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

if no if now this is the theory this is the big 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 ten sir you're the ten welcome to my first million thanks for joining sam alright so sean is in california there's a power outage last minute i called nick hub we're gonna give you like the proper introduction but basically you were on a month ago six weeks ago and it was one month i think it was the second most downloaded pod in the last ninety days it had something like a hundred and fifty or even more downloads something like that so the people loved you and what what was your introduction last time nick has at least a hundred million dollars 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 and dabble and 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 because we don't ever i'd never asked the same person twice but i know that you're easy to work with and what's do i knew you'd show up in time well you blew up you blew up my life man i mean i i looked back you you brought me on this show the very first time on november eleven two thousand twenty and then another time february sixteenth two thousand twenty three which was four weeks ago today and honestly it blew up my world i mean i'm telling you really what are the results i mean support shepherd the company that i used to hire a lot of you know va and and i'm a partner in two hundred plus leads of people business owners to reach out for the first time to hire their first va which is freaking awesome and that's like four grand a month or something or two grand a month it just costs about three grand it's thirty percent of the first year salary thirty five percent the first year salary to make the placement so average tickets between three and four grand all the other businesses too that i mentioned on there got some leads i'm ari cost web lebron dot com it's just crazy man got reached out to you by a lot of people and actually have have have kinda got started with a couple more businesses since then so it's just been a while so i like i went to vancouver and i was hanging out with some guys that were like worth hundreds of millions and maybe one or two of them in the billionaire range and we are having dinner and they would stop talking about that episode and they wouldn't stop talking about you and they were like i got a meet nick i introduced you to one of them and courtney and 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 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 m meetup up last night jonathan organized it and we had five hundred people rs i don't know how many people showed up but it was awesome we got to like meet people and a lot of people are asking about you and it was really fun to get out from behind the microphone because what people do i always say this i said this last night they don't realize is like sean and i at least we talk throughout the week but we try to save our if we ever if we're ever talking about something juicy he'll just say like don't don't tell me tell me when more live and right now i'm just in my when i turn like a small bedroom into a little it just has his desk in the 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 du behind a mic just barely i mean we prepare but like we're just kinda like having a conversation with our friends and it's really cool to like see the people and like actually hear from them and so we did that last night it was exhausting but i was very happy to do it and so hopefully you you've been able to meet some of the people as well it's crazy because we consider and talking i'm i'm a little bit nervous just because i know the impact of my first meeting i know that hundred thousand 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 a hundred thousand people watching i mean it would be it may work a lot more real 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 sean like one and i'm like well it's just more convenient it but also it's like i one time i i recorded at a studio and there was like this like lady at the at like the sound board and she was like hip and cool looking in and i was like a cute lady and i remember she wouldn't laugh every once in a while when i thought i said something funny and i got in my head i was like shit i didn't i think was at douche was that lame and then everyone when she went laugh i'd be like alright i got it i got her i gotta keep going and so like she was my audience said so i remember i was like changing everything i did and afterwards i was like ben i can't do this with with eddie of these people in this room anymore it's getting in my head i'm trying to impress him too much it's tough man it's tough i'm having a live event on the twenty second in athens which you guys inspired me to do i put it together right after that and thirty people have bought tickets to it so i'm i'm a little bit bummed out but we're gonna actually go through its next wednesday night in athens we're gonna actually have it see how many people show up and see the success but yeah when you put yourself out for a live event it comes with a new level of stress and anxiety for sure so i moved to san francisco in two thousand and twelve i moved out there and i moved out there from tennessee and i i'm still a little rough back down i was really rough on the edges and this was right yeah it and this and this was like basically i moved out there and like i would wear jeans and like boots in the white t shirt all the time and people and i've had a little bit of a twang you know and people would kinda tease me and i told him from tennessee and they're like you know what do you date your cousin like they would make fun of me and i felt really like jealous of the stanford kids i would like i remember i took a bus or a train out and to walk around stanford campus i felt it was like good a goodwill hunting moment i was like dude am i gonna meet all these geniuses what's gonna happen and i got so en and so i created this thing called the anti nba because i was en nba said i didn't get my nba from stanford because i meet all these kids and they had this like awesome network and so i created this book club and we would meet once a week we would read one book a month and we would meet once a week and go over the trailing like you know week's reading and then i would call in a guest to like lead the discussion and i would talk to them and app and i posted an ad on craigslist that's how i got my first people and so ce one of my best friends si who's like a big entrepreneur he was one of those people you know he's one of my closest friends so i met him that way and so i would host these book groups and we it would be ten people at first and then the next time like twelve and then over time i did this for a year every week for a year i got like three thousand people signed up to my email list then i hosted an event that was like maybe eighty people came and then i hosted hustle cloud and three hundred people came but it was very slow like these like events i didn't very like it was like a four year grind and then at hustle count eventually we got like twenty five hundred people coming and so like these events and and then sean and i did a live pod in miami and like maybe a hundred people came and it wasn't that good and then we did it again it was a little bit better so like these events it takes time and it's hard and it's hard because unlike the internet when you you know with the internet you can delete some stuff within event you just are gonna embarrass yourself you know what i mean it's so it is challenging but it was like a grind to do the do those events and getting getting people to actually show up it's tough i mean to get people to listen to my first million or my podcast in nike cuba show all i gotta do is flip through