Welcome

Well folks, it doesn’t get any better than this.

Somehow, you found this site. I never promote it. This means you cared enough to Google me or, gasp, type in samparr.com into your browser.

That’s great, so welcome.

I don’t know why exactly you’re here. But I’l tell you a little bit about myself.

Early Life

  • Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. Raised on The Hill, the Italian neighborhood. Went to SLUH!
  • Attended Belmont University. Was a Division I NCAA 200m and 400m. I used to be super fast, and super fit!
  • Start hot dog stands in Nashville. Southern Sam’s: Weiner’s as Big as a Baby’s Arm.
  • Also worked for the tv show, American Pickers.
  • Started an ecom store in college. Made hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars a day. Realized the internet was awesome. So, I google-d where internet companies were. Someone said San Francisco. So, I decided I wanted to go there.

Later life

  • In 2012 I heard about this company called Air Bed and Breakfast (now Airbnb). Cold-emailed the founder. He asked me to visit the office. I was in Nashville but told him I’d see him Monday.
  • Flew out there and got the job. Moved out to San Francisco. The day before I was supposed to start, I was fired because I lied on my resume. I had issues with alcohol in college and was arrested. I didn’t disclose that. Not good.
  • So, met a guy and we co-founded a roommate-matching business.
  • It wasn’t a great business, but it paid the bills and was acquired.

Starting media companies

  • In 2014 I started a conference for startup founders. Hustle Con, a +2,500 person conference.
  • In 2016 I parlayed that into starting The Hustle, a popular newsletter that’s now read by 3 million people a day. We helped pioneer the newsletter business. People mocked me for doing this. One media founder, who’s now a famous VC, told me it’d never make more than $1m/year. Good call, jackass.
  • Bootstrapped it to over 7-figures a month in revenue. Sold for tens of millions to HubSpot.
  • I think The Hustle could have hit $100m/year in revenue by year 10. But I wanted financial freedom by 30, so I sold.
  • The Hustle owned the daily email, My First Million, other podcasts, Trends.co, and a bunch of conferences

Now-ish

  • Co-host My First Million, one of the most popular business podcasts in the world.
  • Dabble in real estate: Airbnbs, storage units, new developments, and things like that.
  • Own other companies that I’ll announce soon. One will be very big (I think!).
  • Also…my new company is Hampton. It’s a peer group for high-growth executives.

Links

Personal stuff

Wow, still here? Ok, time for the fun stuff.

  • I collect motorcycles. I’m always buying and selling bikes on Craigslist.
  • I do lots of road trips. Here’s my photo album from a moto trip +40k views.
  • When I was 21 I was part of the TV show American Pickers. I helped set up their Nashville store.
  • I went to college on a track and field scholarship (I ran the 200m and 400m).
  • I moved to San Francisco in 2012 when I was 22. Live there until 2020. Now I spend most of my time between NYC and Austin.
  • I used to blog a lot – that’s how/why I started The Hustle. My blog is called The Anti-MBA. I don’t blog much there anymore.
  • I’m big into fitness. I set new challenges each quarter, like trying to bench 330 lbs, squat 430 lbs, do an Iron Man, get my vertical jump to 35 inches, do a boxing match. I succeed most of the time (but not always!).
  • I have an amazing wife named Sara and a tattoo of my 80-pound pitball dog, Sid, on my leg.

OK, well that’s all for now…