Weight Watchers Support Origins
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Sam Parr shares the origin story of Weight Watchers and how it evolved from a small support group to a major company.
"Weight Watchers was started in the sixties by this housewife in New York City who was a little overweight. She got a bunch of dieting tips on how to lose weight and created an 8-person support group where she got her friends to give her $2 per meeting. They met once a week, it helped everyone lose weight, and they were held accountable.
She did it for about a year, and then this businessman's wife told him, 'You should lose weight, go to this woman's support group.' The businessman was like, 'Hey Jean, this should be a business, this was amazing. I actually lost weight and it changed my life.'
They came up with the idea to franchise the business and launched it in 1963. By 1968, they had a million members each paying a monthly fee to attend local meetings based on their dieting advice. They sold the business to Heinz for $71 million, which is something like $400 million in today's money - oddly they sold to Heinz ketchup, which is the maker of a lot of foods that are the opposite of what Weight Watchers would suggest."
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.