Email was the original “killer app” — everyone uses it, and that’s why it’s been the absolute best channel for digital marketing and audience building. And yes, that’s still true in 2018.
The stats don’t lie. Every $1 spent on email marketing produces $44 in return, probably because 58% of adults wake up and immediately check their email (mostly on smartphones). And email remains 40 times better at converting people than Facebook and Twitter.
More interesting are the new breed of media companies that not only depend on email, they are email. Companies like theSkimm, Dave Pell’s NextDraft, and my own newsletter Further.
Today we’re chatting with Sam Parr of one of the best examples of an email-based media company — The Hustle. Aimed at unemployable types like you, Parr’s brainchild is also an example of how you might shift your thinking when it comes to audience building and client development.
The Show Notes
Transcript
The Email Newsletter as Media Platform, with Sam Parr
Sam Parr: So, I am Sam Parr. I am the founder of The Hustle and CEO of The Hustle. Not only am I incredibly unemployable, but I’ve been fired from my first three or four jobs between the ages of 16 and about 20.
Voiceover: Welcome to Unemployable. The show for people who can get a job, they’re just not inclined to take one, and that’s putting it gently. In addition to this podcast, thousands of freelancers and entrepreneurs get actionable advice and other valuable resources from the weekly Unemployable email newsletter. Join us by registering for our Free Profit Pillars Course, or choose to sign up for the newsletter only at no charge. Simply head over to Unemployable.com, and take your business and lifestyle to the next level. That’s Unemployable.com.
Brian Clark: Email was the original “killer app — everyone uses it, and that’s why it’s been the absolute best channel for digital marketing and audience building. And yes, that’s still true in 2018.
The stats don’t lie. Every $1 spent on email marketing produces $44 in return, probably because 58% of adults wake up and immediately check their email (mostly on smartphones). And email remains 40 times better at converting people than Facebook and Twitter.
More interesting are the new breed of media companies that not only depend on email, they are email. Companies like theSkimm, Dave Pell’s NextDraft, and my own newsletter Further.
Today we’re chatting with Sam Parr of one of the best examples of an email-based media company — The Hustle. Aimed at unemployable types like you, Parr’s brainchild is also an example of how you might shift your thinking when it comes to audience building and client development.
I’m Brian Clark, and welcome to Unemployable. We’ve got advice and resources for the self-employed, whether you’re a freelancer, a consultant or an entrepreneur.
This episode of Unemployable is brought to you by the all new FreshBooks, easy accounting software for people just like you. You’ve simply got to try it for yourself and you can do it with this special unrestricted 30-day free trial. Simply go to Freshbooks.com/unemployable, and then enter “Unemployable in the “How Did You Hear About Us? section to claim your free 30-day trial.
Sam, thanks so much for joining us.
Sam Parr: Yeah, thank you for having me. I’m excited we finally got to do this.
Brian Clark: I’ve got to say that you raise the bar with that intro, because I think a lot of us have been fired from jobs, but we don’t always admit that part of it. We’re like, “No, we’re amazing now.
Sam Parr: No, a lot of people say they’re unemployable, because it’s like a cute sounding thing, but I’m like, “I’ve just been fired a bunch of times.
Brian Clark: No, I identify with the word literally, because I was an attorney at one point, so I thought it was just to practice the law, but I found out I just can’t work for anyone. So for some people, I think it’s more literal than cute.
Sam Parr: No, not only did I use to, but to this day, it scares me and it makes me nervous and embarrassed. I wish I actually were more employable to be honest.
What Was Your Journey to The Hustle?
Brian Clark: That’s funny. Well, you’re doing pretty well. Before we get to The Hustle, which is one of my favorite newsletters, let’s talk a little bit about Sam between getting fired and The Hustle. Because you did have some pretty cool entrepreneurial success that I think everyone ought to hear about it.
