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Sam Parr
Co-host, My First Million; Founder of Hampton, My First Million

3 strangers reveal how they make $10M, $20M, and $30M/year

📅 Jun 30, 2026 My First Million 68 MIN 65764 VIEWS 595 SEGMENTS · 5 SPEAKERS
Business Idea Database: https://clickhubspot.com/uyu6 Episode 837: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) bring in 3 founders with weird businesses making $10M, $20M, and $30M. — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (3:32) Alex Daniels, $10M real estate magazine (20:31) Josh Weissenstein, $20M camp ground business (38:36) The $1.8B App Copying Politicians & Hedge Funds — Links: • Haven Lifestyles - https://www.havenlifestyles.com/ • Team Outsider - https://www.teamoutsider.com/ • Autopilot - https://www.joinautopilot.com/ — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton (j...

What Sam Parr said

Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.

Sam Parr and Shaan Puri hosted three entrepreneurs with unusual businesses. Alex Daniels owns Haven Lifestyles, 40 real estate advertising magazines generating $10 million in revenue with $2.5 million profit. He aims to double profit within 11 months, focusing on retention among 10,000+ agents. Josh Weissenstein runs Team Outsider, acquiring family-owned campgrounds, with 16 properties and $20 million annual revenue. He raised $60 million and values the portfolio north of $100 million. Brian runs Autopilot, a platform managing $1.8 billion and $30 million in revenue, allowing users to copy trades from politicians and hedge funds. He targets $100 million in recurring revenue by March next year. Parr and Puri offered advice on scaling, hiring, and customer relationships, emphasizing learning from each guest's approach.

Key takeaways

  1. Alex Daniels aims to double profit to $5 million run rate within 11 months, focusing on retention.
  2. Josh Weissenstein's Team Outsider owns 16 campgrounds, generating $20 million revenue, with $60 million raised.
  3. Brian's Autopilot manages $1.8 billion, generating $30 million revenue, targeting $100 million recurring revenue by March.
  4. Autopilot's top pilots earn $1-2 million annually, with Peter Wolf attracting $220 million in following funds.

Numbers and commitments

FigureWhat it refers toTypeAt
$10 million Annual revenue for Haven Lifestyles metric 3:42
$2.5 million Annual profit for Haven Lifestyles metric 6:18
40 Number of publications owned by Alex Daniels metric 3:42
$20 million Annual revenue for Team Outsider metric 20:06
16 Number of campgrounds owned by Team Outsider metric 22:15
$60 million Total capital raised by Team Outsider metric 24:48
$1.8 billion Assets under management for Autopilot metric 36:59
$30 million Annual revenue for Autopilot metric 36:59
$100 million Target recurring revenue for Autopilot by March timeline 1:02:42
250% Expected growth rate for Autopilot next year guidance 55:10

Chapters

  1. 0:00Introduction and format
  2. 3:24Alex Daniels and Haven Lifestyles
  3. 9:36Advice on scaling and retention
  4. 19:57Josh Weissenstein and Team Outsider
  5. 21:29Campground business model and growth
  6. 36:42Brian and Autopilot
  7. 38:24Autopilot's marketplace and growth
  8. 50:56Hiring advice and closing thoughts

