Nick Huber: Powerful Sales Trick, Traits Of An Entrepreneur, & When To Sell A Business - Transcripts

doing anything that makes your life better. It's all super uncomfortable and it's very, very easy to just be passive. Ooh, I don't necessarily have the energy to do that.

I'm gonna step back. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off.

On the road, let's travel, never looking back. Welcome to my first million.

Thanks for joining me, Sam. All right, so Sean is in California. There's a power outage. Last minute I called Nick Huber. We're gonna give you like the proper introduction, but basically you were on a month ago, six weeks ago, and it was, 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 what was your introduction last time? Nick has 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. Yep, yep, 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. Put the pressure on me. Because I never asked the same person twice, but I know that you're easy to work with.

And I knew you'd show up in time. Well, you blew up my life, man. I mean, I looked back. You brought me on this show the very first time on November 11, 2020. And then another time, February 16, 2023, which was four weeks ago today. And honestly, it blew up my world. Really? What are the results? I mean, Support Sheppard, the company that I use to hire a lot of VAs, 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. And that's like $4,000 a month or something,

or $2,000 a month? It just costs about $3,000. It's 30% of the first year's salary, 35% of the first year's salary to make the placement. So average tickets between $3,000 and $4,000. All the other businesses, too, that I mentioned on there, got some leads, reCostSeg, webrun.com. It's just crazy, man. Reached out, too, by a lot of people and actually got started with a couple more businesses since then.

So it's just been wild. I went to Vancouver, and I was hanging out with some guys that were worth hundreds of millions and maybe one or two of them in a billionaire range. And we were having dinner, and they would stop talking about that episode, and they wouldn't stop talking about you. And they were like, I got to meet Nick. I introduced you to one of them, but they wouldn't stop talking about you. And I was like, damn, people love Nick.

It's amazing. It's been amazing. I think 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. We were at a, I did like a MFM meetup last night. Jonathan organized it. And we had 500 people RSVP. I don't know how many people showed up, but it was awesome. We got to like meet people and a lot of people were asking about you. And it was really fun to get out from behind the microphone because what people, I always say this, I said this last night, what they don't realize is like, Sean and I at least, we talked throughout the week, but we tried to save our group. Have ever talked 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 his 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 Dufuses behind the mic. 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 hopefully, you've been able to meet some of the people as well. It's crazy because we consider you and talk and 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 Cowboys Stadium with 100,000 people watching again. It's the worst, it would make it feel a lot more real.

It's the worst, it would make it feel a lot more real. We've had so many people say, why don't you guys do it in real life? Like you and Shawn like and I'm like Well, it's just more convenient. But also, it's, like, one time I recorded at a studio and there was, like, this lady at the soundboard. And she was, like, hip and cool looking. And I remember she wouldn't laugh every once in while. When I thought I said something funny, and I got in my head, I was like, shit. I didn't, like, was that douchey? Was that lame? And then when she would laugh, I'd be like, alright, I got her, I got her, I gotta keep going! And so, like, she was my audience, and I remember I was, like, changing everything I did, and And afterwards I was like, Ben, I can't do this with Eddie, these people in this room anymore. It's getting in my head.

I'm trying to impress them too much. It's tough, man. It's tough. I'm having a live event on the 22nd in Athens, 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 a little bit bummed out, but we're going to actually go through its 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. A quick break to let you know that today's episode is brought to you by the Side Hustle Pro Podcast, a podcast hosted by Nikayla Matthews-Akome, which is also on the HubSpot Podcast Network. So the Side Hustle Podcast is focused on people bringing their side hustles into making them their full-time gigs, making them big businesses. And so she's got a bunch of really interesting episodes. Her most recent episode is about a woman who was popular on Instagram and created a bunch of products and brought it into Target and got it into retail stores, which is really, really hard. She has a few other episodes on changing the relationship with money and building a healthy emotional relationship with money, which is something we talk about here, which is definitely challenging. Mastering self-talk and then also how to have a plan for the year and put it into action and much more. So go check it out, Side Hustle Pro, wherever you get your podcasts. So I moved to San Francisco in 2012. I moved out there and I moved out there from Tennessee and I'm still a little rough. Back then I was really rough around the edges and this was right. Yeah, I moved out there and I would wear jeans and boots and a white t-shirt all the time.

to do those events. And 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 podcasts, 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,

it's more difficult. Where do you want to go today?

Where do you want to drive? So I want to talk about the traits of a successful entrepreneur. 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 of 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 10 Xers. They're the people who, you know, I have a theory that 80% 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 outsize 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.

