The Step-by-Step Playbook We Used to Build a $100M+ Newsletter Business
[free]
Episode 693: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) talks to Alex Lieberman ( https://x.com/businessbarista ) and Austin Rief ( https://x.com/austin_rief ) about how to build a profitable newsletter.
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Show Notes:
(0:00) Intro
(3:12) 0 to 100K subscribers
(9:18) Nontraditional hires
(15:26) 100K to 1M subscribers
(35:00) Entrepreneurs Operating System
(43:27) 8-figure Exits
(55:28) How to start a newsletter in 2025
(1:02:57) Newsletter ideas
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Links:
• The Hustle - https://thehustle.co/
• Morning Brew - https://www.morningbrew.com/
• Traction - https://tinyurl.com/5dfh3nx9
• Arena Magazine - https://arenamag.com/
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Check Out Shaan's Stuff:
• Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com
• Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents.
• Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies!
Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC
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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
• Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/
My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano
How Morning Brew Grew to 6 Million Subscribers and $70 Million Revenue in Six Years | Austin Rief, Co-founder & CEO
Austin Rief is the Co-founder & CEO of Morning Brew, building the Wall Street Journal for the next generation. They started the company in 2017, and grew it to 6 million subscribers and $70 million in revenue in six years.
We talk through the journey starting Morning Brew with Co-founder Alex Lieberman while students at the University of Michigan, and Austin's playbook for starting a new media company from scratch today. We get into the creator economy, early stage investing, ad based business models, being the first advertiser on Instagram Stories, advice for hiring, and his secret for sourcing remote talent in Sri Lanka.
Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(03:42) How to start a media company from scratch today
(13:01) Future of the creator economy is niche products
(14:42) Opportunity in B2B media today
(17:05) Reflecting on investing during ZIRP
(21:30) Why its starting to feel like 2021 again
(23:16) Talking VC portfolio math
(27:09) Starting Morning Brew with Wall Street interview prep
(33:35) Being so dumb that they never pivoted from being a newsletter
(35:29) How newsletter business models works
(38:32) Morning Brew’s first viral Instagram post
(40:37) Acquiring subscribers for two cents on Instagram Stories
(42:29) Nik Sharma’s poor mans paid ads strategy
(44:32) Landing Discover as their first big sponsor
(46:06) How agencies and ad buying works
(49:49) Why sales roles are so hard to hire for
(53:04) Importance of offsheet references
(57:43) Sourcing talent in Sri Lanka with Oceans
(01:04:23) Austin and Alex’s unique co-founder dynamics
(01:07:16) Dental plans, rotisserie chickens, and company laptops
(01:10:00) Building WSJ for the next generation
Referenced:
Morning Brew: https://www.morningbrew.com
Try Oceans: https://www.oceanstalent.com/
Kevin Espiritu episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FefGL-qPzDo
Craig Fuller episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPPqO8eBq2M
Forbes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hayleycuccinello/2019/02/07/morning-brew/
Follow Austin:
Twitter: https://x.com/austin_rief
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austin-rief/
Newsletter: https://www.theaustinbrief.com/
Follow Turner:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak
Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
Brainstorming +$1M Weird Business Ideas With Morning Brew’s CEO
Episode 543: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) talk to Morning Brew founder Austin Rief ( https://twitter.com/austin_rief ). In this episode, the three amigos of newsletters are brainstorming weird business ideas like Gen Z Bingo, Binge-Eating Bars, and Meat Influencers.
No more small boy spreadsheets, build your business on the free HubSpot CRM: https://mfmpod.link/hrd
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Show Notes:
(0:00) Intro
(1:00) $120M Bingo idea
(5:00) Pizza-Binge Bar
(11:00) No more alpha in newsletters
(13:00) Meat influencers
(19:30) Creator brands that actually work
(26:00) Interviewing Tony Robbins
(31:30) Dinner with SBF
(41:30) Being Goggins for 1 hour a day
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Links:
• Austin’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/austin_rief
• Bingo Loco - https://www.bingo-loco.com/
• Bongo Bingo - https://www.bongosbingo.co.uk/
• Beard Meats Food - http://tinyurl.com/2wzszdaa
• Museum Hack - https://museumhack.com/
• Jonathan Katz-Moses - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXBNF-A7QlYT3tT-B9N4ElA
• Oklahoma Smokes - https://itsoklahomas.com/
• Albany Bahamas - https://www.albanybahamas.com/
• Aman - https://www.aman.com/
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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
Check Out Shaan's Stuff:
• Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/
• Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant
• Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing
• Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/
• Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/
Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more.
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Other episodes you might enjoy:
• #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits
• #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future
• #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto
• #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett
• #218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates
• Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More
• How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More
Austin Rief: Building Morning Brew, The Ultimate Guide to Building Newsletter Businesses, Side Hustle Ideas, & More
Episode 398: Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) talk to Morning Brew Founder & CEO Austin Rief (@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.
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Links:
* Morning Brew
* Toptal
* Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel.
* Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter.
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Show Notes:
(01:00) - Morning Brew origin story
(19:10) - Ad sales
(24:10) - Austin's strengths
(32:15) - Austin's upbringing
(42:55) - What did you do with your new found wealth?
(45:55) - Ideas brainstorm
(01:13:14) - Future plans
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Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more.
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Additional episodes you might enjoy:
• #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits
• #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future
• #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto
* #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett
• #218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates
• Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More
• How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More
Optimism In A Tech Downturn — With Packy McCormick and Austin Rief
Austin Rief is the CEO of Morning Brew. Packy McCormick is the author of Not Boring on Substack and founder of Not Boring Capital. The two join Big Technology Podcast for a discussion of why the economic downturn has hit tech disproportionately hard and how bad it's going to get. They also look for places of optimism, and areas of opportunity. Stay tuned for the second half where we discuss whether their own investing has changed, how their media businesses will get through this moment, and the latest on Elon Musk's plan to buy Twitter.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
#202 – How to Build a Rabid Fan Base with Austin Rief of Morning Brew
Austin Rief (@Austin_Rief) started the newsletter Morning Brew in college when he didn’t care if he made money or mistakes. That freedom in the early days resulted in an authenticity that he credits for their growth. In this episode, I talk to Austin about how he’s using Twitter to grow, what types of customers become brand ambassadors, and so much more.
• Follow Austin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Austin_Rief
• Get smarter by subscribing to Morning Brew: https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/subscribe
How I Built Resilience: Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief of Morning Brew
Six years ago, Morning Brew started out as a fun business newsletter Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief wrote for their classmates out of their University of Michigan dorm room. The company now has over 2.5 million subscribers with multiple newsletters and a podcast, and last year Business Insider paid about 75 million dollars for a majority stake in Morning Brew. Alex and Austin talk to Guy about the organic unpaid marketing they relied on in college to build up their readership, and they predict shifts in how we will consume news in the next five years. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating turbulent times.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.