Jason Hirschhorn's personal network made him rich. Then it saved his life.

From an early age, Jason Hirschhorn knew how to rally a crowd. While in high school, he worked as a club promoter in New York City; one night, he got 7,000 teenagers into a venue that charged $10 a head — and he had negotiated that he would receive half of the door sales.

"I walked out of the club with a garbage bag of $35,000," Hirschhorn said on the latest episode of Recode Media with Peter Kafka. That was just the start; he sold his first startup to Viacom for tens of millions of dollars, a "life-changing amount of money," and embarked on a career that brought him to MTV, Sling Media and Myspace, all the while building strong connections throughout the media industry.

In 2006, Hirschhorn launched Redef Media, a weekly email newsletter for that network, full of links to must-see content from around the web. More recently, Redef has become its own company, delivering curated newsletters to people in other industries like music, fashion and sports.

Serving as Redef Media's curator since 2006, Hirschhorn opens each entry with a personal note. Those notes got a lot more personal when he went in for quadruple bypass surgery last year and then encountered serious complications afterwards that his doctors struggled to fix.

"One of the things when you write about personal stuff on the internet is that you can find the doppelgänger," Hirschhorn said. "You can find the person going through the same things as you."

Sure enough, his loyal readers directed him to a new doctor with a world-class reputation. He said that doctor, who proposed solutions never mentioned by his initial doctors, saved his life.

You can listen to Recode Media in the audio player above, or subscribe on iTunes, Google Play Music, TuneIn and Stitcher.

If you like this show, you should also sample our other podcasts:

• Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with the movers and shakers in tech and media every Monday. You can subscribe on iTunes, Google Play Music, TuneIn and Stitcher.
• Too Embarrassed to Ask, hosted by Kara Swisher and The Verge's Lauren Goode, answers all of the tech questions sent in by our readers and listeners. You can hear new episodes every Friday on iTunes, Google Play Music, TuneIn and Stitcher.
• And finally, Recode Replay has all the audio from our live events such as the Code Conference, Recode Media and the Code Commerce Series. Subscribe today on iTunes, Google Play Music, TuneIn and Stitcher.

If you like what we’re doing, please write a review on iTunes — and if you don’t, just tweet-strafe Peter. Tune in next Thursday for another episode of Recode Media!

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.

So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)

If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via