When everything works, you learn the wrong lessons

23:23And you can find people who can work magic in Microsoft Excel and Power BI from a finance data analyst perspective. Colombia and Brazil are unbelievable for operations. They're on your same time zone. Just every single role, if they don't need perfect English, if they're not in a sales role, South America is amazing. South Africa is a sales and finance hub. There's 30 ,000 South Africans that get on a plane and go to America every single year to do audit and tax work for big four consulting firms. They go back to South Africa and you can hire them for three grand a month to be a controller at your small business.

23:55So yeah, it's just unbelievable areas. I love Sri Lanka as well for almost all roles. Philippines, obviously there's 30 million Filipinos working for American companies today. It's just deeply ingrained in their culture. So to give people an example of the assessment real quick, I just pulled one up. So this is what I use to find my assistant. So I basically gave this out and I said, I want you to do the task and I want you to record a Loom video explaining what you did as you do each task, which tells me their thought process, shows me kind of how they work and not just like the end product. And I also get to hear them communicate and if they're like an easy person to communicate with.

24:28So my assistant task, I said, pretend you're booking a vacation from LA to Paris for my wife and I. Our ideal dates are this, but we're flexible on those by a day or two. Here's our preferences. Send me a couple options. The lowest cost option, the best option that balances convenience and cost and maybe the most luxurious option more expensive but whatever. I want to see them put together kind of a menu of options because that's typically how I work with my assistant. It's like you get me to 90 % and then I pick and choose what I want. Another one I said here's a voice note I put a voice note on SoundCloud and I said of me dictating while driving draft these two emails based on what I mentioned and in that voice note I'm like hey oh I promised so and so I would introduce them to so and so you know I met them at lunch blah blah blah And then I try to see if they can just quickly grok.

25:12Basically, can I write a fuzzy address on an envelope and will it still get there? Because I'm not going to get perfect instructions most of the time. So how do they deal with imperfect instructions? I'll have them do simple things like, hey, I've just moved from Texas to Wyoming and I don't have changed my driver's license. Can you figure out how I need to get DMV work? How would I get a new license? Could you do it all the way? And if not, what steps do you need me to do? And then make a birthday card in Canva for my daughter's birthday. I want to see, do they have basic design and event organization skills?

25:42And the last one was research. So it's like, hey, I'm looking for influencers for this new fitness product that I have. Find me 10 fitness influencers that fit this criteria. Let me just see if they're able to quickly do data collection and research and be able to provide something useful to me. And so those are examples of what tasks I put out there. That's a one-page Google Doc. And they send me basically a Loom video of them doing each task. And that's how I quickly filtered through 50 people. like somewhere basically it was like, hey, here's 50 people. Here's the four we like best. I gave them the assessment.

26:12I didn't like the first four. Then they gave me another batch of four and immediately there was someone who was great. Yeah, they shined. The person who's competent will shine to the top of the crowd without any work on your end. It's a beautiful thing. You were basically saying like, you know, you find all these different talent. So people can go find it themselves. If they wanted to find it through somewhere, like what is the simple way to do that? I mean, we prepared kind of like a special thing for your audience. Do you want to talk about that now? Or do you just want to talk about like generally how the company works?

26:41Yeah, well, what is it? What do you have? Yeah, I, in advance of this episode, I personally vetted and interviewed 10 salespeople in South Africa. Okay. 10 finance folks in Egypt, LATAM, and South Africa. And 10 executive assistants in Sri Lanka, LATAM, and South Africa. Gotcha. So you did a personal vet shortlist for each other. I watch their videos. I analyze their resumes. What do you want people to email you or how do people get access to that? Yeah, so if they email me, nick at sweatystartup.com, I can hook them up with some of these profiles, let them see them and hopefully help them grow their team.

27:19That's cool. I'm curious, man. You are always meeting interesting people, partly due to having a presence on Twitter, partly just, you know, you have like one foot in the sweaty startup world, one foot in the tech world, the online media world. I'm just curious, like who have you met recently that kind of either inspired you or like, you know, broke your frame in some way or somebody who you think is doing cool stuff. I have one person in mind who's building a pest control, like monster of a company. I don't want to out him. It's just incredible to me. You know this. You've actually taught me a lot of this stuff is that they find one thing that really works inside their company and they just run the same play for five or 10 years to grow a monster business.

