262 - Best of 2025! Nick Huber's Entrepreneur Playbook: From Storage Units to $52 Million

14:06Nick Huber:I went from that to being able to make five hires who are specialists for the same money. And when you can do that, the growth, it just changes everything about how you think about business. If you can manage these people, like, look, there's difficulties. If you can manage them, if you can keep track of everything, if you can really make sure that everybody's productive inside your business, it's a total game changer. And I know it's not going to get easier to hire Americans.

14:29Nik Huber:I know that. Why do you think no one's built a hundred million dollar overseas talent company yet?

14:35Nick Huber:They have. Absolutely. They have? Oh, hell yeah. Athena. Tell me about it. Athena is doing 60 million ARR, probably worth a half a billion. If they, if they went public, they just do executive, only executive assistants.

14:47Nik Huber:Only executive assistants in the Philippines.

14:49Nick Huber:They're not doing any team building. They're We have shifted our focus over the last year to literally helping companies build their entire teams. And we're going to do, with five different clients this year, we're going to do more than 30 hires. 30 hires for them.

15:07Nik Huber:We're going to help them build their entire company.

15:09Nick Huber:That only goes up as you start building teams. So yeah, there's many, many BPOs. We're going to build a full team for you. We're going to put them in an office. What's a BPO?

15:18Nik Huber:Business partner organization?

15:19Nick Huber:Business process outsourcing means we're going to take a function of our company and put it in an office in the Philippines. If you go to Manila, there are high rises full of BPO organizations that are the middlemen between Visa, MasterCard, Apple, and these call centers. And many of them are worth$100 million plus.

15:38Nik Huber:Oh, yeah.

15:39Nick Huber:It's a big, big business.

15:40Nik Huber:So did you just see, oh, I'm able to differentiate because I have a distribution channel? It's like, okay, this is a known thing. There are already companies this size. We're growing exceptionally fast. I've got the experience from it because I know how much it's revolutionized my business and I have a distribution channel like with those kind of the components that

15:58Nick Huber:got you to a place where yeah that's exactly it like hey look this is a good business this is a good business model I'm a good operator I can grow this thing and over time if I make good decisions and I build the right team this can be not a you know not a million dollar a month business but a 10 million dollars a month revenue business so when when you found out Andrew

16:16Nik Huber:Wilkinson was looking or sniffing around the business or had made an offer. I don't know kind of where the process was. Did you know that Marshall was like in the mode of selling or was this news to you?

16:24Nick Huber:That was the first time when he called me and said, Hey, Nick, we need to talk. I said, I got, I got something to talk to you about. I had a, the first thought came to my head. I was like, Holy shit, you get an offer to sell. But when he called me, it was the first I'd heard that he was even interested in selling.

16:38Nik Huber:Cause when was that? Like, when did you get that call?

16:41Nick Huber:Late October, 2023. Okay.

16:43Nik Huber:So we're talking like six months in between when you got that call and when you closed in May or late April, whenever the close was.

16:50Nick Huber:April 30th, May 1st. Yeah.

16:51Nik Huber:How did you go from a$47 million valuation to$52 million? Like what? Revenue went up. How did that work? Huh?

16:58Nick Huber:Revenue went up as we negotiated.

17:00Nik Huber:Oh, yeah. Is that how these are valued? Just off of top line? Because bottom line is so good?

17:04Nick Huber:No, like I valued the company on what money it was making. It made more money. Between October and January, the business kept growing.

17:13Nik Huber:Yeah. Do you feel like you paid a premium for it or do you feel like it was baked in? Like it was market price? Because some people would look at it and be like, hey, look, why are you drinking your own blood? You built this company off, and I'm not saying you, I know Marshall was a part of it, but a lot of the distribution was built off of you posting about it and driving people to it. It's like, okay, you built this company, why now pay a premium valuation for it?

17:37Nick Huber:I think starting from scratch was not something I was interested in. It's been a great deal. I don't regret a thing that tells you anything.

17:44Nik Huber:That's awesome. Yeah. All right. So like I said, kind of similar situation to you, the most money I've ever raised, let's just call it mid seven figures, 5 million, 6 million, somewhere in that ballpark from investors. You had to go, and you probably raised more than that because you were buying these large real estate deals. and that just takes more capital. But for an enterprise like a business, five or six million is the most I ever raised. You had to raise$20 million for this? And then you had to take out, sounds like about$10 million of debt from what I've done in the bit of research I've done.

