Costco has grown revenue at roughly 10% per year for over 30 years in a row.
Costco has grown revenue at roughly 10% per year for over 30 years in a row.
Where this was said
At 3:28 · chapter starts 0:00
The episode kicks off with Ben and David flagging that this Costco episode has been re-promoted to the top of the feed because listeners keep calling it one of their all-time favorites and a perfect entry point for new listeners. Ben then launches into the famous Costco product list — cashews, prescription eyeglasses, gas, tires, 96 rolls of toilet paper, a new refrigerator, a shed, a 10-carat diamond ring, sushi, fine wine, and of course the $1.50 hot dog — before David delivers the Warren Buffett / Charlie Munger plane hijacking joke that perfectly captures how much Munger loves the business. A rapid-fire set of mind-bending statistics follows: 30+ years of unbroken ~10% revenue growth, revenue per square foot that rivals Tiffany, massive international runway, and the revelation that Kirkland Signature alone out-revenues all of Nike. The hosts promise to explain not just what Costco does, but the precise set of 50 interlocking trade-offs that make it work.
Kirkland Signature does over $52 billion in annual revenue, exceeding Nike's total revenue by about $1 billion, making it the largest consumer packaged brand in the world.
Despite months of meticulous preparation, Starter Story's initial launch attracted zero users — a humbling reminder that building alone guarantees nothing.
A single Reddit link post quickly drove 100 visitors to the Starter Story website, igniting the founder's belief in social traffic.
After reformatting content as a native self-post (no direct link spam), the post exploded with hundreds of upvotes and thousands of readers.
By posting again and again with the native-content strategy, the founder's posts repeatedly hit Reddit's front page, reaching millions of readers.
Before Reddit banned his domain, the founder converted his viral traffic into an email list of tens of thousands — a self-owned audience independent of Reddit.
Redditors eventually organized a petition to ban starterstory.com posts, effectively ending the Reddit growth channel — but the email list was already built.
The Reddit attention strategy ultimately served as the foundation for a million-dollar business, proving that free distribution channels can replace paid marketing.
The key tactic was keeping content fully on-platform (no direct link spam), then adding a small link at the post's end for users who wanted more.
With a thriving email list and a self-owned audience, the founder quit his six-figure New York City salary job to go all-in on Starter Story.
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