The 6 Traits Of A Successful Entrepreneur (#431)

Nick Huber 0:00 If, no if, now this is the theory. This is the big-

Sam Parr 0:02 Yeah

Nick Huber 0:03 ... 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 10Xer. You're the 10Xer. [upbeat music] Welcome to My First Million. Thanks for joining me, Sam.

Sam Parr 0:27 [laughs] All right, so Shaan is in California. There's a power outage. Last minute, I called Nick Huber. We're gonna give you, uh, like, the proper introduction, but basically, um, you were on a month ago? Six weeks ago? And it was-

Nick Huber 0:43 Yeah, about one month

Sam Parr 0:43 ... I think it was the second most downloaded pod in the last 90 days. It had something like 150 or even more downloads, something like that. So the people loved you. And, uh, l- what, what was your introduction last time? Nick has, uh, at least $100 million in storage units, of which I am an investor in, so I always disclose that. And you also own three or four different companies right now that are doing really well, or own part of.

Nick Huber 1:09 Yep, yep.

Sam Parr 1:10 Mm.

Nick Huber 1:11 Dabbling in s- dabbling in a lot of stuff. You texted me actually one hour and six minutes ago, and you said, "Hey, can you come on the pod in one hour?" And I said, "Yes." And you said, "Do you actually have good content?" And I said, "Yes, I'm a content machine. I was just kidding with you." And you said, "Hey, you need to make a document and send it to me. Are you sure you have the fire?"

Sam Parr 1:30 [laughs]

Nick Huber 1:32 You put the pressure on me. [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:35 [laughs] 'Cause l- we don't ever, I never ask the same person twice, but I know that you're easy to work with. And, uh-

Nick Huber 1:42 Let's do it

Sam Parr 1:42 ... I knew you'd show up in

Sam Parr 1:44 time. Um-

Nick Huber 1:44 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 11th, 2020, and then another time February 16th, 2023, which was four weeks ago today. And honestly, it blew up my world. I mean, I'm telling you, I, I-

Sam Parr 2:02 Really? What are the results?

Nick Huber 2:04 I mean, Support Shepherd, the company that I use to hire a lot of, you know, VAs and, and I'm a partner in, 200 plus leads of people, business owners, who reached out for the first time to hire their first VA, which is freaking awesome.

Sam Parr 2:17 And that's like four grand a month or something, or two grand a month?

Nick Huber 2:20 It just costs about three grand. It's 30% of the first year's salary, 35% of the first year's salary to make the placement. So average ticket's between three and four grand. Um, all the other businesses too that I mentioned on there got some leads. Um, RE Cost Seg, uh, webrun.com. Uh, it's just crazy, man. Got reached out to by a lot of people and actually have c- have, have kind of got started with a couple more businesses since then, so it's just been wild.

Sam Parr 2:47 So I, uh, like, uh, 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 were having dinner, and they wouldn't stop talking about that episode, and they wouldn't stop talking about you. And they were like, "I gotta meet Nick." I introduced you to one of them, um, and, uh, Courtney. And, um, but they wouldn't stop talking about you. And I was like, "Damn, people love Nick." It's amazing.

Nick Huber 3:12 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.

Sam Parr 3:21 We were at a, I did, like, a MFM meetup last night. Jonathan organized it. And we had, uh, 500 people RSVP. I don't know how many people showed up, but it was awesome. We got to, like, meet people, and, uh, a lot of people were asking about you. And, uh, it was really fun to get out from behind the microphone because what people don't... I always say this, I said this last night. What they don't realize is, like, Shaan and I at least, we talk throughout the week, but we try to save our g- if we ever, if we're ever talking about something juicy, he'll just say-

Nick Huber 3:48 Yep

Sam Parr 3:48 ... like, "Don't, don't tell me. Tell me when we're live."

Nick Huber 3:51 Mm-hmm.

Sam Parr 3:52 And right now I'm just in my, what, I turned, like, a small bedroom into a little, it just has this desk and a camera. And you probably, it looks like you're in the same. You have, like, a small office in your house. And, like, they don't realize that, like, we're just a bunch of, like, doofuses 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.

Nick Huber 4:19 It's crazy because we can sit here and talk and I'm, I'm a little bit nervous just because I know the impact of My First Million. I know that 100,000 people might listen to this. But imagine how nervous we would be if we were sitting in two chairs in the middle of Dallas Cowboys Stadium with 100,000 people watching. I mean, it would be-

Sam Parr 4:33 It's the worst

Nick Huber 4:34 ... it would make it feel a lot more real. It would make it feel a lot more real.

Sam Parr 4:37 We, we've had so many people say, uh, "Why don't you guys do it in real life, like you and Shaan, like, one-" And I'm like, "Well, it's just more convenient." But also it's, like, I... One time I, I recorded at a studio, and there was, like, this, like, lady at the, uh, at, like, the soundboard. And she was, like, hip and cool-looking and 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 didn't d- was that douchey? Was that lame?" And then everyone, and then when she would laugh, I'd be like, "All right, I got her. I got her. I gotta keep going."

Nick Huber 5:08 Yeah.

Sam Parr 5:08 And so, like, she was my audience. And I remember I was, like, changing everything I did. And afterwards I was like, "Ben, I can't do this with, with any of these people in this room anymore. It's getting in my head. I'm trying to impress them too much."

Nick Huber 5:18 It's tough, man. It's tough. I'm having a live event on the 22nd in Athens, um, which you guys inspired me to do. I put it together right after that. And 30 people have bought tickets to it, so [laughs] I'm a little bit bummed out. But we're gonna actually go through. It's next Wednesday night in Athens. We're gonna actually have it, see how many people show up, and see if it's a success. But yeah, when you put yourself out there-

Sam Parr 5:37 So if it-

Nick Huber 5:37 ... for a live event, it comes with a new level of stress and anxiety, for sure.

Sam Parr 5:41 So I moved to San Francisco in 2012. I moved out there, and I had moved out there from Tennessee. And I, I'm still a little rough. Back then I was really rough around the edges.

Nick Huber 5:49 [laughs]

Sam Parr 5:50 And this was right, uh, yeah, it w- and this, and this was, like, basically I moved out there and, like, pe- I would wear jeans and, like, boots and a white T-shirt all the time. And people... And I had a little bit of a twang You know, and people would kinda tease me, and I told them I'm from Tennessee, and they're like, "Well, 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's campus. I felt it was like Goodw- a Good Will Hunting moment. I was like, "Dude, am I gonna meet all these geniuses? What's gonna happen?" And I got so envious, and so I created this thing called the Anti-MBA because I was envious that I didn't get my MBA from Stanford, 'cause I would 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 I, and I posted an ad on Craigslist. That's how I got my first people. And so Sieva, one of my best friends, Sieva, um, who's like a big entrepreneur, he was one of those people. You know, he's one of my closest friends. And so I met him that way. And so I would host these book groups, and we, it would be 10 people at first, and then the next time, like 12. And then over time, I did this for a year, every week for a year. I got, like, 3,000 people signed up to my email list. Then I hosted an event, uh, that was, uh, like, maybe 80 people came. And then I hosted Hustle Con, and 300 people came. But it was very slow. Like, these, like, events, I did them very, like... It was like a four-year grind. And then at Hustle Con, eventually we got, like, 2,500 people coming.

