How Nick Huber Built A $100M Self Storage Empire (#420)
Storage, Tax Credits, Outsourcing, and Huber's Regrets - February 16, 2023 (about 2 years ago) • 59:25
Transcript:
| Start Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
Sam Parr | What do you... I'm an investor of yours, so I forget how much I invested. But you're like, "Well, I don't really invest in anything other than total index funds."
But you're like one of the few. I think you're one of three things that I did. It's going great! I mean, I see the returns.
But how much do you have in total self-storage now? Like $100,000,000 or something?
| |
Nick Huber | I think last time I came on, it was 15 properties or so and $20,000,000 worth of storage. We now have 61 properties and 1,800,000 square feet of storage. We've acquired it for $103,000,000. We've raised $41,000,000 from people like you who invested in Bolt Storage. It's been a whirlwind; the last 2 years have been crazy.
| |
Sam Parr | would you say $100,000,000 worth of that's how much you paid for it I don't know how much it's worth | |
Nick Huber | I don't either. We could guess... we could try to guess. But look, the real estate market has no mark to market, right? Because, like, Elon Musk, he can see how many shares Tesla has and the value of those shares. I have no idea. I mean, I can make educated guesses, but if we sold our portfolio today, I don't know. Six months ago, we might have been able to sell it for $190,000,000 or so.
| |
Sam Parr | Oh, that'd be awesome! I think the way I met you was... so, you know, it's kind of a creepy story. Years ago, I dated this Polish girl, and I remember seeing your picture on Twitter. If your... this is so weird, your face reminded me of hers.
| |
Nick Huber | That is the best compliment! That's the best compliment I could get. Are you Polish? I'm German. Yeah, Huber. My mom is a Ghettofinger, so yeah, we're very German.
| |
Sam Parr | I remember seeing your picture and I was like, "Oh my gosh, this guy looks Polish almost." Then, I was driving cross country and I did a Twitter Live or something like that. I forget what I did, and you commented. I just called you on air—or no, I called you on your phone. I put it on speakerphone and we started talking. And that's how we met, I think, right?
| |
Nick Huber | Yeah, and now we know each other quite well. I think we've punched each other in the face, we've guarded each other, and fouled each other in basketball. We have hung out at a couple of conferences, and we talk several times a week. So, I appreciate your friendship, man. | |
Sam Parr | I appreciate you too. He told me that he was a decathlete, and I was like, "Yeah, but you're not good." Then I looked up his times, and I was like, "Oh, he's better than I was." That's why I liked you even more.
| |
Nick Huber | what was | |
Sam Parr | your 4 100 time I think you read 47 | |
Nick Huber | Yeah, I opened 47. You know, splits are crazy because your coach wants to tell you that you run really fast splits to pump you up. But he told me I ran a 46.7 one time split.
| |
Sam Parr | I'd believe that. So, my fastest opens were only in the 48 and 49 seconds, and my splits were 47. You're probably a second faster than I was.
But, for those... for the like, you went hard on Twitter when COVID started. So, we have this text message group. It's me, you, Sean, Austin, Reif, Nikita, Bier, Sahil Bloom, and Greg Eisenberg. I think that's everyone. Did I forget anyone?
| |
Nick Huber | Yeah, you were an addition that came on about 6 months to a year after the group started. But you've added some great banter to it. | |
Sam Parr | And like, the reason the group started was you guys all went hard on Twitter around the same time. You started sharing each other's stuff. You're thread boys.
Then I remember you started doing that. But of that $100,000,000 that you've raised, or $80,000,000 that you raised—I forget how much—how much has come from 40? You've raised 40.
| |
Nick Huber | yeah how much has come from twitter 90 96% of it has come from twitter | |
Sam Parr | no way is that real | |
Nick Huber | Yeah, my entire real estate private equity company was built on the back of Twitter. Yes, we bought and built our first self-storage facility. We raised $500. My dad took a mortgage out on our house to do it. He didn't tell me that he did at the time because we're middle class. I went around to his friends, basically, and he helped me raise the money for that first deal.
Everybody says, "You know, you're not self-made," and that's my not self-made story: my dad was the first investor in my first storage building. But then we ran out of money, and we had to buy our second, third, fourth, and fifth properties with our own cash from our moving company.
So then, you know, fast forward to Twitter. I'm tweeting about deals, I'm tweeting about some of our properties, and people are DMing me asking to get on our investor list. Fast forward to today, we've raised $40,000,000 from 320 people, and we have 2,000 people on our distribution list. It's changed my entire life. | |
Sam Parr | what's 40,000,000 divided by 300 what's the average check | |
Nick Huber | Ben can help us out. Maybe I don't have a calculator on me, but yeah, $50 to start. We have some investors up over $1,000,000.
| |
Sam Parr | that's crazy I wish I would have done $1,000,000 when I saw the checks out for the year | |
Nick Huber | Yeah, that deal that you're in is going to be a really good deal. We refinanced it in a really crappy refinancing environment, but we're going to build some climate-controlled storage on that property.
That was a deal that was really big and uncomfortable, man. I mean, we bought a $9,000,000 property—the one I did. Yeah, it was a big deal for us. That was our biggest deal so far. It was hard for us to get the money together and raise the funds for it, $9,000,000.
Then we bought another small property after that, another portfolio, and all of that is included in the same one. Our basis is about $15,000,000, and I can... I got my spreadsheet up here. You do not even...
| |
Sam Parr | know what that means what's basis mean that's how much you're in for | |
Nick Huber | yeah total cost total cost | |
Sam Parr | But you're in for 20% of $15, right? Because you only put 25% down.
| |
Nick Huber | Yeah, exactly right. So, we put about **30%** down. We have **$12,000,000** in debt because we refinanced it and pulled out some cash. But now it's got a **$1,000,000** net operating income, and it's a **$20,000,000+** property, which is great.
| |
Sam Parr | That's crazy! Yeah, I remember seeing that check.
Well, what do you want to talk about today?
I want to talk about all types of stuff, dude. Can you talk about the shepherd thing that you're doing?
| |
Nick Huber | Yeah, so that company is a phenomenal company. It kind of kicks off our discussion because my goal is real estate. It's a little bit slow, but the company's in a really good spot. I still spend a ton of time giving thumbs up or thumbs down to deals, thinking strategy, and working on it.
However, I have a lot of time, and I also have 30,000,000 impressions a month on Twitter. You know what that's like when you have a podcast like this and the distribution that you have.
But yeah, my goal right now is to build a portfolio of ownership chunks in great small companies, you know, sweaty startups.
| |
Sam Parr | And our friend Austin Reif, who founded Morning Brew, was supposed to come on today. He had a last-minute board meeting, so thanks a lot, Axel Springer, the owner of Morning Brew. Thanks, guys!
Anyway, I was like, "Awesome, what should we talk about?" You, me, and Austin were in a group chat, and he was like, "Let's talk about..." because he knows that I hate advertising. I used to make fun of him as an enemy, but now I make fun of him as a friend about how much...
| |
Nick Huber | he loves he makes fun of everybody sam | |
Sam Parr | not really do I I don't know it's good | |
Nick Huber | You just make jokes that are at people's expense, and it's hilarious... sometimes.
| |
Sam Parr | They're funny, and I was like, "Austin, what do you want to talk about?" And he's like, "Let's talk about non-advertising ways to monetize media followings."
