You get on My First Million by bringing Sam Parr and Shaan Puri a specific, surprising number from a business you built, ideally through someone already in their circle, because the show has no guest form and books fewer guests than most people assume. It is a brainstorming show first and an interview show second. Hosts and producers do not need your story. They need material they can riff on for an hour.
Most founders pitch it like any business podcast, with a bio, a headshot and three talking points. That package lands nowhere here. There is no inbox for it.
Here is how the show works in 2026, who gets booked, a scorecard for testing your fit, and how to prepare.
What My First Million actually is in 2026
Apple Podcasts describes the show in one line: Sam Parr and Shaan Puri “brainstorm business ideas based on market trends and opportunities, and sometimes bring on famous guests.” Read that sentence twice. The guests are the “sometimes.” The brainstorm is the product.
The show started inside The Hustle, the business newsletter company Parr founded. When HubSpot agreed to buy The Hustle in February 2021, its announcement listed the daily newsletter (then above 1.5 million readers), the Trends research product and My First Million as part of the deal. Today it anchors the HubSpot Podcast Network, and HubSpot entered it in the 2025 Webby Awards, where it was nominated for Best Creator or Influencer Series.
The archive is deep. As of early November 2026, Apple Podcasts shows 917 episodes in the feed and a 4.7 rating from more than 2,600 ratings. The episodes run on video as well as audio, through the show’s YouTube channel, and the lengths swing wildly. In October 2026 alone, Puri posted a 24 minute solo episode about three embarrassing moments, while the Nick Kokonas conversation on October 26 ran past two hours.
That variety tells you something. The show follows whatever the hosts find interesting this week. If you want to learn how to get on My First Million podcast, start by accepting that you are auditioning to be interesting to two specific people.
Who sat in the guest chair this fall?
The recent guest list shows the range of people who earn a seat. Between late August and the end of October 2026, the show’s episode page lists these conversations.
Wade Foster, the Zapier co-founder, appeared on August 26 in “How a $5B founder is using AI (3 tutorials),” walking through how he uses AI to cut hours from his day. Allison Ellsworth, the Poppi co-founder, was on two days earlier in “I built a $2,000,000,000 business on vibes.” On September 7, IM8 co-founder Danny Yeung explained how the supplement brand scaled to $100 million in under a year. Then came a run of bigger names: skateboarder Tony Hawk on September 9, Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein on September 14, executive coach Joe Hudson on September 18 (billed as a “coach for SpaceX & OpenAI”), and Whatnot founder Grant Lafontaine on September 21.
October followed the same mix. Shaan Puri interviewed Jeff Harmon, the Angel Studios founder whose earlier ad work the episode title ties to Squatty Potty and Poo-Pourri, on October 7. Ben Levy joined both hosts on October 23 to react to the week’s most talked-about posts on X. Alinea co-founder Nick Kokonas came on October 26 to talk about finding arbitrage, and former Amazon vice president Ethan Evans described working with Jeff Bezos on October 28.
Look past the famous names and a pattern shows up. Almost every guest arrives with a number in the title or the first line of the show notes: $5 billion, $2 billion, $100 million in under a year, $5 million turned into $500 billion. Whatnot’s notes lead with the leap from 30 sales to $2.3 million in its first year. The number is the hook for the episode, the thumbnail and the clip. The hosts book people who can explain how a number happened, then spend the hour pulling the method out of them.
Read the October 2026 schedule before you pitch
Here is the part most pitch guides skip. The show’s own episode page lists nine episodes published in October 2026. Four had a guest: Harmon, Levy, Kokonas and Evans. The other five were hosts only, including “3 businesses we think are about to blow up” on October 5, “the 6 traits of people who can’t stop making money” on October 16, a breakdown of an Elizabeth Holmes documentary on October 20, and an episode where the hosts fed a multimillionaire’s portfolio into Claude.
So in a typical month, more than half the slots are not available to anyone. The guest chair competes with Sam and Shaan’s own ideas, which cost nothing to book.
This changes the math on how to get on My First Million podcast. Your pitch is not competing against other founders. It is competing against an hour of the hosts talking to each other about a business they find fascinating. If your conversation would be less interesting than that, it will not get booked, however impressive your company is.
There is an upside in that schedule, too. The host-only episodes are full of named examples. The “6 traits” episode, for instance, leaned on stories about Nick Kokonas, the railroad financier Jay Gould and WPBeginner founder Syed Balkhi. Kokonas then turned up as a guest ten days later. Being a story the hosts tell is often the step before being a guest they book.
The Hampton factor
If you read the fine print in the episode descriptions, you will find the most useful sentence on the whole site. Under “Check Out Sam’s Stuff,” the show notes promote Hampton, the founder community Parr co-founded with Joe Speiser, with this line: “Average member does $25m/year.” Then: “Many of the guests are members.”
Hampton describes itself as a bootstrapped community for founders and CEOs of digital, tech and internet companies, built around peer groups of about ten that meet monthly in person, with an online network of more than 1,000 members. Every applicant is vetted.