flip through podcast click a little button if they don't like it if they're gone getting somebody to buy a ticket drive somewhere the uncomfortable of meeting other people you know it's more difficult what do you wanna go today where what you wanna drive so i wanna talk about the traits of a successful entrepreneur what may 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 starts a business i mean somebody who leads other people in inside 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 will call them ten years they're the people who you know i i have a theory that eighty percent of of of workers are just kinda skate by and maybe they're adding a little bit of value to a company but the top twenty percent are generating outs size return for the company that they work for or themselves if their an entrepreneur what makes those people tick on talk about that alright the the most interesting thing apart about this is that it's kind of this will morph into a a tactical guide of literally starting a company because when you start to identify these things and you track down these people and you bring them together a company is nothing more than just a group of people that i'll work together so if you can find these people and put them together which i know you can which i'm confident that i can and anybody who scales a business can do you can you can make a lot of money fast so let's dig in well when i when i first started my career it was basically just can i make enough money to pay for my own bills and then once you get past that point maybe that point is it's different for everyone for us it was in the thirty thousand dollar a month range once we got to thirty thousand dollars a month i realized cool it's sustainable to a certain level i need to hire people and i hired one or two people in in a few of my different companies where once we got to like thirty and forty thousand a month when you hire the right person it can ten x fairly quickly and at that thirty thousand mark i realized at a young age i am in the collection of people this so 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 a long game relationships last long time so i've done a good job of collecting people and you asked me this so i made a list mh so four traits that i always look for the first is i look for emotionally stable people the reason i look for that is i'm not exactly the most an emotionally stable person i'm the fire so when when it comes to starting stuff i don't need anyone to motivate me i'm the flame i'll get it started i don't need any gasoline i don't need anything of that like that but i need people who can when you're the type of person like me and you have really high highs and i can motivate someone and can get them gonna do crazy shit stuff that typically those people it's almost like a comedian they're often if they're great on stage that means they're probably sad a lot of times where they get like down or like for in my case i'm like this is gonna fail this sucks and so i was like for someone who's like pretty stable and they're a rock who can like sustain like a pretty even pace and they i can motivate them to get excited but they don't get down too easily i also look for proposal one time let's go one let's go away for one you you say one trait i say one trait so for me it's it's very very similar to what you just described in yourself and it is that that fire that sense of urgency in that energy i think most people out there just in general a lot of people they they they're like they're in slow motion they walk slow they think slow they talk slow they make decisions slow they're just kinda la gag through life they go into work they clock in at nine am they do the bare minimum all day to get paid next friday and not get fired and then they clock out and they go home and drink a couple beers they're not that excited about hobbies they're not that excited about much at all which is fine yeah it's fine i just don't wanna and and you need those people a lot of times you need need 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 gonna get out of bed today and i'm gonna attack this thing and we're gonna make decisions fast we're gonna move fast we're gonna talk fast we're gonna take action fast and we're gonna get shit done and those people when you bring them in they can do all the other things on this list i think everything else on my list and your list feeds from hey we are going to get stuff done quick when i started my very first company it was a a moving company that pick up and delivery storage for students we bought a cargo van on craigslist for three thousand dollars and we drove it back to the track so this is kind of a good example of of the different the way that people think about business and opportunity we were jacked up me and my business partner we were all excited about the idea of starting a company and going out and trying to make some money we drove this van back and we're like we're gonna start doing pickup and delivery storage for students and some of our buddies they're sitting around and we're sitting around the track house playing beer pong and they're like you guys are freaking crazy what is exciting you know about that what what beer pong no what do you what do you know about moving like you know like who you're not qualified yeah they're they're just like why is that exciting you're gonna go what we're gonna go have fun this weekend you're gonna go around sweat and pick up boxes for thirty bucks a piece like that is not sound fun to me i am i have zero energy and zero excitement around that and they would have quit or given up in a week or two whereas we were energetic we were excited we got after it and we were able to convince other people to come along and you know that was yeah that's that's the whole thing there's this great there's this great book rob you know rubber green the author rubber green he wrote that book forty dollars of power he has another book that was way less popular called the fiftieth law and it's really weird because he wrote it about fifty cent and it's actually a great book and i know it sounds weird but he because he robert greene he's into like a philosophy and all the all this stuff but he talks about like rappers and he loves hip hop culture and he and he's like fifty cent is really good at those because he has done a good job reinventing himself a bunch of time he's changed his image a bunch of times whatever and he said the key to fifties success was his sense of urgency and if you don't have a sense of urgency and everything that you do it it ruins everything and he doesn't just talk about business people he talks about poets he talks about people who discover invent different medicines like you know poets writers whenever it's always about 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 well i don't necessarily have any energy to do that i'm gonna step back i used i used to have a rule when i saw this is how my wife when i saw a cute girl who i wanna talk to the the i could only give myself five seconds after seeing her before i spoke to her arch is a rule it was the five second rule because if you don't talk to them within a couple seconds you're never gonna do it and the longer you wait the harder it gets and so i i work get the five second rule i have a couple more on my want me to go again or do you wanna do your second one yeah go 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 r on this too sam because you're a master of bringing people together and i have this theory about recruiting employees or partners or people in your early company which step one is always you know the website getting your click funnels getting your copy writing down getting your service put together but then it's attracting people that's all it is as an