And you did it! I don't know what your net worth would be or what the value of your percentage of your thing would be, but you've done it to the tune of like $100,000,000 in real estate. That's your non-advertising way of monetizing your audience.
Yeah, you're also doing it in like a bunch of... Sorry, go ahead.
| |
Nick Huber | yeah my equity in that is maybe you know 10 to 20,000,000 yeah | |
Sam Parr | So, you operate this successful business. It's not just because of Twitter; you make smart decisions beyond that. But you are also doing it in a few different ways.
I'm actually a customer of your other business, which is a cost segregation business. I almost used Shepherd, which I don't know if you are a part owner of or if you're just an affiliate for.
You're monetizing in a bunch of different ways, and I want to talk about the ways that you're monetizing in non-ad ways with your audience.
| |
Nick Huber | Yeah, so Shepherd is the ideal story. I mean, it was late 2020, November or December. I wanted to hire somebody in the Philippines. I met Marshall Hasso, who owns Support Shepherd, and I was his customer. I made a deposit for them to hire somebody, and my goal was to get someone on the phone in my self-storage facility who could, you know, press 1 to make a payment.
You're going to go to this person, and they're just going to process the payments for us—just some extra help doing very simple things. I gave them the details, and actually, they built the job description. They got me three candidates ready to interview. I got on and interviewed them all in the course of an hour, and I was absolutely blown away. I hired all three of the people. I'm like, "This company..."
| |
Sam Parr | is what was the rate per hour | |
Nick Huber | $5 an hour $800 a month to get these people to come and work for my service company and | |
Sam Parr | and they're awesome | |
Nick Huber | Fast forward... Yeah, they were incredible. Fast forward four months later, I had 15 of these people working inside of my company. Not only were they doing the simple stuff, but they were also answering sales calls. They were guiding the logistics of a customer in one of my facilities looking for a specific unit.
They were just able to do exactly what our American reps do, except instead of paying $60,000 or $70,000 a year, we pay, you know, $10,000 a year. So it was a game changer. Now, we have our whole finance department in Colombia. Shepherd has helped us find those folks in Colombia, so the business blew my mind.
I went to Marshall in May 2022 or 2021 and said, "Hey, I want to be an affiliate of this company. Give me a cut of what I can bring in, and I'll do some tweeting." At that time, they were doing about $50,000 a month in revenue. Shepherd was...
| |
Sam Parr | That's their net. That's the net of the net of payouts to the workers.
| |
Nick Huber | no that's like total revenue total revenue for shepherd | |
Sam Parr | okay | |
Nick Huber | As a company, the one that does the headhunting and finds employees for American companies, they were doing about 50 placements a month or less. They were growing fast; it was a good company.
I started tweeting and pissing off the woke mob while recommending Port Shepherd for a 15% cut of the revenue that I brought in.
| |
Sam Parr | what's say what those tweets were they're they're hilarious | |
Nick Huber | I would say, like, I'm going to weather this recession for one main reason: my employees all work for $5 an hour in the Philippines, and they're absolutely incredible.
Then it made me look like a complete idiot, but the woke mob would just blow these threads up—totally blow them up. We're talking to the tune of 3 to 5 million impressions.
So that really accelerated the growth of Shepherd. They were getting a ton of business as it was; they started growing like crazy.
Fast forward a year later, and Shepherd had 7x'd the size of that company. It had grown by 7 times in just one year. And it wasn't just because of me; it wasn't just because of me. It's because they started offering folks in Colombia, they started doing a ton of work, and they had like 50 more...
| |
Sam Parr | you're a part of the you're a part of the puzzle | |
Nick Huber | A big part of the puzzle to help it grow. So, I went to Marshall and I was like, "Marshall, this business is way too good. I'm not getting enough money. I want to own part of Support Shepherd."
He's like, "No way! That's ridiculous. You're just an influencer."
I was like, "Well, man, I'm going to go start another company that does exactly this, or I could be a partner of yours."
He was like, "Okay, you're right. Let's make a deal."
We negotiated, and I own 15% of Shepherd. You fast forward to...
| |
Sam Parr | and what's the deal like you have to keep referring a certain amount of customers and do you still | |
Nick Huber | Get your payout. Affiliate payout? No, the affiliate payout was canceled. I got 15% of profits, and he just trusted me that I was going to be motivated to continue to do what I do.
Now, once a month, I just piss off the woke mob on Twitter. I send some newsletter ads, and I kind of sit on the board and do a little bit of operations things and recommend, but I mostly just drive those guys nuts when it comes to that.
| |
Sam Parr | Well, wait. I want... I need you to redeem yourself really quick because you're like, "I'm pissing people off." But the reality is that, like, what's the salary? $10 a year is what to them?
| |
Nick Huber | Yeah, these people... me and one of my reps were talking the other day, and it's like, "Yeah, I bought a house, Nick. It's incredible! I bought a house in the Philippines." I'm like, "What are you talking about?"
And he's like, "Yeah, this is my home. It's a 3-bedroom house that I bought." Me and Dan talk all the time about how our employees in Colombia and the Philippines are just as wealthy as us. They have the same exact lifestyle as we do because, yeah, they get on a bus, they commute for 2 hours, and they work for like, you know, $2 an hour over there with not the best conditions.
Then they get to work for many other companies, and it changes their lives. So the reality is that the woke mob has no idea what they're talking about. This is an incredible opportunity for them and for us. Now, a lot of people are, you know, making that switch and getting employees over there, which is so...
| |
Sam Parr | all right I interrupted you because I wanted you to redeem yourself but what were you saying about so | |
Nick Huber | You fast forward a year now, and after another year of promoting and the business growing, I think 51% of their business is repeat customers who want to come back for more help. It's a multi-seven-figure profit business a year. I make $50 a month personally from my 15% ownership at Shepherd.
| |
Sam Parr | God, that's so funny! Dude, you would not have wanted to go and start a competitor to them, would you? That sounds hard. It sounds like a hard business to operate. | |
Nick Huber | It's really hard. They have 150 employees. I was mostly bluffing; I mean, it's a super hard business to start. They have a ton of really good talent and a lot of sales reps. The way that they do business is really difficult. They have to go and recruit, interview, and vet all these people over there. They need to grade their English and get all these employees put in front of these business owners. So, yeah, it was...
| |
Sam Parr | Marshall's a pretty good entrepreneur. I like Marshall a lot. I mean, he's done like eight different companies, and a few of them have done really well. | |
Nick Huber | very good very good entrepreneur | |
Sam Parr | So yeah, that's hilarious! I can't believe you worked that out. I mean, I think that's a good deal.
I've had a few people reach out to me. There's this guy, Diego. What's his website? Is it like Short Z? I think it's like short clips. I'll have to find it.