Nick Huber 7:26 [gasps]

Sam Parr 7:27 And so, like, these events... And, and then Shaan and I did a live pod in Miami, and, like, maybe 100 people came, and it wasn't that good.

Nick Huber 7:33 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sam Parr 7:34 And then we did it again, and 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. With an event, you just-

Nick Huber 7:45 [laughs]

Sam Parr 7:45 ... 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.

Nick Huber 7:51 And getting, getting people to actually show up is tough. I mean, to get people to listen to My First Million or my podcast, The Nick Huber Show, all they gotta do is flip through, flip through podcasts, click a little button. If they don't like it, they're gone. Getting somebody to buy a ticket, drive somewhere, the uncomfort of meeting other people, you know, it's dif- more difficult.

Sam Parr 8:07 Where do you wanna go today? Where, where,

Sam Parr 8:09 you wanna drive?

Nick Huber 8:10 So I wanna talk about the traits of a successful entrepreneur. What ma- what makes a, whether it's a partner, an operator, a manager at a company. And when I say entrepreneur, I don't necessarily just mean somebody who starts a business. I mean somebody who leads other people inside of an organization. What makes those people really, really good at what they do? And I think you have a lot of experience tracking down and identifying these people who are killers. We'll call them 10Xers. They're the people who, you know... I, I have a theory that 80% of, of, of workers are just kinda skating by, and maybe they're adding a little bit of value to a company. But the top 20% are generating outsized return for the company that they work for or themselves if they're an entrepreneur. What makes those people tick? I wanna talk about that.

Sam Parr 8:56 All right.

Nick Huber 8:57 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 all 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, um, you can, you can make a lot of money fast. So let's dig in.

Sam Parr 9:27 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 $30,000 a month range. Once we got to $30,000 a month, I realized, cool, it's sustainable to a certain level. I need to hire people, and I hired one or two people in, in a few of my different companies where once we got to, like, 30 and 40,000 a month, when you hire the right person, it can 10X fairly quickly. And at that 30,000 mark, I realized at a young age I am in the collection of people business. [laughs] I just have to collect-

Nick Huber 10:05 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

Sam Parr 10:05 ... interesting people, and you have to play, like, a long-term game because n- it doesn't, you can't... Th- they're not always available, but if you, like, play the long game, relationships last a long time. So I've done a good job of collecting people, and I, you asked me this, so I made a list. Um.

Nick Huber 10:18 Mm-hmm.

Sam Parr 10:19 So, uh, uh, 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 un- 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 I can get them to do crazy shit, that y- 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, or they get, like, down, or, like, for in my case, I'm like, "This is gonna fail. This sucks." And so I always look for someone who's, like, pretty stable, and they're a rock who can, like-

Nick Huber 11:00 Mm-hmm

Sam Parr 11:00 ... 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 f- look for people who follow through-

Nick Huber 11:07 Let's, let's do one at a time. Let's go one at, let's go one for one.

Sam Parr 11:10 All right.

Nick Huber 11:10 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 and 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 lollygagging through life. They go into work. They clock in at 9:00 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. But people-

Sam Parr 11:47 Which is fine.

Nick Huber 11:49 Yeah, it's fine.

Sam Parr 11:49 I just don't wanna... I, and, and you need those people a lot of times.

Nick Huber 11:53 Yes. You need, you need butts in seats.

Sam Parr 11:53 You just don't m- Yeah, which is fine. Those people are fine, and they serve a purpose.

Nick Huber 11:59 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 a- 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, they'd pick-up and delivery storage for students. Um, we bought a cargo van on Craigslist for $3,000, and we drove it back to the track house. This is kind of a good example of, of the different h- 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 pick-up and delivery storage for students." And some of our buddies, they were sitting around, we were sitting around the track house playing beer pong, and they're like, "You guys are freaking crazy. What is exciting about this?"

Sam Parr 13:00 Like, what do you know about that?

Nick Huber 13:01 [laughs] Wh- what beer pong?

Sam Parr 13:04 No, what do you, what do you know about moving? Like, you know, like who... You're not qualified.

Nick Huber 13:08 Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're just like, "Why is that exciting? You're gonna go... We're gonna go have fun this weekend, you're gonna go around and sweat and pick up boxes for 30 bucks a piece? Like, that does not sound fun to me. I am z- I have zero energy and zero excitement around that." And they would've quit or given up in a week or two. Whereas we were energetic, we were excited, we got after it, and we were able to convince some other people to come along, and, you know, that was... Yeah, that's- that's the whole thing.

Sam Parr 13:35 There's this great, there's this great book, Robert... You know Robert Greene, the author Robert Greene?

Nick Huber 13:38 Yeah.

Sam Parr 13:38 He wrote that book 48 Laws of Power. He has another book that was way less popular called The 50th Law, and it's really weird because he wrote it about 50 Cent, and it's actually a great book. And I, I know it sounds weird, but, uh, he, he... 'Cause he, Robert Greene, he's into, like, uh, philosophy and all this sh- all this stuff, but he talks about, like, rappers, and he loves hip hop culture. And he, uh, and he's like, "50 Cent is really good at this because he has done a good job reinventing himself a bunch of times. He's, uh, changed his image a bunch of times," whatever. And he said the key to 50's, uh, success was his sense of urgency, and if you don't have a sense of urgency in 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, um, who invent different medicines, like, you know, poets, writers, whatever.

Nick Huber 14:24 Me-

Sam Parr 14:25 It's always about ur- urgency

Nick Huber 14:26 ... doing anything, doing anything, doing anything that makes your life better is uncomfortable. Going out and meeting somebody, taking a chance, trying to get that really hot girl in the bar to go on a date with you, it's all super uncomfortable, and it's very, very easy to just be passive. "Oh, I don't necessarily have the energy to do that. I'm gonna step back."

Sam Parr 14:44 I used, I used to have a rule when I saw... This is how I met my wife. When I saw a cute girl who I wanted to talk to, the m- the... I could only give myself five seconds after seeing her before I spoke to her.

Nick Huber 14:54 Urgency, baby.

Sam Parr 14:54 It was the five second rule.

Nick Huber 14:55 Urgency.

Sam Parr 14:55 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-

Nick Huber 15:02 Okay, so we-

Sam Parr 15:02 ... I always had the five second rule.

Nick Huber 15:04 Um, I have a couple more on my list. Do you want me to go again or do you wanna do your second one?

Sam Parr 15:07 Yeah, go, go one more.

Nick Huber 15:08 Okay. So I think this one feeds into the next one which is when you're starting a company, and people ask me a lot after our last episode where I spoke about the four or five companies that I'm starting, "Nick, how do you have time to do this? How are you doing it yourself?" And the answer is I'm not. I'm going and I'm tracking down people who are really good, and I want you to riff on this too, sh- 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 wr- writing down, getting your service put together, but then it's attracting people. That's all it is. As an entrepreneur, all you're doing is attracting people. I have a theory about this. So 10% of people are in career nirvana, meaning they love their job, they're perfectly motivated, and they are n- under no circumstance are they gonna go and do something else. Another 10% of people are literally actively looking for something else, either they're unemployed or they really hate their job, and they are very open, and they're actively looking for jobs. These are the people that are looking on job boards, posting around, you know, for a- anything that might be another opportunity for them. And then there's 80% of people that are in the middle. 8 out of 10 people have somewhere in the middle. They like their job, but they're open to other things, or they could be open to other things, but they're not gonna go on Monster or on Indeed or on LinkedIn and actually apply for jobs. Those people-

Sam Parr 16:30 Which typically is the, those are the winners.