entrepreneur all you're doing is attracting people i have a theory about this so ten percent of people are in career in nirvana meaning they love their job they're perfectly motivated and they're are under no circumstance they gonna go and do something else another ten percent of people are literally actively looking for something else either they're unemployed or they really hate their job and they're very open and they're actively looking for jobs these are the people that are looking on job boards posting around you know for anything that might be another opportunity for them and then there's eighty percent of people that are in the middle eight out of ten people have somewhere in the middle they like their job but they're open to other things or they could be open other things but they're not gonna go on monster or on indeed or on linkedin and actually apply for jobs which those typically is the those are the winners those are the winners i've every ten extra that i've ever hired and i've been lucky enough to bring a lot of ten and into what i try to do and again it's kind of because of my charisma and my sales ability and meg really going out and putting myself out there and putting my sales at i'm like i'm literally turning into a salesman when i'm going to try to attract talent to come along on my mission every single ten room 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 wanna let them go and my entire career has been built upon going 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 a it's sales it's literally i'm i'm selling them on my mission when we can talk about looks like what sales is another thing but i'm i'm trying to make it i'm trying to tell them how they can win better than what they're winning right now with me i can either make them more money they can have a better quality of life we can do something more fun i gotta get them to buy into my vision i gotta be charismatic and and convince them that they need to stop what they're doing they need to make a big life change which is a career is a huge change to make and they gotta drop it and come with me and you do the same thing sam yeah usually what i do is i'll like i'll find someone interesting and i i just chat them up and i go i'd be like i usually like to flatter people so i say you're amazing what's your story and they'll just gus and tell you their story and i act interested because i am interested and then usually i'm like what where do you wanna be in a handful of years what you wanna do and if they tell me something where i'm like oh i could help you get there sometimes i can't sometimes it's like i i i can't help you get there but if they if i can then i tailor my pitch around helping them get there and i'll say something like would i come join me for a handful of years and i bet you we can set you up nicely to get you to where you wanna go and i and i tailor my pitch all about them and how i'm gonna help them achieve their goals and typically what i do i've said this a bunch of times which is the world wants people to be vanilla they want you to fit into a very safe box and i think a lot of people dread that even though they are living that life and so i tend to go the excitement and fun angle because a lot of the times i'm not necessarily building the next spacex like if you're like work at nasa there is big vision which is like we're putting someone on the moon or if you look at work at some type of company that's like creating a life saving drug i'm like we're gonna save lives but i don't really do stuff like that i just do awesome stuff like fun stuff and so i typically lean into excitement where it's like look we're gonna build this pirate ship together and you're gonna be leading it or you're gonna be contributing it in a way where we're gonna agree on the rules but you could as long as you play within those rules you could do whatever you want 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 i'm making an investment there making a big change i need him to do some pretty important stuff i'll sit there in the interview and i'll be like sam we're we're talking about this company right now but let's pretend that we're five years in the future you and i are sitting right here we're in this office in five years and you walk into this office and you are gus you're excited you're like nick things are going freaking awesome tell me what is going on tell me how much money you're making tell me how big your team is tell me if you're working from home how much you're working tell me what kind of projects you're working on and then i just shut up and i let them talk and i get to hear what makes them tick and where they want to go and if my company can't put that together sometimes it's it's a it's a really valuable tool because a lot of times thirty forty percent of time i'll be like wow i can't deliver on this my company can't deliver on this yeah but then other times i'll be like okay i just it just gives you a look and how these people tick you know what i mean yeah yeah and you gotta tailor it so the 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 my current partner joe joe spice he's the only person i've worked with that i'm like joe you're going fast man it's hard for me to keep up so i i look for speed a lot but the third thing is follow through so people who actually act and i find that to be probably the hardest thing to find and i actually a lot of things are train i don't think that i think you either you you is or you ain't when it comes to following through and like actually doing stuff and what i tend to do is i like to look at people who have products or projects that are live so someone will be like we this one lady replied to one of our tweets and she's like i sold a hundred thousand dollars worth a taylor swift t shirts and i'm like okay that's that's all i need to know you do stuff more maybe they have a blog or maybe they tweet or maybe they have a youtube channel or maybe they have some type of hobby that it involves like taking action and i always look for those things it could be like i or i organize clubs in college yeah there's anything where i see like alright you follow through you say you're gonna do something you do i look for that a lot and you also you you told me this in the group chat is that you will give them a small job and that knocks off if somebody's interested in joining sam the sam ride and get involved in one of your companies one of these things you're gonna give them something to do and that'll knock off eighty percent of the people and because they're not gonna fall us through and they're not gonna fall i think the i got a good story web run the guy that i found to to start this front end web development and landing page companies named will wallace he's at cody lives in atlanta one of the most brilliant dudes i know and when i saw him i was like will i need a i need need a favor and i was testing and you didn't know i i need a favor i need a landing page and i need something to form up on my website i needed it like right away and then boom the next morning i woke up and it was there and it was freaking awesome and he just moved so fast you've got stuff done so quickly that speed and sense of urgency that you're talking about if you can find a way to get a look into their and it goes back to like hey we're looking to assemble a group of people as an entrepreneur we're looking to assemble group people how do you know who those connectors are how do you know who those connectors are getting a look into their mind with some of these ways that we're talking about like you you're saying give them something to do give them something to follow through on like look at what that doing often i'd tell them i get pitch like five times a day probably do too people who wanna make short clips for