Hustle's Revenue Model
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Sam Parr shares a story about The Hustle's unusual business structure and compensation model during its peak performance period.
"There was a time where Trung was on fire and he was our only writer. We had people that would fill in when he was sick, but basically he wrote the email by himself every day for like 8 months and we were doing over $1 million a month in revenue. And there was one Trung and there was like 20 ad sales people.
We had two salary tiers - the entry level people with 2-3 years experience, and the higher people with 5-6 years experience. The younger guys got between $50,000 to $70,000 a year in base salary. The upper guys got like $100,000 to $120,000 in base salary.
The upper guys were expected to sell between 1 to 1.5 million a year in ad revenue, and they would get 4% of that. The younger guys were expected to sell between $500,000 and $900,000. We had some sellers like Katie who would sell around $2.5 million.
They had to get 75% of their quota - if their quota was $1 million and they only hit $600,000, they only got their base salary. If they hit 75% of their quota, that's when the 4% started kicking in. If they got above 100%, the kickers would go up and they would start making a lot of money. The highest paid person at our company oftentimes was an ad seller."
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.