Nothing on either site suggests membership guarantees a booking. But it explains how the show finds people. Parr spends his week around founders running eight-figure businesses and hears their numbers in private first. When the show needs a guest with a niche business and real revenue, the shortlist is already in the room.
The broader lesson applies even if Hampton is not for you. My First Million books from proximity. The hosts’ circles include Hampton, their followers on X, HubSpot’s network and the founders they have invested in or worked with. Your job is to get inside one of those circles before you ever ask for airtime. For more on that sequence, our guide on how to pitch podcasters covers the general mechanics, but this show rewards relationship work more than most.
The Juicy Number Scorecard
In the August 21, 2026 episode “3 millionaires reveal their super niche businesses,” the hosts asked three founders for “the juiciest number” behind their companies. That phrase is the best brief anyone has written for this show, so I built a scorecard around it. The Juicy Number Scorecard rates five criteria from zero to two, for a total of ten. Do not ask for an introduction until you score seven or higher.
The number. Score zero if you have no figure you are willing to say on air. Score one for a respectable revenue or growth number. Score two for a number that makes a listener stop the car: a margin that sounds wrong, a tiny team running a large business, or a growth curve with a date attached. Whatnot’s 30 sales to $2.3 million in year one is a two.
The method. Score zero if your success depended on timing or luck you cannot explain. Score one if the method is real but specific to you. Score two if a listener could copy the tactic next week. Wade Foster’s AI tutorials scored a two, because the episode handed people workflows they could use the same day.
The glitch. Puri talks constantly about arbitrage and glitches in the system. The Kokonas episode was literally titled around finding your arbitrage, and the Harmon notes include a segment called “How to find the glitch in the system.” Score zero if your business is a conventional play executed well. Score one if there is a clever angle. Score two if you found a mispriced channel, customer or asset that most people still overlook.
The range. This is a brainstorming show. Score zero if you can only talk about your own company. Score one if you can discuss your industry. Score two if you can generate business ideas outside your lane on the spot, because that is what the hosts will ask you to do.
The proximity. Score zero if neither host has any way to know who you are. Score one if you share mutual connections or have interacted publicly with them on X. Score two if someone they trust (a Hampton member, a past guest, a founder they have backed) will introduce you by name.
Add the five scores. A seven or higher means you are ready to ask for an introduction. A five or six usually means your proximity score is low, which you fix with time, not a better email. Anything under five means you need a bigger number or a sharper method first.
How do people actually get on My First Million?
There is no published route. The mfmpod.com homepage lists episodes, social accounts, a merchandise store and an email signup for free business ideas. It does not list a booking address or a guest form. Muck Rack describes guests as appearing “sometimes.” That leaves four realistic doors.
The first is the hosts’ own invitation, and it is more common than you would think. In July 2022, the indie founder Pieter Levels wrote on his blog that Parr had asked him to come on the show repeatedly for about a year, and in June 2022 Parr posted publicly on Twitter (now X) that he had asked five times, partly to pressure Levels into a date. Levels had closed his DMs and does not keep a schedule. He came on anyway because the hosts kept asking. The pattern holds: Parr and Puri chase people whose numbers they already admire. The best pitch is to become someone they want to chase.
The second door is the network, covered above. Past guests, Hampton members and founders in the hosts’ investing circles make introductions that land.
The third door is X. Both hosts post there constantly, the October 23 episode was built entirely around posts from the platform, and the Levels booking played out there in public. Founders who post specific numbers and tactics, in a voice the hosts recognize, get noticed. Reply with substance to what the hosts post. Share your own juicy numbers openly. That is how you raise your proximity score without asking anyone for anything.
The fourth door is the traditional one, for names that already carry weight, such as David Rubenstein and Tony Hawk. If you have that profile, a short note through a mutual contact or publicist, built around one number and one idea, can work. If you do not, work the other three doors.
Whatever you send, keep it to the elements the scorecard measures. Lead with the number, explain the method in one sentence, name the glitch and offer two or three business ideas you would want to brainstorm on air. Anyone trying to work out how to get on My First Million podcast with a press release should stop there. The show does not cover announcements.
Show up ready to brainstorm, not to be interviewed
If the invitation comes, prepare for a conversation that will wander. The hosts will push past your company into adjacent ideas, other people’s businesses and whatever they read that morning. Come with a short list of ideas you would build if you were starting over, the numbers behind each, and a story or two that only you can tell. Those are the moments that become clips.
Decide in advance which numbers you can disclose, and say them plainly. Vague answers about “strong growth” get cut.
Treat it as a video appearance. Episodes go to YouTube as well as audio feeds, and even Levels, who resisted the format, bought a microphone arm and set up a camera before recording. Good light, a clean frame and a decent microphone are basic courtesy to a show that lives on clips.
A long-form appearance on a show with an archive this size becomes a reference point that people, journalists and AI search tools keep finding for years, which is why we treat podcast appearances as AI citation assets. Share the episode, clip your best number and send a thank-you note to whoever made the introduction.
Build the business with the number nobody believes, and the invitation to explain it will find you sooner than any pitch could.