In this episode, Nick Huber joins the podcast to discuss the six traits of a successful entrepreneur and how to identify and leverage “10xers” to scale a business. They explore the importance of delegating, the power of clear communication, and the necessity of hiring people who can execute and take ownership of their roles.
Topics: Entrepreneurship, Hiring, Scaling, Delegation, Communication, Business Strategy
The Theory of the 10xer [00:00]
Nick Huber: If you can make other people good at their jobs, not just you good at your job, but if you can lead other people and set them up for success and make other people good at their job, you are the 10xer. You’re the 10xer.
Sam Parr: Welcome to My First Million. Thanks for joining me, Sam. All right, so Shaan is in California. There’s a power outage. Last minute, I called Nick Huber. We’re going to give you like the proper introduction, but basically, um, you were on a month ago, six weeks ago, and it was one month. I think it was the second most downloaded pod in the last 90 days. It had something like 150 or even more downloads, something like that. So the people loved you. And uh, what what was your introduction last time? Nick has uh at least $100 million in storage units, of which I am an investor in, so I always disclose that. And you also own three or four different companies right now that are doing really well, or own part of.
Nick Huber: Yep. Yep. Dabbling in dabbling in a lot of stuff. You texted me actually one hour and six minutes ago and you said, “Hey, can you come on the pod in one hour?” And I said, “Yes.” And you said, “Do you actually have good content?” And I said, “Yes, I’m a content machine.” I was just kidding with you. And you said, “Hey, you need to make a document and send it to me. Are you sure you have the fire?” You put the pressure on me.
Sam Parr: Because we don’t ever I never ask the same person twice, but I know that you’re easy to work with and I knew you’d show up in time.
Nick Huber: Well, you blew up you blew up my life, man. I mean, I I looked back, you you brought me on this show the very first time on November 11th, 2020. And then another time, February 16th, 2023, which was four weeks ago today. And honestly, it blew up my world. I mean, I’m telling you.
Sam Parr: Really? What are the results?
Nick Huber: I mean, support Shepherd, the company that I use to hire a lot of, you know, VAs and and I’m a partner in, 200 plus leads of people, business owners who reached out for the first time to hire their first VA, which is freaking awesome.
Sam Parr: And that’s like four grand a month or something or two grand a month?
Nick Huber: It just costs about three grand. It’s 30% of the first year’s salary, 35% of the first year’s salary to make the placement. So average ticket’s between three and four grand. Um, all the other businesses too that I mentioned on there, got some leads. Um, Ari Costseg, uh, webrun.com. Uh, it’s just crazy, man. Got reached out to by a lot of people and actually have have have kind of got started with a couple more businesses since then. So it’s just been a wild.
Networking and the Power of the Podcast [02:46]
Sam Parr: So I uh like I went to Vancouver and I was hanging out with some guys that were like worth hundreds of millions and maybe one or two of them in the billionaire range. And we were having dinner and they wouldn’t stop talking about that episode. They wouldn’t stop talking about you. And they were like, “I got to meet Nick. I introduced you to one of them, um, and uh Courtney and um but they wouldn’t stop talking about you.” And I was like, “Damn, people love Nick. It’s amazing.”
Nick Huber: It’s been amazing. I think the the network effects of that have really impacted my life and man, I have you to thank in a major way. So really, really, really appreciate it.
Sam Parr: We were at a I did like a MFM meetup last night. Jonathan organized it and we had uh 500 people RSVP. I don’t know how many people showed up, but it was awesome. We got to like meet people and uh a lot of people were asking about you and uh it was really fun to get out from behind the microphone because what people don’t I always say this, I said this last night, what they don’t realize is like Shaan and I at least, we talk throughout the week, but we try to save our if we ever if we’re ever talking about something juicy, he’ll just say like, “Don’t don’t tell me. Tell me when we’re live.” And right now I’m just in my I turned like a small bedroom into a little it just has a desk and a camera. And you probably it looks like you’re in the same. You have like a small office in your house. And like they don’t realize that like we’re just a bunch of like doofuses behind a mic just barely I mean, we prepare, but like we’re just kind of like having a conversation with our friends and it’s really cool to like see the people and like actually hear from them. And so we did that last night. It was exhausting, but I was very happy to do it. And so hopefully you you’ve been able to meet some of the people as well.
Nick Huber: It’s crazy because we can sit here and talk and I’m I’m a little bit nervous just because I know the impact of My First Million. I know that 100,000 people might listen to this. But imagine how nervous we would be if we were sitting in two chairs in the middle of Dallas Cowboy Stadium with 100,000 people watching. I mean, it would be it would make it feel a lot more real. It would make it feel a lot more real.
The Traits of a Successful Entrepreneur [04:19]
Sam Parr: We’ve had so many people say, “Why don’t you guys do it in real life? Like you and Shaan, like want and I’m like, well, it’s just more convenient. But also it’s like I one time I I recorded at a studio and there was like this like lady at the uh at like the soundboard. And she was like hip and cool looking and was like a cute lady. And I remember she wouldn’t laugh every once in a while when I thought I said something funny. And I got in my head, I was like, “Shit, I didn’t I didn’t was that douchey? Was that lame?” And then everyone and then when she would laugh, I’d be like, “All right, I got her. I got her. I got to keep going.” And so like she was my audience. And I remember I was like changing everything I did. And afterwards, I was like, “Ben, I can’t do this with with any of these people in this room anymore. It’s getting in my head. I’m trying to impress them too much.”
Nick Huber: It’s tough, man. It’s tough. I’m having a live event on the 22nd in Athens, um, which you guys inspired me to do. I put it together right after that and 30 people have bought tickets to it. So I’m I’m a little bit bummed out, but we’re going to actually go through it next Wednesday night in Athens. We’re going to actually have it, see how many people show up and see if it’s a success. But yeah, when you put yourself out there for a live event, it comes with a new level of stress and anxiety for sure.