18:16Nick Huber:I borrowed 9.38 million from Marshall as a seller note directly to me. Oh, so that's the debt financing. 18 % of the company I borrowed from Marshall to me. And it's backed by the business itself. So it's not like a personal guaranteed loan. He didn't give me any cash. He gave me the equity and he holds that equity as collateral to the loan itself.

18:37Nik Huber:Did you go to Andrew Wilkinson and be like, hey, look, man, I know you're going to buy it, but would you rather just help me fund it? Or at that point, was he like, no, it's not enough?

18:44Nick Huber:I tried to get him to invest. And at that point, he thought that AI was going to kill the business and he had no interest in investing.

18:50Nik Huber:Wow. Okay. So you go, you raise 20 million and then you do this seller note. Did you sign any personal guarantee?

18:57Nick Huber:No, I put... So I needed almost 30 million to buy 57.25 % of the business from Marshall and Jomer, the two founders. I was trying to organize and orchestrate a system where it was worth it for me and the carrot at the end, meaning I get all my investors paid back. The business grows. I own as much as possible at this company. I already own 12.75%. My private equity tranche, meaning the 20 million in cash that I gave Jomer and Marshall was 39.25 % of the business. I needed to raise that in private equity and I could only get a promote on that. Meaning I get everybody their money back. I'm going to get 20 % of the ups basically.

19:35Nik Huber:Oh, interesting.

19:36Nick Huber:So I raised, I raised all that money giving, there's no pref, there's no fee. It's just, they get every bit of cashflow from that 39.25 % of the business until they're made whole. And then above that, if they invested less than a million bucks, I get 30 % ups. If they invested a million or more, I get 20 % ups. So I raised from 39 people, an average of over 500K per person. A couple of big fish came in to invest. It was super stressful. I went out and pitched them all on how to do this. I had no investment bank working with me. I hired my own attorneys to put all the documents together to orchestrate this deal.

20:11Nick Huber:I set up a deal where if this business grows, I'm going to own about 34 % of the company if I get everybody paid back.

20:21Nik Huber:Okay. You've got 12.5 % at the time. You need to raise the - Okay. Then you need to raise another 20 million to buy the 39 % out. I'm just rounding here. And the way that it currently works is that$20 million, every bit of cashflow that you distribute goes to those investors first until they get their money back. And then there's like a pro rata split of depending on how much they put in either 30 % or 20 % to you and then the rest to them. Yep.

20:48Nick Huber:Yep. Okay.

20:48Nik Huber:I've been thinking a lot about this because I'm kind of toying with the idea of raising some money and going bigger in the healthcare space, buying a larger acquisition. And one of the things that I constantly think about is anytime you're raising money, you're giving up control. That's what's always freaked me out about raising money is like expectations go up and you lose control. Are you able to -

21:10Nick Huber:I didn't lose any control.

21:11Nik Huber:I control everything. So there's like decision-making control, right? But well, I guess let me ask - There's these two transfers.

21:18Nick Huber:They're both LLCs. They both have different promotes, that bought in. Under million dollar investors, the over million dollar investors with the different promotes. I own all the common shares of those. They own the preferred shares. The preferred shares get the cash flow first until they're made whole and then most of the cash flow after they're made whole. But the common shares vote. I own those.

21:37Nik Huber:They have no recourse.

21:39Nick Huber:They have no voting rights. They have no recourse. They just get all the cash flow until they're whole from that entire tranche.

21:46Nik Huber:Wow, man. How did you orchestrate that? Most investors are going to be like, nah, I want some type of recourse. I want a board seat or I want something to say like, if Nick's royally screwing this up, I can get him out of there.

21:56Nick Huber:Yeah, that's the good thing about having the network that I had from raising 40 million across all my real estate investments and knowing how to do it and having a really good plan when I bought the company so that when I got on these meetings, I'm like, hey, look, we're going to grow this business. It's going well. But here's what I think we can do. Obviously, nothing here guaranteed and you're going to get all the cash flow and 80 % of the upside, but you're going to have no say and I'm going to control this thing and you're riding along with me.