Nick Huber 16:32 Those are the winners. I've... Every 10X'er that I've ever hired, and I've been lucky enough to bring a lot of 10X'ers in- into what I try to do. And again, it's kind of because of my charisma and my sales ability and me really going out and putting myself out there and putting my sales hat on. L- like I'm literally turning into a salesman. I'm going to try to attract talent to come along on my mission. Every single 10X'er that I've gotten involved falls in that category. They were previously employed, they had a job they didn't hate, and they had a boss that really didn't want to let them go. And my entire career has been built upon going and finding those people, tracking them down, identifying them, and convincing them to leave that opportunity and come along with me.

Sam Parr 17:15 How do you convince them?

Nick Huber 17:17 It's a, it's sales. It's literally I'm, I'm selling them on my mission. And we can talk about sales as a-

Sam Parr 17:23 Which looks like what?

Nick Huber 17:24 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 got to get them to buy into my vision. I got to 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 got to drop it and come with me. And you do the same thing, Sam.

Sam Parr 17:52 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'll be like, uh... I usually like to flatter people, so I say, "You're amazing. What's your story?" And they'll just gush and tell you their story, and I act interested because I am interested. And then, um, usually I'm like, "What, where do you want to be in a handful of years? What do you want to 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, um, if they, if I can, then I tailor my pitch around helping them get there, and I'll say something like, "Would you like to come join me for a handful of years? And I bet you we could set you up nicely to get you to where you 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, uh, 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 some 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.

Nick Huber 19:27 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, they're making a big change, I need them to do some pretty important stuff, I'll sit there in the interview and I'll be like, "Sam, we're, we're talking about this company right now, but let's pretend that we're five years in the future. You and I are sitting right here. We're in this office in five years, and you walk into this office and you are gushing. You're excited. You're like, 'Nick, things are going freaking awesome.' Tell me what is going on. Tell me how much money you're making. 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, 30, 40% of the time, I'll be like, "Wow, um, I can't deliver on this. My company can't deliver on this."

Sam Parr 20:26 Yeah.

Nick Huber 20:27 But then other times I'll be like, "Okay, I just..." It just gives you a look into how these people tick. You know what I mean?

Sam Parr 20:33 Yeah, yeah, and you gotta tailor it. So the, the third thing I... or the second thing that, uh, we won't talk about because we already did is speed. I look for speed. Um, and that's quite hard to find. Most people aren't fast. Um, my, my current partner, Joe, Joe Spicer, he's the only person that I've worked with that I'm like, "Joe, I c- 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. Um, and I actually... a lot of things are trainable. I don't think that 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 had this one lady reply to one of our tweets, and she's like, "I sold $100,000 worth of Taylor Swift T-shirts." And I'm like, "Okay, that's, that's all I need to know. You do stuff."

Nick Huber 21:26 Mm.

Sam Parr 21:26 Or maybe they have a blog or maybe they tweet or maybe they have a YouTube channel-

Nick Huber 21:30 Yep

Sam Parr 21:30 ... or maybe they-

Nick Huber 21:30 Yep

Sam Parr 21:31 ... um, have some type of hobby that invi- it involves, like, taking action, and I always look for those things. It could be like I org- I organize clubs in college.

Nick Huber 21:40 Yep.

Sam Parr 21:40 Just anything where I see like, all right, you follow through. You say you're gonna do something and you do it. I look for that a lot.

Nick Huber 21:44 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 Parr, the Sam Parr ride, and getting involved in one of your companies, one of these things, you're gonna give them something to do, and that'll knock off 80% of the people and... 'cause they're not gonna follow through. They're not gonna follow through. I think the... I got a good story. Web Run, the guy that I found to, to start this front-end web development landing page company, his name's Will Wallace. He's a coder. He lives in Atlanta. One of the most brilliant dudes I know. And when I saw him, I was like, "Will, I need a, I need, I need a favor," and I was testing him. He didn't know it. I s- "I need a favor. I need a landing page, and I need something to g- a form up on my website. I need 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. He just 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 mind... And, and it goes back to, like, hey, we're looking to assemble a group of people. As an entrepreneur, we're looking to assemble a group of people. How do you know who those 10X'ers are? How do you know who those 10X'ers 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 they've actually been doing.

Sam Parr 22:53 Yeah, and I o- often I tell them... I get pitched, like, five times a day. You probably do too, of people who wanna make short clips for me.

Nick Huber 22:58 Yep.

Sam Parr 22:58 And I almost ignore all of them. But every once in a while I'll be like, um, "All right, 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 it... don't worry about free work. Like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna profit off your work. Make me a video then." Um, and we used to do this all the time. People would apply to The Hustle for wridering, writing. I go, "Okay, write tomorrow's email." And, uh-

Nick Huber 23:20 [laughs] Yeah, it's, it's-

Sam Parr 23:21 Like, I, I would... Every once in a while, we'd get a 1,200 word thing the next day and I go, "All right, sick, we'll talk."

Nick Huber 23:26 What you're looking for is a look into the mind of these people to figure out if they're a 10X'er. So if you're going out and you're trying to build these teams, you can shoot from the hip, 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 blend together, I'm gonna talk about both these things, clear and concise communication. So many people, you'll have a conversation and you'll listen to them for 60 seconds, 90 seconds, and you'll be like, "What the hell is this person even talking about? Get to the point." Whereas you have Nick Huber on his, on, on your podcast, I can say exactly what I've done and where I've been and how many storage facilities I have and, and I've given you three or four things to bite off all in the first 28 seconds that I've been on the show because I'm a very clear and concise communicator. So I look for that. I listen 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 across in 15 seconds-

Sam Parr 24:22 How, how would you feel-

Nick Huber 24:22 ... versus 30 is just, uh, mind-blowing.

Sam Parr 24:26 How would you feel if someone referred to themself in the third person in an interview like you just did? [laughs] That's a, that's a, that's a I'm out, dog.

Nick Huber 24:33 Fired.

Sam Parr 24:33 That's an I'm out, dog, right away.

Nick Huber 24:34 [laughs]

Sam Parr 24:35 Fired. [laughs]

Nick Huber 24:36 We can talk,

Nick Huber 24:37 we can talk about-

Sam Parr 24:37 I'm out. [laughs]

Nick Huber 24:38 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.

Sam Parr 24:48 [laughs]

Nick Huber 24:48 Red flag, cut. Somebody refers to themselves as Nick Huber in the third person, cut. Out.

Sam Parr 24:53 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, uh, just like I always say, I'm like, "Does your oven burn hot?" Like-

Nick Huber 25:05 [laughs]

Sam Parr 25:05 ... are you just smart? Or, um, and can you like... do you have, like, emotional intelligence? But also, um, taste. So I like to ask people what content they consume. I'll be like, "Do you, do you like to read? What do you read?"

