I never really wanted to have a personal brand. But I do have this compulsiveness to share content.
That's Sam Parr, founder of Hampton, the private network for high growth founders.
He's also built one of the most distinctive personal brands on the internet. Today, Sam shares the exact blueprint he used to build his 8 figure audience.
I didn't really have a brand until after I sold my company, but now that I do, it's like way more valuable than I ever thought.
This is truly a master class and Sam is holding nothing back.
I just sleep like a baby knowing that I have to do nothing and everything is taken care of for the rest of my life and for the rest of my kids' life.
You're going to learn the three fundamentals for a strong personal brand. The first thing is a unique perspective. The second thing that you could go down is world-class production. And then the third thing that you could do is you have the equation for turning your audience into real value. Enterprise value equals total addressable market size multiplied by their buying power multiplied by how much influence you have over them. And then the equation of how much influence you have over someone would be how to create content people actually care about.
There is a systematic way to do it. Okay? And it is basically you and why if you're considering growing your own personal brand you need to start now. Consistency over a long period of time is necessary and it tends to be that you get to quality via quantity. Let's get started.
Sam, like awesome to have you here. Uh just before we get started or get into anything else, I just want to put like some numbers on the table. So you sold your company, The Hustle, for like tens of millions. You've got a podcast, My First Million, that's doing like millions of downloads every month. Hampton's at like a thousand members and you've got over half a million followers across your social media platforms. So you've built a really massive and distinctive brand and I think from our personal encounters I believe a very authentic one as well. Um so I'm really curious is like what would you say that the SPAR brand actually generates for you today directly or indirectly?
So you had asked me in advance if my brand was done purposefully and the answer is no. I shoot from the hip pretty hardcore. Um, and I never really wanted to be like a have a personal brand, but I do have this like compulsiveness to share content.
I feel like I didn't really have a brand until after I sold my company, but now that I do, it's like way more valuable than I ever thought. That's for sure. Um, I think most everything that I've gotten post exit has come from that.
And what would you say is like something that like really shocked you in terms of what you were able to get from the brand that you wouldn't have got otherwise?
If I walk through a neighborhood, like for example, I used to live in Austin and Austin is like the epicenter of like 25-year-old single dudes who like listen to podcasts like MFM. Dozens of people a day would come up and say hello.
And that is crazy. And it it boggles my mind that that many people consume the content. I have a guy who I'm friends with named Val who I actually met in Hampton. He's in my core group. Val is one of the most successful people I know in terms of emotionally successful but also financially successful. He's a very very very wealthy person. And one day I was with him and he was like, "Let's let me try this Twitter thing." And I was like, "Okay, I'll like his life is like amazing." He came from the USSR as an immigrant. By the time he was like 19 years old, he was making $10 million a year in profit from an online business. I was like, "Val, look, here's the deal. Let me explain something to you.
Your story is so good. I will write a couple tweets for you. I promise you these are going to go viral and you're going to get tens of thousands of followers instantly. I also promise you that this is probably going to be distracting and I don't know if you're going to love it." And sure enough, the tweets went viral because his life is I mean it's it's easy to go viral when you're successful and you have like this amazing immigrant story.
And he went viral and um he was like, "Oh, I love this." And he kept tweeting, kept tweeting and kept tweeting. and he messaged me, you know, 6 months later and he was like, "This is distracting. What am I doing?" Uh, and so I would say like
He was like wearing a hoodie and on on his Twitter account. Yeah. [laughter]
Yeah. That's him. And so look, I use there's this thing called Brick. Have you guys seen Brick? It's like this like little uh device um where you have to like scan. It's like a a plastic device and it locks your phone. It bricks your phone and you have to touch your phone to it in order to like unlock the the apps. like I use that on my phone 24 hours a day. Like I do think that like it's um it's easy for me to like complain about this because I already like got success from it. But I do think that like social media like it is draining and it like has a lot of downsides. So I think that uh long answer if you're 50 or 40 years old and you're already successful, maybe don't do it.
Okay. So So what would you say is the actual cost that you've paid for being public?
I don't think it's been that big of a cost other than like for someone like myself who's a bit neurotic and I'm um a bit naturally sometimes a people pleaser. When I get like tons of requests, it it like uh I got this like these messages I have to reply to. It it just that could just it just kind of weighs on you a little bit. But I think if you're like a person who's not naturally a people pleaser, I think it could probably be fine. But um like the like the amount of like inbound that you get I feel so grateful that someone cares so much to send me a message and also it does I get like worn out like you guys know like when you have like a lot of employees how you have like a lot of inbound. So my first million,
you know, every year we'll have like a hundred to 200 million people watch or listen and you get a lot of messages and I'm so thankful for it, but also I definitely it could like it kind of it can exhaust you every once in a while. And I think and I'm complaining right now because you're catching me at a moment where all week I was like overwhelmed by messages. But yeah.
