My Step-By-Step Process To Building a $1M+ Business
I'm like, I should create this. And then I looked in the mirror and I was like, yeah, this ain't going to work.
There's a reason your nickname is the Vanilla Gorilla. Okay.
Like, it wasn't going to work.
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off.
So, Sam, I got a question for you. You have launched this business this year called Hampton, and I love the name. I love the brand. I go to the website. I love the website. More than anything, I love the idea. I'm jealous of this idea. Andrew Wilkinson said, I'm so jealous that I didn't start this idea. I feel like you got so much right. And I know that in doing any idea, whatever you cut, there's something called the idea maze. You go through, you wander around, you try to figure out the right path, and you cut. If you're lucky, you pop out the other side with what you did with Hampton, where everything turned out right. What I want to know is what were the other paths you considered but ended up saying no to along the way? Because nobody sees that stuff that's on the cutting room floor. I want to know, you know, I love the name Hampton. Were there other names that you thought about? And like, how did you pick that one? And like, what was that decision process? I want to know target market. Like you, I feel like you nailed the target market and you've nailed the value prop. Were there 3 other runner-ups that you'd consider that you didn't have? I kind of want to see what goes on underneath the surface before this beautiful execution comes out.
Well, first, thanks. You, you, you hopefully only see the good stuff. Obviously there's all types of bad shit that happens on the, on the backend where we're like, this sucks. But in general, it's been quite pleasant. So dude, with this company, it's so funny. I purposely had on, we had guests that ran these types of companies and I wanted to prove to everyone, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna do my research in front of people.
You left a paper trail, right? Like you left public breadcrumbs, uh, as to exactly how you did this step by step. And by the way, I love that you're honest about this because you definitely had guests come on and basically explain to you what the blueprint is. And then you were like, cool, thanks. Gonna go execute on that blueprint.
And, uh, and I didn't hide it from them. I told them, I told them before and after I'm going to launch, I want to launch, I'm thinking of launching something like this and let's talk about it. So there was nothing unethical or evil about this, but yeah, I wanted to do it publicly so people could see. So the, so let me tell you first. So I sold The Hustle, I think in '22. Yeah. And, uh, or something like that. And I had about 6 months or 8 months or 10 months, I forget where I was just kind of fooling around and I was looking at different ideas. The 2 ideas that lost, I'm so thankful they lost. One, remember how I got super into Airbnbs? I was like, this is the thing I could do this. So I bought one and I did it and it did okay. But I was like, this sucks. I do, I do not enjoy this. This doesn't, this isn't in my zone of genius. It's, it's a pain in the ass.
And it seems on paper like a good idea. You had a, you created this Facebook group of, I forgot what you called it, like Sam's Short-Term Rental Bros or whatever the hell you called it.
What was it? The STR Crew.
The STR Crew, Short-Term Rental Crew. And people piled in and they started explaining their blueprints. They're like, yo, I own 40 Airbnbs. They make this much cash flow. Here's the pain points. Here's the plus sides. This other guy's like, oh, I do the same thing with this angle. And I was like, dude, this is fascinating. Sam's doing his research again in public. And you were wandering around the idea maze. You're like, maybe it's over here. Maybe the, maybe the exit path is over here in this short-term rentals thing. And it kind of seemed like a good idea on paper, but you ended up saying no to that.
And it was a good idea. It wasn't a good idea for me. It is a profitable thing, whatever. It was cool. The second thing that I thought about doing was I thought about creating, I've always wanted to create a trucking business. I'm passionate about truckers. I'm passionate about blue collar workers. My family, I grew up in a trucking family. Sort of my— they work in that industry. And so I was like, I'm gonna become a YouTuber and I'm gonna create an audience of truckers and then I'm gonna build a product for them. And then I started like doing it and I was like, nah, hate this, not gonna do it.
You're like, I love the idea of blue collar workers.
Yeah, I like the idea of it being amongst that. Yeah, yeah. It's like getting a neck tattoo. It's like the idea of it's kind of neat, but I don't know if I actually want it. Um, and so then I was like, look, we had this thing called Trends at The Hustle and I got a lot wrong and I love the business model still. I think I I can do this. And my partner, my now business partner and I, uh, we had like basically a therapy group where we would like bitch and complain about everything going on. And we're like, I settled on that product.