Nick Huber 25:16 Yeah, yeah.

Sam Parr 25:17 Um, I'm like, "Where do you, where you're, where do you get your news?" Uh, or if they're like... I'm like, "Seriously, just tell me, like, who do you follow on Instagram?"

Nick Huber 25:22 Mm-hmm.

Sam Parr 25:23 Or, "What subreddits do you like to read?" Anything. I just want to know a little bit about your taste. I've noticed that if I hire-

Nick Huber 25:28 And that's a really... when, when somebody puts you on the spot like that, that's really tough because what they want to do is please Sam. They want to say what you want to hear, but they don't know. It's like somebody saying, "Hey, what's your political affiliation? Tell me who you voted for." And they'd be like, "Oh, oh, I don't know. Who did you vote for? I voted for them." [laughs]

Sam Parr 25:44 No, and I don't care what they read. I'm just like, "Explain to me why it's exciting," because if you're not excited about what you consume every day, then you're boring, and I don't want to be around you. And you-

Nick Huber 25:52 Yep

Sam Parr 25:52 ... and, and but I also want to 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... Uh, like, my brand is fun. And so like if they're just not fun or they don't get that, I'm like, "This is just... it's a bad culture fit that we, we're not gonna blend well." So I look for taste a lot, and I ask them what they consume. Or I do this thing called the bottom fourth of the resume. So at the very bottom of people's resume is, like, where they put, like, the hobbies or, like, what they did in college, and they'll say, like, "I studied philosophy." And I'm like, "All right, cool." I mean, I don't really care about philosophy, but I'm like, "What was your favorite class?" And if they say, "Oh, I'm not sure," I'm like, "Oh, you're out."

Nick Huber 26:27 [laughs]

Sam Parr 26:28 But if they like s- If they say like, you know, "Well, this philosophy class," which I 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, "All right, cool. Th- y- you're all right." Uh, so I look for taste a lot on, on the bottom fourth of the, of the resume.

Speaker 26:41 [upbeat music] This data is wrong every freaking time.

Sam Parr 26:46 Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

Speaker 26:52 Whoa, I can see the client's whole history: calls, support tickets, emails. And here's a task from three days ago I totally missed.

Sam Parr 27:01 HubSpot, grow better.

Nick Huber 27:04 I have a theory that, uh, 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.

Sam Parr 27:14 What are you, Albert Einstein?

Nick Huber 27:15 But if you-

Sam Parr 27:16 Congratulations on that great theory. [laughs]

Nick Huber 27:18 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 10X-er. You're the 10X-er. So I'm gonna look for delegators who can do that, who can lead other people and grow the business beyond... Because look, if I hire somebody and I'm their direct report but they can't be the direct report of other people, they're gonna be a bottleneck. I'm gonna be a bottleneck. They're not gonna help me grow the company. Now the two things that I think are related to that that are kind of counterintuitive, number one is copywriting. If they're a really good copywriter, I think that's directly correlated to be able, being able to delegate and lead other people. 'Cause if you can write-

Sam Parr 27:59 I agree

Nick Huber 27:59 ... clearly and concisely, if you can write-

Sam Parr 28:01 I agree

Nick Huber 28:02 ... clearly and concisely 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-ing 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 and made me a better copywriter, and now I have every-

Sam Parr 28:29 Did it? Did it work with you?

Nick Huber 28:31 ... everybody... Yeah. So Sam has a course where for 10 days in a row he's gonna send... 10 weeks in a row. Is it days in a row, or is it once a week? Days.

Sam Parr 28:39 One day... uh, one a day for 10 days.

Nick Huber 28:42 One a day for 10 days.

Sam Parr 28:42 Monday to Friday, so two weeks.

Nick Huber 28:44 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 was like, "Well, Sam told me it's gonna work. Just trust me." So 10 days I write and I copy these styles and I start to learn how clear and concise communication and hooks and throw away all the words that don't matter. Where's that located a- again, by the way?

Sam Parr 29:06 Copy, copythat.com. Copythat.com. So the word copy and then that.com.

Nick Huber 29:10 Yeah. 150 bucks or something, and it's been worth, I would... you know, 50 grand added to my career. Easy the best

Sam Parr 29:18 Do you know why that works? I, I, I tried to explain it in that e- in the thing. It's called copywork, and it's how I learned how to write. And it was, like, this way that they used to teach kids how to write. Uh, and in the 1930s and '40s I think there was, like, a change in the public schools, and this thing got thrown to the side. But, um, it's called copywork. And, like, if... like, Ben Franklin used to write this way. Um, Hunter Thompson, uh, he, like I said, this is how he'd write. Judd Apatow, the director. And what they would do is they would find, like, scripts or, like, if you're Judd Apatow you would find, like, a funny script that you want to emulate. Or if you're Hunter S. Thompson you would find... you'd do, like, Catcher in the Rye or some book that you like. Because when you copy it by hand you start seeing the patterns and the w- uh, the texture of something. In the same way where if you want to learn how to play guitar, you're not gonna, like, get the guitar on day one and write a song. You're gonna, like, play Jingle Bells, and then you're gonna, like, move to Happy Birthday. And then eventually you're gonna move to, like, rock and roll and then maybe blues. And then you're like, "Oh, this riff from Guns N' Roses, it kind of reminds me of this riff from the blues. If I'm gonna, like... I'll mesh that with this and I'll steal this from here," and then boom, I've got my own piece of art. And that's why it's really good. It, it... and there's actually science behind it where, like, it imprints into your brain and you learn the flow of certain things.

Nick Huber 30:30 So if you could get good at writing and getting your ideas across, and also selling other people, 'cause people think delegating is just telling people what to do. No, you have to make them want to do it, and it's sales. Life is sales. So it's, it's a beautiful resource.

Sam Parr 30:44 Do, do you have a few more or no?

Nick Huber 30:45 Yeah. Yeah. I wanna-

Sam Parr 30:46 I wanna ask you about that tweet.

Nick Huber 30:47 So I wanna go through how I think about sales, because I think this is really important. 'Cause 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 these people who have jobs, and you gotta sell your idea and your vision on them. So I wanted to give you kind of a breakdown on how I think about sales and how I kind of flip the script, and I can give you kind of an example of that. The old school way to sell is you're gonna be pushy, you're gonna ask directly, you're gonna speak the language, you're gonna prove that you're an expert, and then you're gonna talk about all the benefits and all the great things, and then you're gonna hand them a clipboard and ask for their signature. I think that that way is a terrible way to actually sell people in today's world of so many options. So my way to do it is I speak the language briefly and prove that I'm a professional without being braggadocios or bragging on me or the pro- or, or the product that I'm trying to sell. Then what I do is I dive right into talking about the downsides, why I'm worried about it, why the deal might not work, all the things that we need to stress about. And then I ask them, given those downsides, why they still wanna do the deal or why they still wanna work with me or why they still wanna work for my company. And then I shut up, and I let them... It kind of flips the script to where they become-

Sam Parr 32:01 I do that all the time

Nick Huber 32:02 ... the salesperson. They become the salesperson. So, like, Sam, you're about to start working for me as, uh, 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 a year of our life. Why do you wanna come join me?" Another really big, great example of this is for my investors in my real estate deals. They're g- they, they get on a call with me, and they expect me to just sit there and regurgitate 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, 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 give me this 50 grand, you're gonna invest with me. And let's say interest rates spike, the economy tanks, people don't use storage as much, and all of a sudden this deal's worth 20 or 30% less than what it was. And instead of giving you an 8% cash on cash return, I'm gonna give you a 2% 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, it might work that way.