Do you think as a as a as a new father the kind of being in the public could change? Your perceptions of being in the public could change?
I never put them on the internet as the main character. Like if I'm holding them and they're like looking away, occasionally I'll post a I'll I don't have pro problem sharing that photo on Instagram. I don't share on Twitter. But uh no, I don't think that's changed. I did move to a different neighborhood where it was not like 20-year-old guys cuz I didn't want to like talk all the time. But no, it hasn't changed yet. Generally speaking though, the people who listen to MFM or follow me, they're like the kindest guys ever. So like I'm so grateful.
That's my my 14-year-old has said that the second I show up in a social media feed, he's going to block and report me for spam. So, I've kind of got that hanging over me right now. So,
Do you have a 14-year-old son?
I think if I had a 14-year-old son, I would actually want to be popular, so it would [laughter] be cool.
Collect them from school. No, he he's won't even make eye contact with me in public.
Then there's no hope then. So let's say we said like we got no public profile, made my money um and we want to get the growth engine, the optionality like deal flow, meet interesting people. What would be the first step that we should take in order to build that personal brand?
Do you want to talk about like how to get popular with a podcast or how to get popular on social media?
Let's let's go with podcast.
So with podcasting typically you need one of three things or a combin or many of these three things. The first thing is a unique perspective.
And so, um, that would be like the reason people liked MFM was when we started, there weren't a lot of like quote successful people already building businesses, talking about building businesses.
But then you could look at like LeBron James. If LeBron James were to talk about basketball,
it doesn't matter if he was just talking into like his the notes app on his iPhone, but if he like were to do like a note before every game about what he thinks is gonna happen that game, like every basketball fan is gonna listen to that. Yeah. So you need a you need a really unique angle. The second thing that you could go down is a unique um or sorry is worldclass production. So if you look at like a lot of like true crime podcasts that I like or like storytelling podcasts, they do really good production where they'll have like beautiful voiceovers and when you listen to it you're like I'm listening to this like wonderful Hollywood production.
Most business podcast, most people listening to this probably won't go that route. Although some people on YouTube are going that route. There's this guy named Mark Brazil who I like to follow and his YouTube videos have like these gorgeous sets. Same with uh Chris Williamson. He's got these like gorgeous sets. So that's like that's like a shtick and like having one of those shticks is good. And then the third thing that you could do is you have world class delivery. An example of this are a lot of comedians. So I like listening to Theo Von because he's really silly. He could talk about anything and I'm like this is pretty funny. Um and so people like MFM because we're a little bit funny. We're not that funny, but we're funny for a business podcast. And then we are just successful enough that it's like a unique angle. Um, and so that's typically what what you need in order to get popular on a podcast is you need to pick one of those three things and be intentional about it.
And and let's say you've picked one of those three. What would be the next thing that you'd focus on doing?
Um, getting guests that are really popular because that's how you like kick things off. And then unfortunately, you have to do it for like 5 years. It takes a long time for podcast to get popular. And I think the same is true with social media content. Consistency over a long period of time is necessary. And it tends to be that you get to quality via quantity. So you your output has to be incredibly high.
Like but MFM, do you know what episode number we are on?
If I was to guess 7 or 900.
Yeah. Like 850 or 820.
Uh so nearly 1,000 podcasts that we've done. And I don't feel amazing yet. I feel like I'm getting good. Uh, it takes a long time.
And what about like Sean on My First Million? Like I think he's an incredible podcast host. What do you think makes him so special at doing it?
You want to know something? I don't think Shawn was that I think Shawn was okay when we started, but his learning has been phenomenal. He has learned how to be He's become great. I think he's one of the best. And I think one of the reasons why he has become the best is I think he grew up in a household where they told amazing stories at dinnertime. He's like he'll tell I've never met his parents, but like I feel like I know them because I've heard so much about them. I think they were wonderful storytellers. And I also think that uh he loves it. I think that uh he loves telling stories. He um in another life, I think Shawn would have worked in Hollywood.
Yeah. And what about like on the on the social game? So like aside from podcast, what would you see there? How would you approach that?