Questions asked in this interview

12
  1. 5:56And he said that basically agents had reached out to him and like, "Why don't you do something in DC?
  2. 6:54Like how many covers can I get?
  3. 20:20And a campground, the majority of it is like a hotel, right?
  4. 27:22So there are two very large REITs in this space that initially were into the manufactured housing side of the business, but recognized both from a depreciation perspective and also the infrastructure is very similar, right?
  5. 31:56Company building and it's a hospitality business, right?
  6. 33:24... we do and trying to scale culture to a team of hourly employees across 10 states with this workforce, what is something that we could do differently to keep people incentivized to deliver the level of service that we're trying to deliver?
  7. 42:52And I was like, you know what?
  8. 44:47Is that a brokerage you have custody?
  9. 47:03Why don't I just go to Wealthfront that charges like 0.1%?
  10. 49:34Like I don't know, growing up I was like, man, why can't my Robinhood account just like follow this other guy's Robinhood account automatically?
  11. 50:58How do you find people that are highly motivated? What questions do you ask?
  12. 57:00I messaged him roughly two hours ago and I was like, where are you?
Alex Daniels 0:00 ↗
All right. I own 40 publications, $10 million in revenue.
Josh Weissenstein 0:03 ↗
We acquire campgrounds and this year we'll generate around $20 million of revenue.
Shaan Puri 0:07 ↗
We manage and that makes $30 million per year of revenue for the company.
Sam Parr 0:13 ↗
Those are three ideas that didn't even exist in my cone of vision. You know, I didn't even know that people do businesses like that.
All right. How's it feel to be in real life? This is strange.
Shaan Puri 0:28 ↗
This is weird. It's been uh there's normally a screen right here.
Sam Parr 0:31 ↗
Put a side by side of the last time we were in person in San Francisco doing it on the red chairs.
Shaan Puri 0:37 ↗
So when we um when you started this thing and then I came on two or three months later, we had these bright red chairs that we bought off Amazon for $150 and it was just us sitting on chairs and I hated it cuz you could like see like a crotch shot.
Sam Parr 0:50 ↗
Yeah, I think I might be doing it now.
Shaan Puri 0:51 ↗
And just like sitting like this and then we had a like a camcorder. We would have a guy in the room and we'd be like, "Hey, are we good to go? Is it all good audio video?" And he'd be like, "I think so." It was like, "I think so." Is like not what you want to hear from the guy who's sitting there, an intern.
Sam Parr 1:10 ↗
Yeah.
Shaan Puri 1:11 ↗
And it was one camera.
Sam Parr 1:12 ↗
You ever done audio before?
Shaan Puri 1:13 ↗
No.
Sam Parr 1:15 ↗
But I hear you.
Shaan Puri 1:16 ↗
Yeah. I can hear you. Great.
Sam Parr 1:19 ↗
Um, what do you think of New York? You been to a bodega yet?
Shaan Puri 1:22 ↗
Yeah, we went to a bodega. Yeah.
Sam Parr 1:23 ↗
So, I talk about bodega culture. I don't know if you've like seen any that I've... Have you seen any that have impressed you?
Shaan Puri 1:28 ↗
I have to like stay out of bodegas cuz I just start chatting it up for too long. Like dude, I've been here for 75 minutes talking with this guy.
Sam Parr 1:35 ↗
Like the cashier, right? It's the best. I'm friends with so many bodega owners and we could do a full MFM just inside a bodega.
Shaan Puri 1:42 ↗
I probably should have done that actually.
Sam Parr 1:44 ↗
And like it's the pure definition of entrepreneurship because you could clearly tell like oh one day someone asked for cereal. Now they have 10 Costco-sized things of cereal and they're individually packed into an iced coffee cup and they just sell cereal now. Like that's just what they do. There's no like does this go with our mission statement. Like no we sell cereal now.
Shaan Puri 2:01 ↗
I don't know if you need a license to sell food even though it says don't repackage just for individual sale. We sell cereal now.
Sam Parr 2:07 ↗
And that's what I love. All right. So today we're doing something a little bit special. You said you were coming and I reached out. I basically just slacked like the Hampton channel, go, who in New York has like an odd business that we can like impress Sean with? And so we picked three different entrepreneurs.
Shaan Puri 2:22 ↗
I tried to find three businesses that were off the beaten path a little bit because that's why people like watching MFM. You guys like watching or seeing like kind of strange businesses. So hopefully you can open up your mind and be like, "Oh, there's a million ways to get done whatever I want to get done and build a big company, right?"
Sam Parr 2:35 ↗
So I picked three.
Shaan Puri 2:36 ↗
Okay.
Sam Parr 2:37 ↗
Okay. So they're going to come on. What are they going to do?
Shaan Puri 2:39 ↗
So we told him, we just bumped into them. We just told him, "Hey, come in here and don't start with words."
Sam Parr 2:45 ↗
As MFM, you got to start with a number and don't make us dig it out of you. Just give it to us. You know the stick. You know what we like? We like to know. We like you to not be humble and brag about the... We want you to brag a little. So, they're going to say a number. They're going to say what they do. And then we're going to get to know their business cuz we're nerdy about businesses. And then at the end, you know, we will ask them two things. We'll ask them what adjacent business opportunities are there, like what other businesses do they see because of where they are in their tiny niche that we don't have enough exposure to that other people might go run at. And then two, like how can we help them, like what's the burning question, where if they just had me and you for like, you know, 10 minutes, what would they want to talk to us about. So that's what we're going to try.