Sam Parr: So I moved to San Francisco in 2012. I moved out there and I moved out there from Tennessee and I I’m still a little rough. Back then, I was really rough around the edges. And this was right uh yeah, and this and this and this was like basically I moved out there and like I would wear jeans and like boots and a white t-shirt all the time. And people and I had a little bit of a twang, you know, and people would kind of tease me and I’d tell them I’m from Tennessee and they’re like, “You know, what do you date your cousin?” Like they would make fun of me and I felt really like jealous of the Stanford kids. I would like I remember I took a bus or a train out and to walk around Stanford’s campus. I it was like good a goodwill hunting moment. I was like, “Dude, am I going to meet all these geniuses? What’s going to happen?” And I got so envious and so I created this thing called the Anti-MBA because I was envious that I didn’t get my MBA from Stanford because I would meet all these kids and they had this like awesome network. And so I created this book club and we would meet once a week. We would read one book a month and we would meet once a week and go over the trailing like, you know, weeks reading and then I would call in a guest to like lead the discussion and I would talk to them. And I and I posted an ad on Craigslist. That’s how I got my first people. And so Ciava, one of my best friends Ciava, um, who’s like a big entrepreneur, he was one of those people, you know, he’s one of my closest friends. So I met him that way. And so I would host these book groups and we would it would be 10 people at first and then the next time like 12 and then over time, I did this for a year, every week for a year. I got like 3,000 people signed up to my email list. Then I hosted an event uh that was uh like maybe 80 people came and then I hosted Hustle Con and 300 people came. But it was very slow, like these like events. I did them very like it was like a four-year grind and then at Hustle Con, eventually we got like 2,500 people coming. And so like these events and then and then Shaan and I did a live pod in Miami and like maybe 100 people came and it wasn’t that good. And then we did it again and it was a little bit better. So like these events, it takes time and it’s hard and it’s hard because unlike the internet, when you, you know, with the internet, you can delete some stuff. With an event, you just are going to embarrass yourself, you know what I mean? It’s so it is challenging, but it was like a grind to do the do those events.
Nick Huber: And getting getting people to actually show up is tough. I mean, to get people to listen to my First Million or my podcast, the Nick Huber show, all they got to do is flip through flip through podcast, click a little button if they don’t like it, they’re gone. Getting somebody to buy a ticket, drive somewhere, the uncomfort of meeting other people, you know, it’s more difficult.
Sam Parr: Where do you want to go today? Where what do you want to drive?
Nick Huber: So I want to talk about the traits of a successful entrepreneur. What made what makes a whether it’s a partner, an operator, a manager at a company, and when I say entrepreneur, I don’t necessarily just mean somebody who starts a business. I mean somebody who leads other people inside an organization. What makes those people really, really good at what they do? And I think you have a lot of experience tracking down and identifying these people who are killers. We’ll call them 10xers. They’re the people who, you know, I I have a theory that 80% of of of workers are just kind of skating by and maybe they’re adding a little bit of value to a company, but the top 20% are generating outsized return for the company that they work for or themselves if they’re an entrepreneur. What makes those people tick? I want to talk about that.
Sam Parr: All right. The the most interesting thing part about this is that it’s kind of this will morph into a a tactical guide of literally starting a company because when you start to identify these things and you track down these people and you bring them together, a company is nothing more than just a group of people that all work together. So if you can find these people and put them together, which I know you can, which I’m confident that I can and anybody who scales a business can do, um, you can you can make a lot of money fast. So let’s dig in.
The Hiring and Management Philosophy [09:27]
Sam Parr: Well, when I when I first started my career, it was basically just, can I make enough money to pay for my own bills? And then once you get past that point, maybe that point is it’s different for everyone. For us, it was in the $30,000 a month range. Once we got into $30,000 a month, I realized, cool, it’s sustainable to a certain level. I need to hire people. And I hired one or two people in in a few of my different companies where once we got to like 30 and 40,000 a month, when you hire the right person, it can 10x fairly quickly. And at that 30,000 mark, I realized at a young age, I am in the collection of people business. I just have to collect interesting people. And you have to play like a long-term game because not it doesn’t you can’t they’re not always available, but if you like play the long game, relationships last a long time. So I’ve done a good job of collecting people and I you asked me this, so I made a list. Um, so uh uh four traits that I always look for. The first is, I look for emotionally stable people. The reason I look for that is I’m not exactly the most emotionally stable person. I’m the fire. So when when it comes to starting stuff, I don’t need anyone to motivate me. I’m the flame. I’ll get it started. I don’t need any gasoline. I don’t need anything of that like that. But I need people who can when you’re the type of person like me and you have really high highs and I can motivate someone and I can get them to do crazy shit, that you typically those people, it’s almost like a comedian. They’re often if they’re great on stage, that means they’re probably sad a lot of times or they get like down or like for in my case, I’m like, this is going to fail, this sucks. And so I always look for someone who’s like pretty stable and they’re a rock who can like sustain like a pretty even pace and they I can motivate them to get excited, but they don’t get down too easily. I also look for people who follow through. Let’s let’s do one at a time. Let’s go one let’s go one for one. You you say one trait, I say one trait. So for me, it’s it’s very, very similar to what you just described in yourself. And it is that that fire, that sense of urgency and that energy. I think most people out there, just in general, a lot of people, they they they’re like they’re in slow motion. They walk slow, they think slow, they talk slow, they make decisions slow, they’re just kind of lollygagging through life. They go into work, they clock in at 9:00 a.m., they do the bare minimum all day to get paid next Friday and not get fired, and then they clock out and they go home and drink a couple beers. They’re not that excited about hobbies, they’re not that excited about much at all. Which is fine. Yeah, it’s fine. I just don’t want to I and and you need those people a lot of times. You need you need butts in seats. Yeah, which is fine. Those people are fine and they serve a purpose. But then you get those people that have that energy. You get those people that have that, okay, I’m going to get out of bed today and I’m going to attack this thing and we’re going to make decisions fast, we’re going to move fast, we’re going to talk fast, we’re going to take action fast and we’re going to get shit done. And those people, when you bring them in, they can do all the other things on this list. I think everything else on my list and your list feeds from, hey, we are going to get stuff done quick. When I started my very first company, it was a a moving company that pick up and delivery storage for students. Um, we bought a cargo van on Craigslist for $3,000 and we drove it back to the track house. This is a kind of a good example of of the different the way that people think about business and opportunity. We were jacked up. Me and my business partner, we were all excited about the idea of starting a company and going out and trying to make some money. We drove this van back and we’re like, we’re going to start doing pick up and delivery storage for students. And some of our buddies, they were sitting around, we were sitting around the track house playing beer pong and they’re like, “You guys are freaking crazy. What is exciting about that?” Like what do you know about that? What what beer pong? No, what do you what do you know about moving? Like, you know, like who you’re not qualified. Yeah, they’re they’re just like, why is that exciting? You’re going to go what we’re going to go have fun this weekend, you’re going to go around and sweat and pick up boxes for 30 bucks a piece? Like that does not sound fun to me. I am I have zero energy and zero excitement around that. And they would have quit or given up in a week or two. Whereas we were energetic, we were excited, we got after it and we were able to convince other people to come along. And you know, that was you know, that’s that’s the whole thing.
