Chapter 1: What is the biggest mistake in business you've never talked about?
All right, it's a new year, but it's the same old us. And we wanted to do something for you guys. So we wanted to do a mailbag of fan questions. So people have written in questions. We are going to answer them. You ready to jump in, Sam? Yeah.
Chapter 2: What is the best company to work at to become a millionaire?
I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road.
All right, here we go. Question number one. What is the biggest mistake you've made in your business that you have not spoken about publicly yet? And how has it shaped your decision making?
Man, I've got a great one for this. Tell me if your experience has been with this. So I tend to hire ambitious young people and I take chances on them. And I hate to say it, but the majority of the time, that is a horrible plan. And it's significantly better to hire more experienced people and pay them a lot more money. And I get way better results.
Chapter 3: How did Hampton achieve its revenue goals in 2025?
So, uh, when was this mistake?
Chapter 4: What are the 2026 misogi goals discussed?
Is this like, I've been making this mistake forever or this is forever, man.
Look, this is like my mistake. It's like the American dream, you know, like give me your, your, your broken, your week and your, and your like ambitious. Yeah, I can fix him. Yes. And like, I always want to do that because I'm so, you know, I'm into the romantic idea of that.
And just, I recently, you know, at Hampton, we've hired like significantly more experienced people and they cost like two or three times more than a young and upcoming person. But the results are like five or 10 times better.
Chapter 5: What is your 'F U money' purchase?
And I just make this, I always, I get so emotional and I always find the, people say hire high agency people or hire these people whose growth rate is really high. But in general, it's just kind of better to say, hey, you already did this at this other company. Do it here, please.
So, we were just going through a hiring process. I wanted to hire somebody on my content team. And we found this kid who was great.
Chapter 6: What are the MFM OGs currently doing?
He sent in this wonderful video. He made this video application that was super funny. And it was well done. And I was like, yes, this is my kind of guy. Young, green, cool. Yeah, he used to do this, you know, he just graduated, but like this video is amazing. I got to talk to this guy. I talked to him.
Chapter 7: How can you build compounding wealth?
I like him. Good dude. And right before we hired him, you know, we asked a very simple question, which is like, So we want this to go well, right? We want this to be great and we want this to work. And so like, does it make sense to just go with somebody who has never done anything even remotely like this?
Or are there people in the world who have done very similar things that we could go talk to first? And should we not like lean in that direction? And as soon as we had that like very simple sanity check, because I'm like you, I fall in love with the sort of angel investing in people idea. It's like... like the raw up and comer, never done anything, found this diamond in the rough.
Why do I like that? It's not for generous reasons. It's because it's like, I feel cool that I found that thing, right? It's like finding a needle in a haystack, the diamond in the rough. But I have such a low hit rate with that, right? By definition, you're going to have a low hit rate with that strategy.
And if it matters, and if there are people who have done it before that are way more proven in this category, why are you not going in that direction? So I've definitely had that same mistake sometimes. It can work.
And when it does work, it's the best story.
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Chapter 8: What is the best idea you've heard on the podcast?
It's the best. But like, check this out, this strategy that I've been doing, it's been working well. So I love hiring consultants and agencies, but I'll say, I'm only going to hire you for two months and I'm going to, you're going to do the work for the first 30 days. But in the second 30 days, it's just you teaching me what to do.
And so I have found experience of like getting like a young, ambitious, high agency, green person and teaming them up with an agency. And I have had some results with that. But in general, just hiring more experienced people and paying them more money It's just typically the way to go. And that sounds so duh, but that's the biggest mistake that I've made.
Well, most businesses just figuring out what are your own leaks in your bucket. And then of course, to other people who don't have that leak, they're like, I mean, it's obvious, right? But you have to know what are my biases. And in your case, your biases are like, I like to be cheap as hell when I build my companies. This was like how you were before with The Hustle, at least. Of course.
Get the cheap office, get the free desk off Craigslist. Our dog will be security. And you're like, I'm going to build this the frugal way. And then secondly... What if I found a guy like me, just a lovable fuck-up who could be fixed? And it's like, you know, so those are biases that would lead you too far in that direction.
It's not to say you never hire a junior person, but too often defaulting to that. And so you got to know your own biases. What about yours? Do you have one? I wrote project selection. So my theory is this. if you are hardworking and you are sufficiently talented, then the only variable that matters is what project you pick to work on, right?
Because if you're going to work really hard on it and you're talented, then either you're going to be a 10 out of 10 person working on a two out of 10 opportunity or a 10 out of 10 person working on a 10 out of 10 opportunity. And I think I have picked some real dog shit projects in the past. So I tried to start a sushi restaurant chain, which like, Restaurants are one of the worst businesses.
Sushi would be one of the worst types of restaurants to do. And by the way, that makes no sense for me as a person to do. The second one, I tried to make the next hit social media app. I tried to make the next Twitter, the next Facebook, the next Snapchat. And I spent six years going after that as a project to select. And God, that is hard to do.
You try to make us hit social media app, which frankly, you don't really use social media. You use Twitter, but like seldomly, to be honest, even though you're good at it. And two, you eventually made a streaming video game, like, or that's who your market was. Neither of us know or play video games or like streaming.
or had ever streamed a video game in my life. Dude, I made a craft beer app for craft beer enthusiasts. Dude, I can't spell beer. Beer is gross. It makes me burp. I don't know. I don't like it. So I just picked all these terrible projects that were bad founder fit, just weak market opportunities in general, right? So this is like very, very poor projects.
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