When everything works, you learn the wrong lessons

0:00 Alright, look on YouTube Everybody talks about how they're crushing it. Every business podcast, every business influencer is talking about how great everything is going. But on today's podcast, My buddy Nick is coming on and he's doing the opposite. He is talking about A bunch of the big mistakes he's made. He's eating humble pie publicly on the podcast today.

0:19 And talking about some of the things he's learned from it. So I want you to tune into this episode. He's talking about how he made the biggest acquisition of his life when he bought summer dot com. How he might have screwed up certain things and how he's trying to recover from those. It's another side to Nick. If you know Nick he's he's

0:33 He's a popular guy online, but you don't always get to see the uh the humble side. And so I think it's a great episode with Nick. Enjoy. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'm putting my all in it like a day song on the roll list. Alright, what's up? We got Nick Huber here, friend of the pod. Nick, what's up, man? Sean, thanks for having me. Been a long time.

0:53 Did you um You wrote something. So we have every guest do a little prep doc of like, Hey, what do you what are some things on your mind, stories, ideas? That you want to share. And you wrote one that I think is Very interesting to people who've been following Nick Huber. So you built up this personality online. Of being

1:11 Confident. Borderline cocky. Yeah, you know, you have strong opinions. You are not afraid to piss some people off. And you said this in the document, you said, I've been humbled

1:22 Of my cocky attitude in my thirties. Is this a Do we have a heel tur uh what's the a face turn like in wrestling where the bad guy becomes good? What's going on? Yeah, man. I think the last Five years in business, I mean, five years ago, you guys had me on the pot. I I felt like I knew everything, man. Like and I think it was that irrational confidence early in my career that I wouldn't trade for anything because I think it led to a lot of success and me me putting myself out there, but

1:45 Yeah, man, like you just realize that business is hard. Business is really hard. So It's not the same as it was two thousand twenty four, two thousand twenty five are not the same as two thousand twenty two, two thousand two thousand twenty three for any entrepreneur I know. So g g give me an example of uh how Nick what Nick was thinking then versus Nick thinking now, because there's this great phrase Everyone's a genius in a bull market. I think part of what you're gonna talk about is like back in twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, twenty nineteen, like during that era

2:12 It felt like you could do no wrong. But like give me a Nick back then He was thinking X Y Z about himself or the world, and now what is Nick thinking? I thought business was easy. I thought building executive teams was easy I thought. I thought I could do no wrong because I had this personal brand.

2:28 Started all these companies, started ten plus companies over a three year period. Mine. Four of them have been shut down. So yeah, it's uh it's not all roses. It's not all roses. Uh, but you are, you know, I guess older and wiser now and you've it's sure some things shut down, but other things you've sort of doubled down on and have started to work.

2:46 What do you think caused that? Uh was it just market kicking your ass a little bit in certain areas that m that sort of made you reassess? Were you wrong about a specific Thing. I thought with a personal brand that's strong enough. You could

2:59 Get it in agency business of any kind and Go to the moon. Whether or not you do a couple of things right, couple of things wrong, whatever. And then yeah, the algorithm changed, like the business got a little harder, people started really watching how they're spending money, so I just think

3:14 It It's harder now than it was, man. Like Well, I know a lot of people who are making less money now than they were three years ago. Right, right. Okay. I wanna jump around into some of your new ideas. So things you're feeling, thinking right now. So

3:26 You know, you mentioned being sort of humble and you mentioned your portfolio going from How many companies did you have kind of like at your peak and how many do you have now? Eleven. Yeah. I I started eleven companies. From uh you know. Two thousand sixteen was my first or You were like I'm gonna do an SEO company, I got a storage company, I got a um what else did you have? You had a bunch of other paper paper click marketing company called Ad Rhino, I had a sales consulting company called Hubermethod, I had a business brokerage, I had You know.

3:54 Um on and on and on. So I went on a phase where I was like, I can't I'm I got the hot hand. My audience is super powerful. Like let's scale up some companies. Do you remember at your peak what the group revenue or um Of of the companies you owned the majority of, uh of group revenue or cash flow was at the at the peak.'Cause it w it was working for a little while, right?

4:15 Yeah, well. Group cash flow right now is actually way higher than it was, but it's only because of like a three headed monster of the companies that rose at the top. So it's kind of like a power law thing, right? But totally of the six bottom ones, I mean up we were up to half million dollars a month, maybe of total revenue. Yeah, shut down four and two of them are Or

4:33 You know, treading water right now. Right. And so the I think the most interesting lesson Uh,'cause I've got to see it from the inside. I don't know how much of this you've shared, but

4:42 We were both partners in a company called Somewhere. Actually at the time it was called Shepherd. And um People don't know the backstory here. So the backstory is Marshall, who's the founder who was the founder of the company.

4:54 owned the majority of the company. Then me and Nick both had a a a good A good chunk, but in the minority. And Marshall calls and he says, Hey I got an acquisition offer. I think I'm gonna take it. And I was like, Oh wow, talk me through it. What is it? And he tells us that Andrew Wilkinson, our buddy, other friend of the pot.

5:11 He made an offer to buy the company for fifty two million dollars. And this was great, you know, this is a company that Marshall bootstrapped didn't raise any money. Um So you know Potentially big X, but it was a stock based deal. And you know, Marshall was gonna take it. Marshall had worked for Andrew when he was young.

5:27 Uh, he had a lot of respect for Andrew. So I think it was like part of it was like this like almost like full circle validation moment. But you know, personally, I think every entrepreneur could have that where it's like, wow, Facebook wants to buy my company. This is unbelievable. And then there's The financial component to it. And On the phone I was like, Well, let me give you my opinion and I realized very quickly I was like oh

5:44 He's actually already decided this was a let me th I just wanted to let you know, disguised as a what do you think call But you know, I'm I'm a very opinionated guy, so not to be deterred. I was like, Hey, listen, like, you know, we're growing really fast. I like our stock. Why would we trade our stock for for other person's stock? Like we should just keep our stock. It's growing, it's it's a small company. So by nature, it's gonna grow much faster than these larger companies. And um you know, that stock might not be that liquid. Are you sure there's a deal you wanna do? Then I call Nick. And I'm like, Nick, what do you think? I had this opinion.

6:11 You were very similar and we had this idea of like If he's gonna do if he just wants to sell, maybe we could buy it. And originally that was some of the idea. And I said, Oh, look, my life will get too crazy and complicated. I don't want to do this, but you were like, I'm gonna do it. And so Walker that's where that's where the story begins. Walk me through what happened first of all, was that your same history? Did I mess anything up there? Uh and forty seven forty seven million dollar valuation. The company was three years old and growing really fast, about 150 employees. Um, I was a customer and and then became an investor and had started to build worldwide teams. But yeah, here we are. Mar Marshall calls me.