Shaan Puri 3:24 ↗
All right, the first guy. Ben, we could bring him in. What's up?
Alex Daniels 3:28 ↗
Not much. How you doing?
Sam Parr 3:29 ↗
All right, welcome to the podcast.
Alex Daniels 3:31 ↗
Thanks.
Sam Parr 3:31 ↗
All right, so I've known Alex for years.
Shaan Puri 3:34 ↗
For a year.
Sam Parr 3:35 ↗
Yeah, a year.
We're very good friends, so I'm going to be biased. Okay, start us off with the big number.
Alex Daniels 3:42 ↗
All right. Uh, I own 40 publications, 40 magazines, $10 million in revenue.
Sam Parr 3:48 ↗
40 magazines, 10 million in revenue. What sorts of magazines are we talking?
Alex Daniels 3:52 ↗
Uh, real estate advertising.
Sam Parr 3:54 ↗
Real estate advertising. Okay. Give us an example.
Alex Daniels 3:56 ↗
All right. So,
Sam Parr 3:57 ↗
By the way, you got to carry one. You don't have one on you at all times? That's insane.
Alex Daniels 4:00 ↗
Yeah. Uh, real estate agents basically pay us to promote their listings. So a magazine is like a lookbook of all the listings that are on the market at that time in their neighborhood.
Sam Parr 4:09 ↗
And it goes to a lot of different like locations? Like do you have different 40 meaning?
Alex Daniels 4:13 ↗
40, 40 meaning basically we've divided the country into 40 locations, yeah, zones. So we're covering all of the US and Canada.
Sam Parr 4:20 ↗
How big is a magazine? Like how many pages?
Alex Daniels 4:22 ↗
Anywhere from like 100 to 200.
Sam Parr 4:24 ↗
Who's the reader? Because you said realtors are the ones advertising or want...
Alex Daniels 4:27 ↗
Realtors are advertising.
Sam Parr 4:28 ↗
Who's the reader?
Alex Daniels 4:29 ↗
Uh, we have a mixture but basically we mail the magazine out and we'll mail it out based on property value, income, things like that.
Sam Parr 4:36 ↗
With the goal of being a real estate agent has a bunch of listings in New York City or something, I don't know, Dayton, Ohio. And you want to show the residents of the homes on this block that they should either use this real estate agent or buy some of the nearby homes.
Alex Daniels 4:53 ↗
Yeah. Either or.
Sam Parr 4:54 ↗
Okay.
Alex Daniels 4:54 ↗
Yeah. Uh, agents definitely are using it to pick up listings. Like, they want to be able to say, "Look, where I'm going to advertise your home," things like that. But they also want to sell the listing they have.
Sam Parr 5:02 ↗
What's it called? Haven Lifestyles?
Alex Daniels 5:04 ↗
Haven Lifestyles.
Sam Parr 5:05 ↗
Okay. How did you come up with this idea?
Alex Daniels 5:08 ↗
All right. So, I started it with my business partner, Ryan. We were college roommates. I was a couple years out of college. I was actually a bill collector for like 5 years through college and after.
Sam Parr 5:18 ↗
A bill collector.
Alex Daniels 5:19 ↗
I was a bill collector. Uh, which I actually I think really helped with sales. Like, just having to call people all day for money, being rejected.
Sam Parr 5:26 ↗
Are you like the muscle? Like, what is a bill collector actually doing here?
Alex Daniels 5:29 ↗
Uh, dialing them up. It was credit card. Uh, so Victoria's Secret. It's literally Victoria's Secret credit cards.
Sam Parr 5:35 ↗
But yeah, anyhow,
Alex Daniels 5:36 ↗
I did that. I actually was a supervisor. I got dragged into some HR nonsense that I couldn't believe and like having to basically defend myself. And I texted my college buddy. I'm like, "Dude, you want to do something?" And he was like, "Yeah, let's start the magazine." So that's where we started.
Sam Parr 5:54 ↗
But why the idea of the magazine? He was already doing it.
Alex Daniels 5:56 ↗
He had a small publication in Annapolis, Maryland. And he said that basically agents had reached out to him and like, "Why don't you do something in DC? We want to advertise in DC." So we just launched one.
Sam Parr 6:05 ↗
Who's the big... How many companies do what you do?
Alex Daniels 6:08 ↗
Most... there's a lot of small publications. So like each city you go into, I have like a publication, but we have them across the whole country.
Sam Parr 6:15 ↗
And you do 10 million in revenue, you say. How much profit?
Alex Daniels 6:18 ↗
Yeah, like 2.5.
Sam Parr 6:19 ↗
Okay. And the biggest one in the space is how big?
Alex Daniels 6:22 ↗
I don't know, it's not public. I don't... I mean, we could be one of the biggest in the space. Like, most of them are franchised.
Sam Parr 6:29 ↗
How many years you've been doing this?
Alex Daniels 6:31 ↗
10.
Sam Parr 6:32 ↗
10. Okay. So, it's been a slow build. You've been steady at this revenue for a while. What's...
Alex Daniels 6:36 ↗
It's been a slow build that has jumps.
Sam Parr 6:39 ↗
Give us your one. What was your one like?
Alex Daniels 6:41 ↗
300K. And that's just me going meeting individually, like just grinding it out.
Sam Parr 6:46 ↗
Okay.
Alex Daniels 6:46 ↗
And my business partner handling everything.
Sam Parr 6:48 ↗
Did you know right away like this is it? I'm going to do this for a while or were you even after year one, were you still like I don't know?
Alex Daniels 6:54 ↗
I never thought 10 million, but I thought enough to support myself. Yeah. Uh, we launched an initial public... like we just did a free version of the magazine, like just let us put you in. I'm going to show you what it's going to look like. And then I went around and had meetings all week. Um, and like here it is. And I mean literally the very first meeting the guy's like, "All right, I'll do it." I was like, "Okay, cool." Like I'm like 25 years old. All right. And just meeting after meeting was like that. Got to a meeting where a guy's like, "Uh, what can you do for 10,000?" Which is way more than we were charging. Like how many covers can I get? So just like all of a sudden like I'm calling back to my business partner every few minutes like, "Dude, there's another, another, another." Like there's something here. But I kept my other job for like eight months.
