Dharmesh's Dinner Streak
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Sam Parr shares a story about Dharmesh Shah (co-founder of HubSpot) and his commitment to always paying for dinner as a relationship-building strategy.
"I went out to dinner with Dharmesh and it was me, Nick Ray, Neville, and Dharmesh. Dharmesh walks to the bathroom at the end, Nick Ray runs and pays for it. Dharmesh sits down and Nick goes 'My treat.' Dharmesh stands up and says 'This is unacceptable.'
He runs to the back of the kitchen, makes them refund Nick Gray's credit card, and gives his credit card. He comes back and says 'Let me tell you a story. When I came here from India, I didn't know how to play golf. Someone told me to buy dinners, so I committed at age 22 to 100% of the time pay for everyone's dinner. I've done this for 25+ years.'
He said 'I've done it so much that one time we went out to eat with just me and Brian of HubSpot, and there was a company there at a company outing who saw us and bought our dinner as a thank you because they use HubSpot. Dharmesh was like 'I didn't have that much money, we were kind of new, but we paid their $15,000 dinner bill because I refused to have that streak broken.'"
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.