6:43 Hey Andrew, Andrew wants to make an offer to buy the company. I realized hey I don't want to sell any of this company if anything I want more of this business and this was peak This was also just Peak Nick Hubert. You know.

6:55 not humble Nick Huber of thinking I can do anything and I can't go wrong. And by the way, we had just tripled the business that year. So it wasn't like It wasn't like we n w were had any reason to not have confidence. Like the business had just Tripled in cash flow. And so like that was good. Yeah.

7:12 Hey, I got something pretty cool to share with you guys. So if you're like me, you listen to podcasts or YouTube videos, you like to take notes, you're here to learn. And that's a lot of effort. Sometimes you're on the go and you can't do it. And so the folks at Hubspot who are sponsoring the podcast have done something pretty cool for you. They have created the MFM Vault. It's a place to go find notes and resources that they pull. from the different episodes that we do. So if we have a guest on that shares their five point framework, they write down those five points with the examples that the guest gave and they put the notes there for you. So if you want to access the vault. It's totally free. All you got to do is click the link in the description below and you can access all the notes and the stuff in the vault. We're going to keep adding to this trying to make it better over time. Thank you to HubSpot. This is a very cool way for them to sponsor the podcast, but by instead of telling you

8:00 to go buy their stuff, they're actually giving you something instead. Okay, carry on. So you decide I'm gonna I tell you, hey, I think I'm probably not gonna do it, but you're like, I'm gonna do this anyways. Yeah, I I say I'm You know, Marshall, actually I wanna be the one to buy your company. You shouldn't sell it to to Andrew, you should sell it to me.

8:17 And his initial reaction is like you and what money. He had a he had a lot of questions. His jaw almost hit the floor. He's like, Nick, this is insane. Like you kidding me? Like this is life changing money. You sell Fifty one it was a fifty one percent deal'cause he still needed, remember, he still needed me and you in because we were sending a lot of business and he still wanted Marshall to have some skin in the game. Um And yeah, man, the next uh three month period I c I sold Marshall on the fact that I could raise twenty million bucks and negotiate a seller note for a chunk of it. Had to get very creative with how I structured this deal because I realized real quick that

8:48 Not the same as real estate and and how much skin I can get in the game. So so let's talk through this because a lot of people will give high level numbers. Valuation, sale price, but Terms is where Like anybody who's done deals knows like structure and terms matter a ton. Yeah. Uh in how a deal gets done. Like an all stock deal, all cash deal, up front, earn out, contingency base, seller finance. That you know, it's a big there's a big array of different ways the deal can go down. So can you just Give us the the simple version of like what was this. So it was originally a forty seven million dollar offer from Andrew.

9:20 But the business kept growing over the next six months that we kinda got this deal done it. It became a fifty two million dollar purchase acquisition price. And let me be clear that Andrew It was early on it kinda felt like me and Andrew negotiating against each other. Holy shit, I'm negotiating against a Titan This guy's bought forty companies, you've bought zero. publicly traded business, you know, billionaire on paper for a while. Um a great friend of ours. And then

9:42 Andrew kind of just Thought about some AI risk, he saw maybe some some headwinds and he said, You know what Nick like Maybe we'll do this together. It was kind of a conversation throughout. It wasn't as if we're Um have any animosity between each other. Um

9:54 But yeah, it was it was I was gonna raise twenty million dollars to buy forty percent of about forty percent of the company from Marshall. I realize that if I go out and raise twenty million dollars to buy this company. I'm only entitled to a twenty percent carry on top once everybody gets their money back.

10:11 Right. So the structure is you go to investors Investors give you twenty million. Your deal with them is I get a twenty percent carrier profit share of Of that. So like you know, you're only owning. So the twenty twenty million buys you what uh what percentage of the numbers like so forty percent. Thirty nine point two five for like twenty and change, but let's say forty percent. twenty million dollars.

10:31 I would need to Get them all made whole, their money back, plus a hurdle. to then get an eight percent upside, which is twenty percent of forty million. So my ownership stock would go from about twelve percent to about twenty percent. I'd have to raise twenty million bucks, I'd put my name on the line, I'd take all this risk, do all this work.

10:49 Very quickly I realized like I can't do this deal. Like it would be foolish for me to do this. So I went back to Marshall and said, Hey, I need to buy more of the company. And this is where we kinda got creative and I and I carved out An eighteen percent seller note.

11:04 Directly from Marshall to me. And a seller note is basically the seller saying, I will lend you essentially the money to put to pay me and you're gonna pay me every year Um or every quarter, whatever you guys decided. This. Uh so what was that? That was eight w eighteen million? What did you say? How much was negative about nine million bucks for eighteen percent. Of the company. So you you all in, you raise twenty million from investors, you get nine million, nine point something million from Marshall. So you're in twenty nine million dollars.

11:31 And now you're in charge. And you've got peak energy. And I'm talking to you and we both are like, dude, we've had so many ideas of how we could try this business, you know, from X to Y. This is gonna be great. And then Well what happens? Um

11:47 Three things. changed drastically. Number one, we changed the name from support shepherd. I'd set over too many people's shoulders, watching them spell Shepherd incorrectly. Smart people to know that holy cow, we cannot grow A big company with this name.

12:02 So we bought somewhere dot com for four hundred thousand dollars shortly after closing. Change the name from supportshepherd.com to somewhere.com. Our SEO. Our search engine optimization and our brand recognition vanished overnight. In that one fell swoop, we lost.

12:15 Three hundred leads a month of ab of about A thousand leads that we had. Uh so you lose a third of your traffic on your brilliant name change. Okay, next. Yeah, let me let me look at my notes. So Number two. Um Elon bought Twitter.

12:30 Elon bought Twitter and started drastically messing with the algorithm quickly. And it went from me being able to tweet about hiring somebody in the Philippines for five dollars an hour and send you know, three thousand website visits and two hundred, three hundred, four hundred leads to the company. To virtually nothing.

12:46 Right. So my ability to send business to the company with my personal brand. Vanished. Okay. The third thing is um

12:57 I wasn't the only one to think international hiring was a beautiful business and Uh Many, many competitors started over the next uh six months. Yeah. And you guys were pretty loud about the acquisition, which also invites competition. Um I tried telling this, but like, you know, everybody wanted to to pound their chest. Natural, honestly. Like and I get it. There's actually an upside to it, too, right? I think the month we announced act, to be fair, the months the two months after we announced the acquisition, It was actually peak growth because like a lot of people went and checked it out and realized like wow, there's a reason why all these people use this service. There's a reason why there's a high repeat rate of this service is probably pretty good.