Sam Parr: Yeah. So, I’m from Missouri. I went to college in Tennessee. My mom and dad are entrepreneurs, and my brother’s an entrepreneur. Growing up this whole idea — I didn’t know what a startup was — but growing up, I’d always started and sold products on my own, whether it’s buying used cars and fixing them up and selling them or motorcycles or anything like that.
But my first legitimate, business license, insurance type of business was when I was about 20 years old in college. I started a chain of hot dog stands. That was my first like thing where I had employees and was doing everything legitimately and legally, you know what I mean? I did that when I was a junior in college in Nashville, Tennessee. I had a chain of hot dog stands called “Southern Sam’s: Wieners as Big as a Baby’s Arm.
Brian Clark: I like it.
Sam Parr: I didn’t know anything about the Internet back then. So I started this chain of hot dog stands and I worked like a dog. It was really, really hard. And Nashville in the summer can be 100 or 110 degrees and really humid and it’s really hard work and it’s labor intensive.
Then I ended up starting an online liquor store in my free time called Moonshine Online. That started making money and I would be in class, in finance class or some type of business class, and my phone would go, “Ka-ching, ka-ching, because my PayPal app was working. I was like, “This is a thousand times better than going to school and working outside when it’s 100 degrees selling hotdogs. So, I was like, “The Internet is the way to go. That was my first little personal Internet business.
Then my senior year, I did some googling and I found out that there was this place called San Francisco and that’s what Silicon Valley was. I always thought Silicon Valley was like in LA and I didn’t know what it was. I emailed a couple of guys, two people in particular, one person worked at a company called Uber Cab, and another person worked at a company called Airbedandbreakfast.com. And I emailed these guys who worked at these companies and obviously that’s Uber and Airbnb. And I was like, “Hey, so is San Francisco awesome? Is that where entrepreneurs hangout? Tell me more about this. It sounds like the promised land.
They’re like, “Yeah, it’s awesome. It’s like innovation is everywhere and it’s normal to start businesses and young people are starting great things and it’s not weird to be unemployable, like you said.
So, I left school a little bit early and I eventually got a degree, but I left a little early and moved out here, and sold everything I owned and moved out here.
Brian Clark: That’s fascinating. And you’re so enthusiastic. You’re the opposite of the jaded Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur, and I think that’s really refreshing.
Sam Parr: Well, I think I am a little jaded towards Silicon Valley. I mean, I love it and I hate it.
Brian Clark: Well, I’m jaded towards Silicon Valley, but you’re not jaded about life and business. At least it doesn’t seem that way to me.
Sam Parr: No, not even a little bit. I think I’m the exact opposite of jaded in that. I think that as I’ve grown older and more mature and slightly more wise, I’ve realized that the sexiness of starting a business and the shininess of it isn’t exactly the cool part. The cool part is just helping others create income and create a job for themselves or to be able to employ people, so folks can have a family and provide for their family. I think, to me, that’s the most attractive thing to it.
With some hard work and some luck, your dream becomes a reality. And I truly believe that that actualization thing, it’s real and it’s the driving force of my nature, my driving force of all my work.
Brian Clark: Right, that’s cool. I feel similarly. I mean, I’ve never been the VC growth company type, although we’ve grown a pretty decent-sized company. But the fact that I’m responsible for all these other families who work together with us is an honor. And also the reason you get up and you get to work every day to make sure that that works out.
Did You Sell Your Companies?
Brian Clark: Anyway, did you sell one or more companies?
Sam Parr: Yeah, I started this little hot dog thing and that’s not like an Internet business, so it’s not like it’s going to have margins or revenue like an Internet company. But I got a little bit of money for it when I sold it. And then I had some really small websites that made a couple of grand a month that I sold.
Then when I moved out to San Francisco, I met a guy named John who — I actually stayed at his house on Airbnb. He was a couple of years older than me. But I was like, “I’ve never met anyone who was working for themselves. He had started a business and he let me join him as a cofounder, and we eventually had a small exit with that one.
What Was Your Thought Process in Creating The Hustle?
