What's the secret to a happy, successful, supportive, full of respect relationship?
Well, first of all, this is going to sound like an insult or really cold. I leased out a four-bedroom apartment for $3,500, and then I got people to come and get a bedroom in each house for $1,000 each. So I got the crappiest room for $500. So I was able to live for like nothing.
So you sold The Hustle and got over $20 million in profit. Walk me through the first 72 hours once the wire hit your bank.
Six months before I sold the company, I used this finance app where I manually put in that much money into my account. So I looked at it every day and I thought that the money was already there.
What's your advice to someone who's trying to find their edge?
Have you ever heard of this thing called the Ikigai? So the Ikigai, it's like this Venn diagram of four circles, and it's like what the world wants, what you're good at, what you love doing, and what the world wants to pay for.
How did you know that she was the one?
When my wife met me, I was really fat and overweight. Yeah, I was like pretty disgusting looking. I think I had a mohawk and camouflage pants when I met her.
Why did your wife believe in you so much?
Hi everyone. We're here in the Upper West Side in New York City, a beautiful residential neighborhood, and I'm on my way to meet Sam Parr. Sam is a really incredible serial entrepreneur and a podcast host. He's built The Hustle, that he sold for over $20 million to HubSpot. He's the co-host of My First Million, a podcast with millions of downloads. And now he's the founder of Hampton, a founder community for digital-first founders with over $3 million in revenue. Sam and I, I think, are going to have a really rich conversation where we'll talk about his definition of success, how he's built a few successful businesses, how he's approaching his business now, how he's staying so balanced, how he's met his life partner. And I hope you guys enjoy this conversation. Let me know what you think, and let's get to it.
Okay. Wait. So tell me, have you always been so balanced?
Have I? No. No, I've not always been balanced. I think I got balanced maybe when I was like 30 years old.
Probably after selling my company, I got a lot more balanced, but I've always been like a homebody. But no, I've not always been balanced.
So what has been that transition from being, you know, hustling, I guess, all the time to being more balanced?
Well, I think about work and progress all the time. So I don't know if I'm balanced in my brain, but frankly, selling my company, selling a company allowed me to have a lot more space and also just maturity. That helped a lot.
So you sold The Hustle and got over $20 million in profit. Walk me through the first 72 hours once the wire hit your bank.
You know what's funny is I use this thing called, I use Monarch Money now, but before I was using, I forget what I was using, but I used this thing to track my finances. Six months before I sold the company, I used this finance app where I manually put in that much money into my account. So I looked at it every day and I thought that the money was already there. So I got really used to it. Does that make sense?
Okay. So you put the $20 million yourself and...
No, I didn't put that much. I put less, but I put money in there because I didn't get all of that up front. Like I got a whole bunch up front, and then I got a bunch of HubSpot stock.
And then I got paid a little bit for some other stuff throughout the next two years.
And you worked at Airbnb, right?
Airbnb went public where my wife worked at Airbnb and it went public in...
Yeah. End of 2020. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And then I sold my company four months later.
Oh wow. You guys both got this paycheck.
They did.
Yeah, it was like a pretty life-changing moment. That three months changed our lives significantly.
So I have friends, a couple who both worked at Coinbase, and obviously Coinbase had a huge IPO at the same time, and their life changed in kind of a, well obviously in a very drastic way, but they were kind of lost for a little bit because they were like, 'Oh, wow. You know, we're so young and we're already rich. Like, what's next?' What was it like for your wife and you?
I wasn't lost. No. I didn't feel lost because I'd been running a company, so the business was making a lot of revenue. It wasn't making a ton of profit, but it was making good profit. And so I had money, just not in the form of cash or money that I could spend. I had an asset. Did I get lost? No, I didn't get lost. I guess to me it didn't feel real. It took me, it probably took me two years for it to feel real.
Yeah.
Why did it take so long? Is it because you were kind of ramping up?
Because there's usually two, there's two ways that entrepreneurs tend to make money, I guess. One is like my father-in-law owns a moving company and he started it and ran it for like 30 years and he made this amount of income in year one and then it went up a little bit in year two and after like 10 or 20 years it was probably making a lot of income, so he got used to it. With me, I wasn't making a ton of income and then overnight I got a lump sum. And so that definitely messed with me a little bit.
Like I was running the first couple years of my company, I paid myself like two grand a month.
And you were living in San Francisco, I think, right?
Yeah. Because I leased out a four-bedroom apartment for $3,500 and then I got people to come and get a bedroom in each house for $1,000 each. So I got the crappiest room for $500.
So I was able to live for like nothing. And then almost all of my meals came from one of two places. They came from the company credit card. So I would eat at the office and just buy lunch for everyone and that's what I would do. Or my wife, she worked at Airbnb and also worked at Facebook. She would just bring me food home from the company cafeteria.
Why did your wife believe in you so much?
I have no idea. That's a great question. When my wife met me, you guys will have to show a photo of it. I was really fat and overweight and I didn't look nice.
Oh, literally when you guys met at that bar happy hour.