Sam Parr 7:31 ↗
But so it's more like a brochure, but it's a magazine because it's got a lot of pages, but it's a brochure. I mean you're just showing off other people's magazine.
Shaan Puri 7:41 ↗
You're just sending a magazine unsolicited. Correct. There's not...
Alex Daniels 7:45 ↗
True. It's no subscribers.
Sam Parr 7:46 ↗
You're junk mail.
Alex Daniels 7:47 ↗
Sure. Junk. Yeah. It's not a subscriber magazine. Also, I should say, I mean, there's...
Sam Parr 7:53 ↗
Like calling Victoria's Secret just underwear.
Alex Daniels 7:55 ↗
Yeah, exactly.
A huge portion is online at this point. Like, we do drive most of our traffic online, but everyone is paying to be in the magazine.
Sam Parr 8:04 ↗
And who is doing... So, let's say I want to be in the magazine and I like say like, "Yeah, I'm in." Who does the artwork? Who actually makes like the pages?
Alex Daniels 8:11 ↗
We handle it. Uh, most of our designers are in the Philippines. Yeah, basically.
Sam Parr 8:17 ↗
And how many of them are there? Cuz to have 40 magazines and how often, is it quarterly or monthly?
Alex Daniels 8:21 ↗
They're all every once every six weeks. We print 30 different magazines a month.
Sam Parr 8:25 ↗
Why did you just...
Alex Daniels 8:26 ↗
So every week we've got seven going.
Sam Parr 8:28 ↗
Most of it's online.
Alex Daniels 8:29 ↗
Most of the exposure. So when you're talking about subscribers, junk mail, whatever. So like we mail copies out. We do that based on, like I said, network things like that. And then we're also driving another, you know, 90% of our readers online, which are then looking for people that have like recently been looking for homes, things like that.
Sam Parr 8:44 ↗
How many people work there?
Alex Daniels 8:46 ↗
20.
Shaan Puri 8:47 ↗
So I'm confused. Uh, this is a dumb question. I don't really understand how junk mail works. So, I can just mail anything to anyone?
Alex Daniels 8:53 ↗
So, you just look up like, hey, addresses, like which zip codes or neighborhoods have a certain...
Sam Parr 8:59 ↗
Profile.
Alex Daniels 9:00 ↗
Yeah.
Shaan Puri 9:00 ↗
And then you download from some site all the addresses.
Alex Daniels 9:03 ↗
Yeah. It's all through the post office. Like you basically can pick postal routes and they'll deliver. It's actually cheaper when you do that.
Sam Parr 9:09 ↗
How many magazines do you send a year?
Alex Daniels 9:11 ↗
Uh, like half a million.
Sam Parr 9:14 ↗
Yeah. So, this is the post office's business model, right? Like basically the post office is pretty much funded by guys like you who are using it.
Alex Daniels 9:20 ↗
Like we have to make sure it stays within certain dimensions. It can't go over a certain amount of weight or we're...
Sam Parr 9:24 ↗
Post office is basically Facebook ads.
Alex Daniels 9:26 ↗
Yeah, exactly. It's Facebook. It's selling... you are the product. It's selling your address in your mailbox without you benefiting or agreeing to it to others.
Sam Parr 9:36 ↗
What would it take to get you to 100 million in revenue?
Alex Daniels 9:39 ↗
It's definitely possible.
Shaan Puri 9:40 ↗
No, no. Ask it in the like Asian mom way. Why aren't you at 100 million?
Alex Daniels 9:44 ↗
Um, yeah. I mean, it's a good question.
Sam Parr 9:48 ↗
Hey, I want to tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the unsexy business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So, hundreds of episodes the team at HubSpot went through. They pulled out all the unsexy ideas. So, not the super high-tech ones, but the simple, relatable, interesting, profitable ideas that we have brainstormed, and they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys. Back to the show.
Shaan Puri 10:18 ↗
It's kind of a question I would have for you too because I know you always say you get to 10 million. I know you can get to 100 million. So like how...
Alex Daniels 10:25 ↗
I think there's a few different ways. I don't think there's like one flip of a switch. I think there's a lot of other verticals we could be hitting.
Sam Parr 10:33 ↗
Other than real estate, like home services, that sort of thing you're talking about?
Alex Daniels 10:37 ↗
Yeah. Yeah. Which we do within our publication, but I think if it was specific to their market.
Sam Parr 10:43 ↗
You've told us about the business magazine company, aka junk mail. What's the burning question? Like where could smart friends help you?
Alex Daniels 10:52 ↗
Yeah, I mean honestly I do think that question of how do you take this from 10 to 100.
Shaan Puri 10:57 ↗
Can I take a stab at helping you? So, first I always want to know what's the default growth rate, meaning how much did you grow last year to this year? What do I expect if nothing changes?
Alex Daniels 11:07 ↗
Probably like 10%.
Shaan Puri 11:08 ↗
10%. Okay. So to get to 100, or is your real goal 100? What's your real goal?
Alex Daniels 11:13 ↗
My real goal is to double profit.
Shaan Puri 11:15 ↗
Double profit. Okay. You might not even need to grow top line.
Alex Daniels 11:17 ↗
We grow profit faster than we grow revenue.
Shaan Puri 11:19 ↗
Yeah. It seemed like when Sam was asking you like who's the biggest at doing this and you were kind of like, we might be the biggest.
One thing that I could immediately tell that's very different about you than the way both me and Sam are reverse engineer type guys. We like to understand what's working for others, how big other people are to give ourselves like we create this almost like box. And I feel like you don't do that as much. Is that fair?
Alex Daniels 11:42 ↗
Definitely. Yeah. Yeah.
Shaan Puri 11:44 ↗
But you're happy.
Alex Daniels 11:45 ↗
Yeah. Super happy.
Shaan Puri 11:47 ↗
Like what I mean is like...
Sam Parr 11:49 ↗
To be clear, we have a sickness and you seem fine, but we'd like to infect you with our sickness for more.
Alex Daniels 11:54 ↗