Brian Clark: Oh, nice. Okay. So all of this kind of led up to you looking around for the next thing and I’m presuming that next thing was The Hustle. Tell us what was going through your mind when you conceived of that project.
Sam Parr: Sure. What The Hustle is today is we’re a brand where we tell many, many, many hundreds of thousands of people a day all the business news they need to know in the morning. It started because after selling Bunk — I didn’t get fired, but I left because they probably were going to fire me from the company that bought us. I was like, “What projects should I do now? I ended up hosting a conference called Hustle Con, which is pretty much like a TED Talk but for entrepreneurs.
My vision was: I’ll host this event and make it cool and fun. Hopefully, I can get 400 people to come and maybe I can meet someone nice there who I can partner with or I can find new ideas and it will somehow help my career, though I don’t exactly have a plan for what’s going to happen.
In order to make this conference popular, I just started doing content marketing, specifically an email newsletter. One thing led to another and in seven weeks, that conference sold out, like 3 or 400 people, and made 60 grand in profit. And I was like, “Damn, maybe something is here. I don’t know. Maybe.
In doing that content marketing, I got really interested in journalism and I got really interested in content. So I read the founder of CNN, his biography, Ted Turner. I was really inspired by how CNN kind of shaped culture. CNN, as well as Fox, it doesn’t matter where you fall politically. Both of those have undoubtedly shaped culture. And I thought that that was really inspiring how they did that.
I did some more research and I was like, “Man, CNN and Fox, they’re huge companies, but their average viewer is like 70-years-old. Like, “These companies are literally going to die very soon, because their audience is dying. And I thought, “Maybe there’s an opportunity here. If I’m good enough at creating content that convinces a stranger to come off the Internet and attend an event and pay money for it, maybe we can do more with that content.
And so, me and John hosted a conference again and it made way more money, and we used that money to launch The Hustle.
The vision was: let’s create a huge media brand that takes this entire generation of these builders and these makers, an entrepreneurial business minded niche, which is actually quite large. Let’s try to push them forward and we’ll start by giving them the news they need each morning.
Brian Clark: Yeah, that’s fascinating. I know about Hustle Con, but I didn’t know it was first. So, really, you learned how to market this conference. It succeeded and that led to a broader concept of The Hustle.
Sam Parr: Exactly. And it allowed us to bootstrap the business. It paid for the company.
Brian Clark: Yeah, that’s fantastic. We’re big fans of bootstrapping. I love it, because I do a curated email newsletter in the personal growth space called Further.
Sam Parr: I know, I’m on it.
Brian Clark: Oh, cool. I kind of mimic Dave Pell’s style, who has a more general news thing called NextDraft. He’s been on the show before. And you’re like theSkimm for entrepreneurs, but I don’t remember who came first. But I love the style and the voice that you use. And I also love that you called yourself a media company right from the get-go, because that’s the way to think about it.
Sam Parr: Yeah, the way that we saw it, and I’m looking at actually drawings on our whiteboard of how I visualize this to people. But basically, I believe that all future media companies need to have multiple streams of income and that’s all based on a brand and some sort of technology that makes them efficient and trustworthy.
What we’re doing to build our brand is doing this newsletter. Then, as we begin to expand, we have a very, very efficient and profitable operation. So, as we expand our business, we’re going to leverage the trust that we’ve built with all these people via our newsletters, and we’re going to launch other products on top of that.
Brian Clark: Yeah, absolutely. That’s been the Copyblogger model and we’ve always thought of ourselves as a media company, even though we sell web hosting and software and courses, what have you. The only thing we don’t sell is sponsorships and advertising. But you also include that element, which I think is smart, especially given how much the audience has grown.
Sam Parr: Yeah, and I am a total media and advertising outsider. So, our company, we’re all outsiders, all of our employees. We have about 20 employees now, and we’re all outsiders. But, I never knew how profitable and how big advertising can be. It can be quite large. And it’s just like conferences. It’s allowing us to fund more product creation.
