Sackler's Medical Tribune Empire
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A story about how Arthur Sackler, before Purdue Pharma, built a fortune through medical advertising and newsletters in the 1950s-1980s.
"Arthur Sackler was originally a doctor but his first hit was starting a medical advertising agency. He studied copywriting at a traditional agency working nights and weekends to help pay bills. He realized copywriting was awesome and could be applied to marketing valium and other drugs.
Big pharmaceutical companies like Roche, who invented valium, started approaching him saying 'Hey Arthur, we hear you have good ideas.' He told them they needed to hire a salesforce and create ads targeting doctors since they couldn't advertise to consumers directly.
He then did two secretive things: First, he bought half of his main competitor advertising agency and secretly owned it. He would tell clients 'If you don't want to work with us, go to our competitors' while they colluded together on marketing techniques.
Second, he created the Medical Tribune, a bimonthly newsletter for doctors that reached 300-400,000 doctors. No one knew he owned it. He would use his original company McAdams to buy ads in Medical Tribune.
By the time he died in the late 80s, McAdams was doing $170 million in revenue with 170 employees. Medical Tribune was doing $50-80 million in revenue annually. He owned multiple NYC townhomes, made 7-8 figure donations to museums, had a $60 million art collection, and was worth around $150 million (equivalent to $400-500 million today)."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.