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Shaan Puri 11:55 ↗
But if you did want to change, here's what I might do. I think what I would do is maybe it's not like direct like oh who also sends home listings sales to realtors but just the general model of mailing out magazines or informational stuff to homes and generating a big business off the back of that. Who else does that that's not exactly your space? Like are there wealth management companies that grow this way or is there some other category that grows this way?
Alex Daniels 12:22 ↗
I think the most... I mean it's a little different but I think the most intriguing are like neighborhood publications. So, I don't know if you've heard of Stroll, but...
Sam Parr 12:30 ↗
Revolution, is that one?
Alex Daniels 12:31 ↗
I don't think it's Revolution. There's Stroll. There are others.
Sam Parr 12:35 ↗
Is this kind of like what's going on in your area? Is that...
Years ago I talked about this. I think it was called Revolution. It was a neighborhood publication. That's a franchise model that back then we... I think we were in real life when we did this actually. It was like north of 100 million.
Shaan Puri 12:49 ↗
Yeah, they're definitely over 100 million. My gut tells me that if you did have dedicated home services that would be much...
And maybe there's a way to do it more informationally. So instead of the one you do right now, you're just like here's the homes for sale. It's kind of like utilitarian.
If you just said like hey here's all the home service providers. That wouldn't be that great. But if it was like let's say it's winter and it's like here's the five tips every homeowner should do, like listicle type of content, right? And then on the inside there's providers, but like you just do something that's actually like they add...
Sam Parr 13:20 ↗
The front cover is basically like free value. It's useful information, entertaining, useful information about home service or home care. Yeah.
Shaan Puri 13:30 ↗
And then inside you obviously have home care providers where if people don't want to do it themselves, they could hire pros to come do this stuff for them. I wonder if you could get good at that. But I would just kind of... if I was you, I would start with not an answer but a study. I would go get real familiar with what are all the other players doing in the space, who's big, who's not, who used to work there, go talk to them, go learn from them. Like I would kind of go on like a one month expedition of that and I think you'll know so much more by the end of that.
Sam Parr 13:55 ↗
Him and I are buddies. We talk about hiring all the time. I'm like just go recruit someone who's at the bigger company and just have them come and work for you. Um, why is there a world where instead of 40 it could be 80 markets?
Alex Daniels 14:07 ↗
It would be dicing the 40... Well, we could go international. We're already in Canada, so there are markets that make sense for us to go into. But as far as 40 to 80, you would then break down the 40 into 80. It's the same geographical area. It's just going to be more cuz I mean, we're literally covering the whole US.
Sam Parr 14:21 ↗
Got it.
Alex Daniels 14:22 ↗
Uh, but I do think if you break it down, it's going to resonate more. Like there are areas that we have full states combined together because it's just not... like Ohio, Indiana is just not that sexy of a market.
Sam Parr 14:32 ↗
Would you ever sell this?
Alex Daniels 14:33 ↗
I would. It's not necessarily my goal. Uh, I'm pretty happy doing it forever.
Sam Parr 14:37 ↗
Yeah.
Shaan Puri 14:38 ↗
God, it's crazy. You might be too happy.
Sam Parr 14:40 ↗
It's crazy talking to like an emotionally stable person.
Shaan Puri 14:43 ↗
Yeah. Um, you wanted to double profits and I wonder what would happen. Again, I think this is more psychological than strategic. And I think people underrate how much of entrepreneurship is psychological and not strategic.
I wonder if you just decided that instead of 25% net margins, you're going to have 35% net margins in the next 6 months. What would happen differently? Because I think you would... I think right now my read is that you would like for there to be more profits, but you don't really have like a 'I have to have more profits by this date.'
And if you literally just changed the way you talked about it and thought about it, I'm sure that the answers would become pretty obvious to you as you started. Is that true? Like do you have a goal and a date where it's going to happen by?
Alex Daniels 15:24 ↗
Yes, but it is a more recent change in the mindset.
Shaan Puri 15:28 ↗
So what is my goal and the date we can hold you to?
Alex Daniels 15:30 ↗
It was one year from a month ago. So I got 11 months to double.
Shaan Puri 15:35 ↗
Double profit.
Alex Daniels 15:36 ↗
To be at a double... double as in double the run rate at that point.
Shaan Puri 15:40 ↗
So get to 4 million in run rate profit.
Alex Daniels 15:42 ↗
Five. Yeah. Five.
Shaan Puri 15:43 ↗
How's the first month been in terms of... if we were saying like out of 12 months you've already used whatever 8% of your time. Are you like doing what you needed to do to create a bunch of momentum or not really?
Alex Daniels 15:56 ↗
Yeah, I think so. The main thing, the easiest way to double profits right now I think is retention. We already work with 10,000 plus agents every year, but we don't get them to advertise that many times. So, I mean, literally double retention and we're fine.
Sam Parr 16:11 ↗
You have the inventory yourself.
Alex Daniels 16:12 ↗
Exactly. We have the clients, like we have people that are agreeing to advertise with us.
Sam Parr 16:17 ↗
Do you ask them multiple times?
Alex Daniels 16:18 ↗
Yeah, we ask them every cycle.
Sam Parr 16:20 ↗
Why don't they just do it again if it's a money break?
Alex Daniels 16:23 ↗
