HustleCon Mic Check Strategy

Sam Parr shares how he used a clever tactic at HustleCon to get quality time with successful founders backstage.

"I used to do this thing called HustleCon where we would get founders of interesting startups to come and explain their story. We would have 500 up to 2,500 people there. I used to tell these people 'Your speaking slot's at 3, you have to come at noon for the mic check.' Little did they know there was no mic check - the mics work perfectly. You don't do a mic check at 3.

I would tell them that because I wanted to get to spend time with all these billionaire-type people backstage. The best part was I would get like 6 of them backstage at a time. There was a time where it was the woman who started ClassPass, the guy who started Grammarly, the founders of Away, the Casper founders, the founder of WeWork.

I would just throw a question out there, wouldn't insert my opinion, and would hear them talk. People were complaining about things like 'I have to fire my VP of finance, they're horrible' or 'I've been raising money this whole time and I don't know if I'm ever gonna make anything from this.'

That's when I realized a lot of these people are 20 or 50 times more successful than I am, but they are not 20 or 50 times smarter than me. The only difference is they are more courageous and they started their journey earlier. Being around that group normalized success and made me realize that the people I admire are fearful exactly like I am - the difference is they do it anyway."