13:34 So it did initially cause a burst, but it also created You know, it emboldened the existing competitors to go harder and it it created, you know, ten new competitors, let's say. Yep. And then and then the economy started to shift. Like interest rates went up. a general like silent recession happen in a lot of different industries. Right. And and our customer base Our customer base was not

13:54 super well funded AI companies or something like that where were you know spending was they're just spending, you know, sloshing money around. Like we help real businesses. So it'd be whether it's you know, small business agency owners who own a hundred percent of the business and the cash flow matters to them. It's e commerce businesses where you're already on tight margins and that's why You leverage global talent because it improves your margins, but You might just stop hiring altogether, uh, right? Like you might just actually shrink your workforce. Tariffs are coming, you don't know what's gonna happen with that. So you shrink your workforce.

14:23 Yeah, we would serve tech companies that were you know, more responsible with their cash. And so like all these business owners that are are great customers to have and a big part of our audience They are obviously cost sensitive because they live in the real world. They're not VC subsidized with, you know, fifty million dollar rounds where you can just aggressively go higher and spend against

14:43 Macro economic headwinds. Yeah, ecom e com headwinds, home service headwinds, construction headwinds, real estate headwinds. means less people are hiring, less people are growing their teams. Right. Um and I made a lot of bold, quick executive changes inside of somewhere when I when I acquired it. The company had grown Very quickly. It was doing ninety five percent of its hiring in the Philippines.

15:02 Executive assistance. Right. Um we start to invest in Latin America, we started to invest in South Africa. finance talent in Egypt, building executive teams in South Africa, performance marketers, you know, high skilled You know. actually how to structure and build a company from the ground up internationally.

15:17 It's an important part. I'm I'm making fun of of some of the the fun decisions because Because There is a happy ending. It all works out. The company's back is growing well. All that good stuff. So then it's fun to laugh about mistakes. It's it's not so fun when If things go poorly, you don't you don't laugh about the mistakes as much, you cry about them? Yeah, we're making it sound like we make it sound like we're gonna end this in bankrupt, but um no the I guess the spoiler here. You know, over the last four months if you compare it to before acquisition, those four months I was negotiating the deal, we're up about sixty percent from a revenue perspective.

15:48 And over last year it's twenty eight percent. So I'm still behind my like pro form of what I hope to do with the company when I bought it. But revenue's growing very healthily and our team is awesome. So I think we're doing a phenomenal job of finding people all over the world. I've learned a ton about worldwide recruiting. I want to give some people some tips too. how to do this themselves, like what what to look for. But yeah, it's been a

16:08 A lot of changes. So so the reason I wanted to share this is because Ninety nine percent of people talking about their experiences buying and running businesses. The selection effect is the people who are failing, shut up. And the people were sixteen get real loud.

16:24 And I think what's cool about you is that you um You you you can give it and you could take it. And so like you are You are bold and you say what you mean, you say what you feel, you're not will you're not afraid to be wrong. And if you're wrong, you say I was wrong. Um, and I really love that about you, I really respect that about you. I think that's actually quite rare. And in this case, like, you know, you're basically saying, Hey, I went and did this deal and then like here's a bunch of things that immediately I did wrong or went wrong for me and I had to like, you know, figure out how to do better. And I think that's actually like quite admirable.

16:51 The second part of it is There was there's something that in in um in sports they call a new uh new owner. Um sort of new owner syndrome, which is any time a sports owner buys a team, they immediately start changing everything. And they're like, Oh, I can I can do no wrong. I know how to fix this. I'm gonna do all these great things in year one. And one of the things that I think is actually pretty interesting here is Even though

17:14 We've run this global talent. company and we were finding talent all over the globe. We were mostly finding finding Kind of junior and mid level talent. So like You know, whether it's assistance, executive assistance was like a big you know, a huge part of our business.

17:26 Sales folks, you know, whatever. There's Folks like that. C suite folks, we would typically s assume are Well that's who I wanna use you know, uh you know, different uh local hires either you know in the same office as me or just American hires. Expensive big pay packages.

17:41 you know, got a lot of pedigree with companies I recognize, you know, whatever. And so we did that. You know, we hired a bunch of executives and that was I think made total sense on paper. And I think one of the cool things that you figured out that I didn't see going into this was Since then you have actually rebuilt

17:57 Not just the junior and mid level, but actually the executive team. With executive talent elsewhere. And I kinda took that and I was like, Oh, I should do that in my businesses'cause that's actually like An even bigger. Ha, because you you were like, dude, I'm finding here's this person in South Africa. They've got

18:12 NBA. They speak perfect English. They've worked for international companies and you know American companies that do work internationally for Yeah, twelve years. They've been a financial controller controlling these budgets. And you can hire that person at this price. That's incredible. You know, you're saving, you know, huge amounts of money on really great talent and really hungry low maintenance.

18:33 Um hard working hardworking talent all around the globe. And so that was I thought one of the bigger surprises to me and like things we got wrong. that we kinda c corrected and I don't know if you wanna say a a quick thing about that. Yeah I have

18:46 Six Americans at somewhere out of one hundred and sixty employees. Ari Cossack, another Company in my portfolio that's growing really fast. Hundred and thirty employees. Seven Americans. Falt storage, six Americans out of sixty employees.

18:58 Um and they're all in sales and account management. Because I just can't replicate the Americans' ability to close deals. Um high ticket deals. Now we're close with a couple of South Africans, but A COO?

19:10 At R Cosseg? Johannesburg, South Africa. How to performance marketing. In Bogota, Columbia. You know, head of finance, an IT consultant who got me through

19:19 SOC two compliance. We got our certificate this week. And Cape Town, South Africa. So I used to think like okay, I need I need repeatable tasks and I need to outsource those to the Philippines, South Africa, Colombia, whatever. Now I'm realizing that the people who can run my company

19:35 Can do it better and cheaper. Over internationally. And I don't want this to be a somewhere plug, but you you were like dude, I could tell you how to do this without somewhere. And I was like, Oh, that's like an anti ad. So great. You can do some more, but here's how you do it without us. Uh so how do you do it without us?

19:50 So we get we get sixty thousand applicants a month. Um, half those are from LinkedIn and Indeed and Monster promoted job postings. I can tell you I'm gonna tell you exactly how we do it. The other half are from referrals and ads that we run out on the open market for people that already have jobs. But yeah, Make your own hire.

20:08 Go on LinkedIn. Post a job, I'd I'd recommend Colombia, Brazil, South Africa, and the Philippines. Those are the four hottest places to hire in the country. If you're looking for finance, there's Egypt, you know. Um engineers. Um Eastern Europe and some other and some other countries. But Go in there and promote the job on LinkedIn with a hundred dollars a day.

20:25 And run it for five days. Post the job in those countries on LinkedIn, promote it with a hundred dollars a day, run it for five days. So you're in what for Maybe two grand you're gonna get A thousand applicants.

20:36 All right. But that's too many. How do I filter? Yeah, so we have figured out And I'm gonna pass this on to you is that of our sixty thousand applicants every single month. Eighty five percent of them can't type.

