47:38.606)

I think it's very dependent. It can be as low as you can imagine. can sustain that life to, you and, you know, someone may be made more than they would have ever expected. I think a lot of people are very young and they just want to spend more time with their family and they all seem very happy. And then, you other people I know like

Sam (47:41.686)

So like what's the low end and what's the high end?

Auren Hoffman (48:02.124)

I don't think there is any number that they would ever stop. were probably just, they're just, they're gonna, they're gonna keep working until they die. Like in this one day they'll die. like there's just no, there seems to be like just people who are very different wired or in some sort of way.

Sam (48:17.108)

The people who retired were they entirely self-made?

Auren Hoffman (48:22.23)

I think so, Yeah.

Sam (48:24.436)

Yeah, I think that I don't know too many people like that. Like I said, one, I know people who did it, like bailed, quit, but they're unhappy.

Auren Hoffman (48:28.92)

Interesting.

Auren Hoffman (48:33.806)

Well, I think, think what happens, there's another thing I think that is common. So here's what's common that I see. So you, you, you, you had that success and it was fairly successful. Then you did something else and that failed and then they stopped.

Sam (48:51.294)

Yeah, and they probably had a family.

Auren Hoffman (48:51.566)

yeah, they, of course, at the point they had a family, they had a lot of other reasons, but they had, it's like, it's like they didn't, they couldn't, they didn't want another, they couldn't take on another failure in their head. because of course, start doing something again, risking something again, means there's some decent high likelihood of failure. and, and when that, that failure hit them and maybe these are people.

I can't go back in time and understand their psyche, but maybe there's people who didn't have a lot of failure when they're younger, had just tons of success after success, ended up with a great success. then, you know, inevitably we all have failures in life and business, et cetera.

Sam (49:29.718)

Andrew Carnegie who I've brought up because I might, he's a person I read a lot about. He fascinates me. He wrote at the age of 33. He was like, I earn this much money per year, which is like the equivalent of $5 million today. So a lot of money. And by the age of 38, which is in three years, I'm going to retire and I'm going to devote my life.

to non-money making things because the making of money is like an evil task. And two things happened. Two years later, he started Carnegie Steel, which went on to make him the second richest person to ever live in the history of the world. And the second thing was like, obviously he went and made money, but he did dedicate a lot of time to like doing good in the world, even though he's a contrary to your person, he did a lot of bad stuff, but he also like wrote and read a lot and like hung out with literary men.

that he called it. And so I think that like after you get like your first hit or you're one of these people who bounce, you realize that like kind of what I was saying earlier that like business, it's definitely more than just dollars and profit. It's it has to do something for the soul.

Auren Hoffman (50:38.797)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (50:42.188)

And he eventually sold to US Steel. He didn't have to do that. He sold to US Steel. And I believe then he was. Didn't he mostly focus on philanthropy after that?

Sam (50:51.22)

Yeah, well, he was very philanthropic the whole the entire way. Yeah, he was really good about that. He was a very contradictory person because he was very giving and yet he was like a slumlord for his company. Like he was like, if you worked for him, like you were getting shit wages and if you had a union.

Auren Hoffman (50:53.694)

All the way before. Yeah. Cause you know, all the libraries he's so famous for.

Auren Hoffman (51:06.401)

Yeah, yeah.

And he had all, yeah, I he, like went with troops against his own workers a couple of times, right? Yeah.

Sam (51:12.726)

Yeah, so he was he's a contradictory person where he justified some of those actions because he's going to like give all the way away all this money, which he did, by the way. Yeah, he was like intense. and so anyway, my point with that is like, I do think that like what Andrew Carnegie said is what a lot of business people feel, which is like, my God, I was in this just to get profits. And once I got the profits, I realized this like thing of like, it's there's got to be more than this and

Auren Hoffman (51:19.65)

He was like an early EA guy or something.

Auren Hoffman (51:38.53)

Something else.

Sam (51:41.832)

And unfortunately, this makes me sound like a silly for talking about this because you kind of have to experience this to actually appreciate it. And you're like, I don't believe you. So let me go experience this myself. Let me get rich and realize that like, that's not the answer. In which case I say, yes, go experience it yourself. there's gotta be more to it than just profit, I think.

Auren Hoffman (52:00.822)

It's funny, we live in DC and you know, it's like there's so many public servants who eventually like, gotta go make money. And then there's so many people we know who made money who want to go into public service. It's like everyone thinks the grass is greener going the other way.