Sam Parr 33:31 When you're starting these new things, how much do you fund them with?

Nick Huber 33:35 Uh, Recruit Jet, we put, uh, 50 grand in the bank account. WebRun, we put 10 grand in the bank account. Uh, Blue Key Capital, we're gonna put 50 grand in the bank account.

Sam Parr 33:47 Did I tell you about Kevin Ryan? Do you know who that is?

Nick Huber 33:49 No, tell me.

Sam Parr 33:49 You're k- you're doing what he does. Kevin Ryan, I've talked to him about him a bunch on this pod. He's kind of my hero. Um, he started... He was the CEO of DoubleClick, which eventually sold to Google for multiple billions, and it became AdWords or wh- whatever, AdWords or I forget, AdSense. I think AdSense, one of those. Like, the, the way Google makes all their money, so it's like the best acquisition ever. He was, uh, like employee 20 there, and then he took over as CEO, sold the company for multiple billions. And then he went and started, um... He took, like, his, whatever he made, $10 million, and this other guy who worked at DoubleClick named Dwight, and they go, "We're gonna start this thing called Silicon Alley." So they were based in New York, so it was like their take on Silicon Valley. And they invested. He goes, "We would put... Our whole shtick was we're gonna invest $300,000 into a handful of interesting ideas we have, and we'll try to find someone to partner, and we'll try to make them big, and we want big outcomes." And with this method, he started, uh, Gilt, 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 $600 million exit. He started MongoDB, which is a publicly traded database company at, I don't know, it ranges between 20 and 30 billion on, on, on the mar- uh, market cap. Uh, what else did he start? He started, um, Zola, which is like the wedding registry business. He started, uh, like maybe three other things that are big. And he goes, "I give each company six months and 300 or $400,000," something like that. And, you know, 300K is kind of a lot. I mean, it's definitely a lot of money, but it's not that much money for how much value he creates.

Nick Huber 35:26 Mm-hmm.

Sam Parr 35:26 And he gives it 300K and six months, and that's how long it takes him to, like, figure out if an idea is gonna be, uh, worth it.

Nick Huber 35:32 It all depends on the opportunity. I mean, some of these, the, the guy that we're partnering with on Recruit Jet, um, me and Saahil and Marshall from Support Shepherd are starting a company called Recruit Jet to headhunt US talent this exact way. Like, "Hey, we're gonna go into that 80% of people. We're gonna find them for companies." The guy that's our head recruiter, he's been a recruiter for 15 years. He's done work for me. He's a complete badass. He's not gonna leave his job. He's not gonna leave his job until we get our first contract signed. Like, so we don't have any expenses yet. On the other side of the ca- uh, table, I'm trying to start a debt brokerage firm, meaning we're gonna be the middleman that finds and secures debt for giant commercial real estate projects. 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 a partner in that business. I have somebody in mind. I'm gonna have to shell out a lot of money, 'cause this guy makes 450 grand for a bank right now. He's our best loan officer. He's a 10Xer. 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 200 grand a year for two years. Me, personally.

Sam Parr 36:40 Hmm.

Nick Huber 36:41 Off my, off my personal bank account. "Hey, this is... I'm gonna sign a contract with you." 'Cause I already know how he thinks, I already know he's a 10X-er. 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 of runway at 200 grand a year.

Sam Parr 36:58 But are you gonna put-

Nick Huber 36:59 So-

Sam Parr 36:59 ... any additional capital?

Nick Huber 37:01 Yeah, we'll have to. We need to hire some additional people. But for the most part it'll be website, landing page, uh, customer.io, automatic replies to emails. You know, it'll just be building the infrastructure that I'm so good at doing for all these other companies. It'll, we'll create a-

Sam Parr 37:14 And you're actually gonna do it? You're gonna write all the copy, you're gonna set up the email stuff?

Nick Huber 37:18 Um, Web Run. I'm gonna have Web Run do that. Um, and then I'm gonna create a, a, uh, a Twitter account. Make the follow account, and then I do a, a, a software called, uh, BirdFlow that has an automatic DM.

Sam Parr 37:34 Yeah.

Nick Huber 37:34 So every time somebody-

Sam Parr 37:34 I told you about that.

Nick Huber 37:35 Yep, you told me about it. 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 and you need help with banks, um, give us a call," and we'll just drive leads that way. So it'll be-

Sam Parr 37:46 Does that-

Nick Huber 37:47 ... it's very bare bones

Sam Parr 37:47 ... does this person have a family?

Nick Huber 37:49 What's that?

Sam Parr 37:50 Does this person have a family?

Nick Huber 37:51 Yeah. He's got a 12-year-old and an, and a nine-year-old, and his wife stays at home.

Sam Parr 37:55 Does that freak you out?

Nick Huber 37:56 It's very, it's very freaky, yeah. It's, it's g- it drives pretty significant insecurity. Yeah. I mean, even Will-

Sam Parr 38:03 Yeah, I get it

Nick Huber 38:04 ... even Will at Web Run, he had to leave a, a job where he was doing, making 400 grand to start an agency with me. So, like, selling these people. Like, identifying the 10X-ers and selling them on coming to join the Nick Huber mission, like that's, that's what it all is. Like, that's, that's the hardest part of this stuff.

Sam Parr 38:19 The first family person that I hired, the person that had a family, that had children, I remember thinking, like, that when we hired them I was like, "I have a family." Y- I was like, "I now have a family." You know? I was only 26 and I was like, "Shit, it feels like I have a child." And it's, it shouldn't actually feel that way maybe, but in a way it kind of should, where I'm like, "Oh, shit." Like, I have... Like, if this is no longer just necessarily about me, this is about, like, all these other people and stakeholders involved. And I remember freaking out. I was very nerve-wracking.

Nick Huber 38:52 The stakes go up. 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 convincing them to leave their job and their livelihood. They make 450 grand a year right now. I'm, I'm, I'm insane. [laughs]

Sam Parr 39:06 Dude, it, it's scary. What about, um, what did you me- you messaged something or you, you tweeted something out the other day that got, you got a lot of flack for.

Nick Huber 39:13 Oh, yeah.

Sam Parr 39:13 What did you, what did you say?

Nick Huber 39:14 I'll just read, I'll just read the tweet because it's funny. So, um, y- we talk about social justice warriors a lot inside of our group chat. Um, I love them a lot.

Sam Parr 39:23 How many, when, what, what would you... What's a social justice warrior?