27:56Just hammer it. I didn't think that business worked that way, but you could do one thing really well and everything else, you know, you're not hiring internationally, you're not doing the latest software, you haven't even looked at AI, you're not answering the phone past 5.01 p.m., but you do this one thing well and you're worth$100 million. Right. Today's episode is brought to you by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses only use 20 % of their data? That's like reading a book, but then tearing out four-fifths of the pages. Point is, you miss a lot. And unless you're using HubSpot, the customer platform that gives you access to the data you need to grow your business, the insights that are trapped in emails, call logs, transcripts, all that unstructured data makes all the difference.

28:34Because when you know more, you grow more. And so if you want to read the whole book, instead of just reading part of it, visit HubSpot.com. Have you ever seen Peter Thiel taught a class at Stanford and they put the class notes online? And it's been there for a long time. It's called the Blake Masters notes or something like that. Did you ever read those? No. What's the main takeaway? So he's got one, which is he's like, you know, I get a lot of investor pitches. And yeah, I've invested in I was, you know, the seed investor in Facebook. So if you have some huge winners and you have a bunch of losers, what do you notice with them?

29:05And he's basically, he's like, one of the biggest poker tells with the business is when they have seven revenue streams that actually, they think, they come in puffing their chest being like, look, we've got seven. And he's like, all they've told me is they don't have one great one. And same thing with distribution channels. When I asked them, how are you going to get customers? Or how do you get customers today? And if they tell me seven things, all that tells me is they don't have one amazing thing. He's like all the best companies, and this is the best companies, they find one, they basically end up with one distribution channel that really, really works and one revenue stream that really, really works.

29:37And so it's like, you know, for Facebook, for example, the distribution channel that worked was viral photo tagging on campuses initially and then eventually off campuses. And then the monetization was ads. And Facebook didn't need to sell stickers and didn't need to do like a thousand other things that all the other social networks were actually doing. Like M &M's did a homepage takeover and we signed this deal with this movie studio and they're going to do like a cool campaign with us and partnership. And like Facebook was like, self-serve banner ads will be the thing. And this will be the growth tactic.

30:09Brad Jacobs. Brad Jacobs with how he grew United Rentals and several of these other companies. He ran the same plays. What was his play? I actually don't know. I'm sure he had several different plays, but how you make a few billion dollars is like you find a way to grow, you know, equipment rental business through, is it local ads? Is it outbound sales? They had a really good outbound sales team for contractors. And then boom, that business skyrocketed. He pulled the same executive team, pulled his main players out of that company once it went public, put them in the next one, and boom, that's how you grow five companies in a row, figuring out what companies that play will work for.

30:44Right. I've told this story, I think, before, but it's probably one of my most, I don't know, humbling and insightful moments. A hard lesson learned very quickly. A band-aid that got ripped off for me. So we have a buddy, Suli, who you know. And Suli's like, to me, my business Yoda. Like, if I got a business problem, I go to Yoda. And he gives me the like, he can't even really explain it. He just sort of like, he sees through all the noise that I bring him and he just finds the thing. So my e-commerce business was early on, it was growing. And so I think we were at maybe 100 ,000 a month in revenue.

31:26So like, you know, like kind of like a million dollar thing. It was like early on. And how did we get there? We were doing Facebook ads. So he told me, do Facebook ads and focus on Facebook ads. And I was like, but what about Google? He's like, but what about what I just told you? And I was like, okay, cool. So Facebook ads is working. I feel super accomplished. We've gone from zero to 100K in like three months. This is awesome. So I go to him and I'm like, dude, it's working. I'm thinking now we should do influencers and we should spin up Google because of course, who doesn't do Google? But I really think influencers could work.

31:53Here's this cool influencer idea I have. And he would just basically just cut me off and he was just like, he's like, you want to win, right? And I was like, yeah. He's like, cool. Don't say the word influencers until you're at 300 ,000 a month just off of Facebook. And I was like, but would it be bad to let's like do both? And he's like, well, here's the thing. Is there any reason you believe that Facebook can't get you to 300 ,000? No, it's got us to 100. Why couldn't it get us to three? And he's like, and if we couldn't get Facebook to three, do you think any amount of influencers is going to save us?