Sam (52:14.383)

For the record, think the right way is to make a living and then go and do the other thing.

Auren Hoffman (52:20.578)

Yeah, but it's harder because like, there's just things you don't learn when you're younger and stuff like that. you know, just, ever, everything is, everything's different and there's less spots to go do it in the later life. now you, you mentioned, I I think when, once I saw an interview, said you lost a job at Airbnb because you had like a criminal record. Like, how do you think about hiring like today would maybe people have some non-traditional background.

Sam (52:45.952)

think that I, so I got fired because I lied. So basically I'm completely sober now, but I had an alcohol issue and I got a DUI and I lied about it when I was going through the Airbnb process. they...

Auren Hoffman (53:00.524)

You lied about, they asked you about what or what was the lie?

Sam (53:04.288)

So basically I was still going through the system, the court system, where I hadn't exactly had my court date yet. And they're like, have you been accused? I forget the words, but do you have like a misdemeanor? And I was like, yeah. And I was like, well, technically I haven't been convicted yet, but like whatever it was like, that was not within the, I lie. I didn't, I thought I wasn't lying, but like they accused me up and.

Auren Hoffman (53:10.574)

Mm-hmm.

Auren Hoffman (53:14.639)

There was like a questionnaire to fill out after you get your job offer.

Yeah.

Sam (53:30.304)

I'll accept their answer. They are more right than I was. And they were like, dude, we don't hire liars. Like you don't show up. And so they were...

Auren Hoffman (53:31.414)

Yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (53:36.822)

Yeah, yeah. Now, do think they would have hired you if you told the truth and?

Sam (53:41.172)

Well, I did. had a job and I moved out to San Francisco and I was starting the next day in 12 hours.

Auren Hoffman (53:45.56)

But they didn't know about the, if you actually said I had a, know, do you think they, they still would have hired you. So you just were like, yeah. So you, weren't confident in yourself to, to, to, to. Yeah.

Sam (53:49.514)

They would have let me. They would have hired me. Yeah. I think.

Sam (53:56.362)

I was a fool. I lost that in a variety of ways. I was a fool. Now, when it comes to like other now for traditional backgrounds, I work with this thing called the last mile, which is started by my friend Chris, where they go to different prisons and they teach prisoners how to code and they get jobs when they get out of prison. So I'm pretty like on board with that of hiring people who maybe aren't traditional people. Yeah, because

Auren Hoffman (54:21.762)

giving people a second chance.

Sam (54:25.076)

That's kind of a win-win-win, which is like, even if you don't want to have sympathy for these people, which I don't think you should, you know, if you commit the crime, you do the time, it's good for the all society that they get a job, like, because they'll do less bad stuff, like statistically. So I'm like, I'm bored with employing people like that, as long as they're qualified and can help me get the job done. At the Hustle, my old company, and even at Hampton, I did a good job of hiring people that I used to...

Auren Hoffman (54:36.269)

Yeah.

Sam (54:53.594)

say like, we want you to let your freak flag fly at our company. Like we were, I did a good job of hiring non-traditional kind of oddballs and giving them a place to like, kind of be wacky. and that was kind of the fun part of running a media company.

Auren Hoffman (55:07.564)

If you were like a Sam par the hedge fund and you got to invest in these like 20 year olds or something and you can get a percentage of the goodness they give to society or percentage of their earnings and it's competitive, me and you are competing against each other and trying to invest out there. What are the signals that, know, kind of the money ball signals that you're going to find that I wouldn't find that you would invest in?

Sam (55:31.424)

Well, the traditional that's a good question. The traditional things are like, are they good at like poker, video games, puzzles? Like, is there anything that they like anything that's quote, like worthless or weird or whatever that they're like amazing at? So I usually look I look for those things. Yeah, like whatever, like something that like you would laugh at, like if you were their peer or like, our friend Dave, he's so nerdy, he does he he's he times himself up.

Auren Hoffman (55:46.294)

Yeah. The best Call Duty player or something. Yeah.

Sam (56:00.672)

how fast he puts together puzzles. Like if you're like one of those guys, I really love that. I also, I love reading people's blogs or their Twitter or seeing like the written word. And so I've actually hired.

Auren Hoffman (56:02.144)

Yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (56:07.785)

That's a good one.

Auren Hoffman (56:14.476)

Yeah, so do I. Yeah. So rare to find. It's so rare that people write today, you know, or ever, you know, it's interesting because it's so easy to differentiate yourself. have so few people do it.