So let's dig in. Well, 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 to $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 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 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.

but they don't get down too easily. Let's do one at a time. For me, it's very, very similar to what you just described in yourself. And it is that fire, that sense of urgency and that energy. I think most people out there, just in general, a lot of people, they're in slow motion, they walk slow, they think slow, they talk slow, they make decisions slow, they're just kinda lollygagging through life. They go into work, they clock in at 9 a.m. They do the bare minimum all day to get paid next Friday and not get fired. Then they clock out and they go home and drink a couple of beers. They're not that excited about hobbies. They're not that excited about much at all.

which is fine. Yeah, it's fine. And you need those people, a lot of times. You need buts 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 moving company that had pick up in delivery storage for students. We bought a cargo van on Craigslist for $3,000 and we drove it back to the track house. So this is kind of a good example 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 gonna start doing pickup in delivery storage for students and some of our buddies, they're sitting around and we're sitting around in the track house playing beer pong and they're like, you guys are freaking crazy. What is exciting about that?

What beer pong? What do you know about that? No, what do you know about moving?

Like, you know like, you're not qualified. Yeah, they're just like, why is that exciting? You're gonna go, what? We're gonna go have fun this weekend. You're gonna go around and sweat and pick up boxes for 30 bucks a piece? Like that does not sound fun to me. 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 some other people to come along.

And, you know, that's the whole thing. There's this great book, Robert, you know Robert Greene, the author Robert Greene? He wrote that book, 40 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, because he, Robert Greene, he's into like a philosophy and all this stuff, but he talks about, like, rappers, and he loves hip-hop culture, 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 changed his image a bunch of times, whatever. And he said the key to 50's success was his sense of urgency. And if you don't have a sense of urgency in everything that you do, it ruins everything. And he doesn't just talk about businesspeople. He talks about poets. He talks about people who discover, who invent different medicines, like you know poets. writers, whatever, it's always about an urgency.

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. I used to have a rule when I saw... This is how I met my wife. When I saw a cute girl who I want to talk to, I could only give myself five seconds after seeing her before I spoke to her. It was the five second rule... It was the five second rule, because if you don't talk to them within a couple of seconds you're never going to do it. And the longer you wait the harder it gets. And so I was the five second rule.

I have a couple more on my list. Do you want me to go again or do you want to do your second one?

Yeah, go one more.

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 the website, getting your ClickFunnels, 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 circumstances, they're going to go and do something else.

or on Indeed or on LinkedIn and actually apply for jobs. Which typically is the, those are the winners.

Those are the winners. Every 10 xer that I've ever hired and I've been lucky enough to bring a lot of 10 xers 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, I'm literally turning into a salesman. I'm going to try to attract talent to come along on my mission. Every single 10Xer that I've got 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.

How do you convince them? It's sales. It's literally, I'm selling them on my mission. We can talk about sales is another thing, but 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 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've got to drop it and come with me. And you do the same thing Sam-

You talked about steel-

Which looks like what? Yeah, usually what I do is like, I'll find someone interesting and I just chat them up and I go, I'll be like, 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 usually I'm like, where do you want to be in a handful of years? What do you wanna do? And if they tell me something And where I'm like, Oh, I could help you get there. Sometimes I can't sometimes it's like I can't help you get there. But 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 could set you up nicely to get you to where you want to go.

And so that's typically how I pitch. 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 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.

You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, and you gotta tailor it. So the third thing, or the second thing that we won't talk about because we already did is speed. I look for speed and that's quite hard to find. Most people aren't fast. My current partner, Joe Spicer, he's the only person that I've worked with that I'm like, Joe, you're going fast, man. It's hard for me to keep up. So 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. And I actually, a lot of things are trainable.

I look for that a lot. And you also, 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 Sampar, the Sampar ride and getting involved in one of your companies, one of these things, you're gonna give them something to do and that'll knock off 80% of the people. Cause they're not gonna follow through. They're not gonna follow through. I think the, I got a good story. Web Run, the guy that I found to start this front end web development landing page company, his name's 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, well, I need, I need, I need a favor. And I was testing him.

like look at what they're actually doing. Look at what they're actually doing. 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. And I almost ignore all of them, but every once in a while I'll be like, all right, make me a video then. And I'll tell them, I go, I'm not even gonna post it. So don't worry about free work. Like I'm not gonna profit off your work. Make me a video then. And we used to do this all the time. People would apply to the hustle for writing. I go, okay, write tomorrow's email. And every once in a while I would get a 1200 word thing the next day.