Yeah. So, I think that in order to get popular on social, you have to pick the medium that you're best at and that you enjoy doing. So, for example, uh if you prefer writing, you should stick to a writing platform, which would be like blogging or would be uh Twitter. If you like photos, then you stick to a photo. If you like video, which is the most popular and probably the best to be in at the moment, then you have to get really good at video. So, um for years, I never used Instagram. Starting in December, I wanted to learn how to use Instagram. And I've learned how to do it. And I've grown to 105,000 followers in like a few months. And I'm not naturally like a video guy. I'm 36 years old. I don't feel comfortable like talking to a screen. But I think you have to pick the medium that you're that you like. Then you have to have a huge amount of quantity. So you just have to like get stuff out fast. What helped me a lot with writing was having the hustle. We wrote one email every single day. I mean, to this day, they send a daily email. Uh, we got really good uh, and I got really good at putting out a ton of stuff. And in order to get good at writing, I I advise everyone to do this thing called copy work,
which is basically this idea of um, if you were to learn how to play the piano, no one would sit you down and say, "Write a great song." They would say, "Let's play Jingle Bells or let's play Happy Birthday." And you're going to copy other people's music. Then we're going to transition. Oh, you like rock and roll. Let's play this really simple Beatles song. Okay, we'll do a little bit more complicated song. You know, oh, you you think you like David Bowie? Okay, let's play a little bit of David Bowie. And then before you know it, you're like, okay, I'm stealing from all these influences that I like. And I notice that my favorite songs have this structure. Therefore, I'm going to create my own art and it's going to look like, you know, a stealing from a little bit of all these places. Mo, that's how writing should work where you copy other people's work. So, you literally get a piece of paper and you sit down and you find the tweets or the blog posts or the books or whatever TV scripts that I this is what I did for years and you write it out by hand. You sit down and you just copy it word for word. And if you do that for a handful of months, just a little bit every single day, your writing will get really really good really fast. Same thing, by the way, with making video. I highly recommend that. Um, there's like there's a 100% a system to learning quickly and I think the way that people learn learn music is like one of the best ways. I mean, we could take a if someone cares enough, we can take someone who knows nothing about music in six or 12 months, they'll be like good enough to entertain you. Um, and I think that with like video, you do the same thing. So, you find videos that you think kick ass, that you love, and you like recreate them. You just copy them. Copy them. don't you just mindlessly copy and you do that enough times and then you start learning and then you could make your own stuff. So that's how you get good at social media in my opinion.
It's I I I did the same with um my business writing. So I just said right I'm going to read the Financial Times and the Economist which are you know gold standard business writing and just learn how to write by reading that and the improvement in my business writing style like I'm not a copywriter like you're like that but just my you know writing emails writing reports writing presentations skyrocketed. of just like you said just copy really good writers really good editorial style like the economist style guide is phenomenal for business writing
and by the way I think that if you do this for anything
I think that in order to develop good taste there is a systematic way to do it okay and it is basically you uh blindly copy and the way that you blindly copy is let's say like for example I used to be a poor dresser and I wanted to dress better and so I unfollowed everyone on Instagram who I followed and I only followed the two or 500 people who I thought were like cool looking guys on Instagram. I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to like surround myself with these people and I'm just going to figure out exactly the clothes they're wearing. I'm going to buy the exact same things." Okay. So, if you do that, then the next step is you ask yourself why does this particular So, after you blindly copy, you ask yourself, well, why why are the rules that we are like why does this particular thing look good and why am I drawn to that? And what are the rules? Because I think that the definition of taste is basically it's a social language. And in order to understand a language, you have to understand the proper grammar. And so you understand what am so you you you ask yourself what am I trying to say? And what is the rules that require me to follow in order to properly say it and you get good at that and then to in order to be great, you purposely break certain rules. This is the same thing with music. You just do exactly what you're told and you become a classically trained like perfect person. And I don't mean like you have to be like the best. I'm just saying like you understand like generally speaking how to play these like songs like perfectly
and then in order to be great and really push the boundary, you break certain rules. But I think that you have to master the rules first. And I think you can you can master anything. It doesn't matter if we're talking about design. If you wanted to learn how to if you wanted to be great at design, you would find pieces of art or websites that you love and you would literally pixel by pixel recreate them. and you do that a ton and then you're like, you know, I'm drawn to all these things. Why do I like that? And you learn the history and you're like, huh, this actually all stems from like the Bow House School of Architecture where they like this ar this line spacing was this and they did it because they needed to appeal to a large percentage of people and like, oh, that's why I like this. This is like kind of like universally and then like you like learn these like, okay, I'm going to steal that. I'm going to apply it to this. You know what I mean? That's how you that's how you like get good at anything. uh in ter when it comes to creativeness and taste, there's 100% a process and that's the process.