Sam (56:28.022)

Yeah, one of my best hires at the time she was a 23 year old, 22 year old woman named Steph Smith. she was a product manager somewhere and she had a blog and I read her blog and it was great. It was a good ass blog. It was so good. And I hired her. Now she's a big shot at, her name is Steph Smith. She, works at Andreessen Horowitz. And, and it was all because she just had a blog that no one was reading, but like it was really like thoughtful.

Auren Hoffman (56:51.116)

Yeah. Yeah.

Sam (56:52.104)

And so I love seeking out people who are just really thoughtful online. And so I find those people in forums. I used to find them in like chat rooms. This sounds weird finding young people in chat rooms, but you know what I mean? in like anything that I like enthusiast places like on Reddit where there's like fun topics and you're like, this person's talking and they're like 18 years old. You're like, dude, you're a freak. What the hell? What's your story? Like, how are you so knowledgeable about this topic? So I like people like that.

Auren Hoffman (56:58.382)

Mmm.

Auren Hoffman (57:03.011)

Dolly.

Auren Hoffman (57:13.676)

Hahaha

Yeah, now a couple of personal questions that we ask everybody. What is a conspiracy theory that you believe?

Sam (57:23.53)

I'm passionate about conspiracy theories because I think most of them are nonsense. Yeah, and that's one where I'm 99 % sure Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. There is a bunch of weird stuff that's hard to explain, but conspiracies are hard to be. The reason I think most aren't real is secrets are hard to keep. Secrets are really hard to keep, particularly when you're dealing with like.

Auren Hoffman (57:27.126)

Okay, and you've read all these JFK things too and Kennedy things too.

Auren Hoffman (57:46.424)

Yep.

Sam (57:52.118)

a $50,000 a year soldier who like wants to pay money or wants to get paid for telling a secret. So what secrets do I or what conspiracy theories do I believe?

Auren Hoffman (58:01.923)

Like, you mean the Jack Ruby thing. Like, just so weird, right? Like, how did this guy?

Sam (58:07.058)

I think it's weird, but the JFK one in particular, I think I'm 99 % sure that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and he did it. The reason I think that is because like JFK Jr. and a bunch of other people have like read a bunch about it, like because that was his father and they're like, yeah, dude, he acted alone. So that's my opinion on that one. Which conspiracy do I believe to be true?

Auren Hoffman (58:23.438)

Mm-hmm.

Auren Hoffman (58:27.8)

Yeah.

Sam (58:34.442)

This is such a fun question.

Sam (58:38.699)

Sam (58:42.696)

One thing that I'm reading about now, newly interested in this, so I haven't read too much. A lot of the cigarette companies, they bought the major food companies. so, yeah, they were owned by like Philip Morris. like, they owned the majority or a large percentage of their stock because they're like, hey, we know how to make cigarettes addicting. Let's make this food addictive.

Auren Hoffman (58:55.692)

Yeah, like RJR Nabisco type of thing.

Yeah. Yep.

Sam (59:09.226)

And so I think that there is, I'm fairly interested in the idea of, I do think there's a corruptness around food and getting people addicted to certain foods. And I think that it's insane that a large percentage of medical degrees don't require any nutrition classes. And I think that there is some evil big food.

Auren Hoffman (59:32.44)

Yeah.

Sam (59:37.622)

That's like controlling the the the strings behind Behind you know behind the curtains, so I do believe it. I believe that to be true

Auren Hoffman (59:43.598)

Yeah, that's a pretty good one.

All right. Last question. We ask all of our guests. I believe so many, and, I, I generally think like, if there's a scenario where people are, are advocating for something and yet there's a, but there's another party that would directly benefit from it that is not advocating for it, that there's a good chance that that party is involved in maybe funding the people who are advocating for

Sam (59:48.798)

Wait, which one do you believe?

Sam (01:00:17.088)

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Auren Hoffman (01:00:18.444)

And so it's kind of like, it goes like, could be very micro conspiracy. it could be, you know, it could be, there could be lots of different things that are out there, but almost always, like there's almost always there's, that's the case. like if they're benefiting from it somehow, then they're probably, there's a good chance, maybe not, but there's a good chance that they're in.

Sam (01:00:40.576)

And you're in DC where all that happens. I generally think usually the simplest answer is best. think Epstein did kill himself. I think that 9-11 was not an inside job. think we did land on the moon. No. So it's definitely like I generally believe that just conspiracy, really big conspiracies are quite challenging to keep secrets.