I go, all right, sick, we'll talk. 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 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 gonna 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'd be like, what the hell is this person even talking about? Get to the point. Whereas you have Nick pressed on on your podcast, I can say exactly what I've done and where I've been and how many storage facilities I have in it. And I've given you three or four things that bite off all in the first 28 seconds that I've been on the show because I'm a very clear and concise communicator.

in 15 seconds versus 30 is just mind blowing. How would you feel if someone referred to themself in the third person in an interview like you just did? That's a, I'm out dog. That's an I'm out dog right away.

I'm out dog, I'm out dog, I'm out dog, I'm out dog. Everybody wants to hear about the social justice warrior tweet that I had a couple of 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 cut. Somebody refers to themselves as Nick Cuban,

the third person cut, red flag cut out. Dude, and 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, I always say, does your oven burn hot? Like, are you just smart? And can you like, do you have like emotional intelligence, but also taste. So I like to ask people what content they consume. I'd be like, do you like to read, what do you read? I'm like, where do you, where do you get your news? Are there like, I'm like, seriously, just tell me like, who do you follow on Instagram or what subqua edits do you like to, anything? I just want to know a little bit about your taste. I've noticed that.

And that's a really, 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?

it for them? 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. But I also want to know what their taste is because I'll hire certain people and they write in a certain way that's maybe too corporate or like my brain is fun. And so 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 the hobbies or what they did in college and they'll say, I studied philosophy. And I'm like, all right, cool. I mean, I don't really care about philosophy, but I'm like, what was your favorite class?

Yep. So I have a theory that 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 a heck of a lot to a lot of companies.

What do you, Albert Einstein? Congratulations on that great theory.

Now this is the theory. This is the big part. 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 Teinexer, you're the Teinexer. 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 bottlenecked. 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 being Like 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.

is it days in a row or is it once a week? Anybody of- One day, one a day for ten days. One a day for ten days.

Monday to Friday so two weeks. One a day for ten days. Monday to Friday so. 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'm just like well Sam's 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 again, by the way?

Copy that.com. Copy that.com.

So the word copy and then that. 150 bucks or something and it's been worth, 50 grand added to my career. Easy, the best.

Do you know why that works? Do you know why that works? I tried to explain it in the thing. It's called copy work and it's how I learned how to write. And it was like this way that they used to teach kids how to write and in the 1930s and 40s, I think there was a change in the public schools and this thing got thrown to the side, it's called copy work. And if, Ben Franklin used to write this way, Hunter Thompson, he 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'll find a funny script that you wanna emulate or if you're Hunter S. Thompson, you would do Ketch her in the Rye or some book that you like because when you copy it by hand, you start seeing the patterns and the texture of something in the same way where, if you wanna learn how to play guitar, you're not gonna like get the guitar in day one and write a song, you're gonna like play Jingle Bells and then you're gonna like move to Happy Birthday. And then eventually you're gonna move to like rock and roll and then maybe blues. And then you're like, oh, this riff from Guns N Roses, it kind of reminds me of this riff from the blues. If I'm gonna like, I'll mash 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.

it imprints into your brain. And you learn the flow of certain things. So if you could 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 have a few more or no? Yeah.

I want my tweet. Yeah. 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 to customers, you're selling to investors 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 gonna be pushy, you're gonna ask directly, you're gonna speak the language, you're gonna prove that you're an expert, and then you're gonna talk about all the benefits and all the great things, and then you're gonna 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 I have so many options. So my way to do it is I speak the language briefly and prove that I'm professional without being braggadocious or bragging on me 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 asked them, given those downsides, why they still want to do the deal or why they still want to work with me or why I 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 sales person. So like, Sam, you're about to start working for me as 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.

All the other reasons why. When you're starting these new things,

how much do you fund them with? Recruit Jet, we put 50 grand in the bank account. Webrun, we put 10 grand in the bank account. BlueKey Capital, we're gonna put 50 grand

in the bank account. Did I tell you about Kevin Ryan? You know who that is? No, tell me. You're doing what he does. Kevin Ryan, I've talked to him about him a bunch on this pod. He's kind of my hero. He started, he was the CEO of DoubleClick, which eventually sold to Google for multiple billions and it became AdWords or whatever, AdWords, or I forget, AdSense. I think AdSense, one of those. Like the way Google makes all their money. So it's like the best acquisition ever. He was like employee 20 there and then he took over as CEO, sold the company for multiple billions and then he went and started.