Nick Huber 39:27 So a social justice warrior is anybody on, it can be a supreme leftist or it can be a Trumper. It can be somebody who is out on a mission to change the way that a certain group of people is totally mistreated, whether it be people who wanna carry guns or whether it be minorities, whether it be, um, you know, people who feel a certain way from a certain place. They're just out on a mission to go to war with culture to make it better for a certain group of people. That's a social justice warrior in my opinion. Am I, is that a correct definition?

Sam Parr 39:55 Okay.

Nick Huber 39:55 Correct definition?

Sam Parr 39:57 That's significantly more positive than how I use it.

Nick Huber 40:00 [laughs]

Sam Parr 40:01 When, a, a social justice warrior to me is someone who, like, is very close-minded, very outspoken, and will not be well-balanced or open-minded-

Nick Huber 40:11 Right

Sam Parr 40:11 ... 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 which side you fall on.

Nick Huber 40:27 Mm-hmm. Yep.

Sam Parr 40:28 You can probably have a conversation with either side. A lot of people can, and 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."

Nick Huber 40:37 Mm-hmm.

Sam Parr 40:37 Whereas a social justice warrior's like, "Well, you're wrong regardless of how you feel."

Nick Huber 40:41 Yep. That's ex- y- y- 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 me- members. Either side of the aisle." I said, "Luckily, politics is not a protected class, so I'm allowed to view somebody's social media before making a hire."

Sam Parr 41:06 [laughs]

Nick Huber 41:08 And then I said, "These folks bash people that they don't know on Twitter and social media con- c- constantly." Um, and I, and then 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?"

Sam Parr 41:23 And so what did people say to that?

Nick Huber 41:25 And I think that's so true.

Sam Parr 41:25 No, you didn't get any hate, did you?

Nick Huber 41:27 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The people who... I- it's got 64 quote t- tweets right now. Um, this guy says, "Bro, just say that you don't hire Black people. It's way easier." Um, like, people are just really calling me a racist and, and calling me a lot of really mean things, which I'm not at all. I'm, I'm, I am trying to, I'm trying to weed out people who are close-minded. Because if you're radically-

Sam Parr 41:47 Right

Nick Huber 41:47 ... politically left or radically politically right, that just tells me that you're not balanced, because I, nobody that I know is super radical politically. It's just a giant waste of time and energy. 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 Antiwork when you asked them that question earlier, like, "What content are you consuming?" "Oh, I'm in Reddit Antiwork." Uh, okay. Out. [laughs]

Sam Parr 42:12 Well, I, and it... But they could make a good argument as to why they enjoy it. So for example, I like reading... Have you seen this subreddit called, uh, what's the one where the people have multiple jobs?

Nick Huber 42:21 Oh, yeah. [laughs] Yeah, that is-

Sam Parr 42:23 Um-

Nick Huber 42:23 ... that is fascinating.

Sam Parr 42:24 So there's-

Nick Huber 42:24 Entertainment value is another thing

Sam Parr 42:25 ... it's these people who get multiple jobs, like sometimes three or four jobs, and they'll, and I've known a couple people who have done this. It's called Overemployed. It's called Overemployed.

Nick Huber 42:35 [laughs]

Sam Parr 42:35 It's, it's a pretty funny name. And- Like I've known, dude, I've known people who have done this. So they get a job at Facebook and Google, and so they'll... And they call it J1 and J2. And so they'll post like advice like, "Hey, so my J1 has me working from like, I can get it done from like 10:00 to 10:00 AM, and then J2 is like noon to 3:00. How do you people like, uh, get your manager to only put meetings for J1 in the AM?"

Nick Huber 43:00 [laughs]

Sam Parr 43:00 Or something like that. And it's crazy. And I've known a guy who had a job at Facebook and Google, 250,000 or something like crazy for each job, so it was... And they'll say like, "So total income is 600,000. That's broken up with J1 at 200,000, J2 at 300,000." And 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, 'cause that's unethical." It's not illegal, but I wouldn't like that if someone 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 if someone told me they read Antiwork or Overemployed, I'd be like, "Okay. Why? Tell me, what do you learn?"

Nick Huber 43:39 It, it goes really-

Sam Parr 43:40 And so I-

Nick Huber 43:41 It goes really deep. As I'm diving into this stuff on RecruitJet and learning how recruiting companies work, and I've talked to probably 15 recruiters in the past month and just asked them w- you know, what about... There are people who will literally show up to an 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 trying to get-

Sam Parr 43:59 No way. No way.

Nick Huber 44:01 Yes. Yes.

Sam Parr 44:02 Tell me, tell me about that. So what happens?

Nick Huber 44:04 If you're... So you're a recruiter. Somebody hires you to go place a tech position. You're a technical recruiter. You're gonna find somebody to, to work for Google for 250 grand a year. You're gonna go in and you're gonna sort through LinkedIn, you're gonna bring in 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 a software developer. And you literally can talk to them on the phone, and that can't do it because then they can wire in somebody else to talk if you, if you-

Sam Parr 44:28 And that's why they do that? They, that's why they do video is for that reason?

Nick Huber 44:32 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 y- and their voice is not really the one talking, and it's people who are trying to get more than one freaking job. Crazy.

Sam Parr 44:50 That's ridiculous. That's, that's, that's kind of amazing. And, and, and like there's some way... You gotta look at it from a like that's sleazy, don't do that, but also you're like that's pretty amazing, you know?

Nick Huber 45:00 [laughs]

Sam Parr 45:00 It's like a lot of my, my sleazy friends in high school, they would like pay someone to take the ACT for them. And I remember thinking like, "I don't know, man, that's pretty, that's almost as impressive as actually doing a good job."

Nick Huber 45:12 [laughs]

Sam Parr 45:13 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."

Nick Huber 45:19 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.

Sam Parr 45:29 We had, um, we had this guy named Michael Harris. Michael Harris founded Death Row Records. You know Death Row? They like created Tupac, Dr. Dre, NWA. Like, they basically invented like modern hip hop or they invented like gangster rap. It's probably-

Nick Huber 45:42 They were the marketing, they were the marketing machine behind those guys, right?

Sam Parr 45:45 Yeah. And so Michael Harris partnered with Suge Knight. And Michael Harris did it from prison. He was serving, um, 25 to life. He got in trouble for attempted murder, which eventually he got exonerated by Trump two years ago and he got let out. But he served 30 years, partially on death row. And the other charge that he was convicted of that I think he, I, I, um, he admitted to doing was he was selling at times $2 million a day of cocaine, of crack. And he was talking about it and he was like, "Once I started getting all that money coming in, I started realizing like I also need to go legit and do things the right way." And so 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 cashflow from it, so like I, I definitely profited off of it." But he bought buildings, he started a limo company. He, um, eventually Death Row was bringing in like north of 100 million in revenue, 'cause CDs at the time were $19 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." But, uh-

Nick Huber 46:55 I think the-

Sam Parr 46:56 He was like-

Nick Huber 46:56 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, delegating, writing, it can work in any business. Once you learn these skills, I could put Sam Parr and I could take him and I could drop him in a grocery store chain, and I guarantee you you would thrive. I guarantee you 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, um, 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.

Sam Parr 47:34 You're, 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, uh... The few times it does work is when there's like a Ryan Reynolds. You see Ryan Reynolds, uh, sold Mint Mobile today for like 1.5 billion or 2 bil- whatever it was, and then like last year he sold, what was his-

Nick Huber 48:04 His, his liquor

Sam Parr 48:04 ... Avian?