The 50th Law and the Importance of Urgency [13:35]
Sam Parr: There’s this great there’s this great book Robert you know Robert Greene, the author Robert Greene, he wrote that book 48 Laws of Power. He has another book that was way less popular called The 50th Law. And it’s really weird because he wrote it about 50 Cent. And it’s actually a great book. And I know it sounds weird. But uh because he Robert Greene, he’s into like uh philosophy and all this all this stuff, but he talks about like rappers and he loves hip hop culture and he uh and he’s like 50 Cent is really good at this because he has done a good job reinventing himself a bunch of times. He’s uh changed his image a bunch of times, whatever. And he said the key to 50’s uh success was his sense of urgency. And if you don’t have a sense of urgency in everything that you do, it it ruins everything. And he doesn’t just talk about business people. He talks about poets. He talks about people who discover um who invent different medicines, like you know, poets, writers, whatever. It’s always about urgency. Doing anything, doing anything, doing anything that makes your life better is uncomfortable. Going out and meeting somebody, taking a chance, trying to get that really hot girl in the bar to go on a date with you. It’s all super uncomfortable and it’s very, very easy to just be passive. Oh, I don’t necessarily have the energy to do that. I’m going to step back.
Nick Huber: I used I used to have a rule when I saw this is how I met my wife. When I saw a cute girl who I wanted to talk to, the the uh I could only give myself five seconds after seeing her before I just spoke to her. Urgency, baby. It was a five-second rule. Because if you don’t talk to them within a couple seconds, you’re never going to do it. And the longer you wait, the harder it gets. And so I I always had the five-second rule.
Sam Parr: Okay, so you have a couple more on my list. Do you want me to go again or do you want to do your second one?
Nick Huber: Yeah, go go one more.
Sam Parr: Okay, so I think this one feeds into the next one, which is when you’re starting a company and people ask me a lot after our last episode where I spoke about the four or five companies that I’m starting, Nick, how do you have time to do this? How are you doing it yourself? And the answer is I’m not. I’m going and I’m tracking down people who are really good. And I want you to riff on this too, Sam, because you’re a master of bringing people together. And I have this theory about recruiting employees or partners or people in your early company, which step one is always you know, the website, getting your click funnels, getting your copy writing down, getting your service put together, but then it’s attracting people. That’s all it is. As an entrepreneur, all you’re doing is attracting people. I have a theory about this. So 10% of people are in career Nirvana, meaning they love their job, they’re perfectly motivated and they are under no circumstance are they going to go and do something else. Another 10% of people are literally actively looking for something else. Either they’re unemployed or they really hate their job and they are very open and they’re actively looking for jobs. These are the people that are looking on job boards, posting around, you know, for anything that might be another opportunity for them. And then there’s 80% of people that are in the middle. Eight out of 10 people have somewhere in the middle. They like their job, but they’re open to other things or they could be open to other things, but they’re not going to go on Monster or on Indeed or on LinkedIn and actually apply for jobs. Which typically is the those are the winners. Those are the winners. I’ve every 10xer that I’ve ever hired and I’ve been lucky enough to bring a lot of 10xers in into what I try to do. And again, it’s kind of because of my charisma and my sales ability and me really going out and putting myself out there and putting my sales hat on. Like I’m literally turning into a salesman and I’m going to try to attract talent to come along on my mission. Every single 10xer that I’ve gotten involved falls in that category. They were previously employed, they had a job they didn’t hate, and they had a boss that really didn’t want to let them go. And my entire career has been built upon going and finding those people, tracking them down, identifying them, and convincing them to leave that opportunity and come along with me.
Sam Parr: How do you convince them?
Nick Huber: It’s just it’s sales. It’s literally I’m I’m selling them on my mission. We can talk about sales. Which looks like what? Sales is another thing, but I’m I’m trying to make it I’m trying to tell them how they can win better than what they’re winning right now with me. I can either make them more money, they can have a better quality of life, we can do something more fun. I got to get them to buy into my vision. I got to be charismatic and and convince them that they need to stop what they’re doing. They need to make a big life change, which is a career is a huge change to make and they got to drop it and come with me. And you do the same thing, Sam.
Sam Parr: Yeah, usually what I do is I’ll like I’ll find someone interesting and I I just chat them up and I go I’d be like, uh I usually like to flatter people. So I say, “You’re amazing. What’s your story?” And they’ll just gush and tell you their story. And I act interested because I am interested. And then um usually I’m like, “What where do you want to be in a handful of years? What do you want to do?” And if they tell me something where I’m like, “Oh, I could help you get there.” Sometimes I can’t. Sometimes it’s like I I I can’t help you get there. But um if they if I can, then I tailor my pitch around helping them get there and I’ll say something like, “Would you like to come join me for a handful of years and I bet you we can set you up nicely to get you to where you want to go.” And I and I tailor my pitch all about them and how I’m going to help them achieve their goals. And typically, what I do, I’ve said this a bunch of times, which is the world wants people to be vanilla. They want you to fit into a very uh safe box. And I think a lot of people dread that, even though they are living that life. And so I tend to go the excitement and fun angle because a lot of the times I’m not necessarily building the next SpaceX. Like if you’re like work at NASA, there is some big vision, which is like we’re putting someone on the moon or if you look at work at some type of company that’s like creating a life-saving drug, I’m like, we’re going to save lives. But I don’t really do stuff like that. I just do awesome stuff, like fun stuff. And so I typically lean into excitement where it’s like, look, we’re going to build this pirate ship together and you’re going to be leading it or you’re going to be contributing it in a way where we’re going to agree on the rules, but you can as long as you play within those rules, you can do whatever you want. And so that’s typically how I pitch.