32:26It's like, no, like a successful e-com brand should be spending basically 1 million plus per month in just Facebook ads, right? Which means you're making more than a million dollars off of Facebook. Like that's where you're trying to get to. That's the goal. And like you kind of have a broken company if you can't really get there. Like most e-com companies went off of Facebook ads. So like you should just try to win off of Facebook ads before you go do all this other shit. And so just, and I was like, I had expected when I was like going to get advice from him that he's going to give me these amazing strategies, these like new hacks, these brilliant tactics.

32:56And actually the most useful thing he did for me was just say, don't say the word influencers until Facebook is cranking 300 ,000 a month to your business. And just, and by the way, we kept it going after 300, we did 500 after 500, we did a million. And it's like, you just keep going off of just those two. Guess what? I still don't do influencers. Like it's now five years later, we didn't need it. And I definitely would have distracted myself with what sounds like a good idea. And it comes back to the Steve Jobs quote, which is focus is not about what you say yes to. It's about saying no to otherwise great ideas.

33:31One of my companies was making, you know, spending upwards of$150 ,000 on paid ads a month. We realized that, hey, our ROAS is barely breaking even. We calculated it down to the profit and realized that that piece of the company was making us maybe$15 ,000 to$20 ,000 a month in profit. And we were spending tons of executive time and energy to try to get that to work. And we looked at our other part of our, you know, revenue stream and it said referrals. Referrals coming in the doors, generating$250 ,000 of profit per month on, you know, maybe$30 ,000 of referral fees and discounts. What would happen if for six months our entire executive team laser focused on growing that referral number?

34:12And do we think that we'd be better off than, you know, maybe the last year and a half we've been trying to get, you know, slam a round peg into a square hole? And I think it's unbelievable. The job of a CEO sometimes is literally just to tell your team no and to get them focused on what's already working. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And not hedge. Like, you know, I would say no, but then we kind of green light this little test. I would say no, but then like two weeks later, we just do it anyways. What happened to our no? Was that not a real no? And I think there's all these ways where you can think you're compromising or you're having your cake and eating it too, but actually you're just spilling your cake on the floor.

34:49And it's better to not do that. All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you a story. Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know the type. It's got a janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form and it was open only during business hours. And I hit send and it froze. They flagged the transaction. They locked my account. They put me on hold for 45 minutes. And then they told me I got to visit my local branch. And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. After asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury.

35:17And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money. I can pay invoices. I can reimburse the team all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200 ,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to Mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC. You said running a holdco is overrated. I think the trend will die down. Most rich guys I know are focused on one big business and built it for a long time.

35:49So Holdco's or these portfolios of businesses like you were doing was a very, very big idea or popular idea in our circles, in our bubble about five years ago. And it's not a new idea. Holdco's been around for a long time. Give me your updated thoughts on the Holdco. Man, I think over the last three or four years, I've been kind of labeled as one of the Holdco guys. You know, there's several more of us, but I've had a lot of people reach out. You know, I got this plan to, you know, I'm going to buy more companies. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. I'm going to grow to five, eight, 10 companies and the synergies and all this stuff.

36:19I think you really got to know your shit to run more than one company. And the majority of people that I know who run more than one company, they ran just one company for a long time, made it really good, made it really profitable, learned how to build executive teams, learned how to build compensation plans, learned how to work the funnel and convert at the highest rate all the way down the funnel. If you don't know those things and you start going around buying different companies, especially if you use leverage, borrow money to do it, buy companies, whatever it might be, Things can go really wrong really quick because unlike real estate, which was my first business where you get a couple of clients in and they pay rent every single month, operating companies, man, you can have massive swings in revenue and profit.

36:57So yeah, I think everybody thinks it's cool. Another thing about it is you just solve freaking problems all the time. Like the biggest problems in each individual company bubble up and come to you. So yeah, I don't know. When I look at some of the wealthiest people I know, some of the wealthiest people that you've had on your pod, almost all of them focused on one thing and made that one thing really big. So I think there's something to that. One source of problems rather than 10. All right. Another one you have here, consistency is underrated. You're on the consistency train. What's your take here?