But anyway, this dude DM'd me. I think he's Cuban or he's not from America; I forget what he is. But he DMs me, and I get these DMs all the time where they're like, "I'm going to make videos for you." You get those too, right? I'm like, "Dude, shut up."
| |
Nick Huber | oh I get 3 a day that people wanna write my newsletter for me | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, it's like stuff like that all the time. And 9 out of 10 of them, they're just really bad. They're not good at what they do.
This guy kept DMing me, and I was like, "Screw it, fine. Just make clips for me. Send me 10 of them." I just said something stupid or something like that just to get them off my back.
He sent me like 10 clips before the night was over, and they were pretty good. I was like, "Alright, well, I don't want to post these. I'm going to make you post them for me. I'm going to give you my Instagram password. Send me a picture of your driver's license and your social security card."
At one point, he looked at his girlfriend and said, "Send me your girlfriend's driver's license too." He does, and he kills it. I went from like 1,000 followers to 10,000 followers in a week, and now I'm up to 50,000. He kills it!
| |
Nick Huber | I'm not gonna pay him | |
Sam Parr | So, get this. I was like, "Alright, you're right. You're awesome." But here's the deal: you're going to do this for me for free for a long time. In exchange, I'm going to tell all of my friends about you. Eventually, once you prove it to my friends, I'm going to tweet out that I think you're great.
He said, "Great." So, within a month of him messaging me, we got him up to like $20 a month or something like that. I forget, but it was a really good wage. Now, he has this thriving business. I tweeted about him, and we sent tons of customers to him.
I also do the same thing where I take a small percentage of the profits. I'm loving this, but I would rather have the profits rather than equity in the business. | |
Nick Huber | but really | |
Sam Parr | I think | |
Nick Huber | You mean like a cut of revenue? You'd rather have a revenue share than an equity slice? That's the mistake.
Yeah, Sahil sent me a text yesterday and said, "Nick, what's your three biggest regrets in life?" And one of them... why does not do...
| |
Sam Parr | he asked you that question what a weird question to ask you | |
Nick Huber | he works on he works on this dumbass content online who knows what he's gonna tweet about | |
Sam Parr | why is he asking you that okay go ahead one of | |
Nick Huber | They were not going to Marshall a year earlier and getting equity instead of a cut of profits or a cut of revenue.
| |
Sam Parr | Yeah, I just don't know if a clip agency is ever going to sell.
| |
Nick Huber | yeah I love agency I love agency businesses | |
Sam Parr | And I don't want to give advice to people all the time. Do you know what I mean? I think it's different when you're with Marshall because Marshall is a very proven entrepreneur who has a couple of exits under his belt. But sometimes when I'm happy...
| |
Nick Huber | to call people yeah they don't need or want me to get involved in their operations yeah | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, I'm like, "Dude, I don't wanna guide you. I just wanna send you customers." Sometimes, I prefer transactional... is what I mean.
| |
Nick Huber | Yeah, so I love leaning in. I love leaning into the ops. My business partner's an operational mastermind.
You know, I have three other companies that I'm working on launching right now on a very similar trajectory as Support Shepherd.
| |
Sam Parr | By the way, Diego's company is called Short. It's like a short clip, and then it's zy.co, so Short and then zy.co. I'm giving him his job, yeah.
| |
Nick Huber | I mean you should own you should own 25% of his company | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I will end up regretting that, but I'm happy with the deal.
So, what were the other two regrets?
| |
Nick Huber | Oh, I don't know. Let me look. I think it was "go ahead and get married a little earlier and have kids a little earlier," even though I did it when I was almost 30 and then you aren't married.
| |
Sam Parr | until you're 30 or first kid | |
Nick Huber | I got married when I was 27, and I had my first kid at 29. I kind of feel that if that had been 3 years earlier, I would have been just as happy. But in general, I told my...
| |
Sam Parr | So many people I talk to say they wish they would have had their kids earlier. By the way, I'm shocked that people say that.
| |
Nick Huber | Are you excited to be a dad? I know you and Sarah have started to talk about it. What do you think about it? How do you think that's going to change your life?
| |
Sam Parr | I'm pumped! I'm so pumped! I agree; I wish I would have done it earlier, and I am so pumped. I think it's going to be life-changing.
I was talking to Sarah about this last night. I said, "We've achieved a lot of interesting things at a relatively young age. Professionally, we're known in our field, and we have some respect among our peers. Financially, we've achieved some things."
Then we were like, "Parents say you're never ready." I was thinking last night, "Dude, I'm totally ready! What else do I need to do? This feels like the next step." So, I'm incredibly ready.
I don't really care about this, but I actually think it's going to turbocharge my career. I think it's going to make me feel amped up. Before, I was earning for egotistical reasons. Now, I'm in a place where I make money because I do things that are fun. Often, the outcome of my fun hobbies is income. I pick and choose different things now.
I think it's going to feel like I want something for my children. I want to impress them and show them how to work hard. I think there's going to be a little bit of that.
Also, I don't want to spend all of my time after 6 PM working, so I have to pick and choose my battles. I think that's going to actually force focus, and the outcome will be better financially. Am I wrong?
| |
Nick Huber | I think you are right on the money with your two points. There are two more things I want to mention.
**Number one** is that you become so much more emotionally mature when you have kids. At least for me, I experienced highs and lows. It just puts stress in relative form when you know you have a human that you have to care for. The stress level increases when that human is sick, when they scream, when they cry, when they hurt themselves, or when they suffer. That puts everything in perspective. You just get better at dealing with stress.
**The second thing** is that I became more focused and was able to get more work done. When I couldn't travel the world, when I couldn't go play golf all the time, and when I couldn't just get on a plane and be spontaneous to spend two weeks in Europe, I instead spent really good quality time with my family at home. Then, I would pop onto my computer to tinker with my business and make it better.
It's just more... I don't know, does that make sense?
| |
Sam Parr | yeah it totally makes sense and I'm pumped well you have 3 kids now | |
Nick Huber | yeah 5 3 9 months | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, man, I'm pumped for it. I think the outcome will be a better career because of children. That's my prediction. I think you're right.
I want to talk about the cost segregation business because that seems like it's going even better than Support Shepherd. So, I'm a customer. I used it; I got it for free, though. But I am a customer, and I'm using it.
| |
Nick Huber | You did a video. So, cost segregation is when we have engineers who go in and break out the different parts of a commercial property or an income property—a piece of real estate. Then, they give you a schedule of which you can depreciate to the IRS. | |
Sam Parr | meaning like because normally it's what 27 years | |
Nick Huber | It's normally 27 years for straight-line depreciation. They take it so that, oh, the windows, those are only a 5-year life. You know, the landscaping outside has only a 5-year life. Then you've got all these ground improvements that we're going to make and all these other things that can be accelerated a little faster.
