You're Overthinking It. Here’s the Simple Way to Start (ft. Nick Huber)

If you got no money, you got no job, no experience, no skills, go clean something, man. There's a lot that's dirty out there that you can clean. You can make 50 bucks an hour doing it.

We bend over backwards trying to think of really creative, innovative ideas when the obvious ones are usually the right ones.

I got my first 7,000 customers without paying for any marketing. I got up at 7:30 and I went to the bridge and I wrote five chalk advertisements on that bridge. Every single day. We got 40 plus signups. Life in business is not an Olympic gymnastics routine. You can get paid really well to jump over two foot bars over and over and over again. So why would you try to high jump 8ft?

All right, if you spend any time on Twitter, you've probably seen Nick Huber, AKA sweaty startup. He is infamous on Twitter for going viral for all kinds of random things. He likes to poke the bear, he likes to be a troll. But he also has really good content about starting sweaty startups and businesses. Not to mention he owns about a hundred million dollars of self storage real estate alongside investors. And he also owns about eight different businesses. He's a starter, a serial entrepreneur, much like myself, and he has some really interesting takes about starting and growing businesses. And he's an interesting, controversial, smart person that I look up to in the business world. And so we covered all kinds of stuff in this. His insecurities, his doubts, how he raises his family, what he's building, what businesses he'd like to be building. But he's too focused on his current businesses. We covered a wide spectrum of topics here today and he just released a book called the Sweaty Startup. So go ahead and check that out and I hope you enjoy. How would you describe yourself?

Man, I'm an opportunist with a lot of ambition and I put a lot of stress on myself.

Yeah, I feel that. I feel like people shy away from the word opportunist, but I call myself that as well. I mean, that's what I am. But people cringe at that.

The whole concept of my book is a major theme of it is to kind of just be like water, right? Be at the top of a mountain. If you pour out a cup of water, it's going to find the quickest, easiest way down. People do hard things and life in business is not a Olympic gymnastics routine. It's a, you know, you can get paid really well to jump over two foot bars over and over and over again. So why would you try to high jump eight feet?

Yeah, and I know you're not a fan of people going all in on stupid sports. So like that's a big argument out there. Focus on one thing verse all do chase all the rabbits. I have very strong feelings about it. Where are you at man?

I'm blessed to be in a situation where I have three really, really good businesses. It's you know, power law. I started 10 +. So bolt storage is just going to be a really powerful machine with time because it's really tax efficient. It's a business that if you manage these properties well, if you lease units well, if you do good marketing, if you have the right people in there, time takes care of a lot man. And like all of a sudden five years go by in the real estate business and it's really, really powerful. Yeah. So re cost seg is also just kind of exploding. 50 plus employees did almost $800,000 last month of revenue. And then somewhere is my, you know, I'd say it's my main focus at the moment is pretty good opportunity to build a really, really big company I think.

Yeah. So those are like the big three and then you've got others that you're.

Titan Risk, the insurance business. We got Bolt Builders which is like a construction consulting business. Ad Rhino, Bold SEO, Webron, you know the list. But yeah, it's definitely a power law with kind of what starts to go and where your energy is required.

And that's an interesting point because I mean power law is a thing and for someone that's going all in on one thing, they'll never have an opportunity to even experience the power law because the statistical chance that that one thing is the thing that will move the needle is 5%. How do you even know what that thing is unless you try a bunch of things?

And luckily the power law exists in business as well. Like you're going to try, you're going to hire 10 people and two of them are going to be just a massive, massive needle movers for your business. You're going to try 10 different ways to market and two of them are going to click. You got to be constantly trying a lot of things and putting yourself out there. And I guess if you describe me in one word it's like irrationally confident as a kid. I'm assuming you're similar where looking back at my 20 year old self I'm like oh my gosh, it's cringe. It's almost cringe worthy how confident and arrogant I was. But if I didn't have that then there's no freaking way I Would have tried to do the things that I have since tried to do, because nobody's going to give you permission to go buy a bunch of real estate or start a company or buy a company.

Yeah. When it comes to confidence, what percentage of that would you say, speaking to you specifically? What percentage of that is nature versus nurture in your case, would you guess?

My dad is one of the most irrationally positive people I've ever met. Never been to a bad restaurant, always happy, always super excited. You can't let him interview anybody in any of my businesses because he just wants to hire everybody. You know, he's. He's just a super uplifting, positive person. So after the basketball games in high school, so it's a mix between nature and nurture. Like, I am my dad a half blood, but I got in the car after a basketball game and he would just build me up. Where I've heard stories from my friends of them getting in a car after a basketball game and their dad telling them how they didn't try hard and they didn't go after the ball over here and, you know, just tearing them down. So he built me up and made me feel like I could do anything, which, you know, I guess so it's half and half, maybe. I don't know.

Yeah. It's interesting you say that, because as you talk about those dads that tear their kids down, I'm remembering very specific dads that I like, of people that I wrestled with. And I'm thinking of the kids that I wrestled with who had dads like that. And I don't think any of them really turned out okay. Like, I think there's a correlation there. My dad was very positive, too, and my mom.

You got married and had. You got married at 16, right? Had your first kid?

No, I got married at 21.

21. So young.

Yeah. Yeah. But then I had four kids between 23 and 29.

Unbelievable.

And I'm done.

So unbelievable. Yeah, I'm super passionate about that. And I think the Sweaty Startup is kind of a. A title that'll get people in who want to start a company and think startup, but it's really a guide on how to make money. And then a lot of little unique pieces of life advice that I have kind of that you've seen a lot of.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So speaking of that, how does. So your dad is irrationally optimistic and confident, and that's rubbed off on you. How does that play with what we see on Twitter? And a lot of which is, like, negative and critical yeah.

So when it comes to getting hate online, it is not easy to let it roll off. And it takes practice. It's a muscle to build over time. But yeah, I think the most hurtful stuff is when like pretty. It's not the anons, it's not the crazy people, it's the folks who, you know, kind of have a little bit of a pot. You know, they are somebody that you maybe, that maybe has some, you know, pull in a, in a community. And then when they start, yeah, getting all over you, that's when it's harder to let it roll off. But overall I feel very blessed. Like the last year on the Internet with some of the madness going on with Chris Powers and me and some of the others was craziness. But in general the Internet has added so much value to my life that I can take it. How do you feel about it? Cause you get a little bit of hate too.