The Motivational Interview [19:27]
Nick Huber: I love it. And when I’m making a key hire, I do the exact same thing. I call it like the motivational interview. If I’m hiring somebody who’s a little bit higher level and making an investment, they’re making a big change, I need them to do some pretty important stuff. I’ll sit there in the interview and I’ll be like, “Sam, we’re we’re talking about this company right now, but let’s pretend that we’re five years in the future. You and I are sitting right here. We’re in this office in five years. And you walk into this office and you are gushing. You’re excited. You’re like, Nick, things are going freaking awesome. Tell me what is going on. Tell me how much money you’re making, tell me how big your team is, tell me if you’re working from home, how much you’re working, tell me what kind of projects you’re working on.” And then I just shut up and I let them talk. And I get to hear what makes them tick and where they want to go. And if my company can’t put that together, sometimes it’s it’s a it’s a really valuable tool because a lot of times, 30, 40% of the time, I’ll be like, “Wow, um, I can’t deliver on this. My company can’t deliver on this.” Yeah. But then other times I’ll be like, “Okay, I just he just gives you a look into how these people tick, you know what I mean?”
Sam Parr: Yeah, yeah, and you got to tailor it. So the the third thing I or the second thing that I we won’t talk about because we already did is speed. I look for speed. Um, and that’s quite hard to find. Most people aren’t fast. Um, my my current partner Joe, Joe Spizer, he’s the only person that I’ve worked with that I’m like, “Joe, I can’t you’re going fast, man. It’s hard for me to keep up.” So I I look for speed a lot. But the third thing is follow through. So people who actually act and I find that to be probably the hardest thing to find. Um, and I actually a lot of things are trainable. I don’t think that that I think you either you you is or you ain’t when it comes to following through and like actually doing stuff. And what I tend to do is I like to look at people who have products or projects that are live. So someone will be like, we had this one lady reply to one of our tweets and she’s like, “I sold $100,000 worth of Taylor Swift t-shirts.” And I’m like, “Okay, that’s that’s all I need to know. You do stuff.” Or maybe they have a blog or maybe they tweet or maybe they have a YouTube channel or maybe they um have some type of hobby that involves it involves like taking action and I always look for those things. It could be like, I I organize clubs in college. Just anything where I see like, “All right, you follow through. You say you’re going to do something and you do it.” I look for that a lot.
Nick Huber: And you also, you you’ve told me this in the group chat is that you will give them a small job and that knocks off if somebody’s interested in joining Sam Parr, the Sam Parr ride and getting involved in one of your companies, one of these things, you’re going to give them something to do and that’ll knock off 80% of the people and because they’re not going to follow through. They’re not going to follow through. I think the I got a good story. Webrun, the guy that I found to to start this front-end web development landing page company, his name is Will Wallace. He’s a coder, he lives in Atlanta. One of the most brilliant dudes I know. And when I saw him, I was like, “Will, I need a I need I need a favor.” And I was testing him. He didn’t know it. I I need a favor. I need a landing page and I need something to form up on my website. I need it like right away. And then boom, the next morning I woke up and it was there. And it was freaking awesome and he just moved so fast. You just got stuff done so quickly. That speed and sense of urgency that you’re talking about. If you can find a way to get a look into their mind, and it goes back to like, hey, we’re looking to assemble a group of people. As an entrepreneur, we’re looking to assemble a group of people. How do you know who those 10xers are? How do you know who those 10xers are? Getting a look into their mind with some of these ways that we’re talking about. Like you you’re saying, give them something to do, give them something to follow through on. Like look at what they’ve actually been doing.
Sam Parr: Yeah, and I’ll I’ll often I tell them, I get pitched like five times a day, you probably do too. People who want to make short clips for me. Yep. And I almost ignore all of them, but every once in a while, I’ll be like, um, “All right, make me a video then.” And and I’ll tell them, I won’t I I go, “I’m not even going to post it. So don’t worry about free work. Like I’m not going to I’m not going to profit off your work. Make me a video then.” Um, and we used to do this all the time. People would apply to the hustle for writing writing. I go, “Okay, write tomorrow’s email.” And uh Yeah, it’s it’s I would every once in a while I would get a 1,200 word thing the next day and I go, “All right, sick. We’ll talk.”
Nick Huber: What you’re looking for is a look into the mind of these people to figure out if they’re a 10xer. So if you’re going out and you’re trying to build these teams, you can shoot from the hip, you can put bring somebody in from an interview and then you can make the hire or you can try to get a preview. Try to get a preview. Another thing that I look for on my list, and these two blend together, I’m going to talk about both these things. Clear and concise communication. So many people, you’ll have a conversation and you’ll listen to them for 60 seconds, 90 seconds and you’ll be like, “What the hell is this person even talking about? Get to the point.” Whereas you have Nick Huber on his on your podcast, I can say exactly what I’ve done and where I’ve been and how many storage facilities I have and and I’ve given you three or four things to bite off on the first 28 seconds that I’ve been on the show because I’m a very clear and concise communicator. So I look for that. I listen to that when I’m talking to other business people. Hey, you’re trying to tell me a story, you’re trying to get a point across. How quick, how clear and how concise can you do it? And the ability to get points across in 15 seconds, first 30 is just mind-blowing.
Sam Parr: How would you feel if someone referred to themselves in the third person in an interview like you just did?
Nick Huber: That’s a that’s a that’s a that’s a I’m out dog. That’s an I’m out dog right away. We can talk we can talk about Everybody wants to hear about the social justice warrior tweet that I had a couple days ago. But yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of red flags too that are instant cuts. You’re just looking for red flags. That’s what you’re doing. Red flag club. Somebody refers to themselves as Nick Huber in the third person, cut out.
Sam Parr: Dude, the in the last thing that I have that’s related is, and this is hard to figure out a little bit, but I look for taste and intelligence. Intelligence being like uh just like I always say, I’m like, does your oven burn hot? Like are you just smart? Or um and can you like do you have like emotional intelligence, but also um taste. So I like to ask people what content they consume. I’d be like, “Do you you like to read? What do you read?” Um, I’m like, “Where do you where you where do you get your news?” Uh or if they’re like, I’m like, seriously, just tell me like, who do you follow on Instagram or what subreddits do you like to read? Anything. I just want to know a little bit about your taste. I’ve noticed that if I hire And that’s a really when when somebody puts you on the spot like that, that’s really tough because what they want to do is please Sam. They want to say what you want to hear, but they don’t know. It’s like somebody saying, “Hey, what’s your political affiliation? Tell me who you voted for.” And they’d be like, “Oh, oh, I don’t know. Who did you vote for? I voted for them.”