So, and then there's something called bonus depreciation. We're going way in the weeds; you don't need to know that. Basically, our engineers come into the building, they draw a picture of the property, they split it out into different values, and they give you a document that you can give to the IRS to get way more depreciation and save money in year one.
| |
Sam Parr | So, I haven't gotten my report yet. However, let's just pretend. On a $1,000,000 property, what's a million divided by 27? | |
Nick Huber | yeah you're gonna get 27,000 is it much $27,000 a year | |
Sam Parr | yeah okay in depreciation duh | |
Nick Huber | 2.2% maybe something like that | |
Sam Parr | And then on with this, it would be what, like $200 in year 1?
| |
Nick Huber | Yeah, on a self-storage facility, it's anywhere from **20% to 30%** year one depreciation. An industrial property might be **10% to 20%**. An RV park might be **60% to 70%**. It just depends on how many ground improvements you've done, like work to the outside of the property, landscaping, you know, windows, doors... you might be.
| |
Sam Parr | Then do you pay that tax back if I sell the property before 27 years?
| |
Nick Huber | Yeah, it's called **recapture**. So, if you don't plan to hold the property for a while, then you need to keep some money because your basis drops. Basically, your taxable basis drops by the amount that you depreciate.
So, that gap is called **recapture**, and you pay that at the recapture rate. Stuff like that.
| |
Sam Parr | yeah and where is my team doing this | |
Nick Huber | We have my friend Mitchell Baldridge, who you know, and his wife Mel. They are my partners. My business partner Dan is a minority owner as well. I own 45% of Ari Caustig.
Mitchell had done over 100 of these before we started this company, and he had never really thought about, "Hey, we can find some engineers and do this stuff really well."
We created a Twitter account, Re Cossseg. We got really competitive pricing because instead of me flying somebody to your property in Texas, we did a FaceTime. You FaceTimed with one of our guys, and he walked around and took some screenshots. What was that like?
| |
Sam Parr | My property manager did it, and I was out there with her. I think she was on her phone. She said the guy sounded Italian. Are they in Italy or something?
| |
Nick Huber | They're all over. Yeah, we have some people in Miami. Florida's pretty popular. Colombia and the Philippines.
We've hired 7 people through Support Shepherd for this company, which is another funny part about it. But yeah, we have 23 employees. Mitchell's wife, Mel, who spent 8 years at KPMG, is also part of the team.
| |
Sam Parr | yeah yeah yeah | |
Nick Huber | One of the big consulting firms, she was a management consultant. She's the CEO of the company, and yeah, we're 9 months old. We did $250,000 in revenue last month. | |
Sam Parr | Dude, that's crazy! I remember, like, so Jen, my PM, it took her like 20 or 30 minutes. My property is big; it's like 20 acres. There's a 4,000 square foot house and then a barn that has a gym. This is for an Airbnb I have.
She spent maybe 20 minutes walking around, and he was like, "What's that thing?" They were like, "Oh, that's our water purifying system." He was like, "Alright, cool. Let me see that." Then he said, "Alright, cool. Show me all the windows."
| |
Nick Huber | yeah they look at like okay what can we depreciate faster and they're like show me this show me that | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, and he was like, "We have two garage doors here." He was like, "Alright, cool, let me see that garage door." I forget what else it was, but she was just walking around, and he had a checklist.
Then, he would see stuff and ask, "Wait, let me see that water filtration system," or, you know, my property's out in the country, so we have a well or something. I think he was like, "Let me see the well." He wanted to see all this stuff.
I haven't gotten a report yet. I think we just did it like 10 or 7 days ago. Yeah, but yeah.
| |
Nick Huber | that's the business | |
Sam Parr | And there's one other company in the space that's doing it that I almost went with. It was called Madison Spec. | |
Nick Huber | They'll fly somebody out to your property, and they'll charge you twice as much to do a cost segregation because they have to get someone out there. So, it's a win-win scenario.
| |
Sam Parr | dude when I read about this mark jenny so we have this friend named mark jenny who talked about | |
Nick Huber | the pub he's a badass | |
Sam Parr | yeah he's badass he has like I don't know his portfolio is like mid 8 figures of airbnbs | |
Nick Huber | the barstool guys rented one of his houses for super bowl week | |
Sam Parr | Dude, I saw that the Barstool guys are in Arizona, I think. Yeah, and I saw the mini putt-putt course and basketball. I was like, "I bet this is Mark's." Then you or someone else told us that it was Mark's.
He inspired me to get into Airbnb, and I was like, "Mark, what should I read?" He sent me some book, and that's where I learned about accelerated depreciation. I started Googling how to do it, and I only found a couple of firms doing it.
So, I thought this was going to be like a niche business. I didn't think it was going to be a big business. How big do you think this is going to get?
| |
Nick Huber | My prediction, and again, I try not to make predictions because then I just set expectations and end up getting stressed because of those expectations, is that I think we'll do $3 to $5 million in revenue over the next 12 months.
I think about it, and I believe it will become, over the next 5 years, a $10 to $15 million a year revenue business.
| |
Sam Parr | I don't... I mean, you don't have to set expectations, but I will. I feel like that is undershooting it. I think it could be potentially bigger. I don't know how big the market is, but I bet you there are just so many other services that you can begin to offer, depending on how hard you want to work.
| |
Nick Huber | Yeah, we're launching. So that's **reqosteg.com**. We're launching **taxcredithunter.com** as well to do ERC credits and employee retention credits.
| |
Sam Parr | same partnership | |
Nick Huber | Group Mitchell and Mel. That's when you didn't... If you didn't lay off employees during COVID and you own a small business, you can get Employee Retention Tax Credits back from the IRS. You need Mitchell on to really talk about that stuff; I can't guide.
But basically, if you didn't fire your employees when COVID hit and you kept them on, the government is offering massive tax credits to your business. Very few entrepreneurs know about it. They expire in 2025, and yeah, it's significant.
We're talking about the guys that we know who are running companies with 150 employees looking at $100,000 to $1,000,000 in tax credits.
| |
Sam Parr | there's a company called main street main street yep | |
Nick Huber | they do the exact same thing | |
Sam Parr | I think Sean either invested in or knows the guy who founded it, named Doug. They were an advertiser with The Hustle. They're a good company, but what they did was... how much money did they raise? I think they raised... they did the exact same thing you're saying. They probably had a tech play to it. I don't remember exactly, but they're still around.
I think they raised like $200 million or $300 million. I forget the exact number, but it was a huge amount. I think they just recently laid off a ton of people, not because the business stinks, but I think they just raised a ton of money and hired a ton of people.
I do think that that's proof that if I'm in your position and I'm like, "Oh, well, you guys have just validated the idea and concept," we're not going to raise money because we don't want to screw up our cap table. But I bet we can do this because we already have a little bit of money, we already have an audience. Maybe we won't grow as fast, but we'll own the whole thing and do it our way.
| |
Nick Huber | and I | |
Sam Parr | think yeah | |
Nick Huber | The audience is the key. I mean, the ARI Cost Seg Twitter account, which I run and Mitchell runs, has over 13,000 followers already. | |
Sam Parr | no shit what are you tweeting on there to to make people follow it | |
Nick Huber | Just all about cost segregation. It's all about real estate investors and client examples—anonymous client examples—about how much money we save clients. It blows people's minds when they realize that real estate investors can make, I'm an example of this, $2,000,000 to $3,000,000 a year from operating companies. If you're a real estate professional and you buy property each year, and you cost segregate them and depreciate them, you can have...
| |
Sam Parr | Zero tax liability... 0. Yeah, but becoming a real estate professional is a pain in the butt. I tried to do it, and I was like, "There's no way I can justify..." Basically, if I remember correctly, to become a real estate professional, you have to... I forget exactly.
| |
Nick Huber | You have to spend **700 hours**. You need to be the person who spends the most time in the business.