I actually did something like similar with cell. So I used to work in IT support as a kid and I'd often get called into their office and be like fix my computer like get this thing working and I would listen to like the the people that were the best at selling. I would just like stay under their desk like fiddling around with the computer just like hearing what they would say the way they structure their questions. And I really like kind of took that away. And then I went to another level which was because I worked in IT, I could access all their emails. So I kind of read how they would actually write things and I kind of learned that and then took that and practiced it myself.
Yeah. Or Anthony, look at you with u your business like with fitness. So if you take someone who knows nothing about fitness, I think the best way to get fit is [snorts] you hire a coach and you just say, "Coach, tell me exactly what to do and I'll do it." Okay? And then you start seeing some results. And then after a while you're like, "Huh, interesting. My body changes. my I I as long as I walk 10,000 steps a day and I do these lifts in this rep range, my body's changing. Why? Let's ask ourel like let's learn now. Let's learn about why that's happening." But I think that if you teach someone the science behind teaching them to get fit, it's kind of like overwhelming. You're like, "Dude, just just just do exactly what I'm telling you to do." And then as you get into this, you'll learn the why. And then you'll like be more motivated.
It's it's so much easier just to switch your brain off and just do whatever Antony's coach or nutritionist tells you to do. And then I don't even have to think about that anymore and I can do pull-ups and I'm getting a six-pack and with zero cognitive load. It's it's amazing. It's amazing.
I'm very passionate about this because um I I think it's cool to teach people how to learn and I and I once I figured this out, it was a really big breakthrough for me.
All right. So, I guess what would you say is like the biggest mistake that like firsttime personal brand builders actually make, especially when they're like a let's say previous operator who they perhaps will think that they're above it?
I think a few things. I think that um for some reason a lot of beginners think that you are one human being from 5 to 9ine or sorry from 9 to 5 and then another human being from like 5 to midnight. And I think that they don't realize that you could be both serious and silly at the same time. Like those are not opposites. And [snorts] I think more people should understand that. That you can be um a whole person in front of the world. And the what I like to tell people is the that like the internet native generation, which we all are and everyone obviously younger than us definitely is,
they have really good [ __ ] detectors and the easiest way to circumvent someone's [ __ ] detector is to not [ __ ] and and therefore they think that like they have to be like, you know, Anthony, if I hang out with you, we're like goofing off and we're saying like insightful [ __ ] and then like the camera turns on. You're like, you like act a different way. And I just don't think that that works. I think that the things that I've posted that I've done best are things where um I just say how I feel and the things that I thought were going to do good that have fallen flat were things that were highly produced or overly polished.
It's interesting because it takes you into a similar way to the way you like to write. You're writing professionally in a human kind of way. So it doesn't feel like stuck up when you read your copy. So, it seems that you you take that also into the way that you write as well.
Yeah. And you want to know something? My voice, my copy voice, um I've stolen it from two guys from England. I've stolen it from David Ogulvie.
Uh he's one of my um favorites. His book, um it's called Confessions of an Advertising Man. It's one of my favorites.
And then the second one is Felix Dennis. Do you guys know who Felix Dennis is?
recognize the name. Um, so it's called Dennis Publishing is his company. He's not alive anymore. He died of cancer about 10 years ago or 15 years ago. And he was um uh he started um a bunch of companies. The most famous for Americans is Maxim magazine. So a magazine, but in England he had magazine.
Oh, he had he had loaded and so it's Dennis. Yeah. So Loaded, FHM, all that kind of the the original lads mags type stuff.
Yeah. But he also owed um he was a nerd. He owned a lot of um like Apple magazine like like computer magazines as well
and he's got this book called How to Get Rich and it's the most beautiful writing that I've ever seen and I just um I used copy work. I did copy work against him and I stole his voice.
So, one of the things I've seen, you've you've talked before in terms of the order of influence, uh, podcast, YouTube, newsletter, blog was kind of your ranking. Is is that ranking still valid for 2026?