A lot of times they just won't. It's like, you know, I've got a big listing, great, now's the time. And then they just drop off.
Sam Parr 16:28 ↗
Do you ever pre-sell them on like instead of just one time you say I'll give you a discount if you do it for 12 months?
Alex Daniels 16:33 ↗
Yeah. Yeah. We have like 1500 people that do it for the year so they're just on auto debit. So there's a decent amount doing that. But I think there's a lot of things we can do to improve their experience where they're coming back every month or just... I just need them to advertise one more time basically.
Sam Parr 16:47 ↗
I wish you would have brought us one. In the last... okay let's say this year. How many of those agents have you personally talked to on the phone?
Alex Daniels 16:55 ↗
Zero. Should I?
Shaan Puri 16:58 ↗
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Alex Daniels 16:59 ↗
Okay.
Shaan Puri 16:59 ↗
Um, not necessarily to sell them, but like...
Sam Parr 17:01 ↗
Even just take your hundred top spenders. You should call every single one of them and figure out what do they love? What do they hate? Why aren't they doing it more? How do you get them? Could they... are they actually... it's just been out of sight, out of mind? Oh yeah, I will do it.
Shaan Puri 17:13 ↗
And you will learn a lot just by taking a roster of your top hundred. I also learned this in our recent business that's done pretty well. I asked the CEO, I was like, "Hey, like this has gone pretty well. What'd you do?" And he goes, "You know what I did?" He came in and he goes, "I tiered out our key clients as tier 1, tier 2, tier 3." And he created a definition for each. He goes, "Tier one is somebody who... they would do me a favor. I have them in a texting relationship. They know me. I know them. They would do me a favor quickly."
Tier two is I got their email. We've traded some emails. We like each other.
Sam Parr 17:48 ↗
We're friendly acquaintances.
Shaan Puri 17:50 ↗
Tier three is like we're transactional. Like when they need me, they call me. When I need them, I call them. We haven't really talked much because that transaction is infrequent.
Sam Parr 17:59 ↗
Yeah.
Shaan Puri 17:59 ↗
And then there's tier four, which is like worse than that. And he's like, when you do that and you just score yourself like, oh, what would a really healthy relationship look like here? What would a really weak relationship look like here?
And then you look at your top 100 and you realize, we have no tier ones, couple tier twos, and everybody else is tier three or four.
Then it's like a wakeup call. Nothing bad's going to happen by talking to your top 100 customers. But a lot of good can happen from going and talking to them.
Sam Parr 18:24 ↗
Yeah, I like that. And you could do that in 30 days. You could talk to all 100 in 30 days.
What do you think? Are you impressed? Did you ever know that something like this could exist?
Shaan Puri 18:31 ↗
No. It's so simple of a business, too, right? Like...
Sam Parr 18:34 ↗
Yeah, it's pretty simple. But I mean, they didn't even subscribe. I'm used to media businesses where it's like, first I win their hearts and minds, and I get them to listen to me regularly or read me every day, then I get to make money. He's like, "No, read this."
Shaan Puri 18:48 ↗
Yeah. Read. Yeah.
Sam Parr 18:50 ↗
Have you heard...
Shaan Puri 18:52 ↗
That's incredible. Why are we doing junk mail?
Sam Parr 18:54 ↗
You know, Lindy, the AI tool.
Shaan Puri 18:56 ↗
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Sam Parr 18:57 ↗
Flo, the guy who started Lindy, is in Hampton. He's like, "Alex Daniels has the most impressive AI setup I have ever seen."
Shaan Puri 19:05 ↗
Oh.
Sam Parr 19:05 ↗
And that's been like a little bit of a claim to fame that he's had.
Shaan Puri 19:08 ↗
What? Can you give us a little sauce real quick? What are you doing?
Alex Daniels 19:10 ↗
Uh, we used Lindy to basically run the sales process. So...
Sam Parr 19:16 ↗
They don't have sales people.
Alex Daniels 19:17 ↗
We do have sales people, but they've shifted to a different focus basically, which is where I'd like them to be more of that customer experience and like getting people to come back. Uh, but Lindy is able to respond to every email that's coming in, follow up with it, upsell them, just go through the whole process. But yeah, it was a big Lindy, which is what Flo was talking about. It's crazy.
Shaan Puri 19:39 ↗
That's awesome. Well, what you've done is awesome, dude. Good to meet you, guys. We need like a name for this. The dragon stand, the shark tank, the swimming pool, the denim dungeon. Let's...
Sam Parr 19:54 ↗
The denim dungeon.
Josh Weissenstein 19:57 ↗
What's up?
Sam Parr 19:58 ↗
What up, brother? How's it going? Have a seat.
All right. Your name and the impressive number.
Shaan Puri 20:04 ↗
Hit us with the big number.
Josh Weissenstein 20:06 ↗
Great. Uh, I'm Josh. I run Team Outsider. We acquire family-owned campgrounds and this year will generate around $20 million of revenue.
Sam Parr 20:14 ↗
20 million in revenue. Okay. So, explain like I'm an idiot cuz I kind of am. Um, what do you do exactly?
Josh Weissenstein 20:20 ↗
So, yeah. So, we acquire campgrounds typically from families who are looking to retire. And a campground, the majority of it is like a hotel, right? So, we're renting different spaces. Some people come in their RVs, so they have effectively a traveling hotel room. We also have tent spaces and cabins that we rent to people who don't want to stay in a tent and don't have an RV.
Sam Parr 20:40 ↗
Do you camp? When's the last time you went camping?
Josh Weissenstein 20:42 ↗
Like 10 years ago, but I appreciate it.
Sam Parr 20:46 ↗
I haven't gone camping in like 20 years. So, a campground is literally just a piece of dirt, right? So, the ground...
Josh Weissenstein 20:52 ↗