Nick Huber 48:05 His liquor, yeah.

Sam Parr 48:05 Avione or Avione 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 it. I have no idea. And I have no i- 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?

Nick Huber 48:49 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 I've- we've started in the past year. Um-

Sam Parr 49:01 What, what will the collective revenue of those be, do you think, in 2024?

Nick Huber 49:05 Okay, so w- you want me to make a prediction, and then we can come back on and test it, actually. So I think RE Cost Seg will be doing 500 grand a month or s- or so in EBITDA.

Sam Parr 49:16 In 12, in, in, in 12 months?

Nick Huber 49:18 In, um, in the year 2024. At the end of 2024, we'll look back on the year, and I think it'll do 2.5 million in EBITDA probably. So-

Sam Parr 49:27 Okay

Nick Huber 49:27 ... um, Web Run, I think-

Sam Parr 49:31 On what top line?

Nick Huber 49:32 Okay. Th- 30% margins, so whatever that math is.

Sam Parr 49:38 Okay.

Nick Huber 49:38 Web Run I think will be 30 or 40%.

Sam Parr 49:40 So get- g- g- g- getting close to 10 million in, in sales.

Nick Huber 49:43 Yep, yep. I think RE Cost Seg will be really big in the year 2024, so 18 months from now, like trailing. Um, Titan Risk, the ins- the commercial risk property insurance company, I think that one will do three million in sales at a 50, 50% margin probably for insurance brokerage company.

Sam Parr 50:01 Okay.

Nick Huber 50:01 Um, Web Run I think will be doing 200 grand a month, uh, uh, of revenue, so maybe 70 to 100 grand a month of profit. Um, Recruit Jet I think will be a big company. I think Recruit Jet will be five million of EBIT- of revenue and three million of EBITDA. That's recruitjet.com.

Sam Parr 50:23 Okay, so collectively you're, you're in the six million profit range or something like that. Seven million, I forget.

Nick Huber 50:29 Yep.

Sam Parr 50:30 What would, what, what-

Nick Huber 50:31 Blue Key, 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 10, another 5 to 10 million of revenue as well. Pretty good margins with a small team.

Sam Parr 50:43 And would you... So, uh, 2.5 million for Cost Seg, what would that be valued at? Could it be as high as 10 times profit?

Nick Huber 50:51 No, I don't think so. Cost Seg is, uh, politically dependent. You know, if, if bonus depreciation rules go up and down, it changes the demand for cost segs, right? So I think three to four times EBITDA would probably be the value of that company. Wouldn't be worth selling.

Sam Parr 51:06 So pr- so the cash flow's 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.

Nick Huber 51:17 This is, this is what I-

Sam Parr 51:19 Uh, 10 or 20 times profit.

Nick Huber 51:20 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 EV in web development." And my entire thesis is screw EV. EV will come. I wanna be making money every single month and 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.

Sam Parr 51:51 But to play devil's advocate here, when I was first starting to hustle, I was doing the math, and I was like, "Wherever I wanna be by the age of 30," so in five years after starting or four years after starting, you have to make a ton of profit. Like selling a company, if you can get 10 or 15 times earnings or three or four times revenue, that's a huge, that's a huge number. And for a lot of businesses it's not impossible to get that. You know, you need some type of recurring revenue and a really big market and fast growth. But like to make like 20 to $50 million or significantly higher, my argument is it's way easier to get there by selling.

Nick Huber 52:32 Mm.

Sam Parr 52:32 Selling to get capital gains. There's a lot of people who have done it, like Andrew Wilkinson's company is just like killing it, and so he's doing it through cash flow. Um, but if you like do the math-

Nick Huber 52:43 Val.

Sam Parr 52:43 Val. Yeah, my friend Val is doing it, but he also sold a company.

Nick Huber 52:47 Yeah, he did.

Sam Parr 52:47 He sold a company, uh-

Nick Huber 52:49 Mm-hmm

Sam Parr 52:49 ... he sold two of them for tens of millions of dollars. I- my opinion is, and, uh, 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.

Nick Huber 53:06 Mm-hmm. That's my problem, Sam, is I've never sold, I haven't sold a company right now. I've never, I've never sold something to create a massive liquidity event. So I don't have-

Sam Parr 53:13 But would you?

Nick Huber 53:14 Yeah, I, I think I would. Um, the, the-

Sam Parr 53:16 I mean, un- un- unless you work in finance, maybe like in your, one of your company, two of your companies are financey related. Unless you work in finance, I think it's hard to get a significant amount of income. But like, I don't know, like Donald Trump claims to have done it. Like a bunch of people have claimed to have done it through r- through real estate and finance, but I think it's hard through a product, a product based company-

Nick Huber 53:36 If you can really-

Sam Parr 53:37 ... or service

Nick Huber 53:38 ... 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, look, I live in a, I live in a house that I bought for $290,000. I drive a truck that's worth about 12 grand. Um, like if I can just not buy a private plane or a $4 million 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 train now where it's-

Sam Parr 54:00 But how do you, but how are you not like, like, you know, desire is also like evil, you know, when it comes to this stuff. Like when you want shit, you suffer. And so like I know a lot of people that are really wealthy, and every once in a while I fall into this trap where I'm like five years ago if I knew, if, if I- my f- my five y- you know, my 25-year-old, if they knew where I was today, they'd be like, "Oh, you're fine." And then I get to where I am now, and I'm like, "Oh, but there's another step," or what about a 10 or $20 million home, or what about, uh, having a warehouse full of cars, or what about doing this or that or owning a sports team? Like okay, you need more.

Nick Huber 54:39 Mm-hmm.

Sam Parr 54:39 You don't desire things, or a $50,000 watch or something.

Nick Huber 54:42 Of course I do, man. Of course I do. I really want a airplane. I really want a PC-12, and that's my goal is to have a-

Sam Parr 54:48 How much is that?

Nick Huber 54:49 It's a $5 million airplane I wanted it to-

Sam Parr 54:52 And to fly yourself?

Nick Huber 54:53 Eight-

Sam Parr 54:53 Pretty good for-

Nick Huber 54:53 It would fly my family, it'd fly my nanny, um, and we could go from here to LA without stopping for gas. Um, like that's-

Sam Parr 55:00 That's your goal

Nick Huber 55:00 ... that's a goal of mine, but-

Sam Parr 55:03 But why own it w- instead of re- I knew a guy, I know a guy who bought a jet for $16 million during the pandemic when he had just sold the company for 100 million bucks. He owned it for six months, and he was like, "What the hell am I doing with this?"

Nick Huber 55:12 Mm-hmm.

Sam Parr 55:13 And he ended up selling it for 20 million. He goes, "I made a profit on it," which was lucky. But it was looking like a horrible financ- financial decision 'cause I'd have spent all this money to store it.

Nick Huber 55:21 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sam Parr 55:21 A- and it was like it was the stupidest thing ever.

Nick Huber 55:23 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 it'd be really nice to have an airplane. But yeah, I'm, I'm not gonna do it. 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 battle with it every day, man. I mean, it's really easy to spend a lot of money.