Sam Parr: No, and I don’t care what they read. I’m just like, explain to me why it’s exciting because if you’re not excited about what you consume every day, then you’re boring and I don’t want to be around you. And you and and but I also want to know what their taste is because I’ll hire certain people and they like write in a certain way that’s maybe too corporate or uh like my brain is fun and so like if they’re just not fun or they don’t get that, I’m like, this is just it’s a bad culture fit that we’re not going to blend well. So I look for taste a lot and I ask them what they consume or I do this thing called the bottom fourth of the resume. So at the very bottom of people’s resume is like where they put like the hobbies or like what they did in college. And they’ll say like, “I studied philosophy.” I’m like, “All right, cool. I mean, I don’t really care about philosophy, but I’m like, what was your favorite class?” And if they say, “Oh, I’m not sure.” I’m like, “Oh, you’re out.” But if they like and they say like, you know, well, this philosophy class, which I don’t even know about, I’ll just be like, “Well, why?” And if they can entertain me and convince me that it was interesting, I’m like, “All right, cool. You’re all right.” Uh so I look for taste a lot on the on the bottom fourth of the of the resume.
Nick Huber: This data is wrong every freaking time. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa, I can see the client’s whole history, calls, support tickets, emails, and here’s a task from three days ago I totally missed. HubSpot, grow better.
Nick Huber: I have a theory that uh you can get paid really, really well and you can earn a great living if you’re good at your job. If you’re good at your job, you’re worth you’re worth a heck of a lot to a lot of companies. What do you Albert Einstein? Congratulations on that great theory. If you can make other people good at their jobs, not just you good at your job, but if you can lead other people and set them up for success and make other people good at their job, you are the 10xer. You’re the 10xer. So I’m going to look for delegators who can do that, who can lead other people and grow the business beyond because look, if I hire somebody and I’m their direct report, but they can’t be the direct report of other people, they’re going to be a bottleneck. I’m going to be a bottleneck. They’re not going to help me grow the company. Now, the two things that I think are related to that that are kind of counterintuitive. Number one is copywriting. They’re a really good copywriter. I think that’s directly correlated to be able being able to delegate and lead other people. Because if you can write clearly and concisely, if you can write clearly and concisely the way people can understand it, you can lead others. You can give directions, you can be on Slack, text, email. The way that we run our businesses is through the written word. Very luckily, I can see how people write. I can see it because they’re DMing me, I’m reading their tweets, I get a look into how they write. And I think I took your your email course. I want to talk about this because I took this nine months ago or so, blew my mind, it made me a better copywriter. And now I have Did it work with you? Yeah, so Sam has a course where for 10 days in a row, he’s going to send 10 weeks in a row. Is it days in a row or is it once a week? One day uh one a day for 10 days. One a day for 10 days. Monday to Friday, so two weeks. You send an email that teaches people how to do copywriting. And I did it. I got the email the first day and I spent my wife comes in and I got a notebook full of copy written down. She’s like, “What the hell are you doing?” And I was like, “Well, Sam told me this is going to work. Just trust me.” So 10 days I write and I copy these styles and I start to learn how clear and concise communication and hooks and throw away all the words that don’t matter. Where’s that located in again, by the way? Copy copythat.com. Copythat.com. So the word copy and then that. Yeah, 150 bucks or something and it’s been worth I would, you know, 50 grand added to my career. Easy, the best Do you know why that works? I I I tried to explain it in that in the thing. It’s called copywork and it’s how I learned how to write. And it was like this way that they used to teach kids how to write uh and in the 1930s and 40s, I think there was like a change in the public schools and this thing got thrown to the side, but um it’s called copywork and like if you like Ben Franklin used to write this way, um Hunter Thompson, uh he like said this is how he write. Judd Apatow, the director. And what they would do is they would find like scripts or like if you’re Judd Apatow, you would find like a funny script that you want to emulate or if you’re Hunter S Thompson, you would find you’d do like Catcher in the Rye or some book that you like because when you copy it by hand, you start seeing the patterns and the uh the texture of something. In the same way where if you want to learn how to play guitar, you’re not going to like get the guitar in day one and write a song, you’re going to like play Jingle Bells and then you’re going to like move to Happy Birthday and then eventually you’re going to move to like rock and roll and then maybe blues. And then you’re like, “Oh, this riff from Guns and Roses, it kind of reminds me of this riff from the blues. If I’m going to like I’ll mesh that with this and I’ll steal this from here and then boom, I’ve got my own piece of art.” And that’s why it’s really good. And there’s actually science behind it where it like it imprints into your brain and you learn the flow of certain things. So if you can get good at writing and getting your ideas across and also selling other people, because people think delegating is just telling people what to do. No, you have to make them want to do it and it’s sales. Life is sales. So it’s it’s a beautiful resource. Do you do you have a few more or no? I want to ask you about that tweet. Yeah, yeah, I want to. So I want to go through how I think about sales because I think this is really important because life is sales and as an entrepreneur, you’re selling to customers, you’re selling to investors and and partners and you’re selling to your employees. Just like I said, you got to go find these people who have jobs and you got to sell your idea and your vision on them. So I wanted to give you kind of a breakdown on how I think about sales and how I kind of flip the script and I can give you kind of an example of that. The old school way to sell is you’re going to be pushy, you’re going to ask directly, you’re going to speak the language, you’re going to prove that you’re an expert and then you’re going to talk about all the benefits and all the great things and then you’re going to hand them a clipboard and ask for their signature. I think that that way is a terrible way to actually sell people in today’s world of so many options. So my way to do it is I speak the language briefly and prove that I’m a professional without being braggadocious or bragging on me or the or or the product that I’m trying to sell. Then what I do is I dive right into talking about the downsides. Why I’m worried about it, why the deal might not work, all the things that we need to stress about. And then I ask them, given those downsides, why they still want to do the deal or why they still want to work with me or why they still want to work for my company. And then I shut up and I let them, it kind of flips the script to where they become the salesperson. They become