Yeah, you need a good CPA to really log your time and create a rock-solid case.
| |
Sam Parr | And then you also have to consider that the majority of your income has to come from real estate, if I remember correctly. Or is there something where your outside revenue streams can't add up to be more than your real estate income? Is it something like that?
| |
Nick Huber | I thought | |
Sam Parr | That there was something where, like, you can't make too much money. Well, maybe I'm wrong, but I remember the $700 thing. I was like, "There's no way I can qualify."
I think you can get some. I don't want to talk out of my ass here; I don't remember exactly. But I think if you do 360 hours, you can get some. A lot of...
| |
Nick Huber | Short-term rentals... there's a loophole in it right now. We're doing a ton of cost savings on people who have short-term rentals because they don't have to be a real estate professional. They just have to spend more time on that rental property than anybody else.
There are some threads that Mitchell Baldridge has, and if you search for "short-term rental" on the ARI Cost Seg account, you could read the thread. But yeah, there's a loophole around short-term rentals. | |
Sam Parr | Well, that's sick, dude! I think that potentially those businesses can be bigger than your storage thing. But that's just because that's what I know—like internet businesses. I think that actually could be pretty massive, right?
| |
Nick Huber | I think I am very bullish on what could happen. I'm excited!
Yeah, and then I'm also buying and rebranding a property and casualty insurance company.
| |
Sam Parr | what the hell is that | |
Nick Huber | They provide property insurance. If you have a commercial piece of property, a self-storage facility, or a multifamily unit, you need to get property insurance on it. This is in case there's a tornado, a fire, or someone slips and falls outside.
| |
Sam Parr | Yeah, I mean, I have it at my Airbnb. I think it's expensive. I'm pretty sure I pay $5,000 or $6,000 a year. Does that sound right?
| |
Nick Huber | Yeah, that sounds right. We pay over $400,000, or over $350,000 annually, to insure our self-storage portfolio. But it's also a pain to work with these insurance companies. The brokerages operate like it's 1950; you have to push back out.
| |
Sam Parr | Yeah, I do. I don't have a login. I think I just have a PDF that they sent me. Then they sent me more questions that said, "Hey, did you ever fix this handrail or something like that?" Anyway, it's pretty antiquated.
| |
Nick Huber | It's my business partner. We were working with a top 10 firm in the country, a brokerage firm. This is one of the biggest companies. My business partner, Dan, had to go into that business and build a system for them to quickly get us quotes on properties and to bind our coverage.
We can't pay online; things move slow as hell and nobody responds to us. So, yeah, we're buying an insurance company in Kansas City. We're rebranding it as **Titan Risk** (titanrisk.com is the shout out), and we're going to spin off a property and casualty insurance company on the back of, again, the following...
| |
Sam Parr | your website's down so you got that is it titanrisk.com you said yeah | |
Nick Huber | all right you gotta get it up by the end of the day it'll be up by tomorrow hopefully | |
Sam Parr | Alright, good. I don't know, I think this episode might go live tomorrow, so you gotta get it up by then on Thursday. What did you pay for that?
| |
Nick Huber | The guy was doing... we found a guy who had a really good contract base with carriers because that's the key. Like, everybody goes to the same carriers, but you have to have contracts with those really good carriers.
We found a guy in Kansas City who had that, and I think he's doing $1.5 million in revenue inside of a shop. He's the producer and has four back office staff. We're going to hire folks through Shepherd and some Americans as well for account admin roles.
We're going to lean on his shop at the beginning and kind of spin up a secondary brand. So, if I come on in six months, I'd be able to share a ton because this is in its infancy. But I'm more excited about this business than I am about Re Cossegg and Tax Credit Hunter.
| |
Hubspot | Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot?
See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love, love our new CRM. Our software is the best. HubSpot: "Grow Better."
I want to ask you about the fourth one, but for the first three, did you put up any capital for any of them?
| |
Nick Huber | Yeah, we funded a checking account for our Acosta. We put $50 in there, and then two months later, you know, we were making distributions.
| |
Sam Parr | that's nothing right I mean that's nothing yeah and dude that's crazy to me | |
Nick Huber | The great thing about hiring an employee, even if you hire a really good engineer for $100,000, is that you're only paying them $8,300 a month.
| |
Sam Parr | do you have engineers for these companies | |
Nick Huber | Yeah, we have civil engineers inside of our Acosta. So, yeah, this stuff's not easy, right? Mel Baldridge is a badass; she's managing 23 people. We're doing a ton of volume in sales, doing all these CAD drawings, and breaking down these properties. Marshall's team is really badass. None of these companies are easy by any means.
| |
Sam Parr | who's building the system so like and then not civil engineers but I mean like web | |
Nick Huber | Yeah, we're using Airtable as a CRM. We have a lot of out-of-pocket tech, but we're getting some web work done as well.
I'm starting a web landing page for a development company called Webrun.com, but that's with another guy. That's going to be spun up in the next month.
So yeah, I mean, it's getting fun!
| |
Sam Parr | I want to ask you about this last one, and then I want to ask you more questions about all this stuff. I'm going to write my questions down because I don't want to interrupt you. What's this pest thing?
| |
Nick Huber | Oh, the pest control business! I have a good friend of mine who owns six branches of a pest control company. He needs capital to buy additional companies to latch onto his business. He's got some capital, but not $5 or $10 million.
I might do a deal with him where I sit on the board and advise operationally. I help them hire overseas talent through Support Shepherd and implement them inside the company. Then, I would raise the money from my real estate investors to buy the business. | |
Sam Parr | but that's in | |
Nick Huber | its infancy as well I need more time to to really talk on that | |
Sam Parr | So, about between 2 to 6 months ago, Sean and I talked on this podcast about a few things. I told him that, basically, on Instagram, you have like Rihanna and the Kardashians, and then there are like 1,000 and 1,000 more. But those two, the Kardashians and Rihanna, are prominent examples of people who have built hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars worth of net worth via Instagram.
On YouTube, we have Mr. Beast. He's like the common example; he's the one everyone talks about. And then, you know, there are many more people who have built successful brands. For instance, there's the lady who started Ipsy, I think it's called, the makeup brand. There are tons of them.
On Facebook, you could say that BuzzFeed and a bunch of other companies built multibillion-dollar businesses on the backs of Facebook. Now, there hasn't really been anyone who has done it on Twitter. The same goes for Snapchat; we can think of a few more examples.
The reason Twitter maybe hasn't worked as well is that I think people haven't taken it seriously. Also, there are only about 350 million people on it, as opposed to Instagram, which has around 1 billion. But I think that's changing.