22:24Nik Huber:You said it was super stressful as you were talking to people trying to close this deal. Was it ever stressful because of social media? Was it ever stressful because you were, were they saying, hey, I'm not interested because you tweet too much or you're too open or I'm worried about some key man risk because if you do something really stupid because you're so closely associated with it, the value of the business goes down? Has that been a part of those conversations at all?

22:48Nick Huber:Look, a lot of people said no. I approached 500 people to ask about this investment and 39 said yes. So yeah, look, there were a lot of things people didn't like about the business. People said, you're just a contingency-based recruiting firm. People said, you're paying too much. People said, I don't have a board seat. People said, you're not putting in enough of your own cash. you're not making a big enough investment at the beginning other people said that didn't matter but I found 39 people who trusted me and the vision and raised the money and I'll warn you that once you go out and raise that capital to make a deal like this the stress is just on a different level the pressure is on a different level if it was all my money if it was all my own money I'd feel one way about it and I'd be like okay let's see what happens here when other people's cash is on the line it's for me it's more scary i don't know people say oh it's just other people's money we don't care for me yeah i would rather go bankrupt myself i'd rather go nick hubert go bankrupt go get a job start over build from scratch then this deal goes sour and me lose 20 million dollars of other people money have you ever heard someone say like oh opm other people's money not how i think i think

24:02Nik Huber:that's a defining characteristic of someone who's going to be successful entrepreneurs like yeah if you feel like other people's money probably not the person you want in a leadership role or I don't know who anybody who truly feels that way the reputational risk just people work

24:16Nick Huber:freaking hard for their money man they're trusting me with their cash dude I agree with that I've had moments over the last two years where either you know people wanted me to invest or I invested and

24:26Nik Huber:I lost some money and like comments are made about oh well you know yep stuff happens like oh yeah you lost your money almost like it's flippant and my response is because they don't understand it But my response is like, I don't think you understand how hard it is to accumulate a hundred thousand dollars, a half a million, a million,$10 million to put into a deal. It's really hard. If everybody could do it, they would have done it. And then to put it into something, thinking you're going to get a return and it goes belly up. Like that's a big deal. Now I got to go talk to my wife and let her know, or I got to go look in and make sure that our portfolio is balanced the way that I want it to be.

25:03Nik Huber:It's not just, oh, well you had some money to burn, so you're fine. You lost that investment. It's like, no, you don't understand them.

25:10Nick Huber:Maybe that's how the crypto world feels about it. But I don't know any private equity owner who raises other people's capital to buy real estate or businesses or whatever that doesn't feel like a very serious responsibility that comes with that.

25:24Nik Huber:What did you think of Andrew Wilkinson's critique about AI ruining the space? Because I have the same concerns. I'm playing with operator deep research. I'm in the weeds with AI right now. And I'm like, oh man, this is some really good technology.

25:38Nick Huber:Yeah, I'm following. I'm taking it very seriously. I'll push it aside and talk down to it on Twitter all day. But I would be pretty foolish to like Andrew Wilkinson is a great friend of mine, a mentor. Him and I are close. I would be foolish not to listen to a guy who's smarter and more experienced than me. I'm not that I'm not that arrogant. What are your thoughts on it? Give me some of your thoughts. My general thoughts are I'm watching it closely. I am afraid of it. it's on my radar closely, but it's nowhere near close enough to actually replace a human being today.

26:10Nik Huber:All right. Now's the part of the show where I feel the most uncomfortable, but my therapist says I need to face my fears. So here we are. I've started a newsletter and I want you to subscribe. And what you're going to get every single week are the aggregated conversations from that week that I have on this podcast with an overview of what their business actually looks like. I'm also going to throw in a review of one or two businesses that are listed for sale. I'll give you my opinion on whether or not the EBITDA multiple is good, or there's customer concentration of this red flags or green flags.

26:34Nik Huber:And then lastly, I'm going to give you one piece of actionable advice every single week on how to buy your first business. So click the link below, subscribe to my newsletter, and let's get back into the show.

26:43Nick Huber:I know because I'm trying to implement all these tools into my company. The demos are amazing. Their wow factor is amazing. You get in and watch it work and you're like, son of a ****.