Yeah, I do. And it's just like, I think I agree with you where the people that I don't respect their hate doesn't really bother me. But I think sometimes when the hate does bother me is because I know there's some truth buried in that that makes me feel insecure, you know, and it makes me self reflect, even if it's an anonymous person at times. But I care probably a lot more than you do about what people think. And so that I run things through more of a filter, which I probably shouldn't on the Internet. And I'm getting better about, about caring less. But that is one way I'm different.

I think it's natural. Like as any human being with confidence and an ego, it's really hard. Like you can say that you don't care what people think, but it's a lie, especially the right people. Right?

Yeah.

So yeah, it's a balance. It's a balance between having the self confidence and trust. And with that comes some, you know, with 10 years of doing this and five years of putting it on the Internet, I have more confidence and trust in myself so I can kind of push through. But yeah, it's, it does matter what people think. So if it doesn't hurt, people are lying.

Yeah, I mean the best way to build confidence is to do cool things and to like be successful and be proud of yourself. You can't like, like you can fake it to a point, but it only gets you so far. You actually have to go do cool things worth being confident about.

Yeah. And the network grows with that. I mean, it's hilarious to see These, you know, college networking events where all the kids run around saying help me, help me, help me, help me. When in reality the best way to build a network is to get really freaking good at something. Like nobody cared to know Nick Huber or who I was until I had bought those first 10 self storage facilities and they thought that they could gain something from me. So an important realization for me and a kind of shift in my career was understanding that every single person in the world is selfish. They're selfish. Like what's in it for me from. From my wife is married me. Is. Has married me because she thinks I'm a good leader of our family and I'm decent to be around to my business partner who is a business partner of mine because he thinks he pays me less in my percentage of the cash flow than value I add to the businesses on down to the employees to everybody else. So that mindset shift has been massive for me. Just realizing that hey, it's not about you give other people what they want.

Yeah. And if everyone is inherently selfish, then how can we leverage that? That's kind of what you're saying.

Beautiful thing about this world is there's abundance everywhere and you can set up win win relationships where two selfish people who you know, have morals and best interests in mind obviously can get together and you know, one plus one equals four.

Do you ever delete tweets and or two part question. Has there ever been a tweet that you specifically can think of that you just regret putting out there to the world?

I think I made a Tweet back in 2019 or 20 when I first got on about how organic farming is and it's like reducing productivity. We're not getting enough crops, crop prices are going up because we're not spraying pesticides on it. And I have done a full 180 on that boy.

So just in doing more research or.

Trying to be healthy, I'm not putting glyphosate in my kids bodies if I can help it. And I'm trying to avoid it at all costs. And I'm realizing that it's pretty terrible. But that's just one area. I change my mind on stuff all the time, man. This business will humble you. And just when you think you are rocking and you cannot be stopped and everything is happening for you, man, it'll bring you down. It'll bring you down to the depths. So that's the beautiful thing about it is that it's hard. It's hard for everybody.

I know, I can think Back to very specific times in my career where I've thought, oh my gosh, like, I'm done. Like, this is the best ever. Like, I cracked the code, I figured it out. Or my stocks are just crushing, or this crypto is just crushing, or this company. Like we turn the corner and like, as soon as I have that thought, it's a, it's like a signal to things are going to get bad now every single time.

And then there's also this wild thing about business that you can feel like you're toiling away at something for five years and nothing has happened. I've been working on this, I've been blocking, I've been tackling. Maybe it's a year or two years with some shorter duration investments or things that we're after in life. And then bam, all of a sudden, in a matter of days and weeks, it can feel like you just broke through and it happened and it clicked. And I think that's the adrenaline rush and the endorphin rush that keeps me just so addicted to building companies and bringing people together and hiring and, you know, just business. It's fun as hell.

I know. The hard part is knowing, like, is it should I pivot at this point or is it worth continuing to toil and grind on this one project or initiative or company? Do you have a framework for, for knowing when to pivot and when to cut bait and when to triple down?

One thing that I've gotten really good at by having a lot of balls in the air, whether it be writing a book, having three companies and a lot of people that are depending on me doing a house remodel while also having a baby. Like, I was in the starting blocks in college for the Ivy League championships, trying to win an Ivy League championship. And after that I was answering customer service calls for my storage company. And that night I took who was my future wife, out on a date. So it's like I've always had a lot of things that I'm very focused on. And so I have learned over time to be very good at picking like the lowest hanging fruit that I must focus on to move the business forward. And now it's as I get involved in bigger companies like somewhere.com, you have to look at divisions of the company, like the sales team. What is the one thing on the sales team that we can do to move the sales team forward? What is the most important thing in the finance division that we should focus on? What's the one most important thing in the recruiting org that we can do to improve the business. And you just keep piling those things on, keep your people focused. Intuition, almost. Just know what's worth doing. It's really hard, though. I don't know that there's a equation for it. How do you think about balancing everything?

Good question. I just had a different podcast a couple hours ago where he asked me about this, and I like to think of it as, like, increasing your baseline for stress. And the analogy I would make is, like, you've got a hostess at a Manhattan restaurant, hottest restaurant in Manhattan. They're slammed 24 7, and to get her stressed, you need, like, a guy to have a heart attack. And then you've got, like, a restaurant in the Midwest that, like, you know, they're. They're steady and maybe a big party comes in and they get stressed out.

Yeah.

And, like, most people have no idea what their baseline is for stress because they just live this normal 9 to 5, and it's like, oh, you want me to come over? Oh, geez, I got to do the laundry. Then, like, they just don't know what they're capable of because they haven't said yes to enough things. And you and I, like, we're saying yes to so many things. We're overburdening ourselves to the point of exhaustion.

Things are going wrong.

Yes. After five or seven years, we're like, holy crap, I get a lot done in a day. Like, a lot. A lot of stuff fell off because it wasn't important. And that's a signal that it wasn't important. But you just have to increase your baseline for stress before you know what you're capable of.