Yeah, probably. I I maybe maybe some things would change, but I do think podcast would be number one. Man, it's crazy. Like I can tell you guys the data, but basically like MFM we get something like on any given month it'll be between 10 and 20 million views on like shorts on YouTube shorts
and then or it could be a little bit less but in the range of like millions to tens of millions on any given month something might go viral and then long form views will be 1 to 2 million I think. Um, and then audio will be 1 to 2 million, but let's just say 1 million for each. The listener average listen time on audio is like 36 minutes. The average watch time on YouTube will be like 8 minutes. And we weren't on YouTube.
I mean, you can go back and look like we didn't try hard on YouTube until probably year four into the podcast. And on a reoccurring basis, I would say something in minute 36, minute 56, minute 40, and the next day I'd be walking in the street and people will reference that thing.
It's just absolutely insane how intimate you can get with a gu with a your listener when they have their earphones in and you're talking to them. I mean, think of the podcast that you listen to where
I mean, you said this before we got on. You're like, "Oh, I I feel like I know you." Um I Yeah. I mean, that's what a podcast does. And I think you get that a bit with YouTube, but I think you get that more. There's something intimate about like this literal act of like headphones. And it tends to be that the value of a media company, if there was like an equation, it would be like enterprise value equals total addressable market size or how big your audience is multiplied by um um their buying power multiplied by how much influence you have over them. And then the equation of how much influence you have over someone would be uh like time spent with you times like uh like times time spent with you per viewing session multiplied by number of viewing sessions.
Like this is that that's is like the big equation of like media.
And so podcast is just happens to be like the easiest way to do that. And so if you look at Tik Tok, like we could do some another equation where like 10 million Tik Tok followers, I bet you is equal to only 100,000 monthly listeners for a podcast.
Why do you think that? Because it's short form, quick, snackable like it it doesn't have the intimacy or what's the
Yeah,
because uh time spent is incredibly important.
Got it. And also there's something magical where you like shut off your ears and just consume one thing. Like there's something like special about that. It's a very special. It's a very strange. It's a but it's I don't know the science behind it, but it's a very strange thing. Like there's like so many podcast hosts that I like intimately know and obviously I don't know them.
Well, we we talked about that before we started like your episode with Greg Eisenberg where he walks through building an like an entire company using AI from idea to finished product.
I've listened to that I think like 10 times at least and sent it to so many friends and listening to it was like the monkey having the first magic mushroom where it's just his brain is being rewired
for human like oh my god now I understand AI I've been doing it completely wrong. Um and it's a level like I haven't even watched the YouTube videos just the podcast even though it's a physical
Yeah it's like a it's like a YouTube like first thing. It's perfect for YouTube, but the audio was enough. Uh, but it literally changed my life.
Uh,
well, thank you. Uh, and well, shout out to Greg. He's the one who did it. But, um, it changed my life, too, by the way. Greg's really talented at that stuff. Uh, and then like I do think that like newsletters, the the thing about podcast, there's a huge downside. Podcasts are so hard to grow. They're like impossible to grow. It's really challenging. And then like below that would be like YouTube. YouTube is pretty straightforward how to grow that. There's so many great wonderful ways to hack it and it is a powerful medium. The cool thing about newsletters is those are so easy to grow. Very straightforward how to grow newsletters, but they are quite powerful. Um and then
can we can we double click on that because it's that's a quite a throwaway. Oh, it's easy to grow a newsletter. What's the what's the growth hack for newsletters?
So the hustle in our first year got to roughly 100,000 subscribers. And it was easier. It was both harder and easier. It was harder because there was no blueprint at the time. So, we were sort of making it up. So, it felt challenging and there also weren't a lot of tools to help us grow. So, that was hard. But on the plus side is we cracked the code early on. And for us, it was writing blog posts that would go viral and then we would capture emails and we had a really good popup that said like, "Oh, no, not another popup." Well, while you're here, you might as well give us your email because here's the deal. The hustle is not actually a blog. We just did this to get your attention. It's a daily newsletter that does X, Y, and Z. And that was like cute and unique at the time. So, we stuck out. But now, it's really easy to grow in social. Way easier to grow in social. So, you can like have a viral video and you could say like, "Comment here and I'll send you uh like more content like this." Or you could say, you know, that's like it's pretty straightforward. But then the really cool thing that what we did um once we learned that we made like $18 per subscriber per year, we we were like, well, let's just buy ads to grow. And so we grew from a 100,000 to 2 million or 1.8 million, which is when I sold from Facebook ads. And we were able to buy a newsletter subscriber for something like a $1.75. And so it was like an ATM, which I didn't realize how good we had it back then. Um, but we would just place ads on Facebook that says, "Do you want a daily email that helps you get better?" Uh, or like teaches you all the business news that you need to know each morning.