How Do People and Advertisers Respond to the Email Newsletter?
Brian Clark: Yeah, how do people respond? Because it’s funny, every year for the last 10, people said email was dying and yet some of the most interesting businesses are email-based. It’s certainly where I focus my attention.
Sam Parr: Anyone who says email’s dying is on drugs or stupid.
Brian Clark: Well, I’ve been saying that for… It’s fascinating
Are you finding that these advertisers understand that if you can engage with an email audience, that’s better than on page advertising or other forms of digital advertising? Because of the congruence…Anyone can launch a Facebook Ad, but you have an affinity with your audience that I think advertisers can kind of latch on to.
Sam Parr: Yeah, and they get results. I mean, you know more than more than anyone.
If you look at the economics of email – if you send something to a small amount of people, let’s say you send an email to a thousand people, you might get the same results as if you had 100,000 people come to your website. The results are significant.
We have a lot of advertisers. There are brand advertisers and there are direct response advertisers. We have a lot of both. We have big brands like Target or Walmart or Red Bull and Microsoft who want brand advertising. But then we have people who want to spend a dollar to make $2, and we get results. And I would like to think it’s because we’re brilliant, but in reality, it’s because the strategy that we’ve kind of lucked into, it just works really well.
How Did You Develop the Voice for The Hustle?
Brian Clark: Now, it’s interesting to me, how did you develop the voice for The Hustle? Because I think that’s one of the coolest things. I’m a Gen X guy and I think you’re mainly targeting millennials, but I enjoy the way it’s written and the style in which you basically take somewhat boring business news and make it cool or at least digestible.
Sam Parr: Yeah. Basically I was the first writer and then John was the first writer, and we kind of created the foundation of the voice. It was heavily inspired by — I took a course by Neville Medhora, who’s now one of my best friends and investor. And it inspired me to write like I speak. I just began studying tons of authors and tons of TV shows and figuring out how they write. Me and John kind of created the initial foundation. And then we just hired a few amazing people. Our head editor now, Lindsey, she just totally took that and put it on steroids and made it a thousand times better.
The voice was just shaped by me and John, like, “How would we write to our really smart friends? And then we also just stole a lot of strategies from a lot of old school copywriters like Dave. If you read David Ogilvy’s book, what’s it called? Confessions of an Ad Man?
Brian Clark: Yep. Also, Ogilvy on advertising is a classic. You’re talking my language now.
Sam Parr: Some of those old school books or Joe Sugarman or The Boron Letters, Gary Halbert.
Brian Clark: Eugene Schwartz, I don’t know if you’ve read Breakthrough Advertising?
Sam Parr: Yeah, of course. The way that they spoke in those books and these are 100 to 300 page books, they’re not like emails. But the way that they wrote in the books, it was incredibly conversational, yet still very intelligent. That was kind of how we created that.
Then now we have a media guide or a style guide where we say, “Here are the words that we’ll use, here are the words we won’t use. And it’s become quite refined so we can take people who’re talented and train them.
Brian Clark: Yeah. I was wondering if you had a style guide, because I know you always make a joke about yourself in the credits. Oh wait, you’re not in this last…
Sam Parr: I’m not in the latest one.
Brian Clark: I know, that’s the first time I haven’t seen you there. Of course, I have to bring it up and I’m looking.
Sam Parr: If you go to last week’s, you’ll see one. But yeah, that started, because I used to do that for Hustle Con. Our original vision was like, “Let’s make every single piece of copy entertaining or educational. Whether it’s our pop-ups or our authors’ names, they have to be on brand and they’ve got to push the audience forward and be entertaining.
Brian Clark: Yeah, I love it. It is consistent and I love that it started with you, but you’ve — I don’t want to say “scale — but by having demonstrable voice and also a style guide, these people have something to look at and go, “Okay, this is what this sounds like.