I think stress and decision making are muscles. There's no. And delegation, too. Like the three. The three core cornerstone attributes of an entrepreneur. Being able to handle stress, being able to make good decisions, and then actually being able to delegate and tell people what to do. None of that can be learned in the book. If you want to put on muscle, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, you're not going to go. Read about Arnold. Watch a bunch of videos, build your plan, order your protein. No, you got to go to the gym and lift the weights. I think those things are exactly the same because the things that got me stressed early in my career, our everyday occurrences today as the stakes go up.

Paul Graham has this essay that I love that's called Makers versus Managers. Have you read that?

No.

He just talks about how, like, in the business world, there's two types of people. Picture, like, a coder sitting in a dark Room, just building code and he's got the whole day open and you put one meeting on his calendar and he's just thrown off. And then you've got, that's a maker, right? Then you've got a manager who's just like, they want their calendar full, they want meeting after meeting after meeting because it makes them feel productive and busy and you know, their default setting is like, just put something on my calendar, put something on my calendar. If that's a spectrum, where would you put yourself? Because if you have three businesses that are all growing, you kind of fall into the manager role whether you like it or not. Where would you put yourself?

I definitely not a natural manager where I just want to have, you know, 30 meetings a week on my calendar. And I know a lot of folks like that who can be effective that way for sure. I like to think about obviously monthly meetings and check ins on my businesses where I feel like the team has clear direction. If every team has clear direction and they know exactly what to work on, and I agree with that, I'm good to let them run. Hey, come to me when you have a problem. But I'm definitely not a natural manager on that spectrum. What about you?

I'm like a maker through and through. Like I want my calendar to have nothing on it and even if that means all of my businesses are smaller as a result, right? Like, I just want to work on a bunch of stuff and tinker and scheme and toy around. That's just fun for me. I'm planning a keynote for SM Bash and it's about the role of a CEO. And I've got two quotes for you and I want to, I want to know where you stand. So one is Andrew Wilkinson and this is his tweet from 2020, March 2020. He says, As a CEO, your job is to actually do nothing. CEOs who perform duties within their companies are failing. Your job is to set strategy and culture, delegate and incentivize. Same goes for executives. You are just more, more focused. Many CEOs who report up, so that's Andrew Wilkinson and then you got Michael Gurdley who says, hire smart people, leave them alone. Terrible advice. Where do you stand? Too smart people, opposite advice.

Both of them more successful than me probably. But in my opinion, to be an effective manager, you have to be able to get in a meeting and tell people what to do. You can't do that if you don't know what it's like on the front row. So in somewhere, like, I know how to recruit I know how to recruit almost any person. I know how to get in our software. I know how to look at their profiles. I know how to move them along in our sourcing. I know how to request a video because I wrote the email that we send to a candidate to request a video. I wrote all the templates that my recruiters are using to present candidates to clients. Yesterday at 4:30 I got on and coached for an hour our sales team because I took 20 sales calls over the last month. That's where I stand.

Well, to me it's very clear where you are on that spectrum. Then I won't share my screen. But the slide is like how it started and then it's Andrew Wilkinson's quote and then it's how it's going and it's his stock price from 2020 to today is down 30%.

That's doing somebody dirty though.

I'm not trying to do him dirty. I like Andrew Wilkinson. I agree with 95% of what he says. But I read that quote of his and I read it to my CEO at the time back in 2020 and his name was Matt. And I was like, you need to be a router. You need to be a router of information. You need to put people in the right place, put them in the right seat on the bus, let them do their job. And you know what happened after that? It sucked. Everything tanked. And I forgot about that quote. And then a year or two later we were talking and he's like, dude, you just, you told me that like if I'm a good CEO, I shouldn't have any do. And I'm like, oh my gosh. So like, I think there's merit to both of them. But I think with Andrew Wilkinson's advice.

Generally speaking, how big was the business in revenue and headcount when it was.

An $8 million yearly revenue business? Top line.

I think we may be speaking to just like playing different games when you're trying to run a hundred million dollar company. And I don't know how, how big, you know, Andrew's companies are, but when you're trying to run a really big company, I can see that like it's really hard to get in the front row and the, and the CEO has no business flipping a burger. But all of my companies, I have to know how the job works and figure out how to do it and then tell everybody what to do it and keep moving up the chain.

Yeah, I like to say is like a CEO should know what all the weeds are. But not spend his day in the weeds, you know, But I think most CEOs don't even know what the weeds are. They're too far removed from it. And they're like, well, I'm the CEO, right? So.

And I think another thing, I think.

You'Re doing it right.

You really have to. It's my job. And then it's our job, and then it's your job. People delegate too fast. A lot of CEOs delegate too fast. And COOs, meaning a problem comes in, they know the solution. They're just going to send a quick message. No meeting necessary. No meetings at my company. I'm just going to tell somebody quickly what to do. No follow up, no holding them accountable, no walking them through it, no watching them. For a couple months, my head of ops at Somewhere was cc'd on every recruiting email because you can't see what's happening. You don't know what's happening unless you're really in the trenches.

One of the things I told my CEO this was a Shopify business and I said, I want you to turn on notifications for all of our orders. And he's like, what? That would blow my phone up. I'm like, you need to see. Like, you just need to see. You need to stay top of mind on the size of the orders, the name of the person ordering, because it was E commerce, but it was B2B, so there were bigger orders. And you just need to have your finger on the pulse of it. And in that business, with that method, it was just a good way of doing that.

So that's what AI is overblown, in my opinion. But there's one thing it's really good at, it's quality control. And I can get an AI notification in my Slack channel every time a client sends my recruiter negative feedback. And me, as the owner of the business, can see and read where my company's getting negative feedback. Critical, critical. If I was just ignoring that, burying my head in the sand, I wouldn't know what to do to improve everything.

Yeah, I try to, like, unsubscribe from as many notifications as I can, but for our businesses that have Google my business profiles, I get emails every time we get a review. 1-45-star, it doesn't matter. And that's a really good way of keeping your finger on it as well. I'm glad you brought up AI. I have two tweets from you and I. I've watched your stance on AI change over the years. January 2023, you said I'm very bearish on AI. Now that's taken out of context. It was a longer tweet than that. And then November 2024 you said, I don't think AI will change the world like they think it will. So it's like you're kind of moving down the line. Where are you today on AI and how are you using it?