And it was like gang busters. We just crushed it. And I didn't realize how good it was. And you could still do that I think today, but I think the cost will be a bit higher.
Um, ju just something that like fascinates me is I I recall you saying that you didn't actually use your personal brand to grow Hampton at the beginning.
Yeah, we got to over uh well over a million dollars in revenue before I shared it on social.
I think I I think so we dude we've made so many mistakes with Hampton, but I didn't want I was a little afraid. I wanted to make sure that it was good first before I publicized it. I also had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder for some reason. Even though I've been a content creator for over a decade now, I haven't always placed enough um sacredness on it and I always felt like a little bit like a fraud where I'm like, I have to be a business person first and it'd be cheating if I used it,
which is stupid. Like that's dumb. Um and then the week we launched Hampton Publicly, we got like 10,000 applications and it like crushed us and we made a lot of stupid decisions. And so I think that it actually would have been smarter to like grow slower without using my brand because I didn't realize how powerful it was going to be. Um, but I would say that it was um I did it just cuz I wanted to prove that I could build a company without it, which is like a dumb that's that's dumb. If you're building a company, take every advantage of every advantage you have.
For sure. I always say like you've got you're dealt a certain deck of cards. You need to just play your best hand, right?
Yeah. It's like being 7 feet tall and being like, "Oh, you know, I don't really want to play basketball. It's too easy." [laughter]
Like I I think I think one of the interesting things though is that it probably also allowed you to get real feedback at the beginning as well to actually create something even better, right? So instead of having people that are fans of you that you know perhaps would like be more okay with certain things, you actually get to go through the the real feedback probably a bit faster and then actually be able to like deliver a better community like you've been able to today.
Yeah. Yeah. And also community is like [clears throat] very fragile. Like you can ruin it by growing too fast. And so uh
we try to be purposeful with that. And frankly we're 3 years in. We haven't just I don't think we've nailed it until just recently. Like we you know we started virtually which for some reason I thought that was a good idea and then we made this massive pivot to in real life and like the results are night and day. Like in real life right now last month we had 90% annual retention. Uh like it's like crazy. It's not even like it's it's just not even in the same category of of of results.
It's that it's that personal connection that you can have with someone, right? I mean, Finton and I, we both met in our core group in Hampton, but we took it in person. So, at the time, everything was virtual, but we I think I flew over to Finton in in Amsterdam and we hung out for the whole day, like went on like he organized like a boat ride for me and like all that kind of stuff. So, it
we went to the gym first, right? Let's be very clear. We did a really hard workout before we did anything. All right.
man. You guys are really chuming it up.
How cute. [laughter]
Yeah, it just you're like the matchmaker.
How Yeah. How stupid were we? I like look back. I'm like what was I thinking? I think it was like it was still in COVID era a little bit.
It was just dumb. It was Yeah.
So, interestingly, obviously like your your brand like creates like fun opportunities also like money as well. Um, and it clearly will shape the way that you spend your time. So, I'm kind of curious to see how like these things intersect. Um, so obviously you're speaking a lot about like the four Fs. So, your finances, your fitness, your family, and fun.
I think that um I think that like uh I had uh this guy named Amjad. Amad started a company called Replet uh which is like a I don't know what they're worth. Probably like $30 billion.
Yeah. I had him on the podcast yesterday actually, but we had had him on previously and he he does something that's really special, which is he always talks about how his life he needs it to be a story and he needs all the pieces of the story need to fit in perfectly because he wants to look back and be like it made sense why I lived the life that I did because I basically had my north star which was guided by my values and then all the actions that I took it was done to make the best story and that is a life well-lived. And I really appreciate his perspective on that. I think that's a really wise way to look at it because I think that uh men uh I'm sure I don't know if I'm sure women do too, but I from a man's perspective like I feel like I was a high horsepower power like I had a lot of I had like a lot of horsepower in my engine. And the times in my life that I was most sad and unhappy was when I didn't have a clear direction that where I was headed to. And so um I decided to like get ruthless about goal setting and say all right where do I want to be in 10 years and how will I measure if this story is good and I created the categories I mean I think many people have these categories of family fitness finance fun where I'm like where do I want to be in 20 years where I want to be in 15 10 5 and I just try my hardest to be intentional about creating the story because I just get aimless when I don't have this clear direction where I'm trying to head to and I think this there's this this guy what's the guy's what's the British uh director who did uh Snatch Guy Guy Richie
Guy Richie had this great thing where he was like I found it very motivational he was like you need to be the director of your own movie and your life's the movie and I found that to be very romantic and intoxicating and so I sort of like created these four categories as ways to like figure out like am I on track for the movie that I'm trying to have
and and how how would you say that's kind of changed so obviously you you like post exit um do Do you find it harder to have like specific goals that you're you're chasing towards or do you find it to be like quite similar?