You built a product, launched it, did not use your audience initially publicly. You didn't use the podcast to promote it initially. Maybe your brand, your brand name helped personally in private, but you didn't do it publicly. And you drove, you drove it to millions of dollars in revenue, um, very early on. So very successful thing that Everybody listens to this podcast kind of wants that outcome. So, so, you know, you're a walking case study.
Go ahead. Yeah. So Hampton is a peer group. So some people call it a community. I call it a peer group. Basically, there's 3 parts of the peer group. So you have an 8-person group that have, uh, like similar size or types of companies. And you basically, it's like a therapy group. You just complain. So it takes about 6 months to like really like for it to like catch and be awesome. But I have a 6-person or 8-person group. It's freaking awesome. And you will do everything like you. Uh, someone will make a presentation for every meeting and they'll say like, here's my portfolio, here's my net worth. Can you guys tell me, am I doing something wrong? Am I doing something right? Here's how my company works. What am I doing wrong? What am I doing right? And so they do a presentation. So that's part 1. Part 2 is we have a digital community where you can like post in there and see what other people are saying. And you could like, hey, I'm trying to hire a nanny. Um, what are your guys's best, uh, advice for agencies to use in the Northeast? Things like that. You can do personal stuff, non-personal stuff. The third thing is events. I think we host 200 events a year at this point. Including retreats, all these types of things. So it's highly inspired by Chief, YPO, Vistage. These are large companies that are in the space. So that's the business. Originally, I was trying to go after marketing executives and then just executives in general. Dude, I called, I did 50 to 70 meetings with people trying to convince them to join. And none of them wanted it.
Hello, dear marketing executive.
Yeah.
Anyway, how goes your marketing today?
No one fucking wanted it. I couldn't get, and then eventually I was like, I need to charge like around $10,000 a year in order to make this like a viable business. No one fucking wanted it. They're willing to pay $500 and I created a group that was actually $500 and I was like, dude, this sucks. I can't do this. And then my, and then we were like, should we do doctors? Doctors would be cool. Um, but like, what the fuck? I don't know anything about doctors. I tried to get a, I tried to get in touch with a ton and like no one wanted it. And then I was like, Fortune 500 CEOs, same problem. Like, how do I get in touch with a Fortune 500 CEO? Like, I don't, I don't know one. Like, it is really hard.
And then ideas that sound good on paper, but as soon as they came into contact with reality, they got punched in the face and they ran home with the nose bleeding.
Well, this one really punched me in the face. The next one, we thought about minorities. We're like, uh, you know, my, my wife is a minority and I like hear a little bit of the things that she goes through. I'm like, I should create this. And then I looked in the mirror and I was like, yeah, this ain't going to work. I'm the The opposite of a minority.
Uh, business might look great on paper, but then the old reflection doesn't look good in the mirror. Yeah. I remember when you told me that idea and I was like, dude, honestly, it's a great idea. I think it's an underserved community. I think they want that career development. I think that, I think that makes sense. But I was like, dude, what are you going to do when you're like, hey, I was like, you know, are you going to have Sarah be the CEO? Like, what are you going to do? You're gonna be like, I am this white man. Who's running this company? I don't know. Possible, but like, I don't know.
If you Google the word white bread, you're going to see a picture of Sam Parr. Like, it feels like it would not have worked.
There's a reason your nickname is the Vanilla Gorilla. Okay.
Like it wasn't going to work. And then, uh, my partner was like, dude, let's just go after CEOs. And he'd been saying this whole time. I'm like, they will never pay for this. But all along, some people had heard rumors that I was launching this. So they asked me like, Can you do this for us? And I kept saying no. And then finally we were like, fuck it, let's do it. And then that obviously was the right decision. But by the way, I did a ton of research. So I interviewed a ton of members of all these different groups and they're like, I'm a tech guy, but there's, it's all like guys who own like 18 apartment buildings in South Florida in my group. It kind of sucks. Like I love them, but we don't like align on business.