I am following it very closely because I have 15 million of overhead at my companies, mostly labor. If I can do anything to reduce that, that's a dollar in my or my investor's pockets.

So video is cool. But you know what's better? Long form audio via podcast and my newsletter tkopod.com go there to subscribe for free to my newsletter. It's one email a week, very tactical. And then go to my audio podcast, three episodes a week. Stuff like this you're gonna love. No sleazy sales pitch. Tkopod.com I would be foolish as an.

A business owner to not try to figure out what tools I can do to make everybody more efficient. So I've demoed, I've demoed 20 to 30 AI tools over the last six months that all of them had a wow factor, pop that original like shock factor that AI gives. And I've tried to implement about eight of them into my company and seven of them were total giant pain in today right now. So AI is a massive risk to what I'm doing at somewhere placing, hiring people. Is it a risk because we're already, you know, developing AI training modules and we're getting all our executive assistants trained on AI and making them more powerful and even more competitive against the US based employee. So is it the US based employee that's at risk or is it the international employee? That can be argued. But when people like Andrew Wilkinson say that AI is going to crush my business, a mentor of mine, I call him and say, hey, what's this? What's going on? How's it, what do you, how do you see this playing out? And he says your business isn't going to exist five years from now. I'd be pretty foolish not to pay attention, but massively underwhelming from a delivery standpoint today. And also I'm just generally a skeptic because Elon Musk has been telling me full self driving is coming to the road near me for 20 years. He's saying it's coming in two years. He's been saying that for 20 years.

It's the same principle. The last mile is as hard as the first 99 with anything you do. Right. Getting it across the finish line. Are there any specific tools that you're using outside of chat GPT that you're you, you are enthused by?

Yeah, but I don't know if I want to say because one of them is, one of them is pretty awesome and adding a lot of value, but I know that's fine. I have competitors crawling everywhere.

You have to tell me offline then.

Yeah, I will, I will. And is it a game changer? Is it a total game changer? No. But is it making my team better and more efficient? Absolutely.

I'm like all in on AI.

Right.

But I'm also, you were right about Web3. You were just like, Web3 is overblown. We're not living in the metaverse. And I was with you on that and you were right. Right. And crypto NFTs. I feel like AI is kind of the. Along the same lines but different, like more transformative than all those. But I tweeted a week ago, I was like, please someone tell me how are you using an AI agent every single day? Like specifically, what are you doing? Because. And then I put a screenshot of all the companies that have raised eight figures on AI agents, mostly sales agents. And I said, I've, I've looked at these, I've demoed these. I don't know a one person, myself included. I use Zapier, I use Gumroad, you know, automations. That's not what I'm talking about. Who is actually using an agent? Not one person could tell me. So what are we doing?

Domino's is using an agent in the Philippines. When you call in your pizza, so is Papa John's. Neither of them are using an AI agent. No, no, they're using a Filipino agent like I hire.

Oh yeah, oh, I know that, I know that. Like at drive thrus you'll talk to someone in the Philippines, right?

I pay $500 for a customer in the self storage business at some of my highest rent locations, you know, blended across my portfolio well under $200. But some of them where I'm charging, you know, 300 bucks a month for a climate controlled, you know, high, high rent storage unit. I'm paying 500 bucks to fill that unit. How the hell am I going to trust an AI agent with a delay on it to rent that unit? Guys like Andrew Wilkinson make these videos on Twitter of them like talking to the AI bot Elon Musk with Rogan on February 28th. Elon spends the beginning talking to Grok I've been in rooms with CEOs saying, this is going to change everything. Here's how I talk to AI and I listen to these conversations and it's like, it's everything I can do to not laugh at this. It's like this is. I don't get any value. Where is the value? Tell me where the value is. So there's that side of it and then there's the side of it. Like it's coming, it's a tool. It's already proving to be effective inside of a couple of my companies. I'm leaning towards like, this is the lawnmower and it's going to make the landscaping companies more efficient and more money. The Internet came along and all these people who were just plugging data, working in warehouses in New York City, plugging floppy disks in and out of machines, they found other jobs.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, self driving cars were promised by 2020. It could be five more years for Tesla.

They were promised by 2015. It was promised by 2015.

Yeah. Maybe 2020 was the third deadline.

Is the roadster out yet?

You're right. I mean, the last mile takes a long time. I'm doing a total pivot here, but I'm curious how. You talk about your family a lot, which I love. How do you plan to manage wealth with raising humble kids that have normal lives?

Man, I feel so passionately about this. Thank you for asking the question. You've done a lot of research.

I think about this too. On a daily basis.

I meet kids from both camps. I meet kids who came from money, who are arrogant, they don't understand the value of a dollar, they don't add value to the world and they're just generally not great people. And then I meet kids who came from serious wealth, who are humble, who are hard workers, who add value and who have good morals and good relationships all the way around them. And I've actually been lucky enough to talk to a lot of their parents because of my reach. Now over the last few years I've been in the rooms and I've been able to talk to some of these people and be like, what's the, what's the difference? What are you doing different? And it's all a version of teaching your kid how to struggle with grace. Life is hard for everybody. It really is. Like, there's going to be travel delays, there's going to be health problems, there's going to be surprises, there's going to be sick kids, there's going to be all this hard stuff. About life. No matter how much money you have, if you can't struggle with grace, you're going to be miserable. You're going to be miserable. So what you do is you have an option as a kid for kids. Put them in a bubble and protect them from all pain, or let them go out and experiment and mess up and make mistakes when the stakes are low so that they practice their decision making, they practice their resiliency. Just like we were talking about at the beginning of the episode, getting used to the struggle. Who are hard workers, who add value and who have good morals and good relationships all the way around them. And I've actually been lucky enough to talk to a lot of their parents because of my reach. Now, over the last few years, I've been in the rooms and I've been able to talk to some of these people and be like, what's the. What's. What's the difference? What are you doing different? And it's all a version of teaching your kid how to struggle with grace. So if you give everything to your kids and you protect them from every bit of pain and make decisions for your kids, they're going to fail. Like, I went to Cornell, where half the kids on my floor's parents made it their mission to get them in Cornell. The parents sent them to private school. The parents did the homework, the parents did the essay. The parents dropped them off. The parents schedule the fricking cabs to the bars that night. Those kids didn't hack it. They never made it.