Sam Parr: Yeah. And that’s what our team has built. I am not good at doing any of that stuff, but we’ve had this amazing team who’s basically taken a little bit of foundation and just have totally organized it properly and made it better.
What Role Has the Ambassador Program Played in Your Growth?
Brian Clark: Cool. I like it. So, I wanted to ask about this, because it seems to me that in the last year or so, you guys maybe 5x-ed your subscriber base. For some reason, I think it was around 100 grand, and now it’s like 500. It could be even more.
Sam Parr: It’s a lot more. We add many thousands of subscribers a day at this point. Maybe a year ago, it was 100,000. We’ll be two years on April 20th, and it’s growing quickly.
Brian Clark: What kind of role has the ambassador program played in your growth?
Sam Parr: Yeah, we have this ambassador program where people refer subscribers and they get gifts, whether it’s t-shirts or stickers or tickets to stuff. It’s been helpful. We have maybe 4,000 ambassadors. Each ambassador refers maybe 25 people. It’s been, I don’t know, what’s that? Maybe 15% of our growth.
It’s helped, but more importantly, arguably more importantly than just the numbers, is whenever we think of new ideas, we test it with that 4,000 group and they just tell us all types of cool feedback. If we fail with them, it’s not a big deal, because they love us and they’ll give us honest feedback. And it makes it really easy to test new shit.
Brian Clark: Yeah, so these are your evangelists, advocates, but there’s a more formal structure to it where they actually get rewarded for possibly doing what they would do anyway, which is tell their friends about The Hustle.
Sam Parr: Yeah. We have this automated system where if you get 10 people to join, you’re automatically mailed a sticker. We have a fulfillment center and they send stickers. If you get 25, you get some t-shirt. If you get 50, you get a hoodie. It’s completely automated, and we just send merch to them.
Brian Clark: Yeah, I like it. I’ve really enjoyed looking through some of the stuff you put out there. So, instead of just saying we’re going to create an online store, although you do sell merch too, or am I wrong about that?
Sam Parr: Kind of, not really. It’s actually the automated system that we have set up, we use Shopify to do it. This is like really tactical, but I’m sure a lot of people will enjoy it. The Shopify store, in reality, sells things at a zero price and then we have a fulfillment center to fulfill those $0 Shopify orders. And then we were just like, “Screw it, let’s just make a slash shop page where we just put stuff for sale, and let’s just see if anyone buys it. Who knows?
Brian Clark: Yeah. But it really fuels your loyalty and reward program more than anything else.
Sam Parr: Yeah, we’ve mailed out like 10,000 stickers or 20,000 stickers or something like that. It’s really all about fueling that.
Do You Do Any Other Marketing or Advertising to Build Your Base?
Brian Clark: Yeah, that’s cool. Do you do any other kind of marketing or advertising to build that base or are you really just seeing word of mouth, people forwarding, talking about, linking?
Sam Parr: That’s been huge for us. Kind of recently, we began doing Facebook advertising, because we know what our lifetime value of the user is. We know how much revenue we earn per user per month. And so, it’s like, “All right, what’s our payback cycle for that? So, then what CPA can we spend? And as long as we are below that CPA, we pour money into it.
Brian Clark: Yeah, and so that includes your entire array so far of revenue sources, which would include the conference and email advertising. You guys probably do a lot more than I’m even consciously aware of, because most of the time, I’m just reading the newsletter. But at the same time, since I am in the industry to a degree, both on original content creation and now curation, I’m also going, “What are they doing behind the scenes there?
Sam Parr: I think that our daily newsletter’s the tip of the iceberg, and a lot of people don’t realize this. But what we’re trying to build here is that we have a database of many, many hundreds, many millions of high-quality people. I mean, the people who are interested in this stuff are the movers and shakers of the country I think. If you have a database of that type of person and with someone’s email…
It’s fun talking to you, because you know all about this. What we’ve built is an entire media company in email, which means we need content recommendations kind of like when you go into Business Insider and recommend certain articles. We need our own ad platform, which is like when you go to Business Insider, you see advertisements. We built all of that on our own. We have our own email sending platform, and then once you have someone’s email, you have so much information about them. You know how it is. If you have someone’s email, you know their LinkedIn, where they work, how many Twitter followers they have – a ton of information.