the salesperson. So like, Sam, you’re about to start working for me as a, you know, you want to come to work for Nick really bad and we’re going to start this company together. I’ll say, “Dude, this is an agency business. It’s really hard. It might take six months before we make any money at all. We might be stuck in it. Worst case scenario, we’re going to waste a year of our life. Why do you want to come join me?” Another really big great example of this is for my investors in my real estate deals. They’re going they they get on a call with me and they expect me to just sit there and regurgitate all the great things about storage, all the great things about real estate investments, the tax benefits, why I’m such a good operator, all that stuff. I don’t do any of that. I get on a call with somebody, a Zoom call with somebody and they already know me, they’re already on a call, they’re already interested in investing in storage. So I talk about all the downsides. I’ll say, “Look, Sam, let’s do an example here. You give me this 50 grand, you’re going to invest with me. And let’s say interest rates spike, the economy tanks, people don’t use storage as much and all of a sudden this deal is worth 20 or 30% less than what it was. And instead of giving you an 8% cash on cash return, I’m going to give you a 2% cash on cash return. Now it’s my job to make sure we don’t lose the properties. I’m going to do this, this and this to think about risk. But why do you want to invest in storage?” Boom, flip the script, flip the script and the person will say, “Well, Nick, it seems like you’ve thought a lot about these risks. Like you’re worried about this stuff. I don’t have to worry about this stuff. I don’t need cash flow off of this. It’s a long-term investment. All the other reasons why.” And then they’ll like say this, it’s hilarious. And I read it all the time because I’m like, “Well, I’m pretty sure I’m against that because that’s unethical. It’s not illegal, but I wouldn’t like that if somebody did it to me. But then I’m like, but is that wrong? And so anyway, I like to like read that to like just explore new ideas and it’s also just hilarious. So someone told me they read anti-work or overemployed, I’d be like, “Okay, why? Tell me, what do you learn?” Uh and so It goes really it goes really deep. As I’m diving into this stuff on RecruitJet and learning how recruiting companies work and I’ve talked to probably 15 recruiters in the past month and just asked them, you know, what about there are people who will literally show up to an interview like this, an interview like this and their mouth is moving but somebody else is talking to them and it’s the people who are trying to No way. No way. Yes. Tell me tell me about that. So what happens? If you’re so you’re a recruiter, somebody hires you to go place a tech position, you’re a technical recruiter, you’re going to find somebody to to work for Google for 250 grand a year. You’re going to go in and you’re going to sort through LinkedIn, you’re going to bring in all these applicants and you got to try to find a way to scan out a third of the applicants. A third of these people are trying to get more than one job being a being a software developer. And you literally can talk to them on the phone and that can’t do it because then they can wire in somebody else to talk. If you And that’s why they do that. They that’s why they do video is for that reason. They have to do video. I should have asked the guy a lot more questions about it. If you’re following me and Sam and you’re listening to this and you obviously know about this occurrence, tweet us because I want to know more about this as well. But he told me that you’re on a Zoom call with somebody and it’s blurry and and their voice is not really the one talking and it’s people who are trying to get more than one freaking job. Crazy. That’s ridiculous. That’s that’s that’s kind of amazing in the in the and like there’s some way you got to look at it from a like that’s sleazy, don’t do that. But also you’re like, that’s pretty amazing, you know? It’s like a lot of my my sleazy friends in high school, they would like pay someone to take the ACT for them. And I remember thinking like, I don’t know, man, that’s pretty that’s almost as impressive as actually doing a good job. You know what I mean? I’m like, I don’t want to work with you, but like kind of I do. If like if you if you could use that for good. You see so many criminals get caught doing all this crazy stuff and you just think that if they put that energy towards something productive, how rich they could get. We had um we had this guy named Michael Harris. Michael Harris founded Death Row Records. You know Death Row, they like created Tupac, Dr. Dre, NWA, like they basically invented like modern hip hop or they invented like gangster rap. They were the marketing they were the marketing machine behind those guys, right? Yeah, and so Michael Harris partnered with Suge Knight and Michael Harris did it from prison. He was serving um 25 to life. He got in trouble for attempted murder, which eventually he got exonerated by Trump two years ago and he got let out. But he served 30 years partially on Death Row. And the other charge that he was convicted of that I think he I I I’m he admitted to doing was he was selling at times $2 million a day of cocaine, of crack. And he was talking about it and he was like, “Once I started getting all that money coming in, I started realizing like I also need to go legit and do things the right way.” And so he started buying real estate and he started doing all this other stuff and he was like, “I was killing it in the drug game, but like I killed it even harder like just doing the legal stuff.” Like I you know, he’s like, “I had the cash flow from it, so like I I definitely profited off of it.” But he bought buildings, he started a limo company. He um eventually Death Row was bringing in like north of 100 million in revenue because CDs at the time were $19 and it was like a dollar to make a CD. And he was like, “We killed it the right way, but I did all this bad stuff, so I had to pay the price.” But uh he was like It’s such a good example that business is simply a flywheel around these things that we’ve spoke about in this episode. If you can get these things right, attracting people, leading people, managing people, delegating, writing, it can work in any business. Once you learn these skills, I could put Sam Parr and I could take him and I could drop him in a grocery store chain and I guarantee you, you would thrive. I guarantee you you could succeed just because of the way that you think about business, the way that you can lead people and the decisions that you would make. So, um I I feel strongly that once you get the flywheel going and once you push yourself and once you start to learn some of these things, you can you can crush it. You’re you’re doing something that I hate doing and I advise most people not to do it, but there’s many examples of people doing it successfully of which you’re one of them, which is doing multiple things at once. In most cases, I think doing multiple things at once is a horrible idea. I think we saw uh the few times it does work is when there’s like a Ryan Reynolds. You see Ryan Reynolds uh sold Mint Mobile today for like 1.5 billion or two bill, whatever it was. And then like last year he sold What was his liquor? His his liquor, yeah. Aviation or Avion or something like that. He sold that for hundreds of millions and you know, I don’t have any idea. It says like Ryan Reynolds sells his telephone