Have you heard the phrase, We've all heard helicopter parent, but lawnmower parent? It's like you just mow down everything in front of your kid to make sure they've got smooth sailing.

Oh, man, that's a good one.

It's good. You've got to make like your kids have to struggle, and it's the hardest thing in the world. You have to fight it. But it's like, I talk out of both sides of my mouth because we live in an amazing community and a big house, you know, but we, we want our kids to be humble and they have to do chores, but their chore is like, you know, bring the garbage can out from the street. It's not like go dig a ditch for eight hours. You know, they have to do their homework.

They life is hard for everybody. It really is. Like, there's going to be travel delays, there's going to be health problems, there's going to be surprises, there's going to be sick kids, there's going to be all this hard stuff about life. No matter how much money you have, if you can't struggle with grace, you're going to be miserable. Going to be miserable. So what you do is you have an option as a kid for kids, put them in a bubble and protect them from all pain.

Their screen time is limited, but I don't know, I also think, like, if you're worried about this kind of stuff, then your kids are going to do fine. It's like a self select or let.

Them go out and experiment and mess up and make mistakes when the stakes are low so that they practice their decision making, they practice their resiliency. Just like we were talking about at the beginning of the episode. Getting used to the struggle bias.

And if you don't think about it.

You'Re not intentional, then the enabling is a disaster. Like, there's people who will enable their high school kids to just become alcoholics and drug addicts. I don't, I don't understand that from like wealthy, well to do people.

Reminds me of Trump in the sense that you get eyeballs and you say stuff to get eyeballs and it works.

So if you give everything to your kids and you protect them from every bit of pain and make decisions for your kids, they're going to fail. Like, I went to Cornell where half the kids on my floor's parents made it their mission to get them in Cornell. The parents sent them to private school. The parents did the homeworks, right?

But then the other half of you is the opposite of Trump. Like, Trump would never be vulnerable, he would never be humble, he would never admit where he screwed up, ever. And that's like very strategic on work.

The parents did the essay, the parents dropped him off. The parents schedule the fricking cabs to the bars that night. Those kids didn't hack it. They never made it.

Have you heard the phrase, we've all heard helicopter parent, but lawnmower parent his part. Whereas I've heard you on Chris Powers, I've heard you like be vulnerable and open. What do you think that is? Do you. Are you intentional about your content or about that side of you, or is that just who you are? It's like you just mow down everything in front of your kid to make sure they've got smooth sailing.

Oh, yeah, look, I've told in. In the sweaty startup, when it comes out, people are gonna, people are gonna read horror stories from my time in, you know, trying to grow these companies. You know, the nights where you walk into your house, man, that's A good, like that's a good one.

It's good. You've got to make.

You're an anxious mess and you can't look at your wife. You are so stressed. I mean not too long ago I had a quarter cortisol blood test in the high 30s. I don't know if anybody tracks their cortisol. It should be like 15. Very stressed out person's 25. Mine was in the high 30s. This is stuff going on inside of companies that will shake you to your core and make you doubt everything and humble you. And any, any business owner who does big things and acts like that stuff doesn't happen is just, that's, that's a lie. It's not really what it is. Why would I try to like your.

Kids have to struggle and it's the hardest thing in the world. You have to fight it.

But lie about what it's like to be a business owner. When I'm, I'm on the Internet trying to convince people to be entrepreneurs, I'm writing books about trying.

It's like I talk out of both sides of my mouth because we live in an amazing community and a big house, you know, but we, we want our kids to be humble and they have to do chores, but their chore.

Is like, you know, they convince people to be entrepreneurs. Total disservice. To skip the hard stuff.

Yeah, yeah. It's a trade off. Sometimes I wish I had a boss that would just tell me what to do. And I just had a paycheck every two weeks. I don't, but I do, you know?

Yeah, yeah. When things are working, man. And right now, like several of my companies, things are just working and it makes the good days better for sure. When there's hard days.

How do you balance the mindset of when it comes to starting a business? On, on one hand, my messaging is always like, just freaking do it. Like anyone can start a business. It's approachable. Yes, it's hard. It's bring the garbage can out from the street. It's not like go dig a ditch for eight hours. You know, they have to do their homework. They hard. But if I overcomplicate it in my messaging, then people won't even try. Right. So I try to dumb it down, simplify it, be optimistic, encouraging. You know, just get someone that doesn't know you to pay you for a service, then figure out how to fulfill it. Their screen time is limited, but I don't know on the other side it's like, listen, this is not sexy. This is not roses. It's freaking hard. Careful what you're going into. Where do you find yourself on that spectrum?

Like training a dog. I just got a dog.

I also think, like, if you're worried about this kind of stuff, then your kids are going to do fine. It's like a self selection bias. And if you don't think about it, you're not intentional then.

And when the dog is, when you want the dog to do something that you want it to do, you give it a little bit of food, they're going to just continue to do things that feel good. Humans are the same way. Running a business and running a business poorly is the enabling is a disaster. Like, there's people who will enable their high school kids to just become alcoholics and drug addicts. I don't, I don't. A nightmare. So they're not going to last long. I don't really have a lot of fear of, like, trying to convince somebody to run a business and them spending 20 years toiling away suffering. They're going to get that feedback, they're going to know if they have it or not, and then they're going to iterate and adjust. But it is a truth that 95% of people don't have it. Five years ago, early in my content career, when I first started my podcast, maybe 2020 even, I thought, everybody should start a business and if you don't start a company, you're an idiot. Everybody should do it. Everybody. It's the best way to understand that from, like, wealthy, well, to do people.

Reminds me of Trump in the sense that you get eyeballs and you say stuff to get eyeballs and it works, right? But then the other half of you is the opposite of Trump.

How else are you going to get wealthy? I totally disagree with that now. And that 50% of people literally don't even have the mental ability to, like, not be totally broke and overweight.

Trump, like, Trump would never be vulnerable. He would never be humble, he would never admit where he screwed up, ever. And that's like, very strategic on how.