We have a ton of people who are high-quality and spend a lot of money and earn a lot of money. We have this huge database of that. And we also have an automated email or like an ad network now for our email. The potential is quite huge as to what we can accomplish just with that email list and this technology that we’ve built. So, like I said, we’re building this brand and we’re building this tech behind the scenes. And now, hopefully, we’re going to solve more problems in our customers’ lives and be able to launch this product in a very systematic way. And it all just starts with email at the foundation.
Brian Clark: Yeah, I’m totally feeling this. I almost think I’m going to have to find you at the next conference and buy you a drink to ask you more questions, because you don’t want to pull back the curtain completely.
Sam Parr: I don’t want to pull back completely, but we can talk after this. You know how it is. You guys must have hundreds of thousands of emails, right?
Brian Clark: We do. Yeah.
Sam Parr: Imagine if you wanted to, I don’t know, do you use your own email sending service or do you use SendGrid or what do you guys use?
Brian Clark: Yeah, it’s interesting. We do have on the Rainmaker Platform side, we developed our own email. We don’t use SendGrid, we’ve got a different server partner, but similar concept. And that’s really our platform. It started with WordPress, but then we proprietarily enhanced it. I don’t know where your starting point was. Is John a coder or you? It doesn’t seem like you have that in your background.
Sam Parr: No, I can’t even log into our stuff. But John’s self-taught and we also have a team of developers. But yeah, he is.
Brian Clark: Yeah. But when you first started it was just you and John. You guys had to do the writing. He had to code stuff and that reminds me of 2006, 2007 when it was just me and Tony Clark and his wife. And then you go forward and then you’re at eight figures and 65 employees and you’re like, “Wow, how did this happen? But we just did the next thing every year. It sounds like you’ve got that same mentality, just a new way to basically engage the audience while also creating a new revenue stream for the company. Not only is there nothing wrong with that, that’s a perfect model.
Sam Parr: Yeah. And not only that, I actually think it’s more, I don’t know, maybe I’m being too romantic. I think of the macro environment, which is media. I don’t agree with him — and there’s one thing I do agree with, which is this whole fake news thing that Donald Trump talks about, it’s actually true. Media is screwed, because in order to get revenue dollars, they have to get more traffic. In order to get more traffic, they’ve got to gain Facebook. And the best way to gain Facebook is to publish outlandish stuff, and it creates a horrible cycle. I think that the model that we’re trying to build, I actually think it could save a lot of really great media brands if they just replicate this.
Brian Clark: You’re so right and I’m glad you brought this up, because when Dave Pell and I had a conversation right after the election, I was like, “I know you’re not happy about the results, but you are a trusted source for curated news. People know Dave Pell is not going to link to fake news any more than The Hustle’s going to link to some BS entrepreneurial crap. From what I’ve been seeing, and I’ve been reading for a while, same thing with me. That’s my argument, which is I’ve shifted to more curating than creation, because the world needs trusted editors. If you can become a trusted editor, that is a media brand.
Sam Parr: Exactly, breaking news at this point is a commodity, anyone on Twitter breaks news. Some of it can be legitimate, you just don’t know who to trust. The way that I see it is between the years of 2010 and up until recently, media companies have had not only to create great content, but they’ve had to gain distribution in order to get eyeballs. Whereas in the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, Johnny Carson, he knew every single week that about the same amount of people or slightly more were going to watch this show every week, because it was one of the few things on, right? All he had to focus on was like, “How do I create something that’s going to provide value?
Now, you’ve got new brands now where they’re like, “The value that I’m providing is just the eyeball. So, it’s like a different incentive structure. With email, it’s like, “I’ve got the distribution already. I just have to invest in people who can create great stuff for these eyeballs. Do you know what I mean?