26:53Nik Huber:Yeah. It's a really cool efficiency gain. You're able to turn one employee into maybe 1.5 or two employees. And for some specific positions, you're able to outsource it. But yeah, I'm in the same boat. I don't, I don't see it yet getting to the place where it can actually take a full-time employee position. I mean, there are some cool things after hours answering services. That's been really cool. I've seen AI answering calls and then redirecting those calls, but not yet have I seen it actually replace people. Deep research is the closest I've seen to like, oh, this, this is like an entry level analyst, but I still have to do all of the work in order to produce the outcome.

27:33Nick Huber:I've had friends who say like, Nick, you got to watch this and they'll pull up their phone. They'll start talking to their AI. And at the end of the conversation, I'm like, that was the dumbest thing I've ever just listened to. I love Andrew. He pulled up his phone on Twitter and he started talking to his AI that he built about making a reservation. I'm like, nobody would put up with that. I saw that video.

27:51Nik Huber:I was like, dude, is he in a hostage situation?

27:53Nick Huber:Elon is talking to Joe Rogan on February 28th episode. And he starts talking to his AI for and I'm like, guys, the wow factors here, but ain't nobody want to do this. And in my storage business, every phone calls worth 500 bucks. Ain't no way I'm trusting AI to answer the phone. Right. In a roofing business, every phone calls worth 600 bucks. Ain't no way we're trusting AI to answer the phone.

28:17Nik Huber:this is the way I think about it right now. I think people are seeing the opportunity of AI, right? These things come out and you're like, oh my gosh, AI can answer this question. And quickly you go to the end state where if AI is basically what we hoped Siri would be when it first came out. But if AI can produce this report for me quickly, oh man, I'm going to be able to replace a full-time employee, but it's the last like mile. That's the hardest to actually implement. And so I think those people get really, really excited about the opportunity where I think people, and I'm not saying like you, I'm not saying you, but potentially like you who are like, call me when it's ready.

28:54Nik Huber:I do think that when it's adopted, it's going to be adopted very quickly. And there's going to be an arbitrage for six months, maybe a year because people have been up to speed with it. And then once it's finally game time, they can implement it because they've been thinking about how do I put this process into place? Where would I actually plug it in? What's the software I would use to track usage? Who would I replace? how would I implement the SOP to train the AI? And then everybody's going to catch up, right? But there's going to be this kind of year time where they can still charge old prices with new efficiency until the new prices catch up with the new efficiency.

29:26Nik Huber:It's sort of my thinking.

29:27Nick Huber:We're building an AI training module that has an add-on somewhere for every new hire. Like at the end, you pick somebody and they're like, and we say, hey, for 500 bucks, do you want us to put them through a two-week intensive AI training and make them 50 % more effective at their job? You're pretty silly to say no to that.

29:42Nik Huber:Yeah.

29:43Nick Huber:So yeah, look, I think the main hesitance of hiring internationally is the language barrier. They can't quite speak and they don't quite understand our culture like us, as well as us. South Africa is a game changer when it comes to that, by the way, building literally executive teams at all my companies in South Africa. But AI is going to help these folks with the things that they struggle with most. In a way, like when the lawnmower was invented, it didn't put the lawn care companies out of business. It actually helped them make more money and be more effective. I'm going to be on the cutting edge of AI.

30:14Nick Huber:And when it's ready, we're nimble. We make decisions quickly. You know, we're good operators. So, but I don't know what's going to happen.

30:20Nik Huber:I don't know what's going to happen. I think nobody knows what's going to happen. People think they know what's going to happen, but you know,

30:26Nick Huber:ultimately I've been listening to Elon Musk. Tell me full, full self driving is coming the next year for 20, 20 years,

30:31Nik Huber:20 years now.

30:33Nick Huber:What he does, what he does for humanity is amazing, but there has been there. These tech enthusiasts need to shut their computer, go outside and touch some grass sometimes.

30:42Nik Huber:It's been a shift for you to go from, all right, I've got these smaller companies to now you've got to hire executives. You hired Zach Prince at REKOSSEG, which dude, when you pulled that higher, like blown away just because he's so high caliber and you can like write him off and say, well, he was crypto and his company went bankrupt, whatever. The dude was a billionaire for a period of time and built a company that was worth billions of block fight. I don't care what ended up happening. He didn't commit fraud, right? But that's incredible. You went out and snacked him. You got him. You then go take down somewhere, $50 plus million.