Are those folks going to run an organization under stress and guide other people that can't even manage their own lives? So I've started to shift my opinion on that a little bit.

I could see that. I, I feel like people that are enamored by it and really want to try it, like, they should try it, right? Like, not let go of their job or whatever it is, but, like, just check that box for yourself and find out if you actually like it or if it's actually enjoyable.

I love, I love, I mean you get a lot of the same hate that I get on the Internet and I love it when you post this very actionable, true advice about starting this part.

Whereas I've heard you on Chris Powers, I've heard you like be vulnerable and open.

Hey guys, it really is as simple as getting out and getting that first customer to pay you money. And you have all these keyboard wars.

What do you think that is?

Do you.

Are you intentional about your content or about that side of you or is that just who you are?

Yeah, look, I've told in. In the sweaty startup when it comes out, people are gonna, people are gonna read horror stories from my time years in the comments that say it's not that easy, Chris. You're lying to everybody. It's not that easy.

What about insurance?

Yeah, what about insurance? What about your llc? You forgot that step. And you know, trying to grow these companies, you know the nights where you walk into your house, that's just people who realize that either A they have too much anxiety and self doubt to ever try or B, they've tried and failed and they don't want anybody else to. They want to feel better about themselves. So there's the people with the abundance mindset that look at your content and they like it and they buy in and they love it. And there's the people that are the crabs in the bucket who use it as a way to get upset. I think you're, you're an anxious mess and you can't look at your wife. You are so stressed. I mean not too long ago I doing an amazing thing for your brand and for everybody to scare off all those anxious basement dwellers and double down on the people who want to do something. A quarter cortisol blood test in the high 30s. I don't know if anybody tracks their cortisol. It should be like 15 very stressed out person's 25. Mine was in the high 30s.

Yeah, well, thanks. Our insecurities come out in those comments, especially through anonymous accounts. I've said this a dozen times on this podcast, but I firmly believe that our insecurities make us either our best or our worst selves.

Are we aware this is stuff going on inside of companies that will shake you to your core and make you doubt everything and humble you aware of them?

Are we. Is it a chip on our shoulder or is it like an anchor pulling us down? What would you say your insecurities are and how do they drive you, if at all?

My insecurities help me manage risk. My insecurities keep me humble. My insecurities will allow me to change my mind and take advice. So I tell this story in the book that I've never really told before. My VP of Finance in 2022, late 2022, went on vacation for a week and we had a lot of deals flying around. You and any, any business owner who does big. We had a lot of offers out for storage. We got a couple counteroffers. While it things and, and acts like that stuff doesn't happen is just. That's, that's a lie. It's not really what it is. Why would I try to. It was gone and I accepted. Like me, the owner of the company went in and said, okay, we can't afford to pay this. Like, let's get these two deals under contract. We got two self storage facilities under contract, almost $10 million of storage. He comes back and I'm like, kevin, good news, man. We got $10 million more dollars of storage under contract. A lie about what it's like to be a business owner. When I'm on the Internet trying to convince people to be entrepreneurs, I'm writing books about trying to convince people to be entrepreneurs. Total disservice to skip the hard stuff. He looks at the deal in a meeting, in a team meeting, group meeting, looks at the deal and he's like, we can't do these deals. These are bad deals, Nick. And I'm like, whoa, I'm your boss. But that was my initial thought. I didn't say that. But it's like, whoa, okay, that was your ego. Yeah. But then I was like, let's look at this like, okay, tell me why. And I started encouraging him to talk and we started talking through it and I realized he was right. It was too much money. And if we would have bought those two deals looking back to late 2022, they would have been massive stresses and they could have taken down our entire organization. Because 10 million of debt.

Yeah, yeah. It's a trade off. Sometimes I wish I had a boss that would just tell me what to do.

Gotta have five, six billion dollars to come up with a refi. Who knows what could have happened, right?

And I just had a paycheck every two weeks. I don't, but I do, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. When things are working, man. And right now, like several of my companies, things are just working. So it's not easy to swallow that pill and, you know, trust, trust your people to guide you the right way. So that's where kind of My insecurity and humility come in for sure.

Pride comes up in business so much and it leads us to do the stupidest things. I see it all the time and.

It makes the good days better for sure. When there's hard days, people are irrational, man. People are irrational. They'll say stupid things, they'll be disrespectful, they'll say, they'll demand things that don't make any sense.

How do you balance the mindset of when it comes to starting a business on, on one hand.

And sometimes your best bet as a business owner is to swallow your pride, smile and nod and then just play the cards you're dealt and that's really, really freaking hard. Yeah.

Yeah. My messaging is always like, just freaking do it. Like anyone can start a business. It's approachable. Yes, it's hard, it's hard. But if I over complicate it in my messaging then people won't even try, right? So I try to dumb it down, simplify it, be optimistic. What business ideas or opportunities are you to focus on what you're currently doing to launch that other people might take advantage of?

This is my wheelhouse. I mean I do a lot of the same. Our content overlaps so closely that we could jam on this for hours. One of the most popular pieces of content that I've ever written is my 200 plus business ideas. Have you seen these?

It's now encouraging. Just get someone that doesn't know you to pay you for a service then figure out how to fulfill it now.

500 plus business ideas by the way. Cause I've been working on it for seven years now. But if you're listening to this you can go to sweatystartup.com ideas and you can get a PDF of. Let's just start reading. Lawn care, pest control, firewood delivery, residential painting, pressure washing, thermal imaging, vacation rental management, custom closet build out, mobile car detail, trim, tree trimming on demand Irrigation, green home consultation on demand. Holiday decorations, pool, hot tub services, deck staining, gutter cleaning, maid services, laundry services, keep on going down. In my opinion, if you got no money, you got no job, you got no experience, you got no skills, you're not a.

On the other side it's like listen, this is not sexy, this is not roses. It's freaking hard. Careful what you're going into.

Computer programmer from Socks from Stanford. Go clean something, man.

Where do you find yourself on that spectrum?

Like training a dog. I just got a dog. And when the dog is. When you want the dog to do something that you want it to do, you give it a little bit of food, they're going to just continue to do things that feel good. Humans are the same way. Running a business and running a business poorly is. There's a lot of that's dirty out there that you can clean and you can make 50 bucks an hour doing it. It's a great place to start.