What Are You Seeing Out There for Entrepreneurs Who Are at an Earlier Stage in Their Business?
Brian Clark: Yeah, absolutely, I do. All right, so you’ve got an audience listening here of the type of people that The Hustle informs, what are your thoughts from that perspective? As someone who pays close attention by necessity to the entrepreneurial space? Maybe even freelancers who are just getting out on their own and hoping one day to evolve to the next level like most of us did. What are you seeing for these people out there? I mean, we’re seeing dominance by the big tech companies, we’re seeing it harder, I think to get a startup funded. What are your takes? I’m going to be quiet now.
Sam Parr: Guide me here a little more. So, what’s my take on the…
Brian Clark: In my opinion, we’ve kind of not left behind the startup period, but the frothiness I think is dying down. Meanwhile, I’m talking to what could be called the companies of one, because I think the shifts in the economic landscape are going to really disrupt traditional employment. Those who can make the leap and be self-sufficient before then, I think, have an advantage over those who are hanging onto the job.
I’m just wondering, do you think about things at that level and what do you think?
Sam Parr: Yeah, I think about that myself. So, I have a company now and I’m an employee of the company. We’ve raised a little bit of funding, but we haven’t raised a massive amount of funding, as I always think it’s important to get that nest egg or to get that safety net built.
So, when I was just a company of one, it was, “How do I de-risk the downside as much as possible?
Brian Clark: Yeah, I get that.
Sam Parr: For me, all I think about is, “How do I de-risk the downside? And now, when I think of the downside, I think of liabilities. Costs. To start something, it’s never been cheaper. I mean, I don’t think ever in the history of the world it’s been cheaper to start something that could scale so quickly. You can start an Internet business for $100 and it can start making five grand a month like immediately. So, it’s never been cheaper. That downside is great.
Then, if I were a freelancer, I would try to build up an audience. I guess I’m biased, but an email audience, as soon as possible. Because that’s a very predictable, invisible stream of income that makes life way easier, thus decreasing the risk big time.
Brian Clark: Yeah, It’s interesting because I see this same model. It’s tough to create original content anymore as a little person compared to 10 years ago. So, I acknowledge that.
But even a freelancer could build a curated email newsletter audience that brings them clients. So, immediate revenue. But as that audience grows, because it’s more than just, “It’s me and my business and here’s what I do. It’s more like something like The Hustle or Further or NextDraft or what have you, where it does evolve into a really sustainable, solid small business, because you’ve got that audience.
Sam Parr: Exactly. Additionally, I believe that Facebook and Google, if you look at what they cost to acquire a customer from an advertising point of view — people who advertise on Facebook, cost per clicks and CPAs and CPMs, they’re going up every single year. You know how we look back at Google and we look at them from like 2008, 2009, and you’re like, “Man, a cost per click for this thing was so cheap. I wish I would have exploited that sooner. I think that we’re going to see a rapid increase of cost per thousand views on a lot of these platforms that we’re used to.
If I were just starting now, which I kind of am just starting now, but if I were just starting from scratch now, I would be like, “I need to get in now while the getting’s good. Because it’s going to get harder and harder each year to acquire customers. Because the more people who flock to the Internet and flock to search and flock to Facebook and social, it’s just a supply and demand issue. You have to have the inventory, which is eyeballs. And then you have to have people supplying advertisements for that. It’s just going to get harder and harder and harder.
If you’re a freelancer, start now because every day it’s going to get harder.
Brian Clark: Yeah, and you’re right, the cost per click thing. I thought it was outrageous around 2005 and that was nothing. So, I turned away from that model, went to content marketing like you did. But now…
Everything always evolves, but audience doesn’t. If you can get an audience, you almost offer a competing product to the big platforms out there.
Sam Parr: Which is what we do.
Brian Clark: Exactly, yes. I love that.