37:28Yeah, I think it's really easy to get excited about something and jump in and be delusionally focused on one thing for one year, even two years, whether it's business, a certain idea, your physical health. I know people who are, they're either running a marathon and cutting, cutting calories and super fit and super clean and super healthy, or they're totally falling off the rails and doing the opposite while they're focused on something else. Um, it's kind of sexy to just jump in and be totally all obsessed with something. The people who win are like even keel. Maybe they're not working 70, 80 hours a week.

38:03Maybe they work 50 hours every single week for their whole career or even 20, 30, 40, whatever it is. But it's hard. It's hard to stay excited about something for a long time without getting burnout. But I think it's a superpower. Like if you can be even keeled in all areas of life, I'm not just talking about business, but mostly business. If you can just keep from gaining weight up the first time, it can be a lot easier to stay healthy the rest of your life. You can just stay focused on one business or a certain way that you do things and get after it. You can really win. I know a lot of guys who, they're either kicking ass inside their companies or they're like totally checked out and like ignoring the hard decisions.

38:41I think that's - And they wouldn't have thought they would get there, but how do you get there? You get there because you didn't understand how to have a sustainable burn. You had a bonfire and then it goes out. You know, I used to be in college like a proud procrastinator. I would wait till the last minute. I'd pull an all-nighter. I'd study, I'd pass the test and I would wear that like a badge of honor. And it became like a terrible habit and sort of identity to build around was this thing of like, oh, when I turn it on, I have this crazy intensity. Nobody can work harder than me for that 72 hours, but then I'm going to crash and I'm going to procrastinate because I know I always have that in the tank.

39:23And it's the sort of tortoise and hare thing where you just realize that the tortoises win in life and the tortoises that just keep putting one foot in front of the other every single day they win. And so like, I've actually far shifted my philosophy where now when I hear about somebody who has that same attitude I used to have of the badge of honor of like how hard they go and how, how crazy they're working, it's a sign of weakness. It's like, oh, you just don't have systems. Oh, you don't understand leverage. You don't have good judgment. You don't know where to put your energy. So you're just putting it everywhere because I used to be that guy.

39:53I slept in the office when I was 24 years old. I remember I slept in the office 224 days out of a year. I thought that was me grinding. Actually, it was me highlighting to everyone, waving a flag, saying, I'm an idiot. I don't know what to do. So I'm just here all the time, just manically doing anything I could think of, right? And now I have a totally different productivity routine, which is basically, I call it the one big thing method. So every morning I decide the one thing that matters that I'd get done today. The one thing I put all my core focus on. And I give myself two hours to focus on it.

40:23First thing in the morning, no distractions. Don't check stocks, don't check the mail, don't check Twitter, don't check anything. and I just focus on that one thing for two hours. And after I'm done with that one thing, anything else I do in the day is gravy. I can go play with my kids. I can go work out. I could do a little more work if I wanted to, but it doesn't matter because what I realized is the person who wakes up every day, 365 days, identifies the proper single thing that matters and puts full focus on that one thing for even a two, two and a half hour time spread, they will crush the average person who simply doesn't even identify the one big thing.

40:57because you do that for three to six, five days, you have a hell of a year. It's the ability to zoom out. So many entrepreneurs, they're so focused. They're so intense. They're so jammed up in the weeds inside their company. And look, sometimes you got to do that. Like I've been in the weeds in several of my companies, but the people who can really zoom out, like you're saying, what really matters here? And you do that for four or five years, six years, 10 years, 20 years. Man, father time, like it's really sexy to build businesses fast and it's exponential growth. And you hear about all these stories, we read about them and it takes over media, especially social media.

41:28Well, you've seen that meme almost at this point. It's not supposed to be a meme, but it looks like a meme now. It's like fastest company to 100 million ARR. And it's these charts and it's like, well, Slack took seven years. And then it's like, we did it in two weeks. There's like the new AI company that's got a straight line up. And then somebody else comes in and says, we did it in two minutes. We did it in two seconds. And so they're all trying to just beat each other to this like sprint to low quality revenue. And I think it's so funny. It's like in the big short where he's like, why are they confessing?