What do you think is the best way to get your first customer in a service business like that?

I got my first 7,000 customers the same way without paying for any marketing. I was doing pickup and delivery. Student storage, meaning kids in dorms needed to place to store their stuff when they went home. And then they moved into a different dorm. They were all on college campuses. Cornell was where I was. I got up at 6:00am Actually, I got up at 7:30 and I went to the bridge where north campus went to campus where every kid walked across nightmare. So they're not going to last long. I, I don't really have a lot of fear of like trying to convince somebody to run a business and them spending 20 years toiling away suffering. They're going to get that feedback, they're going to know if they have it or not and then they're going to iterate and adjust. I wrote five chalk advertisements on that bridge and then they woke up and they walked to their 8:40 class. They started walking, but it is a truth that 95% of people don't have it and they're at 8 and from 8 to 840 every single day during finals week, we got 40 plus signups. The email inbox was just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

Was it a phone number that they called?

Storagesquad.com the ad said free boxes, free pickup, free delivery, free packing supplies. Summer storage. Storagesquad.com no graphics, no funny stuff, just that words. Storagesquad.com Five years ago, early in my content career, when I first started my podcast, maybe 2020 even then they went to storagesquad.com and they signed up for their free boxes. I thought everybody should start a business and if you don't start a company, you're an idiot. Everybody should do it. Everybody. It's the best way. So yes, it's super simple.

It's usually simple. You know, we bend over backwards trying to think of really creative, innovative ideas when the obvious ones are usually the right ones.

My brother runs a wait, how else are you going to get wealthy? I totally disagree with that now. And that 50% of people lawn Care company and bandit signs are his number one customer source. Literally don't even have the mental ability to like not be totally broke and overweight. You know what a bandit sign is?

Same for our tree trimming. Yeah, yeah.

It's those white signs or whatever color signs that have the steel, the little thin steel, and you jam them into the grass, double sided.

They cost like two bucks each.

If you order 500 of them, yeah. You're going to spend a thousand bucks. It's awesome. How are those folks going to run an organization under stress and guide other people that can't even manage their own lives? So I've started to shift my opinion on that a little bit.

I could see that. I feel like people that we don't leave a house without leaving a bandit sign at our tree trimming business. All right, well, tell me about your book. What's in there? What you hope people walk away with when they read your book.

Yeah. So it's broken into three sections. It's about first one's opportunity. How to pick the right business idea, literally how to call and do a market study. It's pretty tactical.

Are enamored by it and really want to try it. They should try it, right? Like not let go of their job or whatever it is. But just check that box for yourself and find out if you actually like it or if it's actually enjoyable.

I love. I mean, you get a lot. I do the anti VC spiel as well. Like, stop trying to change the world. A new idea is bad. The second section is about the skills you need, whether it be delegation, sales, sense of urgency, all the things you need to know how to do to run a company. And then the last part is the people, because you can't do any of this alone. So you got to learn how to hire, to recruit, to manage, to, you know, effectively scale yourself. Because me, myself, I can work for a whole year and I can work 3,000 hours. You know, that's what, 55 hours a week? So maybe I can work 4,000 hours if I'm an attorney. No life. But right now on this podcast, you and I are going to spend an hour together and I'm going to get 350 hours worth of work done because I have 350 employees. A lot of the same hate that I get on the Internet. And I love it when you post this very actionable, true advice about starting a company. Hey, guys, it really is as simple as getting out and getting that first customer to pay you money. And you have all these keyboard warriors in the comments to say, it's not that easy, Chris, you're lying to everybody. It's not that easy. But across my organizations, what was the.

Process of writing that book? Was it insurance?

Yeah, what about insurance? What about your llc? You forgot that step.

Did you use a ghostwriter? Do you have any help? Do it yourself. I've heard you say that it was very difficult at first.

I had all this, all my threads organized in like all my Twitter writing organized in different concepts. And I'm like, okay, here's a section of a chapter, here's a section of a chapter, here's a section of a chapter. And I hired a ghostwriter to write it. That's just people who realize that either A, they have too much anxiety and self doubt to ever try, or B, they've tried and failed and they don't want anybody else to. They want to feel better about themselves. One chapter in. I knew that this was not going to happen. It's not going to happen. This is my legacy. This is all my friends and family. And anybody is going to read this, I'm going to have to write this book. So I realized that very, very soon. So there's the people with the abundance mindset that look at your content and they like it and they buy in and they love it. And there's the people that are the crabs in the bucket who use it as a way to get upset. I think you're doing it. And then I realized how much harder it is to write an actual structured, organized book than tweets on Twitter, my blog, my email newsletter, the words just flow. I can write my Monday email newsletter on a management principle and I can write it in 25 minutes. And it's great because it's just how I do it. You're the same way. I can tell by the way you write on Twitter that I can't stop it from coming. Actually, I wish sometimes I could be like, stop thinking of tweets. A book was not that way. And I wrote the whole book, turned it into my editor and she's like, nick, A, we need to find somebody to help you with this, and B, you're going to have to rewrite all this. Doing an amazing thing for your brand and for everybody to scare off all those. I hired an editor to basically keep me on track, help me with structure, say, hey, Nick, we can't just jumble all five of these ideas on four pages. This doesn't make any sense at all. We got to change this. Here's how we're going to do it. We're going to make this read. We're going to make it make sense. Her name was Julie. She was amazing. She was an editor. We had meetings to keep on schedule and then I wrote it again and I'm really happy with it, but man, it was hard. Then there's that anxiety and self doubt that creeps in where you're halfway through a book and you're like, who am I to write this book? No one's going to give a about any of this. These ideas are.

Yeah, yeah. You don't even have time to think that when you blast out a tweet.

Anxious basement dwellers and double down on the people who want to do something.

Yeah, well, thanks. Our insecurities come out in those comments, especially through anonymous accounts. I've said this a dozen times on this podcast, but I firmly believe that our insecurities make us either our best or our worst selves. Are we aware of them? Are we. Is it a chip on our shoulder or is it like an. But with a book, you've got years to really sell an anchor pulling us down. What would you say your insecurities are and how do they drive you?