if an idea is gonna be worth it. It all depends on the opportunity. I mean, some of these, the guy that we're partnering with on Recruit Jet, me and Sahil and Marshall from Support Shepherd are starting a company called Recruit Jet to head hunt US talent this exact way. Like, hey, we're gonna go into that 80% of people. We're gonna find them for companies. The guy that's our head recruiter, he's been a recruiter for 15 years. He's done work for me. He's a complete badass. He's not gonna leave his job. He's not gonna leave his job until we get our first contract signed. So we don't have any expenses yet. On the other side of the table, I'm trying to start a debt brokerage firm, meaning we're gonna be the middleman that finds and secures debt for giant commercial real estate projects.

at 200 grand a year.

But are you gonna pay any additional capital? Yeah, we'll have to. We're gonna need to hire some additional people, but for the most part, be a website, landing page, customer.io, automatic replies to emails, just be building the infrastructure that I'm so good at doing for all these other companies.

You're actually going to do it, you're going to write all the copy, you're going to set

up the email. Webrun. I'm going to have a web run, do that, and then I'm going to create a a Twitter account, make the follow account, and then I do a software called Birdflow that has an automatic DM. I've talked to everybody. You told me about it. somebody follows the account, they get a DM and they'll say, Hey, if you're placing any debt on any big projects or you're buying something you need help with banks, give us a call and we'll just drive leads that way. So it'll be- Does this person have a family?

A DM?

So every time somebody. I've talked to you about that. Does this person have a family? What's that?

Does this person have a family? Family? Yeah. He's got a 12 year old and a nine year old. And his wife doesn't know.

Doesn't freak you out?

His wife doesn't know. Doesn't freak you out? It's very freaky, yeah. It drives pretty significant insecurity. Yeah, I mean, even Will at Rebron, he had to leave a job where he was making 400 grand to start an agency with me. So like selling these people, like identifying the 10 Xers and selling them on coming to join the Nick Huber mission. Like that's what it all is.

Like that's the hardest part of this stuff.

And Will, the first family person that I hired, the person that had a family that had children, I remember thinking like that when we hired them, I was like, I have a family. I was like, I now have a family. You know, I was only 26 and I was like, shit, it feels like I have a child and it shouldn't actually feel that way maybe, but in a way it kind of should, where I'm like, oh shit, like I have, like if this is no longer just necessarily about me, this is about like all these other people and stakeholders involved. And I remember freaking out. I was very nerve-wracking.

It was very nerve-wracking. The stakes go up and definitely have some times where I'll wake up at night and I'll be like, what the hell am I doing? Like, am I really think we can drive enough business to support this person and I'm convincing them to leave their job and their livelihood. They make 450 grand a year right now.

I'm insane. Dude, it's scary. You messaged something. You tweeted something out the other day that you got a lot of flack for.

What did you say? What did you say? I'll just read the tweet because it's funny. So we talk about social justice warriors a lot inside of our group chat. How many, what would you, what's a social justice warrior? So a social justice warrior is anybody, it can be a Supreme leftist or it can be a Trumper. It can be somebody who is out on a mission to change the way that a certain group of people is totally mistreated. Whether it be people who want to carry guns or whether it be minorities, whether it be, you know, people who feel a certain way from a certain place, they're just out on a mission to go to war with culture to make it better for a certain group of people. That's a social justice warrior in my opinion.

Is that a correct definition? That's a significantly more positive how I use it. A social justice warrior to me is someone who is very closed-minded, very outspoken and will not be well balanced or open-minded to new ideas and new facts and who will automatically dislike you because you do believe in something regardless if you're, like for example, let's say you're, this is a controversial one, but pro or anti-abortion, it doesn't matter which side you fall on. You can probably have a conversation with either side. A lot of people can't be like, well, I disagree with you on that, but I understand your perspective and I don't hate you for it. You just have different opinions than I do. Whereas a social justice warrior is like, well, you're wrong regardless

of how you feel. Yep. You put it exactly right. So I made this tweet. The worst thing you can do as an entrepreneur is hire a social justice warrior. People who are very radical politically are way more likely to sue you or your business, upset your customers and upset your team members, either side of the aisle. I said, luckily politics is not a protected class. So I'm allowed to view somebody's social media before making it higher. And then I said, these folks bash people that they don't know on Twitter and social media constantly. And I said, you don't think they'll take to a public forum to bash you and your company when you fire them for missing

work to attend the eighth rally or March of the year. And so what do people say to that?