The fitness goals are so much easier uh post exit. I was really fat before I sold. I was like a filthy animal. Uh so fitness is way easier. Like having money makes fitness and health like so much easier. There's no doubt about that because I could like hire people like you to help me or use your service to help me.
Um fun. I actually don't think that's I think it's equal. I think that's the same. I have a lot of like every night at 7:30 I go down to the convenience store down at the bottom of my building and I hang out with the owner and we just kick it and that's like the most fun that I have. So no, I don't think that's changed. Um, family is like the greatest thing ever. I didn't I think that more I I I wish I would have had children when I was younger. Um, that's like been the greatest thing ever. Uh, I think have kids I think it's awesome. And then uh finances is like way easier. Yeah. Um, I think that the once you get like popular on the internet and maybe you have a little bit of success, the hardest thing is focus. I think that uh people say you have to say no to stuff and I always say say no to stuff and I always say that I'm focused, but the reality is is that it's so much easier to not be focused and I fall down that trap of not being focused and it ruins your flow. I think that like another reason another times when I look back at the times that I'm most happy it's when I'm in flow and I'm like in complete solitude not with anyone and like focus on stuff but it's really hard to do that when you're like oh I got this invitation to this thing or I could go talk to these cool people that's it's hard.
Yeah, I think you end up with like way more options as well, right? So like I notice even myself in business, it's like, oh, there's this cool opportunity here that we can do. Okay, I'll just fund that. And I just keep doing that over and over and over again and you realize like, hold on, you're leaking way too much money in the way.
You have to pull this back. And if I think about myself like 10 years ago, I wouldn't even have had the opportunity to to do that. So that would have made me more focused. And actually, ironically, there was some advantages to that. So I um on MFM I have said we've done close to a thousand episodes. We've had billionaires on. We've had people worth tens of billions. We've had people who are like the best scientists or whatever. Like all these like people who are like the best scientists or whatever.
are top top top in their field. And I have like two major takeaways. The first takeaway is that there's basically no one way to achieve happiness or success. Like for every rule that you will say, I can probably almost always show someone who broke that rule and achieved their desired outcome. I could show you people who wake up at 11 a.m. and they're fat and they don't exercise and yet they're happy and very successful. I could show you people who do the opposite. They do all the cold plunging, everything, and they are happy and successful. But the one thing that tends to almost always exist is that they can focus on one thing for decades. That tends to be the common denominator.
I'm a big believer that consistency over time equals success. And that is the really boring answer to business success, relationship success, whatever. Just being really, really consistent and showing up every day.
And it sucks that it takes way longer than you think. Oh, it's so boring, right? It's not going to sell any courses. It's not going to, you know, there's no get rich, you know, the industry is built on get-rich-quick, get-fit-quick, whatever. But it's typically not the answer, unfortunately.
We have the guy who bought my company is this guy named Dharmesh. He's the founder of HubSpot. HubSpot, like I always forget. Do you guys know what year HubSpot was founded?
2006. And he's been doing the same company for what is that, 20 years now, which like when I say 20 years, I'm like, that's not that much, I guess. But when you look at like if you like one time he showed me, I forget, some type of graph where it was like a graph that generally speaking it went up and to the right, which is I think it was the revenue, I forget exactly what it was, but it was like a success metric and like it generally went up and to the right, which was great. But there was like all these like lines and each line was a month, but there was like eight months where it was like flat or went down and then like it popped up again and they had like three months of like amazingness.
And then it like was kind of flat or even down in some cases. And even though it all trended up, when you zoomed in, you're like, 'Oh my god, that was eight months of you going down every month. That must have sucked.' Like that was horrible. Because if you guys have ever experienced that, there's time in your business where you're like eight months, that's like what's that, 240 days of just [__] every day. And you get a message from an employee every couple days that says, 'Can we talk?' And you're like, 'Oh, [__], this guy's going to fire. Like he's going to quit.' And like you feel like it's doom doom all the time. And imagine doing that for 20 years. And it's so much harder than people think. It's so much more like you feel like it's the end of the world all the time, even if it's not.