It was so much easier. It was way easier. Now let's talk about the names. Here's a good story about the names. So the company's called Hampton. A lot of people think that means the Hamptons. Um, up until I was like 27, I didn't know what the Hamptons were. I thought I had read about it in like The Great Gatsby. I thought like it was like that. I didn't even know what it was until I married a woman from that area and I learned about it. So what I do is all of my LLCs. Are named after streets in my neighborhood of St. Louis. And there's a lot of really good names for some reason. And so I just usually look at the map of where I'm from and I just look at the names. So let me tell you some names that I thought about naming it. None of these really fit, but they could fit for other things. Number 1 is Macklin. I love that name.
Macklin.
So at one point I thought about having the Macklin Running Club. Um, the second one is Sablette. I've always liked Sablette. Uh, the third one was Simpson. That was a street I grew up near. And then the last one, check this out. King's Highway. Is King's Highway awesome? I love King's Highway. I love King's Highway. And then eventually we settled on Hampton because I grew up near Hampton Avenue and everyone thinks that it means the Hamptons. It doesn't. It means Hampton. And so sometimes people will say like, oh, I love the Hamptons referring to my company. And I'm like, no, it's Hampton. So we settled on Hampton because I had a good, uh, that had a good sound to it.
By the way, can you tell me, in deciding a name, uh, is that like a 1-day process, a 1-hour process, a 1-month process for you? And are you bouncing it off people, or are you just going into a dark room and saying, what feels right in my soul? Like, what's your— what is the actual way a name gets picked for you?
I only ask like 3 people. Usually it's my wife, my business partner, and that's about it.
3 people, but actually there's only 2. Even better.
Did I just name 2? And myself. The royal we.
Yeah.
Um, No, I don't really ask too many people because I just don't care that much. Like, I just want to like hear someone's gut opinion. But, um, and also hampton.com, I don't think I'm ever going to get, you know, who owns that is Marriott.
Yeah. The Hampton Inn. Yeah.
Uh, so I don't know if I'm ever going to get that, but check this out with branding. If you asked me about this 5 or 10 years ago, I'd never in a million years thought this was important, but I actually do. I hired a branding agency, so I paid $15,000 right out the gate. And what I did was, and I sent this to you, I created this document and it says, it just says one line. It says elite but cheeky. And the reason I was inspired by that was, have you ever read Felix Dennis's book? Yes. How to Get Rich. Yeah. So Felix Dennis is this famous entrepreneur. He's, he's dead now, but he was a wild guy. He was basically a combination of Richard Branson and Mick Jagger. So he had like swagger, but he was like a legit business guy. Um, but he like was, He was like elite in that he was great at what he does, but he was like a silly person and he, uh, wrote in a very conversational way. And I love that. And so when I wrote out this branding document, I listed what the business is, who uses it, whatever. And then what I did was I listed a ton of ads that I liked. So there's a, a bunch of advertisements from the '70s. That's one of my favorite eras for ads. And I found a bunch of GQ ads, Porsche ads, and Rolex ads. Like Rolex had this famous series of ads called The Men Who Built the World Wear Rolex. And they would do like a really cool exposé on like an astronaut. And you could see the astronaut, he's wearing a Rolex, or Dwight Eisenhower, the president of the United States. He's got a Rolex. And it's the men who build America are wearing a Rolex. And so, and then there's one with the Wall Street Journal where it says, money talks, we translate. And it's just this beautiful imagery. And so I took that imagery and then I took the color British Racing Green. You know what British Racing Green is? I mean, it's the Hampton colors., but it's like a famous color from like Land Rover and Jaguar. It's like these British racing colors that I love. And I thought that, 'cause like when I think of a Land Rover or a Range Rover or Jaguar, what do you got there? There you go. That, that's almost— so I, I freaking love that color. That's my favorite color. I've got motorcycles in that color. I've had a car in that color. It's my favorite color. And I took that color and I'm like, we have to make the brand feel like these ads. But be that color. And I wrote a bunch of sentences that I would want on the website. And that's how we selected the branding. And dude, hiring a branding agency is like a total hack.