We have amenities. So, all of our campgrounds have stores. We typically have a cafe where we'll sell ice cream and sometimes burgers and...
Sam Parr 20:59 ↗
Cabins basically or...
Josh Weissenstein 21:00 ↗
We have cabins as well. Uh, we have swimming pools, lakes. At one of our campgrounds we have a go-kart track.
Sam Parr 21:06 ↗
Okay. So, it's a very outdoorsy hotel essentially.
Josh Weissenstein 21:08 ↗
Effectively. Yeah.
Sam Parr 21:09 ↗
Okay. We're looking at one here. What's like the most popular one you guys have?
Josh Weissenstein 21:13 ↗
They're all really popular in their local communities. Um, the first one we bought which is right near Grand Teton and Yellowstone is really popular cuz that's a major tourist destination. We have one right outside New York City called the Neversink River Resort. It's a couple hours away. So, that's really popular with folks who live around here.
Sam Parr 21:29 ↗
So, give us the story. What makes a guy want to buy a campground? How did you even realize that that's a good opportunity?
Josh Weissenstein 21:36 ↗
Yeah, so I met my partner in college, Cody. We studied together and started a business together, which was tremendously unsuccessful, but showed us that it was a really good relationship. And so we stayed friends post college, got some working experience, and then realized we wanted to do something together again. We were looking for a business where two non-technical founders could hopefully have a winning situation. And we wanted a market that was large enough to participate in and interesting. Uh, one where there was an immense amount of fragmentation with ownership, one that was operationally complex and one that was meaningful where the team members would feel good working there and where the customers would feel good about being part of it as well. So...
Sam Parr 22:14 ↗
How many do you own?
Josh Weissenstein 22:15 ↗
Currently we have 16 and there are about 4,000 sites amongst those in 10 states.
Sam Parr 22:20 ↗
And did you raise money?
Josh Weissenstein 22:21 ↗
Yeah. So the first one we did with our own cash and an SBA loan. So just kind of...
Sam Parr 22:25 ↗
That was the Yellowstone one. How much was that?
Josh Weissenstein 22:27 ↗
About 3 million.
Sam Parr 22:28 ↗
And so how much money of yours and loan did you put?
Josh Weissenstein 22:31 ↗
The loan was 80 plus%. Yeah. The rest was cash.
Sam Parr 22:35 ↗
Sorry. So that was an already operating site.
Josh Weissenstein 22:37 ↗
Everything we buy is existing cash flow. It's been there generally for decades. Most of these are staples within their local communities.
Sam Parr 22:43 ↗
So let's walk through that first one. So you find this property. It's doing what when you buy it?
Josh Weissenstein 22:48 ↗
It was generating around half a million dollars of topline, of total income.
Sam Parr 22:52 ↗
Top line. And then the cash flow on that is what?
Josh Weissenstein 22:54 ↗
About 35%.
Sam Parr 22:56 ↗
Can you do that for me?
Shaan Puri 22:57 ↗
Yeah, we...
Sam Parr 22:58 ↗
Call it 150. Okay.
And you buy that for three million bucks.
Josh Weissenstein 23:02 ↗
Mhm.
Sam Parr 23:03 ↗
Okay. So, that's the entry. And then you do that knowing, hey, we think we can turn that 150 to 250. What was the insight at the time?
Josh Weissenstein 23:12 ↗
Yeah. So, that one didn't have a lot of digital marketing. Um, it was...
Sam Parr 23:16 ↗
Was it like a mom and pop thing?
Josh Weissenstein 23:18 ↗
All of them are.
Sam Parr 23:18 ↗
And it's all... everything's on paper and they've been doing it forever and they're like, "Our kids don't want this. Do you want it?"
Josh Weissenstein 23:23 ↗
Exactly. So, we are oftentimes a succession plan for these sellers. And so, these are multi-year relationships. We've got a couple under contract right now. One of them I've been talking to the seller for 5 years. And generally, what happens is we maintain the relationship and when they're ready to sell, we get the call hopefully. And...
Sam Parr 23:38 ↗
And what were we going to do to make it better? And what does better mean?
Josh Weissenstein 23:41 ↗
Yeah. So, there are a few things we can do. Uh, one of them is introduce just professionalized systems. So, digital marketing, a better website, voice systems for the phone to be able to make sure that the training is happening the right way.
Sam Parr 23:52 ↗
Marketing mean like Yelp and Google reviews?
Josh Weissenstein 23:55 ↗
Google reviews, but also paid ads, a better website. Oftentimes there's no digital reservation system, so we'll introduce that.
Sam Parr 24:01 ↗
Got it.
Josh Weissenstein 24:01 ↗
Um, so that's kind of on the technology side.
Sam Parr 24:03 ↗
I think I missed it. So you're like, I wanted to do something with my friend and then you had the like business school explanation like high fragmentation blah blah. No, no, no. Like where were you sitting when someone was like, should we buy campgrounds? Or like you met a guy who's rich that bought campgrounds? You're like, we should do that. Like what actually happened?
Josh Weissenstein 24:20 ↗
Great question. And so our backgrounds were in hospitality and real estate.
Sam Parr 24:23 ↗
Okay. So there's like obvious confluence there.
Josh Weissenstein 24:25 ↗
And then Cody lives in Bozeman, Montana, and is an avid RVer. So he said, "Hey, like the thesis sounds interesting. Why don't you fly out here and let's drive around the country, meet some owners, team members, guests, and see if this is something that actually has a little bit of a spark to it." So I flew out from New York, spent some time on the road meeting different campground owners and team members and guests, and just fell in love with the space.
Sam Parr 24:45 ↗
And how much money have you raised in total now?
Josh Weissenstein 24:48 ↗
Uh, we have raised around $60 million.
Sam Parr 24:52 ↗
You raised 60 million bucks from what you say 15-ish properties.