That I sold my book to HarperCollins and got my advance and if at all, my insecurities help me manage risk in the fall of 2023. It's an 18 month process for me.

Why not self publish with your audience?

It was worth it. HarperCollins has been a great partner and I got a half million dollar advance to write the book.

Bang. How much of a percentage do they keep?

I get 15% of revenue after they recoup theirs. So it's a really good deal for them if it sells a lot of books. But, but their team is great. Like from, from advice on the structure to Hollis, who is a world class editor at HarperCollins Business, Hollis Heimbeck. She would give me my insecurities, keep me humble. My insecurities will allow me to change my mind and take advice. So I tell this story in the book that I've never really told before. Very blunt and brutal advice on my writing and say, Nick, you got to change this or that and the other. Then from the COVID art to the rapping to the structure of it all, it was just their team is good, so I don't regret it at all.

You're like, nothing's wrong with my writing. Look at my tweets. They get millions of views. What are you talking about?

She's like, nick, it doesn't make any sense, man.

Well, I'll be writing a book eventually, but I'm intimidated by the whole process for the same reasons.

I think it would be worth doing it even if I didn't get any advance and nobody read it because I'd learned a lot through the process. Highly recommend that you do it. Highly recommend.

Okay. Well, Nick, thank you for your time. Your book's called Sweaty startup. Comes out April 29th.

Yep.

Where else can we find you?

We'll put a link to the book. My VP of Finance in 2022, late 2022, went on vacation for a week and we had a lot of deals flying around. We had a lot of offers out for storage. We got a couple counteroffers while he was gone, and I accepted. Like me, the owner of the company went in and said, okay, we can't afford to pay this. Like, let's get these two deals under contract. We got two self storage facilities under contract, almost 10 million right here in the show. Notes on Amazon. And then. Yeah, man. Whatystartup across all the social channels. You can send me an email, nick, sweatystartup.com if you have any thoughts, feedback for me. You want a discount@wherewhere.com, anything like that, shoot me an email. I'm all over the place.

All right, thank you.

In dollars of storage. He comes back and I'm like, kevin, good news, man. We got $10 million more dollars of storage under contract. He looks at the deal in a meeting, in a team meeting, group meeting, looks at the deal and he's like, we can't do these deals. These are bad deals, Nick. And I'm like, whoa, I'm your boss. But yeah, that was my initial thought. I didn't say that, but it's like.

Whoa, okay, that was your ego.

Yeah. But then I was like, let's look at this. Like, okay, tell me, like, why? And I started encouraging him to talk, and we started talking through it, and I realized he was right. It was too much money. And if we would have bought those two deals, looking back to late 2022, they would have been massive stresses and they could have taken down our entire organization because 10 million of debt. Got to have 5, 6 million dollars to come up with a refi. Who knows what could have happened, right? So it's not easy to swallow that pill and, you know, trust. Trust your people to guide you the right way. So that's where kind of my insecurity and humility come in, for sure.

Pride comes up in business so much, and it leads us to do the stupidest things. I see it all the time.

People are irrational, man. People are irrational. They'll say stupid things, they'll be disrespectful, they'll say, they'll demand things that don't make any sense. And sometimes your best bet as a business owner is to swallow your pride, smile and nod and then just play the cards you're dealt. And that's really, really freaking hard.

Yeah. Yeah. What business ideas or opportunities are you too focused on what you're currently doing to launch that other people might take advantage of?

This is my wheelhouse. I mean I do a lot of the same. Our content overlaps so closely that we could jam on this for hours. One of the most popular pieces of content that I've ever written is my 200 plus business ideas. Have you seen these? It's now 500 plus business ideas, by the way, because I've been working on it for seven years now. But if you're listening to this, you can go to sweatystartup.com ideas and you can get a PDF of. Let's just start reading. Lawn care, Pest control, Firewood delivery. Residential painting, Pressure washing, Thermal imaging, Vacation rental management. Custom closet build out. Mobile car detail Trim, tree trimming. On demand Irrigation, Green home consultation, on demand. Holiday decorations. Pool, hot tub services, Deck staining, Gutter cleaning, Maid services, Laundry services. Keep on going down. In my opinion, if you got no money, you got no job, you got no experience, you got no skills, you're not a computer programmer from Stanford. Go clean something, man. There's a lot of that's dirty out there that you can clean and you can make 50 bucks an hour doing it. It's a great place to start.

What do you think is the best way to get your first customer in a service business like that?

I got my first 7,000 customers the same way without paying for any marketing. I was doing pickup and delivery. Student storage, meaning kids in dorms needed to place to store their stuff when they went home. And then they moved into a different dorm. They were all on college campuses. Cornell was where I was. I got up at 6am actually I got up at 7:30 and I went to the bridge where north campus went to campus where every kid walked across and I wrote five chalk advertisements on that bridge. And then they woke up and they walked to their 8:40 class. They started walking there at 8 and from 8 to 8:40 every single day during finals week we got 40 plus signups. The email inbox was just bang, bang bang, bang bang bang, bang, bang bang.

Was it a phone number?

That they called storage squad.com. the ad said free boxes, free pickup, free delivery, free packing supplies, summer storage. Storage squad.com. no graphics, no funny stuff, just that words storage squad.com and they went to storagesquad.com and they signed up for their free boxes. So yeah, super simple.

It's usually simple. You know, we, we bend over backwards trying to think of really creative, innovative ideas when the obvious ones are usually the right ones.

My brother runs a lawn care company and bandit signs are his number one customer source. You know what a bandit sign is?

Same for our tree trimming. Yeah, yeah.

It's those white signs or whatever color signs that have the steel, the little thin steel and you jam them into the grass.

Double sided. They cost like two bucks each.

You order 500 of them. Yeah. You're going to spend a thousand bucks. It's awesome.

We don't leave a house without leaving a bandit sign at our tree trimming business. All right, well, tell me about your book. What's in there? What. What you hope people walk away with when they read your book.

Yeah. So it's broken into three sections. It's about first one's opportunity. How to pick the right business idea. Literally. How to call and do a market study. It's pretty tactical. I do the anti VC spiel as well. Like stop trying to change the world. The new idea is.