company and I’m like, probably he has nothing to do with it. He just does the commercials. Maybe he has something to do with it. I have no idea. And I have no idea. It says like Ryan Reynolds, his his telecom company got sold. Maybe he only owns like three points. I I have no idea. But in that case, someone like him, he does have multiple things. When it’s you who you are doing a lot of the work and you’re not you’re famous or you’re a big deal, but you’re not like everyone in America knows who you are, I think that it’s scary and it’s challenging. Why are you doing more than one thing versus just one thing? I’m I’m pushing myself. I don’t know if I can do it. There’s a lot of anxiety around it and some of these things will fail. I mean, look, it’s five companies that I we’ve started in the past year. Um What what will the collective revenue of those be, do you think, in 2024? Okay, so you want me to make a prediction and then we can come back on and test it actually. So, I think Ari Costseg will be doing 500 grand a month or or so, and EBITDA In 12 in in in 12 months? Um, in the year 2024. At the end of 2024, we’ll look back on the year and I think it’ll do 2.5 million in EBITDA probably. So Okay. Um, Webrun, I think will be 30 or 40% margins. So whatever that math is. Webrun, I think will be 30 or 40% So get get get get getting close to 10 million in in sales. Yep. Yep. I think Ari Costseg will be really big in the year 2024. So 18 months from now, like trailing. Um, Titan Risk, the the commercial risk property insurance company, I think that one will do 3 million in sales at a 50 50% margin probably for insurance brokerage company. Okay. Um, Webrun, I think will be doing 200 grand a month of revenue. So maybe 70 to 100 grand a month of profit. Um, RecruitJet, I think will be a big company. I think RecruitJet will be 5 million of of revenue and 3 million of EBITDA. That’s RecruitJet. Okay, so collectively, you’re you’re in the 6 million profit range or something like that, 7 million, I forget. Yep. What would Blue Key Blue Key Capital, Blue Key Capital could be the big one, the debt the debt brokerage company for real estate firms. That one could be doing again, 5 to 10 another 5 to 10 million of revenue as well. Pretty good margins, a small team. And would you so uh 2.5 million for Costseg, what would that be valued at? Could it be as high as 10 times profit? No, I don’t think so. Costseg is uh politically dependent. You know, if if bonus depreciation rules go up and down, it changes the demand for Costsegs, right? So, I think three to four times EBITDA would probably be the value of that company. Wouldn’t be worth selling. So the cash flow is awesome. The multiples are shit. Everything that I’ve ever started, typically the cash flow is only okay, but the multiples are really, really good. This is this is what I 10, 20 times profit. Yep. This is what I can’t stand. I I tried to convince a kid to come with me to do a web development agency and I failed. My sales pitch failed. He didn’t join me and he kept saying, “There’s no enterprise value.” He kept saying, “There’s no EV in web development.” And my entire thesis is screw EV. EV will come. I want to be making money every single month and cash flow every single year. That’s the goal. And if we can do that, good things will happen over time and we’ll see which one of these companies really takes off. But to play devil’s advocate here, when I was first starting the hustle, I was doing the math and I was like, wherever I want to be by the age of 30, so in five years after starting or four years after starting, you have to make a ton of profit. Like selling a company, if you can get 10 or 15 times earnings or three or four times revenue, that’s a huge that’s a huge number. And for a lot of businesses, it’s not impossible to get that. You know, you need some type of recurring revenue and a really big market and fast growth. But like to make like 20 to 50 million dollars or significantly higher, my argument is it’s way easier to get there by selling, selling to get capital gains. There’s a lot of people who have done it. Like Andrew Wilkinson’s company, it’s just like killing it. And so he’s doing it through cash flow. Um, but if you like do the math, Val, yeah, my friend Val is doing it, but he also sold the company. He sold the company uh he sold two of them for tens of millions of dollars. I my opinion is and that there’s there’s so many examples where I’m wrong, but in most cases, I think you it’s significantly easier to sell something than it is to earn through income. That’s my problem, Sam, is I’ve never sold I haven’t sold a company right now. I’ve never I’ve never sold something to create a massive liquidity event. So I don’t have But would you? Yeah, I I think I would. Um, the I mean, unless you work in finance, maybe like in your one of your company two of your companies are finance related. Unless you work in finance, I think it’s hard to get a significant amount of income. But like I don’t know, like Donald Trump claims to have done it, like a bunch of people have claimed to have done it through through real estate and finance, but I think it’s hard through a product a product-based company. If you can really If you can wait it out, I mean, time is on your side. You know what I mean? If you if you’re okay living, I look, I live in a I live in a house that I bought for $290,000. I drive a truck that’s worth about 12 grand. Um like if I can just not buy a private plane or a $4 million house, I don’t have to sell anything and I think time will really help me. So I’m on the I’m on the train now. But how do you But how are you not like like, you know, desire is also like evil, you know, when it comes to this stuff. Like when you want shit, you suffer. And so like I know a lot of people that are really wealthy and every once in a while I fall into this trap where I’m like, five years ago, if I knew if if I my my five you know, my 25-year-old, if they knew where I was today, they’d be like, “Oh, you’re fine.” And then I get to where I am now and I’m like, “Oh, but there’s another step or what about a $10 or $20 million home? Or what about uh having a warehouse full of cars? Or what about doing this or that or owning a sports team? Like, okay, you you need more. You don’t desire things or a $50,000 watch or something. Of course I do, man. Of course I do. I really want an airplane. I really want a PC-12 and that’s my goal is to have How much is that? It’s a $5 million airplane. I want to And to fly yourself? to fly my family and fly my nanny, um and we could go from here to LA without stopping for gas. Um, that’s that’s a goal of mine, but But why own it instead of rent? I knew a guy I knew a guy who bought a jet for $16 million during the pandemic when he had just sold the company for 100 million bucks. He owned it for six months and he was like, “What the hell am I doing with this?” And he ended up selling it for 20 million. He goes, “I made a profit on it, which was lucky.” But it was looking like a horrible financial financial decision because I had to spend all this money to store it and it was like it was the stupidest thing ever. Yeah, it’s straight overhead, for sure. Straight overhead. But I need to I I live my family lives 7 hours from here and driving with my family is something we’re only going to do once a year. So I can’t get back to see my dad and my mom and my grandfather who’s only got a couple years left without easy access to get back. So it’d be really nice to have an airplane. But yeah, I’m I’m not going to do it. Like I decided with my