Josh Weissenstein 24:56 ↗
We've sold a couple, but we have 16 currently.
Sam Parr 24:59 ↗
And what is it all worth?
Josh Weissenstein 25:01 ↗
North of 100 million.
Sam Parr 25:03 ↗
Does that mean that 40 million of it is you and your partner's equity?
Josh Weissenstein 25:07 ↗
No, we've raised outside capital. So, at this point, we have family offices we work with, we have a select group of accredited investors we work with, and we have a few institutional partners we've worked with as well.
Sam Parr 25:16 ↗
I guess what I'm saying is of the 20 million in revenue or if you value it, I don't know anything about real estate. However you value it, how do you get personal cash flow or net worth from it?
Josh Weissenstein 25:24 ↗
Like most real estate operators, it's promote-based and different deals are different depending on the investment partner, right? So we are backend incentivized largely for most of these, typical private equity structure where there's a preferred return, there's a return of capital, and then there's a split depending on kind of who the investor profile is.
Sam Parr 25:43 ↗
And so when you do that first one, you go buy it for 3 million. It's doing half a million in revenue, 150k of cash flow. What happened? What was the success story of that one? Obviously, it was a success. You wouldn't have 16 more.
Josh Weissenstein 25:55 ↗
Well, we were able to refi a couple years later. So took all of our cash out.
Sam Parr 25:59 ↗
You brought the NOI up to what?
Josh Weissenstein 26:01 ↗
Uh, the NOI in that one went from closer to 300 at that point.
Sam Parr 26:05 ↗
Okay. So you doubled the profit on the thing, recap, refinanced it out, used that capital to go buy the next one.
Josh Weissenstein 26:11 ↗
Exactly. Exactly.
Sam Parr 26:13 ↗
That's pretty awesome. Why are campgrounds... if I wanted to go do real estate, why would I choose campgrounds instead of whatever, retail shopping, multifamily, office, whatever? What would be my advantages if I was going into this?
Josh Weissenstein 26:25 ↗
Strong yield. It's operationally complex, which means there's opportunity to drive value and really attractive depreciation characteristics that are similar to manufactured housing, for example. So, you can depreciate the roads and the infrastructure. There's very limited land value in a lot of these more rural markets, limited building value. So the depreciation characteristics are also really attractive to people who are tax sensitive.
Sam Parr 26:47 ↗
Will you do this forever?
Josh Weissenstein 26:49 ↗
I hope so.
Sam Parr 26:50 ↗
Like you just... like looking down 10 years or 20 years down the line, where do you hope to be business-wise?
Josh Weissenstein 26:56 ↗
Yes. Look, I think the larger opportunity as more of life moves online, I believe businesses that get people together in the real world are going to be more valuable. Different types of experience-oriented real estate that can speak to that thesis, but campgrounds still have a lot of runway. We still have a big pipeline of properties we'd like to be a part of. And so hopefully we're doing this forever.
Sam Parr 27:20 ↗
Who are the big dogs in this space?
Josh Weissenstein 27:22 ↗
Yeah. So there are two very large REITs in this space that initially were into the manufactured housing side of the business, but recognized both from a depreciation perspective and also the infrastructure is very similar, right? Your renters, campground REIT.
Sam Parr 27:34 ↗
There are manufactured housing REITs that have a large portion of campground exposure.
Josh Weissenstein 27:39 ↗
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So, that was one of the ways when we were researching this that we got a little more comfortable with the idea.
Sam Parr 27:44 ↗
When you're buying, you're buying out the operator and then you put a property management company in.
Josh Weissenstein 27:51 ↗
We're the manager.
Sam Parr 27:51 ↗
You are the manager.
Josh Weissenstein 27:52 ↗
Yeah. So, initially we didn't think we were going to go that route. So, Cody, my partner, went and managed our first location for the first year, scrubbed toilets, did the whole thing. And we thought, you know, learn how to hold a shovel and dig a hole and then you can hire a third party to manage it like most real estate sponsors do. And what we realized is, a, you can't outsource culture. So that was going to be really important for our success. And b, if we wanted to scale, there weren't really, at least at that time, competent third parties that could scale with us. So we made the decision to build an opco in-house and have been managing our properties ever since.
Sam Parr 28:22 ↗
Your branding's cool. That's awesome.
Josh Weissenstein 28:24 ↗
I appreciate that.
Sam Parr 28:25 ↗
And when I was looking, I was like, I would like to go see this. Is there a world where you would buy many of them in a similar region and create a membership? You know, like KOA... is it KOA?
Josh Weissenstein 28:33 ↗
Yeah, we're KOA. We're actually a KOA franchisee in certain markets.

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APA

Parr, S. (2026, June 30). 3 strangers reveal how they make $10M, $20M, and $30M/year [Interview transcript]. My First Million. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3003419/

MLA

Sam Parr. "3 strangers reveal how they make $10M, $20M, and $30M/year." My First Million, 30 Jun. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3003419/.

BibTeX
@misc{parr2026_3003419,
  author       = {Sam Parr},
  title        = {3 strangers reveal how they make $10M, $20M, and $30M/year},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, My First Million. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {jun},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3003419/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}