You didn't get any hate, did you? Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. The people who, it's got 64 quote tweets right now. Maybe they can link this exact tweet. I'm not going to bleed it. So they can link this exact tweet in the show notes, but this guy says bro, just say that you don't hire black people. It's way easier. Like people are just really calling me a racist and calling me a lot of really mean things, which I'm not at all. I, I'm, I am trying to weed out people who are close minded because if you're radically politically left or radically politically right, that just tells me that you're not balanced because I, nobody that I know is super radical politically. it's just a giant waste of time and energy.

like what content are you consuming? Oh, I'm in Reddit anti work. Okay. Out. Well, but they could make a good argument as to why they enjoy it. So for example, I like reading, have you seen the subreddit called, What's the one where people have multiple

jobs? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, that is fascinating. Entertainment value is another thing.

That is fascinating. Entertainment value is another thing. Basically, it's these people who get multiple jobs, like sometimes three or four jobs. And I've known a couple people who have done this. It's called Overemployed. It's called Overemployed. It's a pretty funny name. And I've known people who have done this. So they get a job at Facebook and Google. And they call it J1 and J2. And so they'll post advice like, hey, so my J1 has me working from like, I can get it done from like 8 to 10 a.m. And then J2 is like noon to 3.

It goes really deep as I'm diving into this stuff on recruit jet and learning how recruiting companies work. And I've talked to probably 15 recruiters in the past month and just ask them what about there are people who will literally show up to an interview like this and interview like this and their mouth is moving, but somebody else is talking to them and it's the people who

are trying. No way. No, way away. 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, your technical recruiter. You're going to find somebody to work for Google for 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've 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 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. 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

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 and like there's some way you gotta look at from a like that 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 form. 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 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 have this guy named Michael Harris. Michael Harris founded Death Row Records, you know, Death Row, they created Tupac, Dr. Dre, NWA, like they basically invented like

modern hip hop or they invented like gangster. They were the marketing machine behind those

guys, right? Yeah. And so Michael Harris partnered with Shug Night and Michael Harris did it from prison. He was serving 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 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 we 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 I killed it even harder just doing the legal stuff. He's like, I had the cashflow from it. So I definitely profited off of it.

It's such a good example that business is simply a flywheel around these things that we 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 Campar and I could take him and I could drop him in a grocery store chain. And I guarantee you, you would drive a guarantee, 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 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 crush it.

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. The few times it does work is when there's like a Ryan Reynolds. You see Ryan Reynolds sold Mint Mobile today for like 1.5 billion or two billion, whatever it was. And then like, last year, he sold... What was his liquor? whatshis Looker Avyone or Avyone or something like that. He sold that for hundreds of millions. And, you know, I don't have any idea. and I'm like, probably he has nothing to do with it.

thing versus just one thing? What was his idea? 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 we've started in the past year. 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 RE Costseg will be doing $500,000 a month or so in EBITDA.

In 12 months? 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 web run, I think. On what top line? I think 30% margins. So whatever that math is. Web run, I think will be 30% or 40%.

Web run, I think will be 30% or 40%. Getting close to 10 million in sales.

Yep. Yep. Yep. I think RE Costseg will be really big in the year 2024. So 18 months from now, trailing. Titan Risk, the commercial risk property insurance company. I think that one will do $3 million in sales at a 50% margin probably for insurance brokerage company. Web run, I think we'll be doing $200,000 a month of revenue. So maybe $70,000 to $100,000 a month of profit. Recruit Jet, I think will be a big company. I think Recruit Jet will be $5 million of revenue and $3 million of EBITDA.

Okay. So collectively, you're in the $6 million profit range or something like that. $7 million, I forget. What would?

Blue key capital could be the big one. The debt brokerage company for real. State firms. That one could be doing, again, another 5 to 10 million of revenue as well. Pretty good margins, the small team.

And would you, so $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 politically dependent. If bonus depreciation rules go up and down, it changes the demand for Costseg. So I think three to four times EBITDA would probably be the value of that company. Wouldn't be worth selling.

Perfect. 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 what I can't stand. 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 in cashflow 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 need some type of recurring revenue and a really big market and fast growth. But 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 is just like killing it. And so he's doing it through cash. 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. He sold two of them for tens of millions of dollars.

it's significantly easier to sell something than it is to earn through income. That's my problem, Sam, that I've never sold. I haven't sold the company right now. I've never, I've never sold something to create a massive liquidity event. Yeah, I think I would.