What are some things along the way of making Hampton that you could have done, but you said no to? And in retrospect, maybe it was a good idea, bad idea. You don't know. You don't know how it would've turned out, but like, what were the nos? Because we can only see what you said yes to. We could see the, the name you chose. You told us what names you said no to. We can see the color you chose. What were the things you said no to along the way? Was there anything else that was like a path you considered?
Here's two really, uh, big ones. So Hampton gets, let's just say, these aren't the exact numbers, but, uh, we'll use them roughly 100 people a day who apply. We accept a fraction of that. And my partner, Joe and I, we watch. So in order to get into Hampton, you have to interview. We watch 100% of the interviews and we are the only people who click approve or deny. That is it. It was us two. That is our job is to watch 100% of the interviews.
So you said no to delegating that out.
We said no to delegating that out. And we also, here's what sucks, dude, we turned down so many people and it's like, we're turning down so much revenue and it fucking kills me. I'm like adding up the numbers when I, now when you ask me, so Chief, uh, cheap.com there, it's, it's like this business, I guess we're like them. But they're for women executives. You know why they grew so fast? They grew to $100 million in revenue in 4 or 5 years. They let in 100% of the people who apply and interview. We don't. And it fucking kills me. I see all this missed revenue and I'm like, oh my God. And so I'm thinking in my head, I'm like, so a lot of people, uh, we've talked about this, but Kingsford Charcoal was invented because Ford had all this extra wood that they used to light their furnaces and they eventually turned it to charcoal. That's how Kingsford Charcoal came about. And so always in my head, I'm like, what's the charcoal I could make from these people who we've rejected or who don't fit our criteria at the moment? And, but we've said no to doing any of those ideas. And so we're all, we said, basically, we're only focusing on CEOs of this demographic, uh, of this type of business. And we're only going to do that until we say otherwise. And there's no time in the near future that we intend to say otherwise.
Well, let me tell you. 2 things I think you could be doing. So let me give you 2 ideas I think you maybe should have said yes to. Number 1, I think if I go to your website right now, I don't see that you say no to that many people or that it's a, that there's a curate, that how heavy the curation is. All the things you just said to me would make me want to join because it's like, oh, they're really actually curating the community. These are actually high quality people. The founders watch every single interview. They accept in less than 1% of people. They have a counter on their website of how many people they've said no to or how many, uh, how much revenue they've said no to in order to make the community solid because that comes first. And we put our money where our mouth is. We turn down this much revenue. I don't know, maybe, maybe it's too, too vulgar, but like, I think you could use that.
The second thing, you got the elite part right now. Now, now we have to make it cheeky.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I just went elite douchey. So I don't know, we got to work on the other part. Um, The other thing I don't think you did a great job of is your story. So like, would you, do you value a founding story in, uh, or like the founder story and the founding story of the company? Do you think that's important or useful?
I think that's incredibly important. And I think I made a mistake because I wanted to make this not the Sam Parr business. And I think I've screwed up. I think I should have leaned into that. I think the way it works, I did this with The Hustle. You can have, the founder can be the company or be the face. For a period of time and you could phase it out. And with this time I was like, I'm not going to be it. And I screwed that up.
Yeah. Yeah. I think you should lean into that because the situations where you don't want the founder to be the, the, the face and the reason to join is when the founder has to deliver the service. It's like the law firm or the specialty, you know, marketing exec. It's like, oh, this guy's great. But oh, now I'm handed off to some junior person. They're doing my marketing. I want that guy on my account. Whereas with this, you don't have to be the account. You're not delivering the actual service. Um, so I think you could use it because the true founding story is that's how we met. We made a peer group in San Francisco when we didn't know shit, when we were running our companies and there was, and our companies could fail or succeed. And in that group came a billion-dollar company, a $100 million company, a $30 million company, a, you know, two failures, but one best man at your wedding and a friend who you ended up investing in their thing. And that came out of that. And then this podcast came out of that. Which then has become one of the top business podcasts, blah, blah, blah. Like that's actually almost like your founding story as an entrepreneur and helped you when you actually sold The Hustle successfully. So from, I remember in our peer groups, it was like, I'm going to do The Hustle. It was an events business. Then no, no, no. Next month. No, it's not an events business. It's a blog business.