42:02And he's like, they're not confessing, they're bragging. And it's like, I think they think that's a great thing. And it's like the more impressive chart is the one that looks like Qualtrics. You know, we had the founder of Qualtrics on it. He said, he has a huge sign in his home office. It just says, tune out the noise, play the long game. And he was like, dude, for seven years, nobody cared about what we were doing. We were single-mindedly focused on getting 150 universities to use our thing because we knew that was super important. If we did that, we had a real business and it took us time, but we just stayed scrappy.

42:31We stayed focused and we just did that for years before we ever got any press, any social media, any anything. And it's like, that's who you don't want to compete against is somebody who can do that because they're building this giant foundation of what they're trying to do. It doesn't mean go slow. It just means don't get fooled into thinking that you need to, you know, sort of quickly sprint and just grab some revenue number out of thin air as like what success looks like. Success is this sort of durability over time. There's expectations. Like people have to realize that the expectations of yourself as an entrepreneur in your career, they depend on your last six months, your last 12 months, your last, you know, two years.

43:09If you've had that hockey stick exponential growth, like think about how you have to follow that up. And I think some of those entrepreneurs kind of dream of a world where there's no investors, nobody watching, growing slowly over time, building something sustainable. Yeah. Okay, you have some other ones here. You said, being a YouTuber is the hardest job in the world. I think some coal miners might disagree, but go ahead. Well, I think social media is changing. We can talk about how the X algorithm's changed, how it feels to be a content creator is totally different now. You almost have to be video first.

43:41I don't know if you feel this, Sean. If you aren't on YouTube, you are not growing right now. That's true. I think there's always exceptions, but it's largely true. And I've said this before. Video is the native language of the internet. So it's like going to a country. If you don't speak video, then you are not going to be able to communicate because that's what everybody here speaks is video. Short form, long form, doesn't matter. Yeah, as an entrepreneur, I'm really hesitant to get on that hamster wheel because I see what the life is like of, okay, you got this banger video. Your influence grows.

44:12Got to follow it up the next week. You got to follow it up the next week. You got to follow it up the next week. and you got to be on. And then we go back to that consistency conversation that we just had, living that life for 10 years, living that life for 10 years. Like, how would that look? How would that feel? I think it's a very difficult job. I have a ton of respect for people who do it. I think it's still worth it. But in my opinion, the value of a personal brand on all things not video is going down, in my opinion. All right, one more spicy opinion here. This might be the spiciest of all.

44:42AI is bullshit and unsustainable and will decrease quality of life for the 99%. Wow. Say some words about that. This is just like the internet boom where 0.1 % of the companies will survive whatever happens when the bubble changes and we'll go on to change the world over the next 20 years. I'm not doubting the long-term power of AI. I'm just looking at the money, the hype, the energy that's being poured into it. I'm spending a lot of time inside of my companies trying to implement AI. We're adding tools. and I'm just not seeing it, Sean. Like AI is unbelievable for, you know, me having a doctor in my pocket or me doing recipes or my wife, you know, you know, doing little things.

45:25But man, like where is the long-term value? And then when I think about where it's going and I'm seeing my energy bill in Athens, Georgia, which is not an energy, you know, like an area with an energy crisis, like some areas of Texas and California, my energy bills went up 60 % in the last three years. They've raised it six times. Wow. And that's because what data centers being built or why is it double? There's 30 data centers that have come online in Georgia in the last four years. There's still 30 more in the pipeline being built right now that have negotiated unsustainable energy rates with the local municipalities.

45:58Where does it stop before like, okay, the companies are able to put AI in place to replace employees, but the energy costs, and this is why I think for 1 % of people, it could get really ugly or for the rest of the people could get really ugly. like what about your ability to like run a dishwasher or run an air conditioner or run a heater in your house, which all require a massive amount of electricity that gets more expensive for almost everybody. You have less money to spend on other things to make quality of life better. So yeah, hot take, but man, I'm, I'm very bearish on AI right now. You said it's bullshit and unsustainable, but you said also, you said in the next 20 years, it's going to change everything.

46:33So it's not that you think the longterm is, is you're saying that something today is over-promised. What is it? And you're saying, personally, you're getting value, doctor in your pocket, recipes, life, day-to-day stuff. It's the business use that you're not seeing the... I've added 15 AI tools across my portfolio. We've canceled 13, 11. Like, there's some that I really like. The others, I'm just like, really, really hard to justify the cost already. And they're subsidized all the way down the chain. You know, NVIDIA is selling the chips. They're making the bank. But, you know, Amazon Cloud Services, they're subsidizing it all the way down to the actual company that's VC-backed, that's subsidizing the data usage to try to do the land grab.