20:48 Thirty five words per minute. And if we're talking about remote work in any role. from engineering to marketing to graphic design to admin to sales to executive leadership. Y your your easiest immediate filter is typing speed English test, basically. Yeah, we're getting that down we're getting that down to five thousand people a month.

21:05 That are coming in. You wipe out whatever, eighty percent of people right away. Great. Uh what's the next easiest heuristic to find great talent? We're gonna send them a request for a one minute video. Okay. Where they film themselves introducing themselves for one minute. Eighty percent of people are just not willing to do the work. They're not that serious about looking for a job. Right.

21:24 So the other twenty percent you're left with maybe a thousand. Um this is our talent tool, you know, you when with your job post that you got a thousand applicants, you're left with maybe forty, thirty or forty people that can type over thir thirty five words per minute. And have sent you the video. You watch the videos, you look at the the professional maturity, you look at how they communicate, which is a big part of the job. And you pick your favorite five to hire.

21:43 Um and then I love assessments. If they're if they're if they're coming into a sales role, I love Sending them five calls from my sales team and saying, Hey Break these down, record a three minute video. on how you would, you know, missed opportunities or how they would improve Um

21:56 And that's Yeah. then you're gonna be left with three or four really right candidates and hire'em. Right. Task based test over uh interview. is huge. We do that in in all of our mention the interview, I guess.

22:08 Well yeah, I don't I don't even I don't even get to an interview at this stage. This is how we do it when when I do this with uh with Ben and our companies. And part of it is actually useful for you. So when you sit down, you say, All right. If I give somebody A test that they could do in Something like Sixty to ninety minutes.

22:23 Mm-hmm. What would most closely simulate the type of stuff I want to see them be able to do. So now you get clarity on what am I actually looking for, which most people when they go into interviews, they don't actually even know what they're looking for. That's like sort of the dirty secret why you make a lot of bad hires. So once you do that, you get clarity, then they actually show you and now you're not saying like Hey, you talked to this person. How'd you like him? I liked him so nice. It's like no. We have an objective way to just say here's what one person produced, here's what the other person produced. And we start with production.

22:50 Because that's what we're gonna want in the end is production. And we will often I I don't know if you do this, but we will often just pay to like, Hey, I'll pay you for the hour of time, two hours of time, whatever it is. Like This is a paid task trial because you're actually saving me money. Uh and and time of interviewing and g making a false hire because I liked you when we had a nice chat, but you actually weren't good at doing the thing.

23:12 Yep, exactly. I want to give some people advise Where to go as well. What cities and what countries are hot spots for what type of talent. Um Egypt, Cairo, Egypt is the cheapest city in America in in the world.

23:23 And you can find people who can work magic in Microsoft Excel and Power BI. Refinance data. Analyst perspective. Colombia and Brazil are unbelievable for operations. You're on your same time zone.

23:34 Just Every single role if they don't need perfect English, if they're not a sales role. South America's amazing. Um South Africa is a sales and finance hub. There's thirty thousand South Africans that get on a plane and go to America every single year to do

23:47 Audit and tax work for big four consulting firms. They go back to South Africa and you hire'em for three grand a month to be a controller at your small business. So yeah, it's just unbelievable areas. I love Sri Lanka as well for almost all roles. Philippines. Obviously there's thirty million million Filipinos working for American companies today. It's just Deeply ingrained in their culture.

24:05 So to give people an example of the assessment real quick, I just pulled one up. So this is what I use to find my assistant. So I basically gave this out and I said, uh I said I want you to do the task and I want you to record a loom video explaining um what you did in the in as you do each test, which tells me their thoughts shows me kind of how they work and not just like the end product.

24:24 And I also get to hear them communicate and if they're like a easy person to communicate with. So my assistant task, I said uh Pretend you're booking a vacation from LA to Paris for my wife and I are our ideal dates of this. But we're flexible on those by a day or two. Here's our preferences. Send me a couple of options. The lowest cost option, the best option that balances convenience and cost.

24:43 And maybe the most luxurious option, m more expensive, but whatever. I wanna see them put together kind of a menu of options'cause that's typically how I work with my assistant. It's like You get me to ninety percent and then I pick and choose what I want. Another one I said. Here's a voice note. I put a voice note on SoundCloud. I said Of me dictating while driving. Um, draft these two emails based on what I mentioned.

25:02 And in in that voice note, I'm like, Hey, oh I gotta I promised ex so and so I would introduce them to so and so. You know, I met them at lunch, blah, blah, blah. And then I try to see if they can just quickly gr grok like, basically, can I write a fuzzy address on an envelope and will it still get there. Right. Because I'm not gonna get perfect instructions most of the time. So how do they deal with imperfect instructions? I'll have them do simple things like hey, I've just moved to from Texas to Wyoming and I don't have an I don't have changed my driver's license. Can you figure out how I need to get like get uh like DMV work? Like how would I get a new license? Could you do it all the way and if not, what steps do you need me to do?

25:34 And then uh the like Make a birthday card in Canva for my daughter's birthday. I wanna see like do they have like basic design and event organization skills. And the last one was like research. So it's like, hey, I'm looking for influencers for this new pro fitness product that I have.

25:49 Find me 10 fitness influence that fitness criteria. Let me just see if they're able to like quickly do data collection and research and be able to provide something useful to me. And so like those are examples of what tasks I put out there. I put in a that's a that's a one page Google Doc. And they send me basically a loom video of them doing each task. That's how I quickly filtered through, you know, fifty people that like some were basically just like, Hey, here's fifty people, here's the four we like best. I gave them the assessment. I didn't like the first four. Then then they gave me another batch of four and immediately there was someone who was great. Yeah, they they shine.

26:22 Without Any work on your end. It's a it's a beautiful thing. You were basically saying like uh you know, you find all these different talent. So People can go find it themselves. If they wanted to find it through somewhere, like what is the e is what is a simple way to do that?

26:36 I mean we we prepared kind of a like a special thing for your audience. Do you want to talk about that now or you just want to talk about like generally how the company works? Yeah, well what is it what you what do you have? Yeah, I I in advance of this episode, I personally vetted and interviewed ten salespeople. In South Africa? Okay. Um ten finance folks in Egypt, Latam, and South Africa, and ten executive assistants. And Sri Lanka.

26:59 Latan and South Africa. Gotcha. So you you did a personal vet short list for each. Yeah. I watched their videos, I analyze their resumes. Well do you want people to email you or how do people get access to that? Yeah. So if they email me Nick at sweatystartup.com. Um I can Hook'em up with some of these profiles, let'em see them. And uh

27:17 Hopefully help them grow their team. That's cool. I'm curious, man. You are always meeting interesting people, partly due to having a presence on Twitter, partly just You know, you have like one foot in the sweaty startup world, one foot in the tech world, online media world. I'm just curious, like who have you met recently that

27:33 Kind of. either inspired you or like, you know broke your frame in some way or somebody who you think is doing cool stuff. I I have one person in mind who's building a pest control like monster of a company. I don't want to out him.