You said something that stuck with me and it was, it pissed you off. No, no, because you weren't wrong. You were right. In that I couldn't build a huge company that way, but you were wrong in that I don't have to build a huge company in order to achieve my goals, which was, you go, dude, you're showing up to this fight, you're showing up to this knife fight with just a knife. I don't even want you to have a gun. You need to have a magic fucking wand. And I was like, well, you're not wrong. That would be nice to have that. But I, but I don't. And so until then, we're using our fists.
And Silicon Valley, if you go pitch for investors, You're basically making a promise it's going to be a billion-dollar company. So I was like, I don't think it's going to be a billion-dollar company. What I didn't know is you were like, I'm not trying to build a billion-dollar company. I'm trying to build a company that makes me X millions of dollars and like, and I could do it. It can actually do that. And that would change my life and be fucking awesome, which is a different pitch.
So you were right. But where I was wrong was I shouldn't have aimed for that from the get-go. Right, right. But you were correct.
But so I think, you know, maybe using a founding story would be helpful for you because It's genuine. That's actually, you know, the origin of, I think, you know, a lot of this is like firsthand experience, how the peer group helped you and how blah, blah, blah. And then how it also leads to all these other things that group became, you know, one guy's like, you know, a groomsman at your wedding. Another guy becomes an investment you make down the road, blah, blah, blah. Like that's, that's kind of how these tend to work. So anyways, that's my, my two cents.
Well, thank you. Did you, have you ever used a branding agency?
Um, have I used, I used a guy for the Milk Road. Not, I mean, he's an agency, but it's like a guy, one guy, uh, sketching.
Which I think you actually nailed. I think you nailed that, to be honest. Yeah, I did.
I loved it. It was a cool experience. It definitely felt so indulgent. It's like, oh, and now I'm gonna take a break from my zero revenue business to go through this mood boarding process with this designer and talk about how the brand needs to feel. It's like, it needs to feel like there's a user and a customer. And there's definitely a part of my voice that was like, Shut up. Shut up, you idiot. You go, go build your business. But what we did, the trade-off we did was we actually with Milk Road, we wanted to do a brand right away. And we said, let's reward ourselves with a brand when we get to, I think we said 100,000 subscribers on the, on the list. And I said, today we're going to make the brand. And, but when we get to 100,000, then we'll know like, this is, we can always rebrand. We can, we can polish it up. That's what we did to reward ourselves. I think in the future I would probably use an agency if I'm confident about the idea. If I, uh, it's also just like, I don't know, it's a luxury item. It's not a necessity, but it's a luxury. I think for some things it is a necessity. Like if you're an e-commerce brand or something, you got to get your brand right.
And you know, another thing that I thought was the dumbest thing ever, but I think could be cool, a naming agency.
I used a naming agency once.
I find a lot of value in that now. I think that it's like most agencies where a lot will suck., but I actually think that it could be quite valuable. What, what naming, how much of the naming agency?
I hired a, this is one of my many rookie mistakes. I hired a naming agency once. I paid them $25,000, a lot of money, and I, they came in. Now let me tell you a couple things about them that's interesting. One, the people who work in a naming agency are actually awesome. Somebody who is drawn to that is a super interesting person. And actually the move is to go vet branding agencies or naming agencies. And then just pluck the most interesting person you have and be like, you're gonna run our whole brand. Come over, you just come in-house, you're gonna run our whole brand. That's what I should have done.
And just, just the audacity that they think that they could just name something that could be the job. Yeah.
