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: https://twitter.com/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/writing-sprints PODCAST LINKS: Website: https://writeofpassage.school/how-i-write/ Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-write/id1700171470 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2DjMSboniFAeGA8v9NpoPv 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.