31:21Nik Huber:And you've hired, and I can't remember his name, but you've hired an operator to be the CEO of that company as well. Talk to me about the shift to go from, I'm a sweaty startup guy to now I'm air conditioned white collar guy.

31:32Nick Huber:It's really, really hard and it'll humble you hiring executives. like I thought a year ago that I knew a lot about business and hiring. I've been humbled. I've learned a ton and I'm, I am better, but I realize now how much I have to learn about building teams and scaling companies, hiring executives and people to lead divisions of your company. It's hard, man. It's hard, hard, hard. Very rare for somebody to be able to get into a meeting, go into a meeting, figure out what's happening incorrectly, spot it, think of a solution and then tell everybody that solution even the executives that i hire one in 10 can actually do that like i feel like i can do that or to go into a meeting spot where something

32:13Nik Huber:is wrong and get everybody who's in that group the decision makers to come together and like as a group identify a solution it's a very different skill set that's why i always roll my eyes i roll my eyes i laugh when i see new new entrepreneurs who are like yeah i'm gonna buy a business and I'm going to hire an operator. I'm like, you have no idea. First of all, business isn't big enough for you to quote unquote hire an operator. It's a totally different skillset operating a business and then managing managers.

32:38Nick Huber:Yeah. So Zach Prince left by the way, and we're hiring CEO, COO in South Africa.

32:43Nik Huber:No way.

32:44Nick Huber:His last day was February 23rd. I'm assuming, are you meeting this executive

32:50Nik Huber:team in Africa? Like, are you actually going to fly down and meet them?

32:53Nick Huber:Yeah. I got a trip on trip on the books. Yes. But look, the that's pretty cool. Zach, Zach is a stud, still a great friend of mine. He got an offer that he could not refuse opportunity from his previous network. And he also did amazing things with Ari Kostig in the one year that he was CEO. But when he left, we decided, Hey, we're going to build this entire company. We're going to build this entire company internationally, including executives.

33:15Nik Huber:I mean, how can you not, especially like not only have you taken his big bet on somewhere, but you've also seen, Hey, I know what works and I know what kind of value this is going to provide us. It's a competitive advantage.

33:24Nick Huber:I can hire and I've done it. I've hired a head of sales at Bolt Storage in South Africa for$4 ,500 a month. Jeez. Who has built revenue teams and was a CRO at his previous position. Hired a head of finance at somewhere in South Africa who was a controller of a 600 person company,$5 ,000 a month. I've hired my RevOps specialist who is a HubSpot wizard and one of the best operators I've met is an Indian South African guy named Dippin, our head of sales at Ari Kosseg, Ivan in South Africa, sales managers, sales team, revenue team, marketing team, recruiters. We've hired 40 recruiters in South Africa over the last year.

34:05Nick Huber:We rebuilt the team there.

34:07Nik Huber:What do you look for in leaders? What are your most important attributes or what are the things that you look for?

34:12Nick Huber:I try to find somebody who's done it before. Man, it's hard. I've been humbled by this game over the last year of trying to pick operators and managers.

34:23Nik Huber:Where did you miss? Tell me where you missed. I mean, not to name names, but like, what do you feel like?

34:27Nick Huber:Yeah. I mean, look, it's just really hard in an interview process and in a vetting process to figure out if they have it, if they have that. And you can get, you can get recommendations from people who tell you that they have it and then realize later that they don't. But I can tell pretty quickly when I start, when I get in the trenches with somebody. So I either like promoting from within, getting people. And the great thing about hiring in South Africa is that I can bring somebody in the door for four grand a month. And within a month or two, I know if they're an all star or not. And I can say, OK, like it's time to make six K a month and you're on a path and here's the path.

35:00Nick Huber:It's whereas hiring a United States executive, you're going to, you know, you're going to be on the hook for 200 grand base plus bonus plus a severance plus all these, you know, FICA and benefits and all the other crap.