wife, we’re going to wait because I just want to show my kids that I’m not just going to go out and buy everything I want and I’m going to suffer a little bit and that’s okay and you know, delayed gratification keeps me humble too and but it’s tough. I battle with it every day, man. I mean, it’s really easy to spend all the money. But you want stuff. What what’s your what’s your dream number? Like as far as personal net worth? Yeah. If I’m making a million dollars a month, I think I can then do whatever I want. Isn’t that funny? I but I bet you would have thought that 10 years ago, if you are where you are now, you could do whatever you want. If somebody would have told me five years ago that when I retire, I am where I am right now, I would have given them a thumbs up and and said, “I’m happy, please make that happen.” So, the goal the goal post always changes. It’s so it’s so hard, man, and it’s easy for me to cry and say, “Oh, it’s tough,” but it it’s like a it’s a tough thing to swallow as a man when like all of a sudden you have seven figures in your checking account, you have hundreds of thousands of dollars a month that come your way and you got to figure out what gets you out of bed and how you’re going to not be an asshole and how you’re going to raise good kids and how and I don’t know about you, but I get excited about hobbies and I’ll pick up golf and I’ll or I’ll tennis or pickleball or airplanes, whatever, and I’ll just get really, really, really into it and then it’s on to the next thing. It’s on to the next thing, on to the next thing. And I don’t like that about myself. I I wish that I was more disciplined long-term and How do you feel about that? Um I’m very disciplined, I think uh compared compared to a lot of people, I think I I have a I’m I’m fairly disciplined. I think I uh we spend anywhere from when we’re in Austin, I spend $15,000 a month or so. When I’m in New York, I spend a little bit more. But because I don’t drink and go out, like Monday to Friday, we don’t go out at night because it’s the school night. We say, we go, “It’s the school night, we’re not going out.” Um I live in a house that was is under a million dollars or paid well under a million dollars, so which in Austin, um um it’s kind of hard to find that stuff. But um I think I’m pretty disciplined long-term, but I do struggle with wanting more and my wife is always like, “Stop wanting that. Like you’re going to drive yourself crazy.” Uh and so like I do always want more stuff. Um and I try to like like I want like I want to buy just a huge garage in Brooklyn and just stash all types of cars and motorcycles and then to have like a fantasy factory and just open up the garage door and just sit in front of it and anyone who walks by and like admires it, I’ll be like, “Oh, you want to come in and look? Like I’ll show you around, we can like play with it all.” Like I want that, but that’s going to cost 20 million bucks maybe. Like I I and and it’s a pointless thing because when you die, you don’t get any of it. But uh uh I I got a funny story. I ordered I ordered a lot of bourbon lately, like high-end bourbon. Like How much is that fancy thing of bourbon? Um the most expensive bottle was like $7,500. This is going to make me sound You paid for a 7500 You bought a $7,500 Does it taste any different? What’s it do? This is me being vulnerable. I have I have zero life overhead. Like I could cut my spending to 5 grand a month and put my kids in daycare and pay for my house payment, which is $1,200. So I’ve avoided like the big expenses. I’ve avoided the big, big house, the the plane, the big cars, whatever it is. So I splurge on some of the little things that sound huge and and obnoxious to some people, but aren’t really that obnoxious. So I got some really nice bourbon, some bottles that are really special. And then I got them, I’m looking at them in my bar and I send a text to like four of my boys. I’m like, “Hey, come over, let’s try some bourbon.” And nobody can come over. They can’t come and hang out. Nobody can come hang out. They’re all working. Or they’re out of town or whatever. So the next morning I got up and I just looked at it. I opened one of the nicer bottles, I poured a little bit myself and I’m like, “Fuck, none of this matters. None of this matters. It’s all it is all about the people and the people how they feel about you, whether or not they care about you, whether or not they respect you, how you can help them, how you can help them become better versions of their selves. So the stuff is really just a distraction. It sounds cliché because everybody says that, but it hit me when I was looking at that bourbon and I’m like, my parents my dad loves bourbon. He’s 7 hours away. My brother’s 9 hours away. He’s not here. Sam Parr doesn’t drink alcohol. He can’t come over with me. You know what I mean? It’s hitting me. Yeah. Does a $7,500 bottle taste any different than a $50 bottle? I haven’t opened it yet. It’s the Miter’s 20 year. Does a $1,000 bottle taste any different? You know, I think it does because sounds ridiculous. No, it doesn’t, Sam. It doesn’t. It fucking doesn’t. It’s just a Pokémon card. It’s a ego thing, man. I’m a I’m a I’m a weak man who is after the ego sometimes and I got to stay I just got to remind myself of that. It doesn’t matter, does it? None of it matters, man. Dude, I I bought like a decent car and that makes me happier. But besides that, most most items don’t. Um And what am I going to do? Like invite somebody cool over? There’s a couple pro golfers in town that I’m friendly with and I keep saying like, “Come over and drink some of my nice bourbon.” And what am I going to be that asshole guy who brings in this famous person into my house and is like, “Yeah, drink my awesome bourbon and just talking about how awesome.” Like it’s so fucking dumb. Like I’m such an idiot. I don’t think it’s dumb. Where where do you where do you uh buy this from? And you you do cigars, too. Those are those are good too, right? Yeah, I really like So those are those are two of my hobbies. It’s cigars and bourbon because my I share them both with my dad and golf. Can you be any more of a stereotype? Golly. But my house is so weak. Like it’s literally sitting on the bourbon is sitting on a a $200 really shitty cabinet that I got from Home Depot when I redid my basement. But um no, a guy over in Carlton, Georgia, I’m his biggest customer and every year he gets the releases and drives it over to me and I give him an envelope full of a lot of cash. You got a guy. Dude, I love having hobbies where you got a guy. That’s the best. That’s the best. Well, um I appreciate you doing this. We had a good episode. Um what anything you want to you want to pimp out or promote? Um a lot of people ask me where they can invest with Bolt Storage and real estate’s really slow, but you can go to uh boltstorage.com/investors if you’re an accredited investor and you want to get storage exposure. And also my newsletter that I write every week. I think a lot about this stuff, a lot of the stuff we’re talking about, like what makes How many subscribers do you have on that? I’m up to 42,000. I’m working it really hard. I’m adding like 600 a month. It’s kind of kind of weak, but uh I I write a lot about a lot of this. Like what makes a 10xer? How do you think about this stuff? How do you think about hiring, management, like getting this these teams together. So if you go to if you go to my Twitter at Sweaty Startup, there’s a little link in my bio and you can join my join my newsletter. All right, we appreciate you. Thanks for doing this.