#213 - How to Build a Community

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
All right, there's this amazing book called Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got. I read it a few years ago and it changed my life.
And the reason I loved it was because it basically talks about how to get and make more money using things that you already have.
Coincidentally, today's podcast is brought to you by Business Made Simple. It's a podcast by Donald Miller, who I'm gonna tell you about in a second, but he has this amazing episode that's all related to this book and the things that I learned in this book. It's called How to Make Money with What You Already Have. It's an incredible episode. Talks about all the stuff that I learned in this book. The host is Donald Miller. I didn't know who Donald Miller was up until recently, but over the last 12 months, this is totally by coincidence. It was all separate people. They said, you have to check out Donald Miller. He's amazing. So I'm happy that he's part of HubSpot's Podcast Network. You can check it out, Business Made Simple Podcast. It's where he coaches you on how to build your business like an airplane, where the cockpit is your leadership, the body is your overhead, the right engine is your marketing, the left engine is your sales.
You have to check it out. This guy's amazing. It's called Business Made Simple with Donald Miller.

**Shaan Patel** (1:02)
The dominant way to advertise is not super high production value, finely produced content. It's what we call selfie content, right?

**Sam Parr** (1:24)
All right, let's do it. We're here. What's going on?

**Shaan Patel** (1:27)
What's up, man?
Okay, you want to jump in? A little bit of tic-tac?

**Sam Parr** (1:32)
How you want to do it?
I want to tell you a quick story. So our friend, the guy who emailed hotels and asked for discounts, can we name him or not?

**Shaan Patel** (1:40)
No.

**Sam Parr** (1:43)
Well, he's our friend. He emailed hotels for a European trip and he got some crazy good deals. He got like a $3,000 room for like $350. So I'm in New York. I need a place to stay from September 1st to September 25th.
I made a list of 20 hotels and I emailed them.
And these hotels probably would cost me maybe 15 to 20,000 for that period. So like $1,000 a night. I'm getting some at like 350 bucks, $400 a night. It's working. That's amazing.

**Shaan Patel** (2:14)
And what's the gist of the email?

**Sam Parr** (2:16)
I have something that's unfair. So I say, hey, my name is Sam Parr.
I am in town for three months, but I need a place to stay from September 1st to September 21st. I need a relatively big room because I record this podcast called My First Million. And we have about, I say like a million listeners a month and we record it with video. So I need it to look really nice. I also write this daily email that goes out to 2 million people. And so like I need a comfortable place to work from my home.
My budget is $350 a night. Can you help me?

**Shaan Patel** (2:51)
And that works. So why aren't they giving it to you for free, bro? That's big influencer shit. You should be getting it for free.

**Sam Parr** (2:57)
I don't know. I'm happy to pay for, I don't wanna be a total mooch. I just want a discount.

**Shaan Patel** (3:03)
It's not mooching. You're gonna give them a shout, right?

**Sam Parr** (3:07)
No, no, I won't. I wouldn't give them a shout out just cause they get me a place to stay. I'd only give them, do you shout people out? Cause I mean, I get given stuff all the time. And when people give me stuff and then they ask for a shout out, I say, I don't know, F off.

**Shaan Patel** (3:19)
Yeah, actually the other day, there's a company that I'm using their product.
So I reached out to them. I was like, hey, I can name it. I think I can name it. I think it should be fine.
So basically I use this thing called Passport. It's like international shipping company. So you just say you have a brand, you want to ship products to France or UK or Australia or whatever. Each country has its own little problems with shipping, with customs, with tax, with finding the right carrier to get a low shipping cost there, all that. So these guys take care of it. So I'm like, oh, this is a great product, great idea. So I emailed the CEO, Alex, and I was like, hey man, this is great, we're gonna use it, but how do I invest also? And he's like, oh, we're not really raising around right now. And I was like, please. And he was like, you know what? I think you've already been pretty helpful because you made some intros. I think you can do some more. I think you can do more.