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My First MillionMy First Million

How To Grow A $75M Newsletter Business | Morning Brew Co-Founder (#398)

No more small boy spreadsheets, build your business on the free HubSpot CRM: https://mfmpod.link/hrd - Episode 398: Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) and Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) talk to Morning Brew Founder & CEO Austin Rief (https://twitter.com/austin_rief) about building, growing and selling a newsletter valued at $75M in 5 years, whether newsletter businesses are still worth doing, how to make them succeed, and a few good side hustle ideas to start now. — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire global talent (like Shaan does) and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than their US equivalents. — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth 💰 Pitch your startup for a shot at a $1M investment with Sam Parr as the MC https://clickhubspot.com/pitch ----- Links: * Morning Brew - https://www.morningbrew.com/daily * Toptal - https://www.toptal.com/ 📧: Sign up for The Hustle Daily Newsletter: https://mfmpod.link/8c1 🎙️: Download Our Podcast: https://link.chtbl.com/PyZIFvUo A podcast where we brainstorm new business ideas based on trends & opportunities we see in the market. Sometimes we have famous guests, and they do it with us. ------ Show Notes: (00:00) - Intro (00:34) - Morning Brew origin story (17:46) - Ad sales (22:57) - Austin's strengths (31:29) - Austin's upbringing (33:28) - What did you do with your new found wealth? (45:35) - Ideas brainstorm (57:45) - Future plans ------ For more quality videos subscribe here ➡https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyaN6mg5u8Cjy2ZI4ikWaug?sub_confirmation=1 🔔 Turn on notifications to stay updated with new uploads #shorts #youtubeshorts Like || Share || Subscribe

Sam ParrhostAustin RiefguestShaan Purihost
Dec 20, 20221h 16mWatch on YouTube ↗

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At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Morning Brew's Austin Rief on Scaling Newsletters, Ads, Wealth and Ideas

  1. Austin Rief says Morning Brew expects about $70-75M in revenue this year with a double-digit profit margin and roughly 250 people, after starting as a college project with Alex Lieberman.
  2. Rief and Sam Parr recall their early rivalry, with Morning Brew's team printing out The Hustle daily and comparing lines, and explain how Morning Brew went horizontal with multiple newsletters while The Hustle verticalized.
  3. Rief describes a three-category framework for newsletters and argues the best current opportunity is a niche 'Morning Brew for X' aimed at high-spend consumers or B2B audiences, as Shaan Puri did with Milk Road.
  4. The conversation covers the grind of ad sales, from direct-response ads to big agency-driven brand budgets, along with scrappy growth tactics like pitching lecture halls to collect emails.
  5. Rief discusses his conservative investing, his definition of wealth as time, and business ideas such as outsourced talent marketplaces and an AI newsletter-plus-roll-up, which Shaan critiques for durability risk.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Being young and unfunded shaped Morning Brew's success

Rief says that because he was a college student nobody would fund, they avoided raising venture capital and stayed lean, with costs mainly people, growth marketing and an email service provider.

Daily focus on one metric drives results

Rief describes the 'write, grow, sell' mantra and the 'great wall of opens' tracked daily, and Shaan says the best founders know their main thing and the number that measures it.

Horizontal expansion fit Morning Brew's content, vertical fit The Hustle's

Rief says general business content couldn't support a broad subscription or event, so they launched niche B2B newsletters that could break even through pre-sold ads, while The Hustle's edgier tone suited more revenue streams.

'Morning Brew for X' is the strongest newsletter bet today

Rief says the best opportunity is a niche industry newsletter that aggregates summaries with a distinct tone, aimed at high-spend consumers or B2B professionals, and notes Milk Road fits this.

Big ad budgets are relationship-driven and opaque

Rief and Sam describe agencies, RFPs and brand lift studies as a black box where buyers need to spend budgets, and Rief argues brand ads can shift perception for a big audience.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

I think there's, it's always good for a business to have an enemy.

— Austin Rief

I woke up every day, write, grow, sell. Write, grow, sell.

— Austin Rief

To me, wealth is all about having time and spending that time how you want to, right?

— Austin Rief

I either want a home run or I wanna, you know, sit in the dugout and just, you know, be, be part of the, the peanut gallery. I, I don't wanna play in that middle game.

— Austin Rief

It's talent helps, but then there's reps, and people don't really see the reps.

— Shaan Puri

Morning Brew origin storyRivalry with The HustleHorizontal vs vertical newsletter strategyNewsletter categories and Milk RoadAd sales and agency budgetsWealth, investing and lifestyleBusiness ideas and AI roll-ups

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