27:45 It's just incredible to me. You know this. You've actually taught me a lot of this stuff is that they find one thing that really works inside their company. And they just run the same play for five or ten years to grow a monster business. I didn't think that business worked that way. That you could do one thing really well and everything else You know, you're not hiring internationally, you're you're not doing the latest software. You haven't even looked at AI, you're not answering the phone past five oh one PM. Right.

28:10 But you do this one thing well and You're the hundred million dollars. Right. Today's episode is brought to you by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book but then tearing out four fifths of the pages. Point is you miss a lot. And unless you're using HubSpot, the customer platform that gives you access to the data you need to grow your business. The insights that are trapped in emails, call logs, transcripts, all that unstructured data makes all the difference because when you know more, you grow more.

28:37 And so if you want to read the whole book instead of just reading part of it, visit hubspot.com. Have you ever seen Peter Thiel taught a class at Stanford and they put the class notes online? And it's been there for a long time. It's called the The Blake Masters notes or something like that. Did you ever read those? No, what's what's the main takeaway? So he's got one, which is he's like, um

28:57 You know, I get a lot of investor pitches. And yeah, I've invested in f I was, you know, the seed investor in Facebook. So you get if you have some huge winners and you have a bunch of losers, what do you notice with them? And he's basically he's like One of the biggest poker tells with the business. Is when they have seven Revenue streams?

29:12 That actually they think they come in puffing their chest being like look, we've got seven. And he's like, all they've told me is they don't have one great one. And same thing with distribution channels. When I asked them, how are you gonna get customers or how do you get customers today? And um if they tell me seven things, all that tells me is they don't have one amazing thing. It's like all the best companies, and this is the best companies. they find one they basically end up with one distribution channel that really, really works. And one revenue stream that really, really works. And so it's like, you know, for Facebook, for example, the distribution channel that worked was viral. photo tagging on uh campuses initially and then eventually off campuses.

29:45 And then the modestation was adds. And Facebook didn't need to sell stickers, and didn't need to do like That was another. things that all the other social networks were actually doing. Like f h MMs did a homepage takeover and We signed this deal with this movie studio and they're gonna

30:00 Do like a a cool campaign with us in partnership and like Facebook was like self serve banner ads will be the thing and this and and this will be the growth tactic. Brad Jacobs. Brad Jacobs with how he grew United Reynolds and several of these other companies. He ran the same place. What was his what was his play? Actually don't know. I'm sure you had several different plays, but how you make a few billion dollars is Like you find a way to grow uh, you know, equipment rental business through

30:24 Is it local ads? Is it is it outbound sales? They had a really good outbound sales team for contractors. And then boom, that business Skyrocketed. Pull the same executive team, pulled his main players out of that company once it went public. Put them in the next one and boom.

30:39 You know, that's how you grow up five companies in a row. Figuring out figuring out what companies that play will work for. Right. I I've told this story, I think, before, but um I it's

30:49 It's probably one of my most like, I don't know, humbling and uh insightful moments. Yeah, like you a hard lesson learned very quickly. It got you know a band aid that got ripped off for me. So we have a buddy Um Sully, who you know. And Sully's like to me My business Yoda. Like if I got a business problem, I go to Yoda and he he gives me the like

31:09 He can't even really explain. He just sort of like he sees Through all the noise that I bring him and he just finds the the thing. So um my e commerce business was was early on, it was growing. And so I think we were at Maybe um Hundred thousand a month in revenue.

31:26 So like you know, like kind of like a million dollar thing. It's like early on. And our how did we get there? We were doing Facebook ads. So he told me, do Facebook ads and focus on Facebook ads. And I was like, but what about Google? He's like, but what about what I just told you? And I was like, Okay, cool. So Facebook ads is working. I feel super accomplished. We've gone from zero to a hundred K in like three months. This is awesome. So I go to him I'm like Dude, it's working. I'm thinking now we should do influencers and we should do goo. We should spin up Google because you know, of course, who doesn't do Google? But like I really think influence could work. Here's this cool influencer idea I have.

31:55 And he would just basically just cut me off and he was just like He's like, You wanna win, right? And I was like, Yeah, he's like, Um, cool. Don't say the word influencers until you're at three hundred thousand a month just off of Facebook. And I was like I was like, but would it be bad to let's like do both? He's like, Well

32:13 Here's the thing. Is there any reason you believe that Facebook can't get you to three hundred thousand? No, I it's it's got us to hundred. Why couldn't it get us to three? And he's like and if We couldn't get Facebook to three. Do you think any amount of influencers is gonna save us? It's like no, like a a successful ecom brand should be spending

32:29 Basically one million plus per month in just Facebook ads, right? Which means you're making more than a million dollars off of Facebook. Like that's where you're trying to get to. That's the goal. And like you kinda have a broken company if you can't really get there. Like More off of Facebook ads, so like You should just try to win off of Facebook ads before you go to all this other shit. And he and so just and I was like I had expected when I was like

32:49 Gonna get advice from him. That he's gonna give me these amazing strategies, these like new hacks, these brilliant tactics. And actually the most useful thing he did for me was just say Don't say the word influencers until Facebook is cranking three hundred thousand a month to your business. And just and by the way, we kept it going. After three hundred, we did five hundred. After five hundred, we did a million. It's like you just keep going.

33:11 Um off of just us two. Guess what? I still don't do influencers. Like it's now five years later. We didn't need it. You know? And and I definitely would have distracted myself. With what sounds like a good idea. And it comes back to the Steve Jobs quote, which is focus is not about what you say yes to. It's about saying no to otherwise great ideas.

33:31 One of my companies was making You know, spending upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars on paid ads a month. We realized that hey, our Roas is barely breaking even. We calculated it down to the profit and realized that that piece of the company was making us maybe fifteen to twenty thousand dollars a month in profit. And you're spending tons of executive time and energy to try to get that to work. We looked at our other part of our

33:53 You know, revenue stream and it said referrals. Referrals coming in the doors generating two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of profit per month on You know, maybe thirty thousand dollars of referral fees and discounts. Um, why what would happen if for six months our entire executive team laser focused On

34:10 growing that referral number and do we think that would we'd be better off than you know, maybe the last year and a half we've been trying to get you know, slam a a round peg into a square hole. Yeah, right. It's it's unbelievable the job of a CEO sometimes. Is literally just to tell your team no.

34:25 And to get them focused on what's already working. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And not hedge. Like, you know, I would uh I would say no But then we kind of green light this little test. I would say no, but then like two weeks later, we just do it anyways. What happened to our no? Was that not a real no?