me yep and i almost ignore all of but every once in a while i'll be like alright make me a video then and and i'll tell them i won't i i go i'm not even gonna post it so don't worry about free work like i'm not gonna i'm not gonna profit off your work make me a video then and used to do this all the time people would apply to the hustle for writing writing i go okay write right tomorrow's email and yeah like i'm i would everyone's once a tomorrow we get a twelve minute word thing the next day i go alright sick we'll talk what you're looking for is a look into the mind of these people to figure out a they're ten so if you're going out and you're trying to build these teams you can shoot from the hip so you can put bring somebody in from an interview and then you can make the hire or you can try to get a preview try to get a preview another thing that i look for on my list and these two in together i'm gonna to talk about both these things clear and concise communication so many people you'll have a conversation and you'll listen to them for sixty seconds ninety seconds and you'd be like what the hell this person talking about get to the point whereas you have mick on 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 and i've given you three or four things that i bite off all in the first twenty eight seconds that i've been on the show because i'm very clear and concise communicator so i look for that i listened to that when i'm talking to other business people hey you're trying to tell me a story you're trying to get a point across how quick how clear and how concise can you do it and the ability to get points out how would you feel verse thirty is just mind blowing how would you feel if someone referred to themself and the third person in an interview like you just that's a that's a that's a i'm out dog that's an my dog right away like we can talk you tomorrow everybody wants to hear about the social justice warrior tweet that i had a couple days ago but yeah i mean there's a lot of red flags too that are instant cuts you're just looking for red flags that's what you're doing red flags somebody refers themselves is nick cuban in a third person cut out dude the 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 just like i always say i'm like does your oven burn hot like are you just smart or 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 mean like do you you like to read what do you read yeah yeah i'm like where do you where you're where do you get your news or they're like i'm like seriously just tell me like who do you follow on instagram or what subreddit do you like to read anything i just wanna know a little bit about your taste i've noticed that and that's when when somebody puts you on the spot like that that's really tough because what they wanna do is please sam they wanna say what you wanna hear but they don't know it's like somebody saying hey what's your political affiliation tell me who you voted for maybe like oh i don't know who did you go for i voted 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 don't wanna be around you and you and and but i also wanna know what their taste is because i'll hire certain people and they like write in a certain way that's maybe too corporate or like my brain is fun and so like 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 we're not gonna blend well so for taste a lot and i asked them what they consume or i do this thing called the bottom fourth of the resume so at the very bottom of people's resume is like where they put like the hobbies or like what they did in college and they'll say like i studied philosophy i'm like alright cool i mean don't really care about philosophy but i'm what what's your favorite class and if they say oh i'm not sure i'm like oh you're out but if they like and they say like you know well this philosophy class which don't even know about i'll just be like well why and if they can entertain me and convince me that it was interesting i'm like alright cool the you're alright so i look for taste a lot on the on the bottom fourth of the of the resume this data is wrong every freaking time have you heard of hubspot hubspot is a crm platform where everything is fully integrated well i can see the client's whole history calls support tickets emails and here's a test from three days ago i totally missed hubspot grow better 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 you're worth a a heck of a lot to a lot of companies what do you albert sign congratulations on that great theory if no if now this is the theory this is the big 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 ten you're the ten so i'm gonna look for alligator who can do that who can lead other people and grow the business beyond because look if i hire somebody and on their direct report but they can't be the direct report of other people they're gonna be a bottleneck i'm gonna be bottleneck they're not gonna help me grow the company now the two things that i think are related to that that are kinda counterintuitive number one is copywriting they're really good copywriter i think that's directly correlated to be able to being able to delegate and lead other people because if you can write really concise if you can write i fairly concise the way people can understand it you can lead others you can give directions you can be on slack text email the way that we run our businesses is through the written word very luckily i can see how people write i can see it because they're dm me i'm reading their tweets i get a look into how they write and i think i took your your email course i wanna talk about this because i took this nine months ago or so blew my mind it made me a better copywriter and now i have with yeah so sam has a course where for ten days in a row he's gonna send ten weeks in a is it days in a row or it once a week days one day one a day for ten days one a day for monday days so two weeks you send an email that teaches people how to do copywriting and i did it i got the email the first day and i spent my wife comes in and i got a notebook full of copy written down she's like what the hell are you doing and i like well standpoint is it's gonna work just trust me so ten 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 it again by the way copy copy that dot com copy that dot com so the word copy and then that yeah dot a hundred and fifty bucks or something and it's been worth i would you know fifty grand added to my career easy the best do you know why that works i i i tried to explain it in that in the thing it's called 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 nineteen thirties and forties i think there was like a change in the public schools and this thing got thrown to the side but it's called copy work and like if like ben franklin used to write this way hunter thompson he like said this is how he writes judd apa patel the director and what they would do is they would find like scripts or like if your j judd you find like a funny script that you wanna emulate or if you're hunter thompson you would find you'd do like tetra in the rye or some book that you like because when you copy it by hand you start seeing the patterns and the the texture of something 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 happy birthday and then eventually you're gonna move like rock and roll and then maybe blues and then you're like oh this r from guns and roses it kinda reminds me of this r from the blues 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 and there's actually science behind it where like it imprint 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 del is just telling people what to do no you have to make them want to do it and it's sales life is sales so it's it's a beautiful resource do you do you have a few more