Sam Parr: We’re making a lot of money, because people cannot get the results that they get (for our audience) that they get on Facebook. Yeah, you totally can.
What Alternative Subscription Channels Are You Considering?
Brian Clark: Yup. Last question, because I just hosted a webinar on this topic yesterday. Not as an email killer, but as an alternative subscription channel, have you guys thought about, for example, the whole Chatbot technology, Facebook Messenger? Alternate ways for people to subscribe that’s not in the inbox?
Sam Parr: Yes. And I’m not bullish on it yet.
Brian Clark: Interesting. I wasn’t either. I’m thinking about it at least now.
Sam Parr: I’m certainly thinking about it. I think about these things all the time. I think Messenger is the best for communicating. That’s how you and I talk. I think that Messenger is the greatest thing ever. But I personally have not been able to conceptualize how a brand will communicate. And I’ve never seen another brand do it effectively. Can it be done? Yeah, probably. But I’ve never seen anyone do it now where I’m like, “Oh, they nailed it. And in my head I’ve not figured out how to handle it.
Brian Clark: Yeah, do you guys publish a web version of every issue of The Hustle?
Sam Parr: Yeah, that’s how we get a lot of search and social traffic which ends up becoming subscribers.
Brian Clark: Me too. So, the only thing I envision is that sometimes you have to struggle to render the email the way you want it in every email client. For example, Yahoo still screws up Further’s template even though we’ve tried to refine it every time.
The only thing I see about Messenger for example is it’s just a link to the web version. You’re always getting traffic to the actual site, but the same content. That’s where my head is going, but it would be an alternative. Because to me, as you started this conversation, email is still the channel that you want to develop.
Sam Parr: I think it could be an alternative. I just am not impressed with anyone I’ve seen and I’m not particularly inspired by it at the moment. I think it can be done, and I’m going to keep trying. But I think that people got all hot and bothered by it and they’re like, “Chatbots are the next best thing. It’s kind of bullshit so far.
Brian Clark: Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, a year ago, my friend Andrew Warner was trying to tell me about Chatbots, I’m like, “Not yet. It’s not yet.
Sam Parr: I’ve talked to Andrew a ton about this. I love Andrew, he’s a good friend of mine. I disagree with his opinion though. He went really hard on it and I disagree with it.
Brian Clark: Yeah, that’s interesting. Well, you’ve always got to keep your eyes open. That’s the key. But for me and for you, it’s still you every day, me every week, getting those emails out to the audience. And that’s what matters, serving them.
Sam Parr: Yeah, and maybe I’m just not a smart innovator or something, which I don’t fancy myself as a very innovative person. I more like to execute. It seems, I just know what works and I like doing that. And I morally want to kick that thing’s ass before I totally go deep on something else.
Brian Clark: Yup. Awesome. Sam, I’m so glad we got to chat. I know we took a few stabs at scheduling, two busy people, but this was a great conversation. Like I said, I would do this just standing in the hallway somewhere. But I’m glad we got to share it with other people, because I love to geek out about this stuff.
Sam Parr: And you’re in Boulder?
Brian Clark: I am. And you’re still in San Francisco?
Sam Parr: I’m in San Francisco. I go to LA and San Francisco and New York regularly on business. But I think maybe you can be my excuse to come to Colorado.
Brian Clark: Okay. That sounds good to me. Or I’ll catch you somewhere. Again, thanks for showing up. I appreciate the wisdom and I’m just so impressed with something that I creatively enjoy that is also a badass business. I mean, what could be better than that?
Sam Parr: Thanks, man. I’ve been a big, big, big fan of yours for a long time. So, this is really cool that I get to do this. I’ve followed a lot of your content for years, and I’ve bought a bunch of themes from you.
Brian Clark: Well, I appreciate that very much.
Sam Parr: So, it feels awesome to be able to talk.
Brian Clark: All right, everyone, thanks for tuning in. As always, keep going and find your audience.