47:13So it's going to get more expensive. And I also feel it's kind of like the electric cars and self-driving with Elon Musk, how he's been promising us for 20 years that self-driving is five years away. It's going to get harder and harder and harder and harder to continue to improve AI from here and require exponentially more energy. So I worry about energy mostly. Like if we had nuclear power plants all over the place, like I'd feel much different about AI. Do you have a Tesla? As soon as they make a Cybertruck that doesn't look like a Cybertruck, I'm all in. Like I want full self-driving. I know how safe it is.

47:43I'm not willing to drive a sedan because they're not safe. So my T-bone's me. Dude, I bought one. It is, the self-driving is unbelievable. It is so good. Like I also, before I bought this car, I also thought like the narrative was, Elon's been promising, he hasn't delivered it. it might be harder than you think. Maybe you can't even do it without LiDAR or whatever. And then I buy the car, I push the button and it drives me everywhere flawlessly. And I'm like, this is here. This is already working. This is incredible. And I think the data backs up the personal experience. I have ridden in full self-driving and it is mind-blowing.

48:21It's mind-blowing. I want it. I need it. But is it going to be widespread? Are we going to have robo-taxis like San Francisco all over the country? I still think we're 10 years away from it. And Elon said it'd be 2012 that we were going to have this happen. Yeah, yeah. His timelines have been wrong. But I think that's less to do now with the tech and more to do with the regulation at this point, which I think is a different question. You mentioned pest control. Are there other businesses that you found interesting or you've been surprised at how well they're doing or a niche that you nerded out about a little bit?

48:55Everybody wants to start a marketplace. I think maybe I'm five or 10 DMs a month of somebody saying they found, you know, there's a kitchen cleaning, you know, you go in at night and spray down hoods and clean the inside of a kitchen. I want to start a marketplace that connects restaurants to these people. Right. And then I was doing my roof on one of my commercial properties. And our bid came in to do this roof. It's about a 10 ,000 square foot warehouse at about 70 grand to do the roof. And I'm like, that seems high. Like, let's do some more work. And I found out that I can hire a sub for 30 grand worth of labor.

49:26and I can buy, you know, 15 grand worth of material. And I can, that's the hard cost to do this job. And these roofing companies are making the spread. They're making the spread. So they literally don't do any work. They sell the job, they quote the job, they carry insurance, and then they show up and stand there and watch and make sure the crew does a really good job and make$20 ,000 in a two-day job by getting a sub and actually selling the job, putting their name on it, billing the customer, collecting the money, pay the sub and move on. So is that sexy and exciting? No, but are there roofers running around every town in America making five, 10 grand a day?

50:00Yes. Dude, I'll give you a fun example. So at my daughter's school, I've gotten to know some of the other parents. It's like, oh, cool, what do you do? One of the guys, he does, and I'm so lack of handy that I don't even really know these terms, but he does like framing. Framing, I think, is like a part of the wood. But you don't like, you kind of build part of it or whatever. You frame the building that you're going to build. I was like, cool, so how's it going? Where's the project? Have I seen it? You know, what do you do? He's like, oh, I do hotels. Have you, is it one I've stayed in here? He's like, well, I do all my work in Alaska.

50:31And I was like, Alaska. And he's basically like, again, work smarter, not harder. You know, his take was basically, look, I can be the thousandth best framer in California right now, coming in as like a new guy to the space who doesn't have 20 years of referral relationships with all the other contractors and try to scrape and claw, do business with expensive labor here in California and be competed down to the bare margin because they can bid it out to 30 guys and whoever comes up with the lower price option is going to win. He's like, but if I go to Alaska, it turns out they just don't really have any very many framers.

51:05It's easier for me to get on a flight once a month and go to Alaska than it is for me to build that business here. And it's like, I saw that. I was like, man, there's like, Munger has this great quote, the secret to winning in life is weak competition. And it's basically like, go where there's fish, but not other fishermen. And it feels like it would feel so foreign to me and most people, if you're doing a business to be like, well, how do I live here? I kind of feel like I should do something about something familiar where I see it. It's like, we will go into a knowingly harder situation because it's more familiar than take on some unknown where there might be a total greenfield opportunity.