35:13Nik Huber:I cut my teeth in healthcare. And so my home health and hospice company,$12 million a year, had over 300 employees. So it's just a very service heavy business, right? We're not like one of these tech companies where we've got a million dollars in revenue per employee. We're very low on the revenue per employee side of things. So I've had to learn how to hire. And the biggest thing I've learned in hiring is like, it's a freaking crapshoot. Number one, like you just don't know. They can have the best resume in the world. You hire them and it's like 50 50. But number two, your best people come from your best people.

35:46Nik Huber:Like for me, that's been the biggest, the biggest thing. And that's why I think any leader that I've hired, because I've hired leaders of different businesses is they have got to be able to recruit. They've got to be able to retain. They've got to be able to inspire and they've got to drive results. Like those are the four things they have to do as a leader, because if they can recruit, retain and inspire, then I know their sales, you know, like they're a salesperson, life is sales. Whether you're selling somebody to like bring you new business or whether you're trying to keep people on your team, you've got to convince them and sell them on you, your vision that you're the leader.

36:19Nik Huber:And if, if they can do those things that I know they're going to go get their best people. Right. So it's like, I try to hire leaders who I know have a good network. And that's how I've used Twitter as well as like, I've always got a bench of like four or five people that I know at any given moment. If I had an opportunity, I can go and kind of pluck these people. But it took me a while to like, realize that piece. Is it like, that's just such an important aspect to leadership.

36:39Nick Huber:I'll add a fifth one and that's be able and comfortable to fire people quickly.

36:43Nik Huber:Yeah, that's actually really good.

36:45Nick Huber:Chris powers told me I was complaining maybe two years ago. I was complaining to him about one of my employees. I was saying, Chris, you know, he keeps messing up here. I'm trying to help him trying to help him here. And he goes, Nick, you need to fire the guy. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Chris, it's my busy season. We're doing more than ever. He's working 60 hours a week. I can't fire him. And he goes, you need to fire him tomorrow. And if he's still here in six months, you got a problem because your culture at your company falls to the level of incompetence that you tolerate. So if you tolerate C players, your entire company becomes a C player organization.

37:15Nick Huber:So he said, Nick, you can either let your shitty people go or watch your great people walk away.

37:21Nik Huber:It's totally true, man. I've had to learn how to fire fast. I used to think that was just, oh, if somebody doesn't get it, fire them fast. But now I look at it and I'm like, all right, there's two options. Either they're not going to fit long-term, in which case I fire them fast, or I didn't set them up for success. And even if I didn't set them up for success, there are moments where it's like, I'm sorry, I wish I could have set you up for success, but this position needs you to be successful without me having to like jump in. But I kind of like, I try to parse it in between those two. And if I know they're not going to be a long-term fit, like they're gone.

37:52Nik Huber:If I know that they're a good long-term fit, but I didn't set them up, I do work with them. But you've got to be quick. Like you've got to turn them out quickly. Otherwise it breeds complacency. Like you're saying, it breeds complacency with the rest of the team. 100%, 100%. Somewhere has been doing a fantastic job. And anytime a company is doing really well, it inspires a lot of competitors to enter the market because there's obviously a market for it. They can make money, there's margin, et cetera. And so there's been a lot of other smaller staffing companies, overseas talent companies that have popped up because they're trying to ride the same wave.

38:24Nik Huber:And they're following a very similar playbook. Cool, I'll build distribution on social media and then I'll use that distribution to grow by business. Some of them more successful than others. Your biggest antagonist though has been John Matzner at Sagan. And John is as good of a troll as you are, I would say. You guys are both very good trolls. It's just one of you has the power dynamic that the other one doesn't have at the moment. I have no doubt the roles will reverse. It'd be like the same struggle except you'd be doing the other role. My first question is, how do you, as someone who I've seen be like one of the most fiery people on Twitter, not engage with that?

38:59Nik Huber:How are you taking the high road in this conversation? I honestly wanted to win, man. I really don't care.

39:06Nick Huber:It's a massive...

39:07Nik Huber:It is... It's a massive... That's the most alpha thing you could have said.