I mean, unless you work in finance, maybe like in your one of your company, two of your companies are financing 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 the real estate and finance. But I think it's hard

through a product-based company. Or service. Or service. If you can wait it out, time is on your side. If you're okay living... Look, I live in a house that I bought for $290,000. I drive a truck that's worth about $12,000. If I can just not buy a private plane or a $4 million house, I don't have to sell anything. I think time will really help

me. So I'm on the train now. But how are you not... Desire is also evil. When it comes to this stuff, when you want shit, you suffer. And so 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... 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 having a warehouse full of cars?

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 it to fly yourself. Fly my family and fly my nanny. And we could go from here to LA without stopping for gas. That's your goal? That's a goal.

And to fly yourself? Pretty good phone. But why own it instead of rent? I know 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. And he goes, I made a profit on it, which was lucky. But it was looking like a horrible financial decision because I had to spend all this money to store it. It was like,

it was the stupidest thing ever. Yeah, it's straight overhead for sure. Straight overhead. But I need to... I live, my family lives seven 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 of years left without easy access to get back. So it'd be really nice to have an airplane. But yeah, I'm not going to do it. 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 delayed gratification keeps me humble too. But it's tough.

money. What's your dream number?

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? 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 said, I'm happy. Please make that happen.

So do the goal. The goalpost always changes.

It's so hard, man. And it's easy for me to cry and say, oh, it's tough. But 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 or tennis or pickleball or airplanes, whatever, and I'll just get really, really into it. And then it's on to the next thing, it's onto the next thing, onto the next thing. And I don't like that about myself. I wish that I was more disciplined

long-term. And how do you feel about that? I'm very disciplined, I think, compared to a lot of people. I think I'm fairly disciplined. I think we spend anywhere from when we're in Austin, and 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 a school night. We say, it's a school night, we're not going out. I live in a house that is under a million dollars or paid well under a million dollars. So, which in Austin, it's kind of hard to find that stuff. But I think I'm pretty disciplined long-term, but I do struggle with wanting more. And my wife is always like, stop wanting that.

But, yeah, me too. I got a funny story. I ordered a lot of bourbon lately, like high-end bourbon. How much is a fancy thing of bourbon?

The most expensive bottle was like $7,500. This is gonna make me sadder. You paid for a 7,500, does it taste any different?

What's it do? This is me being vulnerable. I have zero life overhead. I could cut my spending to five 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 plane, the big cars, whatever it is. So I splurged on some of the little things that sound huge 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 it in my bar, and I sent a text to like four of my boys, I'm like, a come over, let's try some bourbon. And nobody can come over. They can't come and hang out. Nobody can come hang out.

I poured a little bit myself and I'm like, better. They can't come and hang out.

Nobody can come and hang out. They're all, fuck none of this matters. None of this matters. It's 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 themselves. So the stuff is really just the distraction. That sounds cliche 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 seven hours away. My brother's nine hours away. He's not here. Sam Parr doesn't drink alcohol. He can't come over with me.

This hit me. This hit me. Yeah. Does a $7,500 bottle taste any different

than a $50 bottle? I haven't opened it yet.

It's the mixtures 20 year.

Does a $1,000 bottle taste any different? You know, I think it does because how it's ridiculous. No, it doesn't Sam.

It doesn't, it fucking doesn't. It's just a Pokemon card.

It's an ego thing, man. 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? No, it doesn't matter. Dude, I bought like a decent car and that makes me happier.

But besides that, most items don't.

Dude, 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 do you, where do you buy this from you? And you do cigars too.

Those are two of my hobbies. It's cigars and bourbon because my share them both with my dad and golf.

Can you be any, 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 $200 really shitty cabinet that I got from Home Depot whenever he did my basement. But no guy over in Carrollton, 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, I appreciate you doing this. We had a good episode.

What, anything you want to, you want to pimp out or promote? A lot of people ask me where they could invest with bolt storage and real estate's really slow, but you can go to boltstorage.com slash 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, what makes some money. How many subscribers do you have on that? I'm up to 42,000. I'm working it really hard. I'm adding 600 a month, it's kind of weak, but I write about a lot of this, what makes a 10Xer? How do you think about this stuff? How you think about hiring, management, like getting these teams together? So if you go to my Twitter, that's where you start up, there's a little link in my bio

and you can join my newsletter, making some money. How many subscribers do you have on that? All right, we appreciate you.

Thanks for doing this. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like no days off Don't wanna roll, let's travel, never looking back