or no yeah answer tweet so i wanna go through how i think about sales because i think this is really important because life is sales and as an entrepreneur you're selling to customers you're selling to investors and and partners and you're selling to your employees just like i said you gotta go find to these people who have jobs and you gotta sell your idea and your vision on them so i wanna give you kind of breakdown on how i think about sales and how i kinda flip the script and i can give you a common 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 of so many options so my way to do it is i speak the language briefly and proves that i'm professional without being brag or bragging on me or the pro or or the product that i'm trying to sell then what i do is i dive writing to talk about the downsides why i'm worried about it why the deal might not work all the things that we need to stress about and then i ask them given those downsides why do they still wanna do the deal or why they still wanna work with me or why i still wanna work from my company and then i shut up and i let them it kinda flips the script to where they i all salesperson person they become the salesperson so like sam you're about to start working for me is you know you wanna come to work for nick really bad and we're gonna start this company together i'll say dude this is an agency business it's really hard it might take six months before we make any money at all we might be stuck in it worst case scenario we're gonna waste the year of our life why do you wanna come join me and another really a great example of this is for my investors and my real estate deals they're they they get on a call with me and they expect me to just sit there and reg take all the great things about storage all the great things about real estate investments the tax benefits why i'm such a good operator all that stuff i don't do any of that i get on a call with somebody a zoom call with somebody and they already know me they're already on a call they're already interested in investing in storage so i talk about all the downsides i'll say look sam let's do an example here you get me this fifty grand you're gonna invest with me and let's say interest rate spike the economy tanks people don't use storage as much and all a sudden this deal worth twenty or thirty percent less than what it was and instead of giving you an eight percent cash on cash i'm gonna give you a two percent cash on cash return now it's my job to make sure we don't lose the properties i'm gonna do this this and this to think about risk but why do you wanna invest in storage boom flip the script flip the script and the person will say well nick it seems like you've thought a lot about these risks like you're worried about this stuff i don't have to worry about this stuff i don't need cash flow off of this it's a long term investment all the other reasons why you know might work that way when you're starting these new things how much do you fund them with recruit jet we put fifty grand in the bank account web we put ten grand in the bank account blue key capital we're gonna put fifty grand in the bank account did i tell you about kevin ryan you know that is you're account tell doing what he does kevin ryan i've talked him about him a bunch of this pod he's kinda of my hero he started he was the ceo of double click which eventually sold to google for multiple billions and it became adwords or what whatever adwords or i forget adsense i think adsense one of those like the the way google makes all the money so it's like the best acquisition ever he was like employee twenty there and then he took over as ceo sold the company for multiple billions and then he went and started he took like his whatever he made ten million dollars and this other guy who worked to double click named to dwight and they go we're gonna start this thing called silicon alley so they're based in new york so it was like the take on silicon valley and they invested he goes we would put our whole stick was we're gonna invest three hundred thousand dollars into a handful of interesting ideas we have and we'll try to find someone sort to partner and we'll try to make them big and we want big outcomes and with this method he started guilt you know like the women's fashion clothing company it it it didn't work out but it got to like hundreds of millions of revenue he started business insider which had a six hundred million dollar exit he started mongodb db which is a publicly traded database company at i don't know it's ranges between twenty and thirty billion on on on the mark mark cap what else did he start he started z which is like the wedding registry business he started like maybe three other things that are big and he goes i give each company six months and three hundred or four hundred thousand dollars something like that and you know three hundred k's kind of a i mean it's definitely a lot of money but it's not that much money for how much value he creates and he gives it three hundred k in six months and that's how long takes them to like figure out if an idea is gonna be worth it it all depends on the opportunity i mean some of these the the guy that we're partnering with on recruit jet me and saw and marshall from support she are starting a company called recruit jet to head hunt us talent this exact way like hey we're gonna go into that eighty percent of people we're gonna find them for companies the guy that's our head recruiter he's been a recruiter for fifteen 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 like so we don't have any expenses yet on the other side of the k table i'm trying to start a debt brokerage firm meaning we're gonna be the middleman man that finds and secures debt for giant commercial real estate projects we're gonna go to all the banks we're gonna shop them we're gonna put the packages together and close the loans i'm right now on the road trying to attract the partner in that business i have somebody in mind i'm gonna have to shell out a lot of money because this guy makes four hundred and fifty grand for a bank right now he's our best loan officer he's a ten x or he's a killer i'm gonna have to make him an offer where it's a little bit less equity less of a percentage of sales but i'm gonna guarantee him two hundred grand a year for two years me personally off off my personal checkout hey this is i'm gonna sign a contract with you because i already know how he thinks i already know he's a ten sir i know he's incredible he's done incredible things for our company when it comes to sourcing debt come to work for blue key capital i'm gonna guarantee you i'm gonna promise you two years a runway at two hundred grand a year but are you gonna any additional capital yeah we'll have we need to hire some additional people but for the most part it'll be website landing page customer dot io automatic replies to emails you know just be building the infrastructure that i'm so good at doing for all these other companies it'll will create actually gonna do it you're gonna write all the copy you're gonna set up the email web run i'm gonna have web run do that and then i'm gonna create a a a twitter account make the follow account and then i do a a software called bird flow that has an automatic dm so i can that yep you told me about every time somebody follows the account they get a dm and it'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 that does this about family what's that does this person have a family yeah he's got a twelve year old and a and a nine year old and his wife freak you out it's very it's very freaky yeah it's it's get it drives pretty significant security yeah i mean he will even will at he had to leave a a job where he's making four hundred grand to start an agency with me so like selling