34:41 And I think there's all these ways where you can think you're compromising or you're you're having your cake and eating it too, but actually you're just spilling your cake on the floor. Um and and it's better to to not do that. All right, let's take a quick break because I gotta tell you a story. Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know the type. It's got a janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form. And it was open only during business hours. And I hit send. And it froze. They flagged the transaction, they locked my account, they put me on hold for 45 minutes, and then they told me I got to visit my local branch.

35:12 And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. Uh, after asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money, I can pay invoices, I can reimburse the team. All from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for

35:25 all of my companies. And so do two hundred thousand other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to Mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, call them NA and Evolve Bank and Trust members FDIC. You said running a hold co is overrated. I think the trend will die down. Most rich guys I know are focused on one big business and built it for a long time. So hold codes or these portfolios of businesses like you were doing.

35:53 was a very, very big idea or popular idea in our circles and our bubble about five years ago. And it's not a new idea. Hold on around for a long time. Give me your updated thoughts on the whole cove. Man, I think over the last three or four years I've been kind of labeled as one of the Holdco guys. You know, there's several more of us, but

36:11 I've had a lot of people reach out, you know, I got this plan to, you know, I'm gonna buy more companies, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna grow to Five eight ten companies and the synergies and all this stuff. I think you really gotta know your shit to run more than one company. Mm. And the majority of people that I know who run more than one company. They ran just one company for a long time, made it really good, made it really profitable.

36:30 learned how to build executive teams, learn how to build compensation plans, learned how to um work the funnel and convert at the highest rate all the way down the funnel. If you don't know those things and you start going around buying different companies, especially if you use leverage. borrow money to do it, buy companies, whatever it might be. Things can go really wrong really quick because

36:48 Unlike real estate, which was my first business where you get a couple of clients in and they pay rent every single month. operating companies, man, you can have massive swings in revenue and profit. Um so yeah, I think everybody thinks it's cool. Um, another thing about it is you just solve freaking problems all the time, like the the biggest problems in each individual company bubble up and come to you.

37:07 Um so Yeah, I I don't know. When I look at Some of the wealthiest people I know, the some of the wealthy wealthiest people that you've had on your pod. Almost all of them focused on one thing and made that one thing really big. So

37:18 One source of problems rather than ten. All right, another one you have here. Consistency is underrated. You're you're on the consistency train. What's your take here? Yeah, I think it's really easy to get excited about something. And jump in and be

37:33 Delusionally like Focused on one thing for One year, even two years, whether it's business, a certain idea. Your physical health. I know people who are they're either running a marathon and

37:44 cutting cutting calories and super fit and super clean and super healthy or They're totally falling off the rails and doing the opposite while they're focused on something else. Um It's kinda sexy to just jump in and be totally I'm all obsessed.

37:58 With something. The people who win are like Even keel. Maybe they're not working seventy, eighty hours a week, maybe they work fifty hours every single week for their whole career or Even twenty, thirty, forty, whatever it is. But it's hard. It's hard to stay excited about something for a long time.

38:11 Without getting burnt out. But I think it's a superpower. Like if you can be even keel In all areas of life. I'm not just talking about business, but mostly business. If you could just keep from gaining weight up the first time.

38:24 You can just Stay focused on one business or a certain Way that you do things and you know. Get after it. You can really win. I know a lot of guys who

38:34 They're either kicking ass inside their companies. Or they're like Totally checked out and like ignoring the hard decisions. I think it's and and and they wouldn't have thought they would get there, but how do you get there? Uh you get there because you

38:47 Understand how to of a sustainable burn. You had a bonfire and then it goes out. Um You know, I used to be in college, um

38:57 Like a um a proud procrastinator. I would wait till the last minute, I'd pull an all nighter, I'd study, I'd pass the test, and I would wear that like a badge of honor, and it became like A terrible habit and sort of identity to build around was this thing of like Oh, when I turn it on, I have this crazy intensity. Nobody can work harder than me.

39:16 For that. Seventy two hours. But then I'm gonna crash and I'm gonna procrastinate because I know I always have that in the tank. And it's the sort of tortoise and hair thing where you just realize that the tortoises win in life. And the tortoises that just keep putting one foot in front of the other every single day.

39:33 They win. And so like I've actually s far shifted my philosophy where now when I hear about somebody who Has that same attitude I used to have. of the badge of honor of like how hard they go and how How crazy they're working, it's a sign of weakness. It's like, Oh, you just don't have systems. Oh, you don't understand leverage. You don't have good judgment. You don't know where to put your energy. So you're just putting it everywhere.

39:52 Because I used to be that guy. I slept in the office when I was twenty four years old. I remember I slept in the office two hundred and twenty four days out of a year. I thought that was me grinding. Actually it was me Highlighting to everyone waving a flag saying I'm an idiot. I don't know I don't know what to do. So I'm just here all the time, just manically doing anything I could think of, right? And now um I have a totally different productivity routine, which is basically uh I call it the one big thing method. So

40:14 Every morning. I decide the one thing that matters that I'd get done today, the one thing I put all my Core focus on. And I give myself two hours to focus on it. First thing in the morning, no distractions, don't check stocks, don't check the mail, don't check Twitter, don't check anything. And I just focus on that one thing for two hours. And after I'm done with that one thing.

40:32 Anything else I do the day is gravy. I can go play with my kids, I can go work out. I could do I could do a little more work if I wanted to, but it doesn't matter because what I realized is. The person who wakes up every day three hundred sixty five days Identifies the proper single thing that matters. And puts full focus on that one thing for even a two, two and a half hour time time frame. They will crush

40:53 The average person who simply doesn't even identify the one big thing. Um because you do that for three or six five days, you have a hell of a year. It's the ability to zoom out. So many entrepreneurs, they're so focused, they're so intense, they're so jammed up in the weeds inside their company. And look, sometimes you gotta do that. Like I'm I've been in the weeds in several of my companies. But the people who can really zoom out, like you're saying. What really matters here

41:14 And you do that for four or five years. Six years, ten years, twenty years? Right. Man, father time. Like it's really sexy to build businesses fast. And ex exponential growth and and you hear about all these stories. We read about'em and and it takes over media, especially social media.

41:28 Well you you've seen that meme almost at at this point. It's not supposed to be a meme, but it it looks like a meme now. It's like fastest company to a hundred million ARR and it's this These charts and it's like well Slack took seven years. And then it's like we did it in two weeks. There's like the new AI company that's got a straight line up. And then then somebody else comes in and says, We did it in two minutes. We did it in two seconds. And that's what they're they're all trying to just beat each other to this like sprint to ru to low quality revenue.