And yet like Dharmesh and HubSpot, it worked out amazing, right? It's a multi-tens of billions of dollar company. But like if you look at if you zoom in on like the check marks of every month, you're like every month is 30 days, which is a bunch of hours where you're at the office and someone's complaining and it doesn't feel good and you have to do that for 20 years and that is really hard. It's something I always say of like something somebody else said, there's two emotions as a founder: euphoria or despair. And you're mostly in despair, right? So that kind of that eight months, you're just waking up like, 'I'm the worst person in the world. I deserve this. I made this. Like what if like this is just karma? This has been coming. I'm an idiot.' Like for sure, it's just eight months of negative talk. It is difficult for sure.
Yeah, like for sure. And that's why I love reading like biographies because I love seeing, um, it makes me feel better to know that like the people I admire suck, which is frankly the best part about Hampton and doing a podcast is like seeing the people who I aspire to be similar to because like the majority of people in Hampton are like more successful than me and I like see, I'm like, okay, I look up to you and also you suck. You make mistakes like I do. You're fearful just like I am. You have all the same [__] but you just keep on going. And that is a really great feeling to know that like my heroes have flaws.
So, from that perspective, is there something that you see them from your kind of bird's eye view in Hampton? Is there something you see people overindex on or underindex on?
Consistently, people make this mistake. They make about two or three mistakes, but the number one is they think that they can outperform an index fund and they invest in illiquid assets that they think are going to be amazing and that sound fancy. And almost always they regret it and it doesn't outperform and they wish they would have kept their money liquid in a passive way that's really boring. That is almost always the case. I have talked to so many people that have made a lot of money and within the first 12 months they invest in dumb [__] instead of boring stuff like in index funds and it doesn't work almost always. The second thing that they do is they buy [__] that they think will make them happy but it just becomes a prison for them. So they'll buy a second home, they'll buy a fancy car and they realize that taking care of a second home is a pain in the butt and they wish they would just rented Airbnbs because they never actually go to it. And they realize that a Ferrari is a pain in the ass to drive and it's incredibly uncomfortable.
So I have a, I bought a McLaren, but I can tell you that I love it. Like every single time I get in and I hear the engine switch on, I'm like, 'Yes.' And it always reminds me, it's like that's what I worked hard for. I think it's probably because as a kid, maybe I idolized that quite a lot. So I would see like my dad's friend like have a really awesome car and I'd be like, 'Yeah, I want that too.' So I have like...
I think that like some people like love cars and that's like their thing. But I mean like you could pick any category. It could be like art. It could be this. It could be that. Like there's so many things that you've probably have bought. It could be fancy clothes where you're like, I don't give a [__] about that. You know what I mean?
I did get one piece of advice that was really good, which was don't spend any money for six months. So as soon as I [got the money in my] savings account, I left it there. At the time actually the interest rates were like pretty decent. Left it. It let me actually like calm down while like you have wealth managers and all of these kind of people just like coming at you and you're just like can't do anything. It's all like locked up and that really lets you feel free. And actually it was actually in my core group. So Finton, I didn't know what to do with my money and he basically shared like all his net worth, broke everything down and said how he allocated his money. I ended up literally doing exactly the same as him and I'd already spent thousands with like different advisers and things like this that give me like 50-page reports. I think he showed something in like five minutes with some like dodgy-looking like Google sheet, all-world index ETF, low cost. Yeah, just don't overthink it. You've bought the market. It's fine.
And I could show you examples again. I could show you examples of people who broke that rule and they're happy with it and it worked out well. But like I talked to Brian Johnson. You guys know Brian Johnson is the live-forever guy. He, what's crazy, you know something crazy about him? He sold this company when he was 29. I forget, it was BrainTree. He bootstrapped it. I think he sold it for $800 million. He told me how much he made. I'm going to get some of the numbers wrong but this is all on the podcast. He, let's say he made $400 million post-tax. He was like, 'I put 50% of it in the index and then the rest I invested in private companies.' And he was like, 'Had I just put it in the index, I would have $2 billion now, but I'm currently worth,' he was like, 'I think the same amount.' And this was like 15 years ago that he sold. [snorts] You got to do some of the numbers will be off, but he was like, 'I would be worth like five times more than I currently am.' And I wish, this is almost an exact quote, he was like, 'It would be way better if I just did like, you know, public equities.'
And just, what did you actually like deprioritize after making money?