these people like identifying the ten and selling them on coming to join the nicu mission like that's that's what it all is like that's that's the hardest part of this stuff the first family person that i hired the person that had a family that had children i remember thinking like that when we hired i was like i have a family you i was like i now have a family you know i was only twenty six and i was like shit feels like i have a child and it's it shouldn't actually feel that way maybe but in a way 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 it was very nerve wracking the stakes go up and it 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 convinced them to leave their job and they're livelihood they make four hundred fifty grand a year right now i'm i'm i'm insane dude it it's scary what about what did you met you message up there or you you tweeted something out there got you got a lot of slack for what did you what did you say i'll just read the tweet because it's funny so you we talk about social justice warrior a lot inside of our group chat how many when what what what would you what's a social justice warrior so a social justice warrior is anybody don't it can be a supreme leftist or it can be a trump it can be somebody who is out on a mission to change the way that a certain group of people's totally mistreated whether it be people who wanna carry guns or whether it be minorities whether it be you know people who feel a certain way from 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 am i is that a correct correct definition that's significantly more positive than how i use it wanna social justice warrior to me is someone who like is very close minded very outspoken and will not be well balanced or open minded to new ideas and new facts or 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 what your decide you fall on yep you can probably have a conversation with either side a lot of people can 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 warriors like well you're wrong regardless of how you feel yep that's a you 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 meme members either side of the aisle i said luckily politics is not a protected class so i'm allowed to view somebody social media before making me liar and then i said these folks bash people that they don't know on twitter and social media constantly and i 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 your say to that no i you didn't get any hate did you oh yeah oh yeah the people who it's got sixty four quote two tweets right now 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 neat things which i'm not at all i'm i'm i am trying to i'm trying to weed out people who are closed 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 just a giant waste of time energy so i just think it's a good practice if you're a business owner look at the way people spend their time where are they if if they told you they were in reddit anti work when you ask them that question earlier like what content are you consuming oh i'm in reddit anti work okay out well i and it but they could make a good argument as to why they enjoy it so for example i like reading it have you seen this subreddit called the what's the one where people have multiple jobs oh yeah yeah that is that is fascinating entertainment values another thing it's these people who get multiple jobs like sometimes three or four jobs and though and i've known a couple people who have done this it's called over employed called over employee it's it's a pretty funny name and like i've dude i've known people have done this so they get a job at facebook and google and so they'll and they call it j one and j two and so they'll post like advice like hey so my j one has me working from like i can get it done from like eight to ten am and then j two is like noon to three how do you people like get your manager to only put meetings for j one in then am or something like that and it's crazy and i've known a guy who had a job at facebook and google two hundred and fifty thousand or something like crazy for each job so it's and they'll say like so total income is six hundred thousand that's broken up with j one at two hundred thousand j two at three hundred thousand and then they'll like say this it's hilarious and i read it all the time because i'm like well i'm pretty sure i'm against that because that's unethical it's not illegal but i wouldn't like that some did it to me but then i'm like but is that wrong and so anyway i like to like read that to like just explore new ideas and it's also just hilarious so someone told me they read anti work or over employed i'd be like okay why tell me what do you learn it it goes really 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 fifteen recruiters in the past month and just ask them you know what about there are people who will literally show up to as interview like this an interview like this and their mouth is moving but somebody else is talking to them and it's the people who are way no way yes tell me tell me about that so what happens if you're so you're a recruiter somebody hires you to go place a tech position your technical recruiter you're gonna find somebody to work for google for two hundred fifty grand a year you're gonna go in and you're gonna sort through linkedin you're gonna bring all these applicants and you gotta try to find a way to scan out a third of the applicants a third of these people are trying to get more than one job being a being know software developer and you literally can talk to them on the phone and that can't do it because then they can wire in somebody else to talk if you and that's why they do that they that's why they do video is for that reason they have to do video i should have asked the guy a lot more questions about it if you're following me and sam and you're listening to this and you obviously know about this occurrence tweet us because i wanna know more about this as well but he told me that you're on a zoom call with somebody and it's blurry and and their voice is not really the one talking and it's people who are trying to get more than one freaking job crazy that's ridiculous that's that's that's kind of amazing in in the and like there's some way you gotta look at from a like that's s don't do that but also you're like that's pretty amazing you know it's like a lot of my my s friends in high school they would like pay someone to take the act form him and i remember thinking can like i don't know man that's pretty that's almost as impressive it's actually doing a good job you know what i mean i'm like i don't wanna work with you but like kinda i do if like if you if you could use that for good you see so many criminals get caught doing all this crazy stuff and you just think that if they put that energy towards something productive how rich they could get we had we had this guy named michael harris michael harris founded death row records you know death row they like created tu hoc doctor dr n like they basically invented like modern hip hop they invented like gangster marketing there were the marketing machine behind those guys right yeah so michael harris partnered with shu knight and michael harris did it from prison he was serving twenty five to life he got trouble for attempted murder which eventually he got exon by trump two years ago and he got let out but he served thirty years partially on death row and the other charge that he was convicted of that i think he i i'm he admitted to doing was he was selling at times two million dollars a day of cocaine of crack and he was talking about it and he was like once i started getting all that money coming in i started realizing like i also need to go legit and do things the right way and so he started buying real estate and