41:56 And I think it's so funny. It's like in the big short where he's like Why are they confessing? And he's like, They're not confessing, they're bragging. And it's like, um I think they think that's a great thing. And it's like the more impressive chart. Is

42:10 The one that looks like Qualtrics. You know, we have the founder of Culture Sonic, he said he has a huge sign in his home office that just says Tune out the noise, play the long game. And he was like, Dude, for seven years, nobody cared what we were doing. We were single-mindedly focused on getting 150 universities to use our thing, because we knew that was super important. If we did that, we had a real business. And it took us time, but we just

42:30 Stayed scrappy, we stayed focused, and we just did that for years before we ever got any press. Any social media, any anything. And it's like that's who you don't want to compete against. It's somebody who could do that. 'Cause they're building this giant foundation of what they're trying to do. It doesn't mean go slow. It just means Don't get fooled into thinking

42:48 that you need to, you know, sort of quickly sprint and just grab some revenue number out of thin air. Um as like what success looks like. Success is the sort of durability over time. There's expectations. Like people have to realize that the expectations of yourself as an entrepreneur in your career They depend on your last six months, your last twelve months, your last

43:08 Yeah, two years. If you've had that hockey stick Exponential growth, like think about how you have to follow that up. And I think some of those entrepreneurs kinda dream of a world where there's no investors, nobody watching. Growing slowly over time, building something sustainable.

43:22 Yeah. Well uh okay, you have some other ones here. You said um Being a YouTuber is the hardest job in the world. I think some like coal miners might disagree, but go ahead. Well, I think social media is changing. Like we can talk about how the X algorithms change, how it feels to be a a a content creator is totally different now. You almost have to be video first. I don't know if you feel this, Sean.

43:43 Like if you aren't on YouTube, you are not growing right now. That's true. I think there's always exceptions, but it's largely true. And I've said this before. Video is the language the the native language of the internet. So it's like going to a country, if you don't speak video.

43:56 Then you were not gonna be able to communicate because that's h that's what everybody here speaks is video. Yep. Short form, long form doesn't matter. Yeah, as an entrepreneur, I'm I'm really hesitant to get on that hamster wheel because I I see I see what the life is like of okay, you got this banger video, your influence grows. Gotta follow it up the next week. You gotta follow it up the next week. You gotta follow it up the next week and you gotta be on. And then we go back to that consistency conversation that we just had.

44:20 Living that life for ten years. Living that life for ten years, like how would that look? How would that feel? I think it's a very difficult job. I have a ton of respect for people who do it. Um I think it's still worth it, but in my opinion the value of a personal brand Um

44:34 On All things not video. Is going down, in my opinion. Alright, one more spicy opinion here. This might be the spiciest of all.

44:42 AI is bullshit and unsustainable and will decrease quality of life for the ninety nine percent. Wow. Say some words about that. This is just like the Internet boom where you know, point one percent of the companies will survive whatever happens when when the bubble, you know, changes and we'll we'll go on to change the world over the next twenty years.

45:02 I'm not doubting the long term power of AI. I'm just looking at the money, the hype, the energy that's being poured into it. I'm spending a lot of time inside of my companies trying to implement AI. We're adding tools. And I'm just not seeing it, Sean. Like

45:17 AI is unbelievable for You know, me having a doctor in my pocket or me doing recipes or my wife You know. You know, do doing little things. But man, like

45:26 Where is the long term value? And then when I think about where it's going and I'm seeing my energy bill in Athens, Georgia, which is not an energy, you know Like an area with an energy crisis like some areas of Texas and and California. My energy bills went up sixty percent in the last three years.

45:41 They've raised it six times. Wow. And that's because what, data centers being built or double there's thirty data centers that have come online in in Georgia in the last four years. There's still thirty more in the pipeline being built right now. That have negotiated unsustainable energy rates with

45:56 the local municipalities. Where does it stop before like, okay, the companies are able to put AI in place to replace employees. But the energy cost this is why I think for one percent of people it could get really ugly. Or for the rest of the people it could get really ugly. Like what about your ability to like run a dishwasher?

46:12 Or run an air conditioner. Or run a heater in your house. Which all require a massive amount of electricity. That gets more expensive. For almost everybody.

46:21 You have less money to spend on other things to make quality of life better. So Yeah, hot take, but man, I'm I'm very bearish on AI right now. You said it's bullshit and unsustainable, but you said also you said in the next twenty years it's gonna change everything. So you it's not that you think the long term is is you're saying that something today is overpromised. What what is it? Is it is and you're saying personally you're getting value, doctor in your pocket. Recipes, life, day to day stuff.

46:44 It's the business use that you're not seeing the I've added fifteen a I've added a fifteen AI tools across my portfolio. We've canceled. Thirteen. Eleven. Like there's some that I really like.

46:55 The others I'm just like really, really hard to justify the cost. Already. And they're and they're subsidized all the way down the chain. You know, NVIDIA's selling the chips, they're making the bank. But You know, Amazon Cloud Services, they're subsidizing it all the way down to

47:08 you know, the actual company that's V C backed that's subsidizing The data usage to try to do the land grab. So It's gonna get more expensive. And I also feel it's kinda like the electric cars and self driving with Elon Musk, how he's been promising us for twenty years that self driving is five years away. It's gonna get harder and harder and harder and harder to continue to improve.

47:26 AI from here and require exponentially more energy. So I worry about energy mostly. Like if if we had nuclear power plants all over the place, like I'd feel much different about AI. Do you have a Tesla? As soon as they make a cyber truck that doesn't look like a cyber truck, I'm all in. Like I want full self driving. I know how safe it is.

47:44 I'm not willing to drive us to Dan because they're not safe. Somebody T bells me. Dude, I bought one I it is the self driving is unbelievable. It is so good. Yeah. I also before I bought this car, I also thought like

47:57 The narrative was Elon's been promising, hasn't delivered it. It might be harder than you think. Maybe you can't even do it without without LIDAR or whatever. And then I buy the car, I push the button, and it drives me everywhere flawlessly. You know, and I'm like, This is here. This is already working, you know, this is incredible. And I think the data b backs up the personal experience.

48:17 Um I have I have ridden in full self driving and it is mind blowing. It's mind blowing. I want it. I need it, but Is it gonna be widespread?

48:26 You know, robo taxis like San Francisco all over the country. I still think we're ten years away from it. And and Elon said it'd be twenty twelve that we were gonna have this happen. Yeah, yeah. He he uh his timelines have been wrong. Um but I but I think that's more that's less to do now with the tech and more to do with the regulation at this point. So I uh which I think is a is a different different question. You mentioned pest control. Are there other businesses that uh you found interesting or like you know you've been surprised at how well they're doing or a niche that you You know, you're you nerded out about a little bit. Everybody wants to start a marketplace, I think maybe

48:58 I'm five or ten DMs a month if somebody's saying they found You know, there's a kitchen cleaning, you know, you go you go in at night and spray down hoods and clean the inside of a kitchen. I wanna start a marketplace that connects restaurants to these people. Right. Then I was doing my roof. on one of my commercial properties.

