Anti-MBA Book Club Growth
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Sam Parr shares how he created a book club called the "Anti-MBA" in San Francisco after feeling envious of Stanford MBA students.
"I moved to San Francisco in 2012 from Tennessee. I was really rough around the edges back then. People would tease me and make fun of me for being from Tennessee. I felt really jealous of the Stanford kids, so I created this thing called the Anti-MBA because I was envious that I didn't get my MBA from Stanford.
I created this book club where we would meet once a week. We would read one book a month and meet weekly to go over the reading. I would call in a guest to lead the discussion. I posted an ad on Craigslist to get my first people. Sieva, who's now one of my best friends and a big entrepreneur, was one of those people.
We started with 10 people at first, then 12 the next time. I did this for a year, every week, and got 3,000 people signed up to my email list. Then I hosted an event where 80 people came, and then I hosted Hustlecon and 300 people came. It was a very slow grind - these events took like 4 years to build up. Eventually at Hustlecon, we got like 2,500 people coming."
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.