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SAM PARR: FROM HOT DOG STANDS TO AN 8-FIGURE EXIT
How Sam Parr went from running hot dog stands to an 8-figure exit all through great content...
Niall Ratcliffe
April 02, 2023
Morning!
Do you ever see people 10 steps ahead of you and just wonder how they got there?
What did they do? Who did they meet? Why does everything they touch turn to gold?
Me too.
In fact, I go down these rabbit holes daily and today’s breakdown is straight off the back of one of them.
I’m about to break down a pretty big player in the world of business, who has been wildly successful over the last few years…
He built and sold an 8-figure company.
Grew a newsletter to 2M+ subscribers.
Amassed 250,000+ followers online.
Built one of the world’s biggest business podcasts.
Oh and he’s only 33 years old.
He’s been a pretty busy guy over the last 5 years.
So, let’s dive headfirst into his story.
Breaking Down The Strategy
Everybody who starts a newsletter dreams that one day they’ll have millions of people reading their emails.
Everybody who starts a podcast dreams that one day they’ll have hundreds of thousands of listeners.
Nearly everybody who builds a company dreams of one day selling it for millions upon millions of dollars.
1% of people do any 3 of those things.
And NOBODY does all 3.
Or at least I thought they didn’t - until I came across Sam Parr.
I’m guessing you’ve probably heard of Sam by now, but if you haven’t…
He’s the founder of The Hustle (which he sold to Hubspot in 2021 for an estimated $27M).
He's the co-host of the My First Million podcast (which has hundreds of thousands of listeners).
And is now the founder of Hampton (which he has already grown to an 8-figure run-rate in under 12 months).
His resume speaks for itself.
But how did he get to where he is today?
I’ve spent over 14 hours this week watching every podcast he’s ever been on and reading every article on him that I could find.
Turns out there is one common theme across all of his success - and that’s unbelievable marketing.
Here are the 3 key marketing tactics Sam has used to make himself one of the most well-known businessmen on this planet:
1) Writing content that gets eyeballs
In 2012, Sam Parr was pretty much a nobody (no offence Sam). At the time he had just started his first business ‘Southern Sam’s Hot Dogs’.
Which was literally just a hot dog stand - I told you, pretty unimpressive, right?
But one thing stood out about Sam’s hot dog stand, and that was his tagline “Weiner's as big as a baby's arm”.
It was different to anything you’d see on a “normal” hotdog stand. It stood out. It attracted eyeballs. And it brought in sales.
This was Sam’s first taste of making money through great copy. It just clicked for him and copywriting would quickly become the backbone of his skillset.
2 years on from selling hotdogs, Sam’s career took quite the pivot when he founded The Hustle.
At the time it wasn’t The Hustle you see today. It was actually an event business that budding entrepreneurs could attend to hear from their favourite business leaders.
Another pretty basic concept, but Sam made it a huge success.
How? Through writing great copy that got eyeballs.
To sell tickets in the beginning, he would create two simple pieces of content each week: one infographic and one blog post.
He would then post said pieces of content on Reddit (example), Hacker News (example), Product Hunt, and a few other sites (entire list).
According to his friend Neville, this simple strategy pulled in around 1000-2000 unique visitors per day.
Usually, I would be surprised by these sorts of numbers, but when I read over Sam’s early blog articles (see examples below) it all made sense.
He wrote titles that you couldn't NOT click on and he delivered to a tee once you did.
Copywriting 101. Sam just had it.
2) Learning how to spark outrage
As time went on, Sam realised that the real growth for the business came from the media side of things rather than the events.
After realising that, The Hustle’s content went to the next level.
They began posting even more “outrageous” (Sam’s words not mine) content that was designed to go viral, like these:
On stage, at a conference, Sam said that some of these articles would amass well over 500,000 views online.
A pretty crazy number.
But when you start to realise just how much traffic they were getting, it’s no surprise their email list grew so fast.
This was just the start though, as Sam had an ace up his sleeve that was yet to be released…
Articles that spark anger.
In a recent interview, Sam explained that he has two aims when trying to write mega-viral content:
A) Inspire awe
B) Induce anger
Both work, but B always performs better from an analytics standpoint.
So he began creating fake personas and writing heavily opinionated pieces from their perspective.
He had a persona called “Steve Garcia” write an article on how LSD solves depression, and “Steph Whitfield” who wrote about men hitting on her through LinkedIn.
These articles would really rile people up and you’ll never guess what that led to…
More replies
More shares
More readers
And ultimately more subscribers to The Hustle’s newsletter
It’s a classic example of the attention economy. Grab someone’s attention (and keep it) you’ll quickly see your bank balance rising.
3) The 8-figure quirky flair
It would be a sin to talk about Sam (and The Hustle’s) success without mentioning the quirky flair that he’s so known for.
Because if there was one thing millions of people probably know Sam for, it’s the quirky flair that he writes with.
Take The Hustle’s old welcome email for example:
It’s absolutely pristine.
In fact, I’m going to do a whole breakdown on this alone one day.
But the greatest thing about it, is that it couldn’t have been written by anyone else.
It’s all well and good writing content that gets eyeballs on it, but writers that really win are the ones that get remembered.
And THAT is what Sam has mastered. His tone is so clear, so quirky, so out there that everyone remembers it after they read his stuff.
He uses that same quirky tone throughout everything he does and has seen huge success time and time again from doing it.
Some other examples…
The Hustle’s very first landing page:
The landing page of his copywriting course (Click here to see full version):
All in all, Sam’s success comes down to an absolute content marketing masterclass.
He’s shown just how far you can take something with the written word.
“Video this.”
“Carousel that.”
“TikTok this.”
“YouTube that.”
The written word. That’s what made Sam a multi-millionaire.
Want to follow in his footsteps, here’s the checklist:
- Write content that gets eyeballs
- Induce anger or inspire awe
- Write with flair (make it unique)
- Write words that only you can write
This is one of those strategies that is simple, but so so far from easy.
Either way, a pretty awesome one to study.
Right, that’s all from me, I hope you enjoyed reading this one as much as I enjoyed writing it!
Until next time.
— Niall
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