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 gonna work. There's a reason your nickname is the vanilla gorilla. Okay, like it wasn't gonna work. I feel like I could rule the world of no But I want to I'm putting my all in it like my day's all on a boat. 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. Uh me I'm jealous of this idea. Andrew Wilkinson was said, I'm so jealous that I didn't start this idea. We are I feel like you got so much right. And

I know that the That in doing any idea. Whatever you cut, you know, there's something called the idea maze. You go through, you wander around, you try to figure out the right path, and you cop you if you're lucky, you pop out the other side with what you did with Hampton, where everything turned out right. What I wanna know is What were the other paths?

you considered but ended up saying no to. along the way'cause nobody sees that stuff. That's on the cutting room floor. I wanna 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 w what was that decision process? I wanna know target market. Like you I feel like you nailed the target market and you've nailed the value prop. Were there three other runner ups that you consider that you didn't have? I kinda wanna see what goes on underneath the surface. beautiful execution comes out.

Well First, thanks. You're you you you hopefully only see the good stuff. Obviously there's all types of bad shit that happens on the on the back end 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 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 how what the bluprint is. And then you were like, Cool, thanks. Gonna go execute on that blueprint. And um and I didn't hide it from them. I I told them I I told them before and after I I'm gonna launch I wanna launch I'm thinking of launching something like this and let's talk about it. Right. So there was nothing unethical or evil about this, but yeah, I wanted to do it publicly so people could see.

So the origin So let me tell you first. So I sold the hustle I think in twenty Two. Yeah. And uh or something like that. And I had about six months.

Or eight months or ten months I forget. Where I was just kinda falling around and I was looking at different ideas. The two 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 does it this isn't in my zone of genius. It's it's a pain in the ass. And it seemed on paper like a good idea. You had a f you created this Facebook group of I forgot what you called, like Sam's short term rental bros or whatever the hell you called it. The S T R crew. The S T R crew, short term rental crew. And people piled in and they started explaining their blueprint. 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 kinda seemed like a good idea.

uh on paper, but you ended up saying no to that. And and it was a good idea. It wasn't a good idea for me. It it it is a profitable thing, whatever. It was cool. The second thing that I thought about doing was uh I thought about creating I've always wanted to create a trucking business. I'm 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.

Like I love the idea of blue collar workers. Yeah. More so than the idea of it. Being amongst them. 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 can do this. And my partner, my now business partner and I, uh we had like a basically a therapy group where we would like bitch and complain about everything going on and we're like I settled on that product. Yeah. 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 part in private. But you didn't do it publicly. And you drove you you drove it to millions of dollars in revenue. Um

Very early on. So very successful thing that Everybody listen 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 three parts of the peer group. So you have an eight person group that have uh like similar size or types of companies, and you basically it's like a therapy group. You just like complain. So it takes about six months to like really like for it to like catch and be awesome, but I have a six person or eight 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 one. Part two 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 Nanny Um What are your guys' best uh advice for agencies that 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 two hundred events a year at this point, uh, including retreats, all these types of things. So um It's highly uh 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 Fifty to seventy meetings. with people trying to convince them to join.

And None of'em wanted it. Hello, dear marketing executive. Yeah. Anyway. No one fucking wanted it. I couldn't get and then eventually I was like I I need to charge like around ten grand a year in order to make this like a viable business. No one fucking wanted it. They were willing to pay five hundred dollars. And I created a group that was actually five hundred dollars. 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 try to get a uh I try to get in touch with ton and like no one wanted it. And then I was like Fortune five hundred CEOs.

Same problem. Like how do I get in touch with the Fortune five hundred CEO? Like I don't I don't know. One. Like it it is really hard. And then paper. But as soon as they came into contact with reality, they got punched in the face and they

Random. Well, this one really punched me in the face. The next one we thought about minorities were 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 gonna work. I'm the opposite of a minority. Uh Business look great on paper. But then look 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. I was like Dude, what are you gonna do when you're like, hey, I was like You know are you gonna have Sarah be the CEO? Like what are you gonna do? You're gonna be like I am this this white man Who's running this guy from you

Possible, but like I don't know. If you Google the word white bread, you're gonna see a picture of Sam Par. Like it feels like it would not have worked. There's a reason your nickname is the vanilla gorilla. Okay, like it wasn't gonna 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're like Fuck it, let's do it. And then

That obviously it 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 kinda sucks. Like I love them, but we don't like align on business. Well, just sounds like it's better founder fit, right? Like you know, it's a it's who it's who our audience is on this podcast. It's where you had a reputation, it's where you knew the relatable pain points. It's you knew how to you knew where to reach him'cause you knew where you hang out. You it's like Way better found. 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 twenty seven, I didn't know what the Hamptons were. I thought I had read about it and 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 one is Macklin. I love that name Macklin. So at one point I thought about having the Macklin running club. Um the second one is Sablet. I've always liked Sablet. Uh The third one was Simpson.

That was a a street I grew up near. And then the last one, check this out. King's Highway. Is Kig's Highway awesome? I love Kiggs Highway. I love Kig'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 peop people will say, like, Oh, I love the Hamptons referring to my company. And I'm like, No, it's Hamptons. So we settled on Hampton because that 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 one day process, a one hour process, a one 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 three people. Usually it's my wife, my business partner, and that's about it. Three people, but Actually, there's only two. Even better. Did I just name two. 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 gonna get. You know who owns that is Marriott. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the Hampton N, yeah. Uh so I don't know if I'm ever gonna get that, but check this out with branding.