Sam Parr 56:00 But you want stuff. What, what's your, what's your dream number?

Nick Huber 56:04 Like, as far as personal net worth?

Sam Parr 56:06 Yeah.

Nick Huber 56:08 If I'm making a million dollars a month, I think I can then do whatever I want.

Sam Parr 56:12 Isn't that funny? I, but I bet you would've thought that 10 years ago if you are where you are now, you could do whatever you want.

Nick Huber 56:18 If somebody would've told me five years ago that when I retire I am where I am right now, I would've given them a thumbs-up and, and said, "I'm happy. Please make that happen." So-

Sam Parr 56:30 Dude, the goal- the goalpost always changes

Nick Huber 56:31 ... it's so, it's so hard, man, and it's easy for me to cry and say, "Oh, 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 I'll tennis or pickleball or airplanes, whatever, and I'll just get really, really, really into it, and then it's onto the next thing. It's onto the next thing, onto 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?

Sam Parr 57:13 Um, I'm very disciplined, I think f- uh, compared, c- compared to a lot of people, I'm, I think I, I have a, I'm, I'm fairly disciplined. I think I, uh, we spend anywhere from... When we're in Austin, I spend $15,000 a month or so.

Nick Huber 57:32 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sam Parr 57:32 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 'cause it's a school night. We say, we go, "It's a school night. We're not going out." Um, I live in a house that was, is under a million dollars, or I paid on, well under a million dollars, so which in Austin, um, um-

Nick Huber 57:52 Mm-hmm

Sam Parr 57:52 ... it's kinda hard to find that stuff. But, um, 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, you're gonna drive yourself crazy." Uh-

Nick Huber 58:05 Mm-hmm

Sam Parr 58:05 ... and so, like, I do always want more stuff. Um-

Nick Huber 58:09 Yeah, me too

Sam Parr 58:10 ... and I 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, admires it, 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 20 million bucks maybe. Like, I, I, and, and it's a pointless thing because when you die, you don't get any of it. But, uh-

Nick Huber 58:37 Yeah

Sam Parr 58:38 ... uh, so-

Nick Huber 58:39 I, I got a funny story. I ordered-

Sam Parr 58:41 Yeah

Nick Huber 58:41 ... I ordered a lot of bourbon lately, like high-end bourbon. Like, the past few years-

Sam Parr 58:45 How much is a fancy thing of bourbon?

Nick Huber 58:47 Um, the most expensive bottle was like $7,500. And this is gonna make me sound ridiculous.

Sam Parr 58:51 You paid for a 7500...

Nick Huber 58:52 This is-

Sam Parr 58:53 You bought a $7,500... Does it taste any different? What's it do?

Nick Huber 58:55 This is me being vulnerable.

Sam Parr 58:57 [laughs]

Nick Huber 58:57 Don't... I, I 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 $1,200. 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 ob- obnoxious to some people but aren't really that obnoxious. So I got some really nice bourbon, some bottles that are really special. And then I got them. I'm looking at them in my bar, and I send a text to, like, four of my boys, and I'm like, "Hey, come over. Let's try some bourbon." And nobody can come over that night.

Sam Parr 59:35 They can't come and hang out.

Nick Huber 59:36 Nobody can come hang out.

Sam Parr 59:37 There's, there's n-

Nick Huber 59:37 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 matters."

Sam Parr 59:49 [laughs]

Nick Huber 59:49 It's 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 a distraction. It sounds cliche because everybody says that, but it hit me when I was looking at that bourbon, and I'm like, "My parents, my dad loves bourbon. He's seven hours away. My brother's nine hours away. He's not here. Sam Parr doesn't drink alcohol. He can't come over with me."

Sam Parr 1:00:17 [laughs]

Nick Huber 1:00:19 You know what I mean? It just hit me.

Sam Parr 1:00:21 Yeah. Does a $7,500 bottle taste any different than a $50 bottle?

Nick Huber 1:00:25 I haven't opened it yet. It's the Michter's 20 Year.

Sam Parr 1:00:28 Does a $1,000 bottle taste any different?

Nick Huber 1:00:31 You know, I think it does because [laughs] it sounds ridiculous. No, it doesn't, Sam. It doesn't. It fucking doesn't. [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:00:37 [laughs] It's just a Pokemon card. It, it doesn't-

Nick Huber 1:00:40 It's a ego thing, man. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a weak man who is after the ego sometimes, and I gotta stay... I just gotta remind myself of that.

Sam Parr 1:00:48 It doesn't matter, does it?

Nick Huber 1:00:50 Not even matching

Sam Parr 1:00:50 Dude, I, I bought, like, a decent car, and that makes me happier. But besides that, most, most items don't, um-

Nick Huber 1:00:58 And what am I gonna do? Like, in- invite somebody cool over? There's a couple pro golfers in town that I'm friendly with, and I keep saying, like, "Come over and drink some of my nice bourbon." And what am I 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... Like, it's so fucking dumb. Like, I'm such an idiot. [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:01:15 I don't think it's dumb. Where, where do you... Where do you, uh, buy this from? And you, you do cigars too. Those are-

Nick Huber 1:01:21 Yeah

Sam Parr 1:01:21 ... those can be expensive too, right?

Nick Huber 1:01:21 I, those are, like, so those are, those are two of my hobbies. It's cigars and bourbon, 'cause my, share them both with my dad, and golf. Um-

Sam Parr 1:01:27 Can you be any more of a stereotype?

Nick Huber 1:01:28 [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:01:30 Golly.

Nick Huber 1:01:31 But my house is so weak. Like, it's literally sitting on... The bourbon is sitting on a, a $200 really shitty cabinet that I got from Home Depot when I redid [laughs] my basement. But, um, no, a guy over in Carrollton, Georgia, I'm his biggest customer, and every year he gets the releases and drives it over to me, and I give him an envelope full of a lot of cash.

Sam Parr 1:01:50 You got a guy.

Nick Huber 1:01:50 Yeah. [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:01:51 Dude, I love having hobbies where you got a guy. That's the best. That's the best.

Nick Huber 1:01:55 It is kinda fun.

Sam Parr 1:01:55 Well, um, I appreciate you doing this. We had a good episode. Um, what, anything you wanna, you wanna pimp out or promote?

Nick Huber 1:02:04 Um, a lot of people ask me where they could invest with Bolt Storage, and real estate's really slow. But you can go to, uh, boltstorage.com/investors if you're an 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 the stuff we're talking about, like what makes somebody-

Sam Parr 1:02:19 How many subscribers do you have on that?

Nick Huber 1:02:21 I'm up to 42,000.

Sam Parr 1:02:22 Damn.

Nick Huber 1:02:22 I'm working it really hard. I'm adding, like, 600 a month. It's kinda, kinda weak. But, uh, I, I write a lot, about a lot of this, like what makes a 10X'er? How do you think about this stuff? How do you think about hiring, management, like, getting this, these teams together? So if you go to, if you go to my Twitter @sweatystartup, there's a little link in my bio, and you can join my, join my newsletter.

Sam Parr 1:02:40 All right. We appreciate you. Thanks for doing this. [upbeat music]