51:47And he's not innovating. Like, it's not like he had to be the, do some new technique in framing or whatever. He just went to a place where there's just not a lot of people offering that service. And I just think like that one principle, you know, if you're a hardworking person, like that one principle can be the difference between, again, being the thousandth contractor here with razor thin margins and making great margins and having to get on a flight once a month. And I just think like, I think about a lot of people in my life, there's more people who could benefit from that principle of just go where it's, where the supply is low or the competition is low because it's unfamiliar for most and you might prosper.

52:25We built our first self-storage facility six hours from where we were living. Borrowed$2 million from a bank, spent$3 million to build a self-storage facility six hours away. And now I'm in Athens, Georgia, which is another different city. And people are like, oh, you're in the self-storage business. Which one in town do you own? And I'm like, they're nowhere near here. I'm sorry. Yeah. In storage, what was the insight on location for you? So did you find like a certain strategy on location worked well for you? Yeah, we didn't even talk about real estate. It's been a chaotic, you know, three years in real estate as interest rates have risen, just total carnage in the business.

53:01Luckily, we've done some things operationally that, you know, give us a little bit of an advantage, but... Sorry, explain why that is. So for somebody who's not in real estate, why does interest rates going up create, as you said, carnage in the real estate market? Because of the biggest line item, the biggest expense for real estate investor, developer, syndicator, anybody who buys real estate and holds it and tries to cash flow is debt. It's our biggest line item. We're going to borrow anywhere from 50 to 70 % of the value of a building. And if you go from paying three and a half percent on that debt, you know, 35 grand to service a million dollars in debt to pay 7%, 70 grand.

53:34Like it's, imagine if your labor cost quadrupled in a service business. That's essentially what happens in real estate. So it drives the value what people can afford to pay down. So all the buildings that you bought in 21, 22, I mean, there's guys that are, there's guys that are going broke in the real estate business right now in real time that I know it's total carnage because they can't sell their buildings for what they were worth because nobody else can afford to pay that higher amount of debt interest either. Does that make sense? Right. What's going on with your properties now? Because that was, that was the time when you were buying too.

54:08So yeah, we bought a lot and we had some stress, dude. Like we had some tough conversations. We got out without raising any additional money from our investors and we replaced all of our loans. Meaning we refinanced them and we didn't have to call a single dollar from our investors. That's a massive win. Many people else are calling capital calls or they're actually losing properties. We were able to increase revenue quite a bit when we bought a building. And we've done things now like we replaced our inbound sales team with South Africans who were actually sales trained and our conversion rate went from when we were in the Philippines from 30 % to 42 % in South Africa.

54:44So revenue's up 15 % year over year. But yeah, man, it's not easy. It's brutal. Is the future for Nick Huber buying more storage facilities? Is it just running somewhere and growing that? Is it something else, you know, five years from now? Like, do you know? What's the future for Nick? You know, I have, my ego has written a lot of checks over the last five years. Now I got to go cash them. No, I'm pretty focused on growing somewhere. I want to grow RE Cost Seg and I want to buy more storage. We have a couple of deals under contract now. The company's in a good place and there's just so much less competition in the real estate business right now.

55:22So it's a double-edged sword. I just think business is naturally cyclical. It really is. There's really good times and there's harder times. And sometimes the hard times are good because you got to buckle up. You got to operate. You got to make things to make your business more efficient. And it washes out the people that can't do that. And it becomes less competitive. So I'm genuinely excited about the real estate business over time. I think we're better than anybody in the world at finding amazing talent at somewhere. And yeah, so I'm going to grow some of these companies. I want to grow some of them really large.

55:53Very cool. Well, man, I appreciate you coming on. Always fun to catch up. Good deal. Thanks for having me, dude. world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back. All right, my friends, I have a new podcast for you guys to check out. It's called Content is Profit, and it's hosted by Luis and Fonzie Cameo. After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness, Luis and Fonzie are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue. In each episode, you're going to hear from top entrepreneurs and creators, and you're going to hear them share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit.

56:36So you can check out Content is Profit wherever you get your podcasts.