What we haven't seen yet is someone who has built the equivalent of the Kardashians on Twitter. Instead of selling makeup, I think they're going to be selling B2B (business-to-business) services or something considered higher-end, not just a young woman buying $12 makeup. We haven't seen that yet.
Then Sean was like, "Yeah, and then we have the guy mafia." So, you have people like the Strip Mall Guy, who I know and am friends with. He has a large business, and I don't know what has come from Twitter, but he has a large business. Then there are like 5 or 6 other guys, like the used car salesperson guy, and he's potentially going to build a large business. It's very predictable what's happening there.
| |
Nick Huber | watch guys is selling shitloads of watches on twitter yeah | |
Sam Parr | I almost bought a Rolex from him. He had these Datejust watches that I wanted. No one has done this to the extent of like hundreds of millions. I guess you kind of almost have already, but no one has done this to the extent that I think is possible. You might be one of the first, or at least one of the people that I know closely, who might be one of these early individuals to build a multi-hundred-million or even a $1,000,000,000 fortune, mostly because of your audience on Twitter. Do you think that's accurate?
| |
Nick Huber | I think these companies are so in their infancy. It's really easy to get to $250,000 of revenue, but ask guys like Andrew Wilkinson how hard it is to go from $250,000 a month to, you know, $250,000,000 a year in revenue. Those types of jumps are on another level, right? I don't know if I have what it takes to do things like that.
| |
Sam Parr | you're saying you don't think you have what it takes how can | |
Nick Huber | you say that I'm gonna try hell yeah I'm gonna try but like how much harder can | |
Sam Parr | it be than what you're doing now but you give it 10 or 15 years to mature | |
Nick Huber | I don't know. I think what Austin Reif does at Morning Brew, like managing these bigger companies, is just a different skill set. It's different. | |
Sam Parr | but you're not doing it | |
Nick Huber | but I'd have to to become a billionaire wouldn't I | |
Sam Parr | I don't know because, dude, it's kind of like you're like the **Ryan Reynolds** of Twitter a little bit. You know what I mean? Like, he's got **Mint Mobile**, he has the soccer team that he partakes in, and he's got, I don't know, the alcohol drink that he has. I think he has a few more. I mean, that guy's not operating those companies. **Conor McGregor** is not operating the whiskey thing, but like...
| |
Nick Huber | I can't operate frankly I can't operate my companies either I'm focused on my real estate and everything else yeah | |
Sam Parr | And so my being is, if you have 10, 20, or 30% of a handful of things, one of them could hit. There's this guy named Felix Dennis. Have you ever read this awesome book called *How to Get Rich*?
| |
Nick Huber | I I love that book | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, I love that book! I recommend it to everyone. It's horribly titled, but it's the best book I've ever read.
| |
Nick Huber | about before you should have equity in that book sam | |
Sam Parr | Dude, whenever we mention it in the pod, we'll notice the next day it goes up the charts like a ton.
Well, he's dead now, but he built a publishing empire that made him a lot of money. The bulk of his wealth came from owning 10 or 20% of this thing called Micro Warehouse, which went public for multibillions. He made many, many hundreds of millions from it.
He had the same approach where he was like, "Look, I own the magazines, and I'm going to promote you guys in there for free. I'm also going to be an adviser, but I'm going to be considered a co-founder. This was my idea, and I hired you guys."
However, he didn't manage the company. He met with the other founders a lot and gave his opinion, but he wasn't running the day-to-day operations.
I don't see why you couldn't do that with a few more things. I think the power of blowing up a brand is one thing.
| |
Nick Huber | The power of spotting, reading, hiring, and delegating to really good operators is something that is underrated. It's another thing that I think I'm good at: finding people who really think about business the right way to build these companies.
I can't operate them; I'm an investor, an advisor, and I promote their stuff on Twitter. I'm a customer, and I help, but you have to find somebody who is really good at running a company.
That's where I wish I could do more angel investing. I made a joke on Twitter that offended a couple of my good friends a few days ago. I said, "I need to do more angel investing so that I can invest in these companies. I can see how these founders think about business, how they make decisions, how they write their updates, and how they fight through challenges." I want to get a look into their brains and spot the killers—those guys who are just really good at business.
Then, I can pull them aside when they want to leave the hellscape of venture capital. That was not true; it was just not cool for me to say that about my buddies who have so much value to the world in that space.
But anyway, I was half joking, half being serious because I want to pull these people away and basically found, start, and buy businesses that I think they could come in and run—great businesses that are currently being run poorly—and just accelerate their growth and make them better.
| |
Sam Parr | Dude, Austin Reif is an amazing operator. I remember when I first met him; I was probably 28, 29, or 30, and he's younger than me—he's 4 years younger. I was like, "You're the first person, one of the very few people who's like my peer but younger than me, who I'm a little intimidated by." I remember telling him, "Dude, I'm a lot better than you at a few things, but you are so much better than me at a few other things, and I wish I would..."
| |
Nick Huber | Have made it earlier. He listens to the way that he thinks about business problems and the way that he talks through them. He paints a story in a clear and concise way when you're asking him about his business. That's what I'm talking about.
Like, that's the 10xer. Austin is the 10xer. He's a 100x, totally. He's on another level. But when you're around a lot of these people and you talk to them, you start asking questions and hearing the way they think about business. You can do it too. You can just tell when somebody's different, when somebody's really got it, you know what I mean?
| |
Sam Parr | Dude, he's the best. But I would also say that Andrew Wilkinson is a great friend of mine. I don't know what his empire is worth, but it's in the $500 million to $1 billion range, depending on public markets.
When I talk to him, I don't feel like, "Andrew, you're out of my league." You've just been doing it for longer, and you are really creative. You were the first person who was bolder and smarter than me to believe that this could actually become a thing. You did the thing, and then you did it for years. You didn't give up, and you never bowed down. You always did it your way.
In terms of your vision and my vision, now that I see you could do it, I'm like, "I don't think you're that far ahead." I think we're in the same ballpark of intellect. That's why when I see him, I'm like, "Dude, you're inspiring to me," because I kind of feel like we're almost the same, although the results are not the same. I find that to be very inspirational.
And that's kind of the same for you. Maybe you look at a guy like him and think, "Oh man..."
| |
Nick Huber | Andrew is my idol. Yeah, I mean, that man understands leverage and delegation unlike anybody that I've ever met. He can find somebody; his brain is so good at analyzing the pros and the cons of making a bet. He does business like a poker player. When the odds are in his favor, he's gonna go big, and he's just proven that he can make those bets better than anybody else. He'd find those excellent operators.
I think he's an undercover killer too. I mean, I know that he comes off really humble, but the dude is...
| |
Sam Parr | **I think he's a killer too. He's a killer, and anyone who's that successful is not a killer.**
| |
Nick Huber | yeah you're right | |
Sam Parr | And he does a good job because he's like... I always tease him. I'm like, "Dude, you always dress so nice when you have slicked-back hair." You have this designer look to you, but quit acting like you're not a killer because you definitely are.
| |
Nick Huber | he's got it | |
Sam Parr | why what do you what do you do with your money do you what do you invest in | |
Nick Huber | Well, in real estate, I'm not that liquid, right? I haven't sold a company or any properties. So, I personally guarantee over $50,000,000 of debt, and I only have $3,600,000 liquid.