Yeah. I was like pretty disgusting looking. I think I had a mohawk and camouflage pants when I met her and I was overweight.
And I didn't have a lot of money. I just started my company. So I don't know why she believed in me. I think that I was just...
Have you ever asked her? I think that particularly this works for men, but I think women are drawn, I think everyone, but women are drawn to young men who have ambition and passion.
Yeah. And a vision or some sort of vision.
Yeah. And even if it doesn't have to be a monetary one. It could be like, I am obsessed with being the best painter. And I think that everyone is driven by someone who says, 'This is the future that I'm driving towards. I'm going there with or without you, but I would love it if you came with me.'
Yeah. Yeah. I think that for men, the most important thing is to have purpose.
Yeah.
Do you agree with that?
Yeah. Just like I think that men need a place that they said that they're going to go to and they need little checkpoints and milestones along the way to let them know that they're getting closer to it. Yeah, that's what I think.
How did you know that she was the one?
Right away. I think I told her I loved her like three weeks in.
Oh, wow. Okay. Wait, how did you feel that?
How did you feel that? Like why three weeks in?
Because she was very, I mean I thought she was physically very pretty. So I was very drawn to her. She had a very elegant beauty, a very poised beauty, but I was always attracted or looking for a woman who was incredibly strong because I'm a little up and down and I can be a little crazy and I need a steady person. And I think I met her when I was 24 and she was 21 or 22. And I could tell right away that I could be a little nutty and crazy and that she was just going to be able to hold me up and be steady. It was very obvious.
And her parents, my wife's mom is an immigrant and I love the immigrant mentality. So I was like, that's to me like kind of the American dream. And her father and mother now are both entrepreneurs. And so I think she understood, but they're really successful now.
Right? Like her mom is a pillow and she sells pillows.
She started a pillow company. It's a very successful company and her father has a very successful moving company as well. And they're very successful but they didn't start that way and it was really cool to be with a woman who experienced, like she knew what it was like to have a lot, she knew what it was like to be up and coming and I thought that was awesome.
That's awesome. I heard on a podcast about your guys' 4F meeting, the fun family...
Family, fitness, finance, and fun. Yeah.
Love it. Okay, tell me more about the meeting, like what actually happens, how long is it, what's the agenda?
It's on my calendar right now actually. So I think I have one next week.
Towards the end of the month, and we review our finances. And the finance is not necessarily the most important part, but it's sort of like the route for, okay, so here's how much we spent. Were you happy with what you spent on? Is there something else that you would like to do? Like for example, the other day we got a $4,000 cash back on a credit card and it was exciting. We're like, 'Oh, you get two, I get two. Let's talk about what we want to do. Like this is exciting.' And it's just a really good way to get in check about are we being purposeful and mindful. And it sounds like trite to talk about spending because that's not actually what I care about. It's just that that's one of the tools that we can use to do things that might make us happy and to be intentional about it.
So finance is the only topic or finance is the umbrella and then it's...
No, that's just like, we say it's for finance reasons and we review the numbers but really it's about family, fitness, and fun.
So do you come into the meeting with the goals that you've set for yourself the previous month and then you are like, okay, this is how I actually did?
Yeah. So we have a monthly budget where I don't care where the money goes. It's just, did we spend below this? And if we didn't, let's ask ourselves why. And then if we are happy or not happy, we can change the budget if we want. And that's basically what it is. And then I personally set quarterly fitness goals and I'll fill her in on if I'm achieving those or not.
And then she has the same as well.
And you keep each other accountable obviously.
Yeah. Like before she got pregnant, you'll have to show these videos. Actually, I think she was early in her pregnancy. She wanted to do...
She wanted to do pull-ups.
Okay. So she was like, 'Are you doing your pull-ups? What's up?' It was that type of thing.
That's awesome. Actually, my last question on the partner stuff. What's the secret to a happy, successful, supportive, full of respect relationship?
Well, first of all, this is going to sound like an insult or this is going to sound really cold, but we have this friend named Logan.
I love Logan. So Logan was my wife's best friend, and I've become very, very close with her as well. She has this book called How Not to Die Alone.
And she's got part of the book where it's called like 'F the Spark', which is basically this idea that everyone thinks that when you meet someone it's really love at first sight, you should have this spark. And I totally agree, and she says no, that's not true, and I totally agree with her. And I have a bunch of friends who, most of my best friends are Indian and their parents were arranged and I always thought that was fascinating and I've always kind of aligned with that in a weird way. And what I mean by that is I think that with my wife and I at a very early stage, we said yes, we love each other, yes, we're attracted to each other, but also we have this sort of agreement like we are going to do life together and we are committed to each other and it's like a binding contract that literally means till death do us part. And I think that we are very explicit about that, which is like, this, we will make it work no matter what. And I think having that agreement is actually quite good. And I did that with my co-founder by the way too. So basically my wife and I, we outlined, we're like, all right, so six months into us dating we said, this looks like it's going to potentially end in marriage. Like we don't intend to break up. Things are going well. And so what do you want your life to look like when you're 30 or 40 or 50? And I said the same. And I was like, what values do you want to live by? How many kids do you want to have? Where do you want to live? What type of lifestyle do you want? And then I said what I wanted. And we're like, okay, this alliance is pretty good. And it was sort of like a, this sounds way colder than it is, but it's almost like a handshake where it's like we agree to this.