39:13Nick Huber:It's a massive market. It's a massive market. Every day I see another competitor that does very similar things to what somewhere does, and they're twice as large as me. And I talked to a guy like Jesse Tinsley, who I had a phone call with him a month ago, and he makes me feel small. he makes me feel like holy shit i'm small yeah talk to guys like chris powers and see what they're doing like i would i approach twitter like john does no but look man he's a good dude he's got a good team i'm super thankful for the work he's done in his past protecting us in our

39:47Nik Huber:country i hope he wins man i really do you just pulled the john ham meme when in mad men when he's in the elevator and the guy says something to him he's like i can't remember what the guy says something about like, I don't know why you think like that. And then Jon Hamm turns to him and he's like, I don't think about you at all.

40:05Nick Huber:I don't think about my competitors at all. The thing about this, I follow my competitors very closely. This is a very hard business. I get 50 ,000 applicants a month and 40 ,000 of them, they can't type over 30 words per minute. Can't work a remote job if you can't type 30 words per minute. So I have to do the work with a team of 20 people to figure out who's actually capable of working for a US-based company. Our screening process is a ton of work. We're selling two sides. You got to sell clients and you got to sell candidates on taking the jobs. Recruiting is phenomenally difficult. If you want to do that yourself or hire an internal recruiter or post jobs on PH Jobs, that's a great way to do it.

40:46Nick Huber:Somewhere adds a ton of value, man. We add great people to companies. We stand by it for six months. like we're gonna we're gonna win i hope a lot of people other went a lot of other people win too because ultimately the people who the people who win are the business owners my self-storage company i i spend 1.5 million a year on payroll to have a team of 50 that's less than 30 000 per head my competitors my competitors in the united states running similar size self-storage portfolios are spending 5 million a year on overhead 1.5 or 5 million you tell me which business you'd rather

41:20Nik Huber:run. It's a game changer. It's a game changer. It's a total game changer. I have another friend who's gotten into this Parker Cox. He has a company called Pavago. Their model's a little different, but he has said, and it's my, it's my favorite quote of Warren Buffett's where Warren Buffett says my favorite boat or my favorite wave to ride is one with a tailwind. So like what Warren Buffett's saying is like any industry that I'm competing in, I want to be in one that's growing like crazy. The one that you're in right now is the wave is so big that a lot of people are able to write it. And a lot of people are going to be able to be successful because even within outsourcing, some people are going to specialize just in sales.

42:00Nik Huber:Some people are going to specialize just in training after they've actually onboarded. Some people are going to specialize in this industry. You know what I mean? Like this, there's a bunch of specialization that you can get into.

42:10Nick Huber:I think a lot of them are going to like, this is a hot take. I think a lot of them are going to fail. it's a very hard business without without you know if we didn't have 40 leads a day coming in the door somewhere be really really really really hard to do this business recruiting is freaking hard like standing by these hires over time is hard i talked to a lot of owners who are like nick i want to sell you my agency and i'm like okay what do you do they're like well we have the athena model it's you know we upcharge every hire i'm like how many do you have 21 we have 21 contractors on we have 80 grand a month of recurring revenue we want a million bucks i'm like I'm like, good luck, man.

42:45Nick Huber:Good luck.

42:46Nik Huber:Good luck.

42:47Nick Huber:Ton of competition in this space. It's really hard. I had to rebuild the business to take it from 1 million a year capacity to now our goal in the next couple of months is 2 million a year, 2 million a month, sorry. 1 million a month to 2 million a month. Taking a business from 1 million a month to 2 million a month, you need so much more.

43:04Nik Huber:You need to totally rebuild it again when you get to 5 million. You constantly are rebuilding the business because what you did at X is not translating at Y.

43:11Nick Huber:So a lot of these operators who are in this space are just not, they're not going to be able to do it. I'll tell you that it's hard.

43:17Nik Huber:Dude, I totally agree. To me, it's very similar to trying to grow on social media, for example, where I think you just have to niche down. And most people don't want to do that. They want to be everything to everybody. If you're going to go into a space like this, carve out a really good niche. And then SaaS does this as well, land and expand. It's like, okay, pick out your niche and expand from there. You're different. You have a distribution channel, which most people don't have as a competitive advantage. So I think your strategy can be different because you have some scale. But if you were just getting into it, you can't be everything to everybody.

43:45Nik Huber:All right. I want to switch a little bit. Your book. I'm excited to talk about this. I saw Sahil Bloom release his book a couple of months ago and was just blown away. I don't know how he did it. I don't know what voodoo he conjured, but it was like every person who had any influence was posting a picture or a quote or something from his book, right?

