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Kind: captions Language: en 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 [Music] work 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 I feel like you got so much right and I know that the that in doing any idea whatever you 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 C you 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 nailed the value prop were there three other runner-ups that you 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 you hopefully only see the good stuff obviously there’s all types of bad [ ] 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 go I’m going to do my research in front of people you left a paper trail right like you left public breadcrumbs 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 going to 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’m want to launch I want to 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 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 six months or eight months or 10 months I forget where I was just kind of fooling 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 I do not enjoy this this does this isn’t in my zone of Genius 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 like Sam’s short-term rental Bros or whatever the hell you call it what was it the Str Str crew the Str Str crew shortterm 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 kind of 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 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 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 G to become a YouTuber and I’m G to create an audience of truckers and then I’m going to build a product for them and then I started like doing it and I was like no hate this not GNA do it you’re like I love the idea of blue color workers yeah I like the idea of it among 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 basically a Therapy Group where we would like [ ] 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 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 podcast kind of wants that outcome so so you know you’re a Walkin 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 crew you just 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’s best uh advice for agencies to use in the Northeast things like that you can do personal stuff nonpersonal stuff the third thing is events I think we host 200 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 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 [ ] wanted it I couldn’t and then eventually I was like I I need to charge like around 10 grand a year in order to make this like a viable business no one [ ] wanted it they were 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 [ ] I don’t know anything about doctors I try to get a i get in touch with 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 the 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 homech in the face 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 look in the mirror and I was like yeah this ain’t going to work I’m the opposite of a minority uh business look great on paper but yeah reflection does 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 g to have Sarah be the CEO like what are you GNA do you’re G be like I am this this white man who’s running this like I don’t know you possible but like I don’t know if you Google the word white bread you’re gonna see a picture of s par like it like it it would not have worked there’s a reason your nickname is the vanilla work and then uh my partner was like dude let’s just go after CEOs and he’ been saying this whole time I’m like they will never pay for this but all along some people had heard rumors I was launching this so they asked me like can you do this for us and kept saying no and then finally we’re like [ ] 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 aign on business well it just sounds like it’s better founder fit right like you know it’s a 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 them because you knew where you hang out you it’s like way better found it was so much easier it was way easier all right everyone a quick break to tell you about HubSpot and this one’s really easy for me to talk about because I’m going to show you a real life example so I’ve got this company called Hampton join hampton.com it’s a community for Founders doing between 2 million all the way up to like $250 million a year in revenue and one of the ways that we’ve grown is we’ve created these cool surveys and so we have a lot of Founders who have high net wors and we’ll ask them all types of questions that people typically are embarrassed to ask but provide a lot of value so things like how much the founders pay themselves each month how much money they’re spending each month what their payroll looks like if they’re optimistic about the next year and their business all these questions that people are afraid to ask but well we ask them anyway and they tell us in this Anonymous survey and so what we do is we created a landing page using hubspot’s landing page tool and it basically has a landing page that says here’s all the questions we asked give us your email if you want to access it and then I shared this page on Twitter and we were able to get thousands of people who gave us their email and told us they want this survey and I can see did they come from social media I can see did they come from Twitter from LinkedIn basically everywhere that they could possibly come from I’m able to track all of that and then I’m able to see over the next handful of weeks how many of those people actually signed up and became a member of Hampton in other words I can see how much revenue came from this survey how much revenue came from each traffic Source things like that but the best part is I can see how much revenue came from it but a lot of times it takes a ton of work to make that happen HubSpot made that super super easy if you’re interested in doing this you can check it out hubspot.com the Link’s in the description and I’ll also put the link to the survey that I did so you can actually see the landing page and how worked and everything like that I’m just going to do that call to action then and it’s free check it out in the description all right now back to MFM 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 llc’s 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 so at one point I thought about having the mlin running club um the second one is sablet I’ve always liked sablet 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 Kings 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 PE 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 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 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 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 in 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 10 years ago I never in a million years thought this was important but I actually do I hired a branding agency so I paid $155,000 right out the gate and what I did was and I sent this to you I created this document and and it says 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 so Felix Dennis is this famous entrepreneur he he’s dead now but he was a wild guy he was basically a combination of Richard Branson and MC Jagger so he had like Swagger but he was like a legit business guy um but he like was he was like Elite and 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 adver Ms 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 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 then there’s one with the Wall Street journals where it says Money Talks we translate and it’s a 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 Range Rover or Jaguar what 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 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 nose 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 could 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 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 too 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 turn down so many people and it’s like we’re turning down so much revenue and it [ ] kills me I’m like adding up the numbers when I now when you ask me so Chief uh cheap.com 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 four or five years they let in 100% of the people who apply in interview we don’t and it [ ] kills me I see all this mis revenue and I’m like oh my God and so I’m picking 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 into charcoal that’s how kings for 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 let me give you two ideas I think you maybe should have said yes to number one I think uh if I go to website right now I don’t see that you say no to that many people or that it’s a that there’s a cur 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 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 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 douchy so 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 do 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 SAR 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 H 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 you 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 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 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 pure Group in San Francisco when we didn’t know [ ] when we were running our companies and there was our compies could fail or succeed and in that group came a billion dollar company a100 million company a $30 million company a 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 podcast 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 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 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 [ ] 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 fist in Sil Valley if you go pitch for investors you’re basically making I promise this is going to be a billion dollar company so I was like I don’t think this 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 in like and I could do it it could actually do that and that would change my life be [ ] awesome which is a different U pitch so you were right but where where I was wrong was I shouldn’t have aimed for that in the get from the GetGo 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 thing 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 this guy which I think you actually I think you nailed that to be honest yeah I L it it was a cool experience it definitely felt so indulgent it’s like and now I’m going to 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 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 milro 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 gonna 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 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 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 I hir this is one of my many rookie mistakes I hired a naming agency once I paid them $225,000 a lot of money and hey and 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 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 they think that could be the job who do you think think you are it’s like that’s crazy so 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 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 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 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 I come back in smokes a bunch of weed style in the middle of the room he’s moved our table to the side he’s sitting in the floor with a 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 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 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 and then the next message I sent 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 well so then he’s he’s just venting and he’s like and 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 way I really actually like 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 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 then they’d be like Corvette Rolex Louis Vuitton blah BL 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 I don’t even remember now the name remember the name I’m sorry this a very unsatisfying end ending to it but um how do you not remember the name that they picked that’s say la that’s what you should have called the [ ] app the app like failed by the time they gave us the name we were like 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 at least for me 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 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 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 FL Boulevard which I don’t think he going to make for a great startup name no s s 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 I think we should show the deck that you made for The Branding agency because you this is not what they gave you this is what you gave them to get a good output you know because you garbage in garbage out if you give the bad instructions or bad prompt you’re G to 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 you you got my VMO um all right is that it is that the pod that’s it that’s the pod