The Step-by-Step Playbook We Used to Build a $100M+ Newsletter Business

**Austin Rief** (0:00)
I still think the big opportunity in the media space, if someone's take a big sway, someone wants to go build a billion dollar company, it's...

**Sam Parr** (0:16)
Wait, so say, what were you saying earlier, how you hated me? Or no, you didn't hate me.

**Alex Lieberman** (0:20)
No, I didn't hate you.

**Austin Rief** (0:22)
Like, I hated you. Just to be clear, I hated you.

**Alex Lieberman** (0:26)
I did not hate you. Like, I feel like also part of like my shtick has always been like, I don't hate anyone. I try to kill people with kindness. I try like people have to feel like douchebags for hating me because there's no way to hate me. Like, I feel like that was my MO for a while. But I remember, yeah, I remember being on the phone with Tim Shaw. And he was investor in The Hustle also, right?

**Sam Parr** (0:46)
Yeah, I was so mad at him for investing in both of our companies. I was so angry.

**Alex Lieberman** (0:50)
Yeah, and I remember being on the phone with him. And I was like, we're talking about you for some reason. And I was like, yeah, like I would love to talk to Sam, but I don't know if he wants to talk to me or us. And Tim was just like, yeah, I don't think he likes you guys very much. And no, but anyway, I didn't hate you, but I was jealous of certain things at The Hustle. And one of the things I was most jealous of was the welcome email. Like I remember reading the welcome email and being like, this is so freaking good. And I'm so angry that we don't have one that is as good as this.

**Sam Parr** (1:22)
I would have traded you the welcome email for your guys' ability to be like financially, to be like just you guys are far more than competent, but I was barely competent. So I so like the envy went both ways. All right, so here's what I want to do for this show. So here's the deal. So wait, do you guys say what you sold for? Is that public or not?

**Austin Rief** (1:42)
We can say step 75 million, I think is the public number.

**Sam Parr** (1:46)
So collectively the hustle and morning brew, we sold for like hundreds of millions of dollars. And we were sort of like the graduating class of like 2020 or whatever. We were the early people in the newsletter game. We didn't like invent it, but we kind of helped pioneer a little bit of what is popular today. And now officially, as of a couple of weeks ago, we are both or all three of us are officially out of our companies. I've been out for a minute. Alex has been out for a minute now. Austin is out. And we could finally reveal like a bunch of information.

**Austin Rief** (2:15)
And sorry, Sam, to be clear, I'm technically executive chairman. So I'm no longer day to day, but I am executive chairman of Morning Brew.

**Sam Parr** (2:22)
You are no longer operating. But I think you guys, do you still have equity ownership?

**Austin Rief** (2:27)
No, we're both fully out.

**Sam Parr** (2:29)
All right. So that's what I mean. And so what I wanted to do was I wanted to go year by year when we each started. And I want to explain to the listener what we were doing in that year, what our revenue and profit was, what our subscriber growth was, things we learned. And also, we have to add this, things that we would do differently if we were starting again today and things that we wish we had done. Does that sound good?

**Alex Lieberman** (2:51)
Yeah, sounds good. I'm also excited for it, because at the time, I didn't know any of your numbers. So this is like the first time I actually know your numbers as we were going through it.

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**Sam Parr** (3:30)
I think I've shared with Austin my whole data room at this point. The cool thing about having a data room is you're supposed to have all the information that's easily accessible, so you can go back and look back.