It would be foolish to start spending that on houses, cars, and boats, right? So, I keep a lot of cash—about $1,000,000 in cash. I also keep another $2,500,000 in public equities that I can create cash flow from.
| |
Sam Parr | are you trading are you trading | |
Nick Huber | no I buy stocks and hold them for a long time I'm way too dumb to try to guess what's gonna happen inside of a market | |
Sam Parr | but you didn't used to be that way | |
Nick Huber | I bought some dumb stocks. We talk about our friend Austin Reef. I bought some dumb stocks that I then sold 6 months later for a big loss. Absolutely. But I'm not trying to day trade in time markets.
| |
Sam Parr | Austin told us all that Zillow was like the buy. He was like, and I... I mean, I didn't buy it, but it was a fair argument. | |
Nick Huber | But we bought it at $150. It went up to $200, and I was getting texts from Austin that, you know, "Let's go! This is incredible!" Now it's $30 or something.
But no, I mean, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple—all the best companies in the world—got 50% cheaper. So I bought a lot of those, and I'm going to hold them for 5 years. I'm sure that I'll do fine.
| |
Sam Parr | what's motivating you right now | |
Nick Huber | I just think it's fun. I mean, the building is really fun. Is that what you... I mean, I want to talk about you now too, Sam, because your earn-out's over here. How many years post-exit are you? Four years out?
| |
Sam Parr | no dude 2 | |
Nick Huber | Two years... okay, never mind. Yeah, I mean, you build something, you sell something, you have that event, and then when it's over, you're like, "Well, shit." I kind of... I love building. I love tinkering. I love entrepreneurship and business. | |
Sam Parr | I needed... so I gave myself one year. I basically wrote the rules where I was like, "I'm gonna read anything that interests me."
Whether that's fiction or something else, I read a lot of fiction. I decided I wouldn't read business books anymore. I also said, "I'm just gonna search." I'm just gonna plot and search, and whatever interests me, I'm just gonna pursue it. You know, I was like a dog on a walk, following my nose, and I'm not gonna feel guilty about that.
I noticed that after about six months, I was ready to roll again. I made some mistakes; I made some irreversible decisions at my company, like some culture decisions. Basically, when I started the company, I was 25, and by the time I sold it, I was about 30. I was a different person, and I'm more solid on who I am now. I would have different values when I start my next ventures.
But anyway, I made some mistakes, so I basically had to sell the company in order to get out. I was pumped about it, but at the same time, I was like, "I wish I was wealthy." I wish I wasn't wealthy when I started a business; I had nothing. I was like, "I wish I was wealthy so I didn't have to sell this to get liquidity." I would have liked to have owned it forever.
But I was very, very happy to get that time to relax and to seek. Then, after about six months, I was like, "Dude, I need action. I need to gamble." I remember watching a James Bond movie, and I thought, "Should I become a cop?" I felt like I needed to go out and get into trouble; I needed to experience life.
| |
Nick Huber | A thrill of uncertainty. I think it's like making a decision where you don't know what the answer is going to be, and then waiting to see what happens. That is just incredibly addicting about entrepreneurship and business.
| |
Sam Parr | Dude, I just like being a shithead with my friends. I love our group chat; when it gets spicy, I think about it all the time. It's so funny, and I'm like, "I gotta go do something now to one-up the guys here." That's how I feel.
So, my best times at work are when I'm with my partner Joe or someone like that. We're like, "We can't pull this off, can we? Fuck, let's go try it!" That adrenaline—that's my version of James Bond. When I'm watching him have a car chase, I'm like, "Dude, this is our nerdy version of a car chase." I need that thrill, and it just so happens that the outcome typically is money.
That's what I'm motivated by: the thrill. I don't give a shit about legacy. When people talk about legacy, I'm like, "I don't give a shit, dude." Imagine the feeling you had before you were born; that's what I think I'm going to have when I'm dead. Why do I care what people think about me?
I want to leave something to my children because I love them, but I don't give a fuck about what everyone else thinks. I just want to have fun and excitement in the moment, and that's what I'm motivated by.
| |
Nick Huber | Yeah, making these business deals and these business decisions, and these calculated bets, we'll call them, like with you and all these things I'm working on. They're just calculated bets.
When you put the money in, you just never know what's going to happen. You never know what's going to happen when you try to sell it, when you start to get customers, or when you start to solve problems. It's addicting, for sure.
| |
Sam Parr | By the way, we can keep this on, but Producer Ben, we have to bleep out the name of what he just said. I haven't announced that yet. | |
Nick Huber | ah but can we talk about it can we | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can't say what it is, but we can mention that I have a thing that I'm going to be announcing in a month.
Okay, one month. Nick just said the name of it; we gotta bleep that out. I'll be announcing it in one month. I've been doing it low-key for two reasons:
1. I wanted to prove that I can do it without my audience.
2. I wanted to make sure that it worked and was life-changing.
It's a wonderful product before I get an influx, but I'm going to announce that in a month.
What else do we want to talk about? Anything else? I mean...
| |
Nick Huber | I mean, I've been thinking a little bit about what holds people back, anxiety, and the decision-making. That's like the worst thing.
| |
Sam Parr | you have anxiety | |
Nick Huber | No, I just mean like the uncertainty, like the fear of failure. It's in everybody, I guess. Anxiety is a bad term; more like insecurity, right? I have insecurity, and it holds me back from making big decisions.
The problem with it is, the more insecure you are, the fewer decisions you make. Decision-making is something that you have to practice to get really good at. If you don't make sure decisions with a lot on the line, you're never going to get better at it.
So then you have unmade decisions, and that equals stress because stress is a decision that hasn't yet been made. It just cycles and snowballs. People who have insecurity and anxiety around making decisions then get stressed out because they have these decisions. It's just a big compounding snowball that holds people back from kicking so much ass.
Every high performer that I know makes a ton of decisions. They make some of them wrong; they lose some money. There's a downside, of course, but they just make them, and make them, and make them quickly. They get better at it, and that's when the leverage kicks in. They can just build and grow, build and grow. | |
Sam Parr | My parents, when I was a younger kid, I would sell CDs or used stuff on eBay. I remember making mistakes, and they would say, "Oh, that's alright. You can't get a hit unless you're in the game." They'd say, "You're swinging, you're missing, but you know you gotta swing to get the hit. You can't get a hit unless you're in the game."
I remember hearing that, and it changed my life. So now, whenever I screw up, I'm like, "Whatever." You know, a .300 batting average in baseball is great. So I'm like, that's all I need. In business, that's fine. In fact, in business, you actually need less. If you try 100 times and one thing works, it makes up for all the 99 things that didn't.
That's what I always tell people: "Dude, you gotta... you can't get a hit unless you're in the game."
| |
Nick Huber | I've been asking high performers this because now I have a 5-year-old. I'm thinking about what I can do for my kids to help them get better at making decisions and to build a more solid foundation in the event of insecurity.
