Sam is a master copywriter and business builder. If there was ever somebody who knows how to turn online writing into cash, Sam is it.

In this episode, Sam shows how you can sell at scale and where to find the opportunities in the business of writing. We’ll teach you how to think through headlines, find content for your own writing, and torch the internet with your ideas.

Sam started in the early days of email newsletters and he was a master of writing viral content. He tells the story about plagiarizing his way onto Amazon’s bestseller list by looking at the intersection of romantic comedies, werewolves, and the Twilight Series. He combined many stories, self published his own book, sued by a publisher for plagiarizing, and ended up exploding on the self-publishing Reddit forum — all of which led to 1000s of new subscribers for his newsletter.

Since then, his success continues to multiply. First, by selling “The Hustle” for eight-figures to HubSpot. Then, by growing “My First Million” into one of the top ten business podcasts in the world. And now, he recently launched a company called Hampton.

One thing that stands out with Sam is how good he is at colloquial copywriting. His writing sells because it sounds like how people actually talk. First he builds trust with people. Then they open up their wallets. He gets people to open up their wallets by building trust with them very fast through writing. In this episode, he shows exactly how to do that.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 Intro
00:00:40 Writing
00:00:55 Old Advertising
00:03:30 Copywriting
00:04:15 CEO stories
00:05:00 Propaganda
00:07:15 Sam's Influence
00:08:15 Simple language
00:09:00 Hemingway
00:10:45 American Kingpin
00:12:45 Robert Caro
00:15:30 Early days of The Hustle
00:18:00 Making money with content
00:18:15 $2 millions a month
00:19:15 4 million subscribers
00:19:45 Growth of The Hustle
00:20:00 Reddit
00:20:30 Self-Publishing
00:21:15 Romantic comedies
00:22:00 Plagiarizing and Amazon
00:24:00 AIDA (Attention, Idea, Desire, Action)
00:25:15 Onboarding emails
00:26:45 Researching from the Web Archive
00:29:00 Starting a media company
00:30:00 Scott Galloway
00:31:40 Dharmesh Shah
00:33:15 Elements of Eloquence
00:38:40 Imposter Syndrome
00:39:45 How to write viral articles and headlines
00:42:45 History
00:44:45 Building a team at The Hustle
00:47:40 Copy work
00:49:15 Habit for Writing
00:50:00 Write of Passage
00:53:00 Moving Fast
00:54:45 Sam's favorite writers
00:57:00 Reading History
01:00:00 Good Reads
01:02:00 Reading
01:04:00 Hampton
01:09:00 Thinking clearly

SPEAKER LINKS:
Twitter:   / thesamparr  
Website: https://www.Joinhampton.com/
Podcast: https://www.mfmpod.com/

WRITE OF PASSAGE:
Want to learn more about the next class Write of Passage?
Click here: https://take.writeofpassage.school/wr...

PODCAST LINKS:
Website: https://writeofpassage.school/how-i-w...
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2DjMSbo...

ABOUT THE HOST:
I’m David Perell and I’m a writer, teacher, and podcaster. I believe writing online is one of the biggest opportunities in the world today. For the first time in human history, everybody can freely share their ideas with a global audience. I seek to help as many people publish their writing online as possible.