he started doing all this other stuff and he was like i was killing it in the drug game but like i killed it even harder like just doing the legal stuff like i you know he's like i had the cash flow from it so like i i definitely profit off of it but he bought buildings he started a limbo company he eventually death row was bringing in like north of a hundred million dollars in revenue because cds at the time were nineteen dollars and it was like a dollar to make a cd and he was like we killed it the right way but i did all this bad stuff so i had to pay the price i think he was like it's such a good example that business is simply a flywheel around these things that we've spoke about in this episode if you can get these things right attracting people leading people managing people del writing it can work in any business once you learn these skills i could put sam par and i could take them and i could drop them in a grocery store chain and i guarantee you you would drive i 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 i feel strongly that once you get the flywheel going and once you push yourself and once you start to learn some of these things you can you can crush it you you're doing something that i hate doing and i advise most people not to do it but there's many examples of people doing it successfully of which you're one of them which is doing multiple things at once in most cases i think doing multiple things at once is a horrible idea i think we saw a the few times it does work is when there's like a ryan reynolds you see ryan reynolds sold mint mobile today for like one point five billion or two bit whatever it was and then like last year he sold what was his liquor his liquor owner or avi or something like that he sold that for hundreds of millions and you know i don't have any idea but it says like ryan reynolds sells his telephone company and i'm like probably he has nothing to do with it he just does the commercials maybe he has something to do with i have no idea and i no it says like ryan reynolds his his telecom company got sold maybe he only owns like three points i i have no idea but in that case someone like him he does have multiple things when it's you who you are doing a lot of the work and you're not you're famous or you're a big deal but you're not like everyone in america knows who you are i think that it's scary and it's challenging why are you doing more than one thing versus just one thing i'm i'm pushing myself i don't know if i can do it there's a lot of anxiety around it and some of these things will fail i mean look it's five companies that we've started in the past year what what will the collective revenue of those b do you think in two thousand twenty four okay so you want me to make a prediction and then we can come back on and test it actually so i think ari cost egg will be doing five hundred grand a month or or so in eb twelve in in twelve months in the year two thousand twenty at the end of two thousand twenty four we'll look back on the year and i think it'll do two point five million eb probably so okay web run i think on what top line okay thick thirty percent margins so whenever that math is weber run i think will be thirty forty get get get getting close to a ten million in in sales yep yep i think our cost cycle will be really big in the year two thousand twenty four so eighteen months from now like trailing tighten risk the the commercial risk property insurance company i think that one will do three million in sales at a fifty fifty percent margin probably for insurance brokerage okay i think we'll be doing two hundred grand a month if revenue so maybe seventy to a hundred grand a month of profit recruit jet i think we'll be a big company i think recruit jet be five million of eb of revenue and three million of eb that's recruit so collectively you're you're in the six million profit range or something like that seven million dollars i forget yep what would blue blue key capital blue key capital could be the big one the debt the debt brokerage company for real estate firms that one could be doing again five to another five million to ten million dollars of revenue as well pretty good margins the small team and would you so two point five million for cost sake what would that be valued at could it be as high as ten times profit no i don't think so cost egg is politically dependent you know if if bonus depreciation rules go up and down it changes the demand for cost saves right so i think three to four times eb would probably be the value of that company wouldn't be worth selling so the cash flow is awesome the multiples are shit everything that i've ever started typically the cash flow is only okay but the multiples are really really good this is this is what i twenty times profit yep this is what i can't stand i i tried to convince a kid to come with me to do a web development agency and i failed my sales pitch failed he didn't join me and he kept saying there's no enterprise value he kept saying there's no e in web development and my entire thesis is screw e e will come i wanna be making money every single month in cash flow every single year that's the goal and if we can do that good things will happen over time and we'll see which one of these companies really takes off but the play devil's advocate here when i was first starting in the hustle i was doing the math and i was like wherever i wanna be by the age of thirty 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 ten or fifteen times earnings or three or four times of revenue that's a huge that's a huge number and for a lot of businesses it's not impossible to get that you know you need some type of recurring revenue in a really big market and fast growth but like to make like twenty to fifty 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 company it's just like killing it and so he's doing it through cash flow but if you like do the math val yeah my friend val is doing it but he also sold the company he's told the company he sold two of them for tens of millions of dollars i my opinion is and that there's there's so many examples where i'm wrong but in most cases i think you it's significantly easier to sell something than it is to earn through income that's my problem sam as i've never sold i'm haven't sold the company right now i've never i've never sold something to create a massive liquidity event so i would you yeah i i think i would the i mean and and unless you work in finance maybe like in your one of your company two of your companies are finance related unless you're 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 who have done it like a bunch of people have claimed to have done it through through real estate and finance but i think it's hard through a product a product based company if you can if you can wait it out i mean time is on your side you know what i mean if you if you're okay living i i look i live in a i live in a house that i bought for two hundred and ninety thousand dollars i drive a truck it's worth about twelve grand like if i can just not buy a private plane or a four million dollar house i don't have to sell anything and i think time will really help me so i'm on the i'm on the treadmill you but how are you not like like you know desire is also like evil you know when it comes to the stuff like when you want shit you suffer and so like i know a lot of people that are really wealthy and i every once in while i fall into this trap where i'm like five years ago if i knew if if i my my five you you know my twenty five year old that 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 ten or twenty million dollar home or what about having a warehouse phone cars or what about doing this or that or owning a sports team like okay you you need more you don't desire things