Did your parents just let you struggle a little bit? That's something I found is very common among entrepreneurs and successful people. Many parents nowadays really mess up because they shelter their kids from all decision-making. They make the decisions for the kids and keep them from experiencing any pain at all. They put them in a bubble to avoid the discomfort of pain.
I look back on my parents, and they would make me make the little decisions when I was a kid. This helped me get better at making decisions, so when the decisions were bigger, I wasn't overwhelmed with fear and insecurity.
| |
Sam Parr | I was always skateboarding, rollerblading, and going to skate parks. I remember I had a unicycle, and I would try to ride downstairs. They thought I was crazy for doing all this wild stuff. I remember when I was in 4th grade, I could ride a unicycle and juggle. I would do all this crazy skateboarding stuff, and my friends would say, "Hey, let's go to the skate park."
The only rule they had was that you had to wear a helmet. They said, "As long as you wear a helmet, we don't care." I was in and out of the hospital with broken fingers, stitches on my eye, a broken arm, and a broken collarbone. I've had a lot of broken bones.
I always say my parents were supportive. Once I left school, they didn't help me financially with my business, but they were emotionally supportive. I remember when I left school and moved to San Francisco, I told them I was going to join this thing called Airbnb. They were like, "This sounds like a multilevel marketing thing. Is this legit?" I said, "No, guys, it's legit! At the time, there were like 200 or 300 people working there."
They were skeptical, saying, "You're going to leave school to do this?" I assured them it was a legitimate opportunity. They thought it sounded horrible, but they said, "We'll see you Saturday. We'll come down there and help you move out."
They did things like that, which were very emotionally supportive. That was huge for me. A lot of my friends who don't take risks often have parents who are quite neurotic. Instead of saying, "Of course, this can work," their parents would default to saying, "Well, this will never work because of this, this, and this," or "You can't study abroad; Mexico is dangerous. Haven't you seen that there are shootings?"
I remember that was usually the default response, rather than saying, "Screw it, we'll handle it when we get there."
| |
Nick Huber | Yeah, putting your kids in a bubble... Now that I have a 5-year-old, it sucks to watch him struggle. I also have a bunch of employees, and it sucks to watch them as well. I don't know, there's a lot of similarities between raising kids and managing a team.
| |
Sam Parr | Get hurt though. Like, let's say your kid's riding a bike and he's wearing a helmet. You're like, "Dude, he's 100% about to knock his teeth out."
| |
Nick Huber | If he's about to hurt himself badly, I'm going to the emergency room. Obviously, I'm going to run and try to catch him. But if he's over on the other side of the cul-de-sac and he hits a curb, falls down, and starts screaming, I'm not going to sprint over there and pick him up and coddle him. Does that make sense? Like, I'm going to...
| |
Sam Parr | yeah | |
Nick Huber | I'm letting him figure that crap out, but I just think it bleeds over into everything.
If an employee walks into your office and they have a problem, and you just say, "Get out of my way, I'm gonna solve that problem," then that enables them.
A) It doesn't let them learn how to solve problems on their own.
B) It enables them to bring you more and more problems and just be completely unable to get things done without you as a boss.
| |
Sam Parr | Do you... Ben just texted me and he wanted me to ask you, do you have all three boys, right?
| |
Nick Huber | I have a 5-year-old boy, a 3-year-old boy, and a 10-month-old girl.
| |
Sam Parr | are you gonna raise her the same way I would imagine yes right | |
Nick Huber | Oh man, I don't know. I don't know if I will. Yeah, you gotta... you gotta. | |
Sam Parr | If I have a daughter, I mean, this is my hypothetical situation. You're living it, but I think I would definitely... you gotta do it the same way, right?
| |
Nick Huber | Oh yeah, I'm going to raise a strong, secure daughter for sure. I'm going to show her that I treat her mother with a ton of respect and that her mother should never take any nonsense from me just because I'm a man.
That's something that can cripple women in the long run if you enable or lead them to be insecure. So, I'm going to try to raise a really strong, confident, secure girl who knows how to struggle with grace. Absolutely.
So when she falls down on her bike, I'm not going to run over there either, I guess.
| |
Sam Parr | Well, good dude! I'm happy you came on. I like talking to you, by the way.
We do this thing on our YouTube channel. I'm going to do it now. I was supposed to do it earlier on. We talked about the gentleman's agreement. Have you heard me say this?
| |
Nick Huber | I have not damn you're catching me I'm totally blind | |
Sam Parr | So, we've been growing our YouTube subscribers. I think last month we grew by 20,000. The pitch was this, which I stole from a guy named Jesse on Fire, so I'm not going to act like I came up with it.
We guilted people a little bit. We said, "Hey, hold on, hold on." I normally say this in the beginning, but I forgot to do it today. I go, "Hold on! Unlike everything else on YouTube, our content is not for free. We actually work for you, and the way that you pay us back is kind of like when you go up to 7-Eleven and you see a jar for muscular dystrophy. You take a piece of candy and you leave a quarter or you leave a dollar. That's what this YouTube channel is. Except instead of the dollar, all you gotta do is click 'like' and 'subscribe' on our little channel. We work for you, and so our content's not free. You have to subscribe if you watch more than one video."
It's called the "Gentleman's Agreement" because we're not there; it's a handshake. So anyway, that is the Gentleman's Agreement. You do have to subscribe to our channel. But dude, that pitch changed everything. Immediately, we started seeing close to 1,000 people a day clicking 'subscribe.' So it's working!
Oh wow, you gotta have a unique way of asking for it, and it's worked. Now we have all types of people coming up to us. I was on a walk yesterday, and a guy drove by and said, "Hey, I honored the Gentleman's Agreement." I swear to God, Austin, I had two people last week say that to me.
So anyway, that's our Gentleman's Agreement. If you're listening and you've ever listened to more than one episode, this is the Gentleman's Agreement. It's an honor system; you have to do it. We can't check this on you, but please do it. Everyone's doing it, apparently, since we're growing almost 1,000 a day.
But Nick, I appreciate you. What's the promote? It's a... so support Shepherd's the Shepherd thing.
| |
Nick Huber | titanrisk.com
sweatystartup.com
boltstorage.com
supportshepherd.com
reqauseg.com
taxcredithunter.com
webrun.com
titanrisk.com
| |
Sam Parr | sweaty startup on twitter twitter | |
Nick Huber | No, I mean, I really appreciate this. I hope your audience got something from this because the value that this will add to me is phenomenal.
Man, you've always been incredibly supportive. I remember I was trying to launch a little community around real estate, and you got on a call when you were busy as hell. I wasn't that big of a deal, and you helped me set that whole thing up.
I mean, the generosity, Sam, is freaking awesome.
| |
Sam Parr | Well, I appreciate that. And now, maybe one day I'm going to ask to be an affiliate of your affiliate or something like that.
| |
Nick Huber | and anything you need anything you need man let me know | |
Sam Parr | alright I appreciate you thank you very much that's it that's the pod |