Yeah. Just who do you think you are? It's like, that's crazy. So the guy, they come in and there's 3 of 'em and I'm like, it takes 3 to do this? Oh my God. And so that's, they, 3 of 'em come in and they sit down and they say, so tell me about, Tell me about the company. And when I tell you, I've never felt as much pressure in a pitch because I'm like, this isn't pitching for an investor or a customer. I'm like, I need to give these creatives, because creative people like that, they're very skeptical. You know, they see a bunch of corporate BS. It's like, I need to be cool and so clear and I need to capture the essence inside this business. I can't just say the surface level because that's what they want. They were like, yeah, but what is it? And you're like, I just told you what it is. What do you mean? What is it? So anyways, I had this conversation with them. And then I'm like, I wanna know this guy's process. And so I leave the room, he comes, I come back in, he smokes a bunch of weed, eats Cheetos, he's sitting in his style in the middle of the room. He's moved our table to the side. He's sitting in his style on the floor with the white— I took our whiteboard, put it on the ground, and he's writing long sentences. And I'm like, this is not names. Like, this is like paragraphs. What are you doing? And he's just writing out almost in first person. This was awesome actually. He was writing out in first person. Uh, I think we were doing a dating app at the time, so he was, he was helping us with a dating app. He was just writing out like from first person, almost venting as the customer. He's like, I don't download a dating app. I download dating apps, all of them, every single one of them. It's embarrassing. And he's like, I've tried them all. I use them all and I hate them all, but I use them. I hate use them. And he's like, I hate them because it's mostly me sitting there sending out messages that are not getting replies. And I just, and then the next message I send, I know this is probably not going to reply. That's a pretty hopeless feeling. At least if I go up to a girl at a bar, she rejects me to my face. Online cowards. These women are cowards. And he's like, they don't even reply. And well, so then he's, he's just venting and he's like, and then he's scratching stuff out. Cause he's like, no, that's not really true. But it was almost like slam poetry. It's like he was trying to like almost get into the feeling of the problem and then the solution. And he was, but he was doing it not in a business planning way, but a, a, I really actually liked that process and I kind of hijacked that. So. I paid a very expensive $25K to learn that one process, which is actually very useful as a copywriter to, to like get to the essence of like what you're trying to do. The name ended up sucking and like they did all these exercises where there would be like, they put out these flashcards that were like Branson, Elon Musk, Einstein. They're like, pick, pick, pick two that you think fit. And then they'd be like Corvette, Rolex, Louis Vuitton, blah, blah, blah, pick two. And then I'm like, dude, what is this personality quiz? And I was just like, I hated the whole process. And then whatever the name was, whatever it was. I don't even remember.
What was the name? You don't even remember the name?
I'm sorry. It's a very unsatisfying ending to it, but, um, how do you not remember the name that they picked? That's c'est la vie.
That's what you should have called the fucking app.
The app like failed by the time they gave us the name. We were like, oh, this is a stupid idea. We don't know how to do this app. Let's move on.
I still think it's worth it, by the way. Uh, I still think it's worth it. I think that's a lot of money though. $25 grand is a lot. I think I paid my branding agency $15,000.
Yeah. It's hard though. When you, once you start to fall into that hole, you're like, well, do I want the best brand or just a mediocre brand? Like, how much is my brand going to be worth? Is it not worth an extra $5K? It's very hard to say no.
Dude, that's ridiculous. Um, is that the pod?
Well, let's, let's recap real quick. It took you, you did your research in public. It took you 5 false starts on figuring out who is the customer. And the way you did it was you had an idea that sounded good in theory, and then you went and tried to contact them and be like, do you want this? And then you got like punched in the face 5 times. And then one of them looked great, but then like no founder fit. And you settled on what was probably the obvious idea. So that's like the first takeaway. Second takeaway, um, your name is awesome. The name is awesome, but you use streets around you. Okay. I don't know if anyone else wants to copy that. Mine would be, uh, Grand Floral Boulevard, which I don't think is gonna make for a great startup name.
No, San Francisco has a bunch of good names too.
Well, that's where I used to live when I was a kid. I think we, I think we should show the deck that you made for the branding agency. The, because you, this is not what they gave you. This is what you gave them to get a good output. You know, 'cause you garbage in, garbage out. If you give the bad instructions or bad prompt, you're gonna get a bad result on the brand. So I think that's cool to show. And I think, you know, maybe one, one other thing that I think people could take away is using a founder story. I think a founder story is very powerful.
And I think I need to fix that. So I just got like $25,000 worth of advice for free. So that's good. I appreciate that.
Um, all right. Is that it? Is that the pod?
That's it. That's the pod.
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.