or a fifty thousand dollar watch or something of course i do man of course i do i really want a airplane i really want a pc twelve and that's my goal is to have how much is that to five million dollar airplane i wanted to apply yourself eight pretty get fly my family fly my nanny and we could go from here to la without stopping for gas that's your goal that's a goal of mine but but why own it instead of i knew a guy i a guy who bought a jet for sixteen million dollars during the pandemic when he had just sold the company for a hundred million bucks he owned it for six months and he was like what the hell am i doing with this and ended up selling it for twenty million he goes i made a profit on it which is lucky but it was looking like a horrible financial decision because i have 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 i live my family lives seven hours from here and driving with my family is something we're only gonna do once a year so i can't get back to see my dad and my mom and my grandfather who's only got a couple years left without easy access to get back so would be really nice to have an airplane but yeah i'm i'm i'm not gonna do like i decided with my wife we're gonna wait because i just wanna show my kids that i'm not just gonna go out and buy everything i want and i'm gonna suffer a little bit and that's okay and you know delayed gratification keeps me humble too and but it's tough i'd battle with it every day man i mean it's really easy to speak stuff what what's your what's your dream number like as far as personal net worth yeah if i'm making a million dollars a month i think i can then do whatever i want that's not funny i but i bet you would have thought that ten 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 him a thumbs up and and said i'm happy please make that happen so dude the goal the goal post always changes it's so it's so hard man and it's easy for me to cry so it's tough but it it's like a it's a tough thing to swallow as a man when like all of a sudden you have seven figures in your checking account you have hundreds of thousands of dollars a month that come your way and you gotta figure out what gets you out of bed and how you're gonna not be an asshole and how you're gonna raise good kids and how and i don't know about you but i get excited about hobbies and i'll pick up golf and i'll or all tennis or pickle a ball or airplanes whatever and i'll just get really really really into it and then it's on to the next thing it's on to the next onto to the next thing and i don't like that about myself i i wish that i was more disciplined long term and how do you feel about that i'm very disciplined i think compared could compared to a lot of people i think i have a i'm i'm fairly disciplined i think i we spend anywhere from when we're in austin i spent fifteen thousand dollars 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 we it's a school night we're not going out i live in a house that was is under a million dollars or paid on well under a million dollars so which in awesome it's kinda 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 like if you're gonna drive yourself crazy mh and so like i do always want more stuff yeah and i do try to like like i want like i wanna buy just a huge garage in brooklyn and just stash all types of cars and motorcycles and then to have like a fantasy factory and just open up the garage door and just sit in front of it and anyone who walks by and like admire i'll be like oh you wanna come in and look like i'll show you around we could like play with it all like i want that but that's gonna cost twenty million bucks maybe like i and and it's a pointless thing because when you die you don't get any of it but i i got a story i ordered i ordered a lot of bourbon lately like high end bourbon like how much is that you fancy you think of bourbon the most expensive bottle was like seventy five hundred dollars this is gonna make me either hate for a seventy five hun you bought a seventy five hundred dollar does it taste any different what they do this is me being vulnerable have i have zero life overhead like i could cut my spending to five grand a month and put my kids in daycare and pay for my house payment which is twelve hundred dollars so i've avoided like the big expenses i've avoided the big big house the the plane the big cars whatever it is so i splurge on some of the little things that sound huge and and obnoxious to some people but aren't really that obnoxious so i got some really nice bourbon some bottles that are really special and then i got him i'm looking at it in my bar and i sent a text to like four my boys i'm like hey come over let's try some bourbon and nobody can come over better cake come and hang out nobody can they're all working or they're out of town or whatever so the next morning i got up and i just looked at it i opened one of the nicer bottles i poured a little bit myself and i'm like fuck none of this matters none of this matter at all it is all about the people and the people how they feel about you whether or not they care about you whether or not they respect you how you can help them how you can help them become better versions of their selves so the stuff is really just the distraction this sounds cliche because everybody says that but 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 park doesn't drink alcohol i can't come over with me you know what i mean does yeah does a seventy five hundred dollar bottle taste any different than a fifty dollar bottle i haven't opened it yet it's the twenty year does a a thousand dollar bottle taste any different you know i think it does because sounds ridiculous no it doesn't sam it doesn't it fucking doesn't it's just a pokemon car it's a no thing man i'm a i'm a i'm a weak man who was after the ego sometimes and i gotta stay i just gotta remind myself of that it doesn't matter does it i i bought like a decent car and that makes me happier but besides that most most items don't and what am i gonna do can invite somebody cool 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 gonna 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 i get so fucking dumb like i'm such an idiot i don't think it's dumb where where do you where do you buy this from you and you you do you cigars too those are those those are those are two of my hobbies it's cigars and berman because my share them both of my dad and golf can you be any more of a stereotype golly but my house is so weak like it's literally sitting on the bourbon is sitting on a a two hundred dollar really shitty cabinet that i got from home depot whenever i in my basement but no guy over in carroll in georgia his biggest customer in every year he gets the releases and drives it over to me and i give him an envelope pull 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 one i appreciate you doing this we had a good episode what anything you wanna you wanna pip out or promote a lot of people ask me where they could invest with bolt storage and real estate really slow but you can go to bolt storage dot com slash investors if you're an a accredited investor and you wanna get storage exposure and also my newsletter that i write every week i think a lot about this stuff a lot of stuff we're talking about like what makes many subscribers do you have on that i'm up to forty two thousand i'm working it really hard and adding like six hundred a month it's kinda kinda weak but i i write a lot about a lot of this like what makes a ten how do you think about this stuff how do think about hiring management like getting this these teams together so if you go to if you go to my twitter at twitter start up there's a little link in my bio and you can join my join my newsletter alright we appreciate you thanks for joining doing this