Auren Hoffman (01:00:51.246)

We didn't fake the moon landing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The earth is not flat.

Auren Hoffman (01:01:03.264)

Yeah. Yeah. I think I agree, but there's a point where these conspiracies aren't so big and they actually can make things happen. The government ones are less believable, but the other ones where you have kind of a group getting together and kind of directing it in certain ways. There's a lot of PR things almost always when you see an article that's like negative about a company. it's like one of their competitors is the one funding it.

so even when you see in the wall street journal, there's like a very high likelihood that they got it. They got like the material from one of the competitors. and so. Yeah.

Sam (01:01:35.222)

I am comp- and the whole media thing is interesting. I know a bunch, or I tried to recruit, but I was a lowbrow publication compared to them. A lot of New York Times people are in that caliber. The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or sorry, New York Times, Washington Post, and five other Vox, Buzzfeed, it's all the same 800 or 1500 journalists, and it's very circular.

Auren Hoffman (01:02:02.179)

Yeah.

Sam (01:02:04.438)

And so like I even though the New York Times many people regard it as like highly reputable. I think most of it is like really hard to trust and it's all like similar people who are all friends with each other and they are read by the majority of the country and they all live in lower Manhattan. You know, like they all live in like the same area. Like this is weird. So I tend not to like trust a lot of those news sources.

Auren Hoffman (01:02:20.354)

Yeah, totally.

Auren Hoffman (01:02:26.67)

Now, last question, let's go over guess what conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad advice?

Sam (01:02:35.994)

what's like, what do people say about winning? They say like, like fail or sorry, fail fast. I kind of think that's stupid. Like it's a lot better. Like just succeed. Like whenever, like, I think that fail fast is they justify it for like, I missed my shot on goal. It's okay. And I'm like, no, it's not okay. It's not okay to fail. Like you can brush yourself off and, do better and get after it again.

Auren Hoffman (01:02:44.782)

Yeah.

Sam (01:03:05.632)

but like don't dismiss this as being okay. This is not okay. And you better make up for it. You know, like I remember I've angel invested a bunch of times and people are like, you know, like I failed, but I learned. So it's okay. I'm like, no, it's not okay, man. That was my money. Like you should tell me like I failed and this is really horrible. I'm so sorry, but don't tell me it's okay that you learned.

Auren Hoffman (01:03:20.332)

Yeah

Auren Hoffman (01:03:24.654)

Well, but like, okay, but you like, just to, just to push back, like in your company in Hampton or something like that, like there's things that you're doing all the time where you're failing, like you're trying things out. doesn't work. Maybe the company itself isn't failing, but there's like many micro things that you're doing. And that's the same thing with a fund. Like if you're in a, if you're a, if you're a venture investor, you know, you, you could have a three hits that drive like massive returns to your fund and everybody else could go under, but it's like those three hits like really hit.

Sam (01:03:40.518)

Yeah, but some things are not okay.

Sam (01:03:52.822)

But that's not a failure because it's for example, it's like this. If you're a good baseball player, you know, I don't pay attention to baseball, but like 300, 300, three out of 10, right? You get hits. That's good. And so that's not failing. But what I mean is, is like, I think far too often we get stuck in this idea of failure being like acceptable. And I'm like, dude, like it's not okay if LeBron James misses the game winning shot like more often than he than he, you know what I mean? Like LeBron James.

Auren Hoffman (01:04:03.318)

Yeah, quite good.

Auren Hoffman (01:04:17.272)

Correct.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sam (01:04:21.322)

has talent and he comes through when it counts. So you are not coming through when it counts and don't tell me it's okay that failing is okay. Messing up on small things every once in a is good, okay? But you have to be right more than you're wrong. And so I hate when people, sometimes like my employees will do this or like employees I've worked with or coworkers or just like people in general be like, well, I, you know, I fail fast. It's okay. I'm like, that's not fucking okay. It's not okay to fail. Okay.

Auren Hoffman (01:04:24.087)

Yes, yep.

Auren Hoffman (01:04:36.173)

Yeah.

Sam (01:04:49.002)

Don't dismiss this. That is really bad. If you want to be a winner, you got to win more than you lose.

Auren Hoffman (01:04:53.624)

Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that attitude. That's awesome. Well, thank you, Sam Parr, for joining us on World of Dazs podcast. I follow you at the Sam Parr on X or Twitter, whatever it's called. And I definitely encourage our listeners to engage with you there. This has been a ton of fun.

Sam (01:05:09.27)

Thank you, I appreciate you.

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