49:13 And our bid came in to do this roof. It's about a ten thousand square foot warehouse. At about seventy grand to do the roof. And I'm like, that seems high. Like let's let's do some more work. And I found out that I can hire a sub For thirty grand worth of labor and I can buy You know, fifteen grand worth of material.

49:30 And I can't That's the hard cost to do this job. And these roofing companies are making the spread. They're making the spread. So they literally don't do any work. They sell the job. They quote the job. They carry insurance. And then they show up and stand there and watch and make sure the crew does a really good job.

49:44 And make twenty thousand dollars in a in a two day job. by getting a sub and actually selling the job, putting their name on it, billing the customer, collecting the money. Pay the sub. And move on. So is that sexy and exciting? No, but are there roofers running around every town in America making

49:59 Five, ten grand a day. Yes. Did I give you a fun example. So At my daughter's um school. I've gotten to know some of the other parents. It's like oh cool, what do you do?

50:08 One of the guys. He does. And and I'm so lack of handy that I I I don't even really know these terms, but he does like framing. Framing I think is like Yeah.

50:19 You like you kinda build part of it or whatever, you frame the the building that you're gonna build? I was like, cool. So how's it going? You know, where where's the project? Have I seen it? You know, what do you do? He's like, Oh, do hotels. Have you s have you uh is there one I've stayed in here? He's like, Well, I do all my work in Alaska. I was like Alaska. And he's basically like again, work smarter, not harder. You know, his take was basically look, I can be the thousandth best framer In California.

50:41 right now coming in as like a new guy into the space who doesn't have twenty years of referral relationships with all the other contractors. And try to scrape and claw, do business with expensive labor here in in California and have to and be, you know, competed down to the bare margin, because they can bid it out to thirty guys and whoever comes up with the you know the lower priced option's gonna win. He's like But if I go to Alaska, it turns out they just don't really have any many very very many. It's easier for me to get on a flight once a month.

51:07 And go to Alaska. than it is to me for me to build that business here, and it's like I I saw that I was like, Man, there's there's like You know, b uh Munger has this great quote, you know, the secret to winning in life is l is weak competition.

51:20 It's basically like go Where there's fish, but not other fishermen. And It feels like it would feel so foreign to me and most people if you're doing a business to be like, Well How do I I live here, I kinda feel like I should do something about around something familiar where I see it. It's like

51:36 We will go into a knowingly harder situation. Because it's more familiar. Then Take on some unknown.

51:45 Where there might be a total greenfield opportunity. And he's not innovating. Like it's not like he had to be the Do you some new technique in framing or whatever. He just went to a place where there's just not a lot of people offering that service. Yep. And I just think like that one principle. You know, if you're a hardworking person, like that one principle can be the difference between again being the thousandth contractor here with razor thin margins. And making great margins.

52:09 And having to get on a flight once a month. And I just think like I w I I think about a lot of people in my life who there's more people who could benefit from that principle Of Just go where it's where the s where the supply is low or the con competition is low because it's unfamiliar for most and you you might prosper. We built our first self storage facility six hours from where we were living. Borrowed borrowed two million dollars from a bank, spent three million dollars to build a self storage facility six hours away.

52:35 Yeah. And now I'm in Athens, Georgia, which is another different city, and people are like, Oh, you you have you're in the self storage business. Like, which one in town do you own? And I'm like. They're nowhere near here. I'm sorry. Yeah. In storage, what was the Insight on location for you. So um did you find like oh this a certain strategy on location worked well for you? Yeah, we didn't even we didn't even talk about real estate. It's been a

52:56 Chaotic, you know. three years in real estate as interest rates have risen, just total carnage in the business. Luckily We've done some things operationally that, you know, give us a little bit of an advantage, but sorry, explain why that is. So for somebody who's not in real estate, why does Interest rates going up create, as you said, carnage in the real estate market. Because the biggest line out and the biggest expense for real estate investor, developer, syndicator, anybody who buys real estate, holds it, and tries to cash flow is is dead.

53:21 It's our biggest line item. We we're gonna borrow anywhere from fifty to seventy percent of the value of a building. And if you go from paying three and a half percent on that debt, you know, thirty five grand to service a million dollars in debt to serve to to paying seven percent. Seventy grand. Like it's it's imagine if you're Labor cost.

53:37 quadrupled in a service business. That's essentially what happens in real estate. So it drives the value what people can afford to pay. Down. So all the buildings that you bought in twenty one, twenty two I mean There's guys that are there's guys that are going broke in the real estate business right now in real time that I know.

53:54 It's total carnage. Because They can't sell their buildings for what they were worth because nobody else can afford to pay that higher amount of debt interest either. Does that make sense? Right. What's going on with your properties now?

54:06 'Cause that was that was the time when you were buying too. So Yeah, we bought a lot and we had some stress, dude. Like we had some tough conversations. We we got out without raising any additional money from our investors and we replaced all of our loans. Meaning we refinanced them and we didn't have to call a single dollar from our investors. That's a massive win. Many people else are calling capital calls or they're actually losing properties. We were able to increase revenue quite a bit when we bought a building.

54:32 And we've done things now like we we replaced our inbound sales team with South Africans who were actually sales trained and our conversion rate went from when we were in the Philippines from thirty percent to to forty two percent in this in South Africa. So Revenues up fifteen percent year over year. Um but yeah, man, it's it's not easy. It's it's brutal.

54:50 Is the future for Nick Huber Buy more storage facilities? Is it just running somewhere and growing that? Is it something else, you know, five years from now? Like do you know? Wha what's the future for Nick? You know, I've I have my uh My ego has has written a lot of checks over the last five years. Now I gotta go cash'em.

55:10 No, I I'm I'm pretty focused on on growing somewhere. I wanna grow R Cossag and I wanna buy more storage. We have a couple of deals under contract now. The company's in a good place and there's just so much less competition in the real estate business right now. So it's a double edged sword. Um, I just think business is naturally cyclical. It really is. Like there's really good times.

55:30 And there's harder times. And sometimes the hard times are good because you gotta Buckle up. You gotta operate. You gotta make things to make your business more efficient. And it washes out the people that can't do that and it becomes less competitive. So I'm genuinely excited about the real estate business over time. I think we're better than anybody in the world at at finding amazing talent at somewhere.

55:48 And yeah, so I'm I'm gonna grow some of these companies. I wanna grow some of them really large. Very cool. Well, man, I appreciate you coming on. Always fun to to catch up. Good deal. Thanks for having me, dude. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to

56:04 I put my law in it like my day song On the road less travel never looking back All right, my friends, I have a new podcast for you guys to check out. It's called Content is Profit, and it's hosted by Luis and Fonzi Cameo. After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness, Louise and Fonzie are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue. In each episode, you're gonna hear from top entrepreneurs and creators, and you're gonna hear them share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit. So you can check out content is profit wherever you get your podcasts.

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