44:07Nick Huber:Sahil wrote an excellent book and he ran a masterful launch campaign and he's connected to anybody who is everybody because he's such a likable awesome dude you can't replicate what sahil did like to get to number two on the new york times bestseller list as a first book behind mel robbins who was selling like any other any other week during any other year sahil's the number one new york times bestseller on his first release the fact that he didn't get there because of mel robbins on a heater is unique the book business is hard and sahil yeah man like he worked his ass off to write a great book and it's going to be it's going to change his life forever

44:46Nik Huber:now obviously you were already writing this book before saho released it and you you and saho probably talked about the fact you're both writing books but yeah we both have the same we're good

44:54Nick Huber:friends we have the same agent like we use different you know publishers but he used penguin i used harper collins you didn't use a ghostwriter though i had an editor that helped me but i wrote I wrote every word. Yeah. I tried the ghostwriter at first. This is my legacy, man. Like it's, it's mine. So I'm not going to do that.

45:13Nik Huber:Well, that's what I'm going to ask. Why write a book? You got all these other things going right now. Like you literally, you just bought somewhere.

45:18Nick Huber:I originally decided to write a book because, well, it was two years ago that I originally decided to write a book and I thought it was going to be easy. I was wrong.

45:32Nik Huber:that that could be that could be the the on the tombstone of every entrepreneur hey why'd you start this business i thought it was going to be easy i'm just cocky enough man that i think i can

45:42Nick Huber:do everything and it was a humbling experience but i'm so glad i did it i am phenomenally happy with how it came out it tells not only my story but the story of 40 plus other entrepreneurs to get key lessons apart apart and people read too much bullshit about trying to change the world this is a tactical book to make more money and to build a sustainable company so i'm proud to focus

46:03Nik Huber:on talk about like what the actual focus of the book is it's got three parts the first part is

46:08Nick Huber:you know what opportunity you chase how to figure out what business you want to go after second part is like the key skills that you need hiring making decisions delegation sales and then the last part is people hiring, you know, how to get people to follow you, what to look for and people because you can't do it alone. And to get leverage, you, you have to hire and build teams. So the last part's all about that.

46:31Nik Huber:So writing a book was probably not the, it's like, probably wasn't the best time to write it. Did you find it helpful though? Oh my gosh.

46:38Nick Huber:I'm so glad I did it. It made me better as a person. It humbled me. and it also gave me like nowhere is there really an organized structured mind dump of mine of how I feel about everything. The super playbook. Everything I feel about from what business to start to how to go after opportunities to how to do all these business things to how to live a good life and how to be a good parent. Like the last chapter is not business related. It's literally me telling people that they need to have kids and telling people how to raise their kids and telling people, you know, what other things you need to focus on to, to, to be an effective person.

47:13Nik Huber:There are three reasons I started this podcast. The first reason was a journal for my kids. The second reason was to meet cool people. And the third reason was to learn about cool businesses. I feel that that's how I feel about this podcast is like, at some point they're going to feed all these into an LLM and my kids are going to be able, and my grandkids are going to be able to talk to, you know, 39 year old Nick, who's still making penis jokes and like hear from him and what he was like and how he thought about things. This is a much better way to capture it. But I've found in writing in particular, you can just codify your thinking a lot more.

47:42Nik Huber:It's like, yeah, how do I think about choosing an opportunity? How do I think about hiring and firing and onboarding and delegating and all of those things, which I'm assuming was actually really good for you as you're in the midst of trying to rebuild somewhere to have this format of forcing you to think about, okay, what are my non-negotiables? Because ultimately it just benefited you.

48:01Nick Huber:you want to learn something, teach it. It's so freaking true. I got organized with my own thoughts, my own priorities, and my own principles. It's really hard to do the work to figure out how you actually think about things. Most people just get on Twitter and think about things just like how their favorite influencer thinks about things. To do the work is different.

48:21Nik Huber:What's the name of your book?

48:22Nick Huber:It's called The Sweaty Startup, How to Get Rich Doing Boring Things. It came out this week.

48:27Nik Huber:My affiliate link's in the bio that Nick's going to pay me handsomely for. I'm just kidding. But yeah, we'll have a link in the bio.