If you ask me about this five or ten years ago, I never in a million years thought this was important, but I actually do. I hired a branding agency. So I paid fifteen thousand dollars right out the gate. And what I did was and I sent this to you, I created this document. And and it'll says he uh it just says one line. It says elite but cheeky.

And the reason I was inspired by that was have you 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 f a bunch of advertisements from the seventies. 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 um The men who built the world wear a Rolex. And they would do like a really cool expose 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 uh Wall Street Journals 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 because like when I think of a Land Rover or a Range Rover or Jaguar, What do you got there? There you go.

I l 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 have turned out. But like What were the no's all'cause 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 uh we'll use them. Roughly a hundred 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 one hundred percent 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 one hundred percent 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 turn 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 dot 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 a hundred million in revenue in four or five years.

They let in one hundred percent of the people who apply in 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 turn 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 what 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. Two things I think you could be doing. So can let me give you two ideas I think you maybe should have said yes to. Number one.

I think Uh, if I go to your website right now, I don't see that you say no to that many people or that you 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 like, oh, they're really actually curating the community. These are actually high quality people.

The founders watch every single interview. They let they accept in less than one percent 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. And 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 uh I don't know. We gotta work on the other part. Um

The other thing I don't think you did 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 same par 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 gonna be it and I screwed that up. Yeah, yeah. I think you should lean into that because you know the 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. Like

the the law firm or the 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 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 It was to fail or succeed, and in that group came A billion dollar company. A hundred million dollar company, a thirty million dollar company, a fit to 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 gonna do the hustle. It was an events business. Then 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 it pissed you off.

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. 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 uh we're using our fist. In Silicon Valley if you go pitch for investors.

You're basically making a promise it's gonna be a billion dollar company. So I was like, I don't think this is gonna 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 in Like and I can do it. It can actually do that. And that would change my life and be fucking awesome, which is a different um pitch. So y y you are right. But

Where where I was wrong was I I shouldn't have aimed for that in the get 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 That group became you know. One guy's like, you know, uh a groomsman at your wedding, another guy becomes an investment you make down the road.

Blah, blah, blah. Like that's that's kinda how these tend to work. So anyway, that's my my two sets. 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 a I mean he's an agency, but it's like

A guy, one guy. Uh which I think you actually nailed. I think you nailed that, to be honest. Yeah, 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.

mood boarding process with this designer and talk about How the brand needs to feel. It's like It used to feel like there's a user and a customer. And there's a definitely a part of my voice that was like Shut up.

Shut up, you idiot. Go go build your business. But what we did the the the trade off we did was We actually with Milk, 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 a hundred thousand subscribers on the on the list.

I said Today we're gonna make the brand. And but when we get to a hundred thousand, then we'll know Like this is we can always rebrand and 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 e commerce brand or something, you gotta 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 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 could be quite valuable. What what naming how much of the naming agency This is one of my many rookie mistakes. I hired a naming agency once, I paid them twenty five thousand dollars.

A lot of money. And they came in. Now let me tell you a couple of things about them. That's interesting. One, the people who work in a naving 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, just come in house, you're gonna run over it. That's what I should have done. And just Just the audacity that they think that they could just name something. They think that could be the job. Who do you think you are? The guy they come in and there's three of them. And I'm like, it takes three to do this. Oh my God. And so that's the three of them 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 creative because the 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 line, because that's what they want. They were like, Yeah, but.

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 have this conversation with them. And then I'm like, I want to know this guy's process. And so I leave the room. He comes and I come back in. Smokes a bunch of weeds and eats the reading. He's moved our table to the side. He's sitting in his floor with a white 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 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 I then the next message I send, I know this is probably not gonna 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. Well, so then he's he's just venting and he's like, and then he's scratching stuff out because 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 planny way, but uh I really actually like that process and I kinda hijacked that. So I paid a very expensive twenty five K

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 they would be like They put out these flash cards that were like

Branson, Elon Musk, Einstein. They're like pick pick two that you think fit. And then they'd be like Corvette Rolex Louis Vuitton 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 I don't even remember. You don't even remember the name? I'm sorry, it's a very unsatisfying end ending to it, but Um how do you not remember the name that they pick? Mm-hmm. That's

Say Lavi. 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. Twenty five grand is a lot. I think I paid my branding agency fifteen thousand. Yeah.

That'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 if I am how much is my brand gonna be worth? Is it not worth an extra 5k? It's very hard to say no. At least for me. Is that the pod?

Well let's let's recap real quick. It took you You did your research in public. It took you five 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. Five 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, Sa San San Francisco has a bunch of good names too.

Well that's why I used to live when I was a kid. I think show we I think we should show the deck that you made for the branding agency. the'cause you it 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 can 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 twenty five thousand dollars worth of advice for free. So that's good. I appreciate that. You got my Venmo.

Alright, is that it? Is that the pod? That's it, that's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world of nowhere But I want to I put my all in it like my day's off a roadless travel, never looking back

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