Yeah. I love that because as you said with co-founders, that's what you do when you start a company. You talk about what exit do you want? How much do...
Exactly. So most people don't do that because they're scared of the uncomfortability of the conversation, but it's almost like exciting. Let's see how we can be a part of each other.
100% that. So my co-founder and I did this as well because it worked out so good with my marriage, where we said like, what do you want your day-to-day to look like? What are you willing to give up? What are you unwilling to give up? And what would success look like?
Yeah. How did you know to ask these questions and have that type of conversation at such a young age?
I've always been like that. So I think I read this book called Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, and he's a little bit of a charlatan, but the book had a lot of good topics and this idea of writing down goals. So I've always been super interested in writing down... There's an MFM listener, he just said hi. I've always been really good about writing down goals and being very specific that says in five years this is where I want to go and this is what I want to have and just reverse engineer that. I've always done that.
Yeah, I love Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. I think I saw your guys' excerpt on Twitter or X with Sean that, okay, the guys actually made up a bunch of [__] in the...
Yeah, we made up everything, but that's okay.
Yeah, that's fine. The advice is great.
You can like the art and not the artist.
Yeah. So on MFM, you've interviewed hundreds of rich people. What's one trait...
I have probably a lot of broke people. Probably I think we've interviewed a bunch of criminals. We've interviewed all types of people.
That's great. It's good to have a range.
What's one trait amongst the successful people that they all share that no one really talks about?
A huge percentage of the epically successful people, I'm talking billionaires, generally speaking, they will acknowledge how important luck is. And I don't think that a lot of people starting out, myself included, they don't acknowledge. You know, you think you get to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And I think that's a really good attitude to have. But the majority of epically successful people agree that luck played a huge part in their success. I think that I didn't buy into that until I started talking to some of these people and then I also had a little bit of success myself. But luck is real, I think.
So tell me more about how do you think about luck because there is the rational point of like you increase your surface area of bets and then you prepare for the lucky moment. But there's also the more spiritual way of thinking about luck.
Well, I think there's like macro luck. So like I was born in a really good area. I was born into parents that were emotionally supportive. I look the way I do and I was born in America. Like there's that.
But I think that like so when COVID happened, a lot of people suffered. I crushed it.
Like COVID was so good to me. Sometimes I feel guilt, but like our business took off. I sold my company during COVID. Two weeks or a week after I sold my company, the CEO of HubSpot got into a life-threatening accident where he almost died. And had that happened two weeks before I sold my company, would that deal still have happened? I don't know. You know what I mean? And I had nothing to do with either of those things, the COVID or him almost dying. But I benefited from them. And that's sort of like I can't... Yeah. And that's crazy. And there's been so many times where one introduction, one email, like one post that I've made has changed everything.
So what's your advice for someone who wants to increase their surface area of luck?
I think if you're young and not successful yet or you're still coming up, you just need, I believe that quantity leads to quality. So you need lots and lots and lots of output. And you need to have lots of output for a very long time.
Yeah. I think one thing that people lack, myself including, is patience. Because I think right now we're living in such a short-term rewards type of world that it feels like, oh my god, you know, if the thing is not working immediately or in a very short period of time, but then you see other people come up because they're sharing their highlight reel. Maybe I should move on to do something else.
Yeah, I think it's always been that way. I think there's this great book by Robert Greene called Human Nature. And yeah, for... I just think that humans have always been the same. So I actually strongly disagree when people say, 'Well, in today's age it's different.' I don't think it's ever different.
Yeah, it's hard to be patient. I mean, that's what separates the winners from the losers is the ability to have grit.
So on patience and reinventing yourself, you have reinvented yourself so many times, you know, from the roommate app, The Hustle, to Hampton. How do you keep your identity small? Yeah. Do you keep your identity small?
That's an interesting question. I would say that a lot of people who know me closely would say that I do have a big ego at times, but then other people will say that I think I have like a dichotomy where I think I'm [__] and I think I'm nothing and I'm a nobody and like what I think is always wrong. Like I have this very self-deprecating attitude. So I think it's like I have both.
That's amazing. And how do you cultivate patience?
I don't know. I mean, I struggle with it too. I don't know. The way that I tend to do things is that when I make decisions and I go all in on them, I tend to make the decision in such a way where it's an irreversible decision.
So for example, if I want to start a company, I tend to immediately hire people.
Oh, I see. So that it's much harder to pull out.
But what if you started the wrong company?
Then you just make it work. I just... That's kind of, I tend to kind of...
I don't know. I just think that like you do it anyway. That's kind of like my Midwestern attitude of like...
If you commit, you stay committed.
