How Nick Huber Built A $100M Self Storage Empire (#420)

What do you, uh, I'm, I'm an investor of yours. So you're, um, I forget how much I invested, but you're like, well, I don't really invest in anything other than like van, like total index funds. And, but you're like one of the few, I think you're one of 3 things that I did. Um, it's going great. I mean, I, I see the returns, uh, but how much do you have in total self-storage now? Like $100 million or something?

I think last time I came on, it was 15 properties or so and $20 million worth of storage. And we now have 61 properties, 1.8 million square feet of storage. We've acquired it for $103 million. We've raised $41 million from people like you who invested in Bolt Storage. It's been a whirlwind. The last 2 years have been crazy.

Would you say $100 million worth of— is that— that's how much you paid for it. I don't know how much it's worth.

I don't either. I mean, we could, we could guess, we could try to guess, but look, the real estate market has no mark to market, right? Because like Elon Musk, he can see how many shares of Tesla he has and the value of those shares. I have no idea. I mean, I can make educated guesses, but if we sold our portfolio today, I don't know, 6 months ago, we might be able to sell it for 190 million or so.

Oh, that'd be awesome. We, um, I think the way I met you was so, uh, you're, you know, it's kind of a creepy story. Years ago, I dated this Polish girl, and I remember seeing your picture on Twitter, and your— this is so weird— your face reminded me of hers.

That was the best compliment. That's the best compliment I can get.

Are you Polish?

I'm German. Yeah. Huber. My, my, my mom is a Ghettofinger. So yeah, we're very German.

I remember seeing your picture and I was like, oh my gosh, this guy looks Polish almost. And then I was driving cross-country and I did a Twitter Live or something like that. I forget what I did. And you like commented and I just called you on air or no, I called you on your phone. I just put it on speakerphone and we started talking and that, and that's how we, how we, how we met, I think. Right.

Yeah. And now we know each other quite well. I think we've punched each other in the face. We've, uh, guarded each other and fouled each other in basketball. We have, uh, hung out at a couple conferences and, and we talk several times a week. So I appreciate your friendship, man.

I appreciate you too. I, I, he told me that he was a decathlete and I was like, yeah, but you're faster than I am. You're not good. And then I looked up his times. I was like, oh, he's better than I was. Uh, and then that's why I liked you even more. What was your 400 time? I think you ran 47.

Yeah, open 47. There's, you know, splits are crazy because your coach wants to tell you that you run really fast splits to pump you up. But he told me I ran a 46.7 one time split.

I'd believe that. So my fastest opens were only in the 48s and 49s and my splits were 47. So you're probably a second faster than I was. But, and did for those, for the, like you went hard on Twitter when we, when like COVID started. So there's like, we have this text message group. It's me, you, Sean, Uh, Austin Reef, Nikita Beer, Sahil Bloom, Greg Eisenberg. Uh, I think that's everyone. Did I forget?

So yeah, you were, you were an addition that came on about 6 months or a year after the group started, but you added some good, you've added some good, uh, great banter to it.

And like, but the reason the group started was you guys all went hard on Twitter around the same time and you like started sharing each other's stuff. You're Thread Boys. And then I remember you started doing that, but did of that $100 million that you've raised or $80 million that you raised, I forget how much. How much has come from Twitter? $40 million. You've raised $40 million?

Yeah.

How much has come from Twitter?

90, 96% of it has come from Twitter.

No way. Is that, is that real?

Yeah. My entire real estate private equity company was built on the back of Twitter. Yes, I had. We'd bought and built our first self-storage facility. We raised $500 grand. My dad took a mortgage out on our house to do it. He didn't tell me that he did at the time because we were middle class. And I went around to his friends basically, and he helped me raise the money for that first deal. Everybody says, you know, you're not self-made. And that's my not self-made stories that my dad was the first investor in my first storage building. But no, then we ran out of money and we had to buy our second, third, fourth, and fifth properties with that, with our own cash from our store, from our storage company, our moving company. So then, you know, fast forward to Twitter, I'm tweeting about deals and tweeting about some of our properties. And people are DMing me asking to get on our investor list. And Fast forward to today, we've raised $40 million from 320 people and we have 2,000 people on our distribution list and it's changed my entire life.

What's, uh, $40 million divided by 300? What's the average check?

Ben can help us out. Maybe I don't have a calculator on me, but yeah, $50 grand people start. We have some investors up over $1 million.

That's crazy. I wish I would've done $1 million when, when I saw like the checks that—

Yeah, that deal, that deal that you're in is gonna be a really good deal. We've, we refinanced it in a really crappy refi environment, but We're going to build some climate-controlled storage on that property. And that was a deal that was really big and was uncomfortable, man. I mean, we bought a $9 million— yeah, it was a big deal for us. It was our biggest deal so far. It was like hard for us to like get the money together and raise the money for it. $9 million. And then we bought another small property after that, another portfolio after that, included all in the same one. Our basis is about $15 million. And I got my spreadsheet up here. It's—

you don't even know what that means. What's basis mean? That's how much you're in for?

Yeah, total cost. Total cost.

But you're in for 20% of 15, right? Because you only put 25% down.

Yeah, exactly right. So we put about 30% down. We have, you know, $12 million in debt because we refi'd it, refi'd out some cash. But now it's got $1 million of net operating income and it's a, you know, $20 million plus property, which is great.

That's crazy. Yeah, I remember seeing that check. Well, what do you want to talk about today? I want to talk about all types of stuff, dude. You— we have— can you talk about the Shepherd thing that you're doing?

Yeah, so that company is a phenomenal company, and it kind of can kick off our discussion because my goal— real estate's a little bit slow. The company's in a really good spot. I still spend a ton of time saying thumbs up, thumbs down to deals and thinking strategy and working on it. But I have a lot of time and I also have 30 million impressions a month on Twitter. And you know what that's like when you have a podcast like this and the distribution that you have. But yeah, my goal right now is to, is to build a portfolio of ownership chunks and great small companies, you know, sweaty startups.

And Austin, our friend Austin Reef, who founded Morning Brew, he was supposed to come on today and he had like a last-minute board meeting. So Axel Springer, thanks a lot. The owner of Morning Brew. Thanks, guys. Uh, but anyway, I was like, Austin, what should we talk about? And you and me and Austin were in a thing in a group chat. And he was like, let's talk about, because he knows that I hate advertising. Um, and I like make fun of him. I used to make fun of him as like an enemy. Now I make fun of him as a friend. And, um, about how much you make fun of everybody, Sam. Not really. Do I? I don't know.

It's good. It, it, you just, you just make jokes that are at people's expense and it's hilarious.

And sometimes they're funny. And, and I was like, Austin, what, uh, what do you want to talk about? And he's like, let's talk about non-ways or non-advertising ways to monetize media followings. And you did it. So you did it. I don't know what your net worth would be or what like the, the, the value of your percentage of your thing would be, but you've done it to the tune of like $100 million of real estate. That's your non-advertising way of monetizing your audience.

Yeah.

You're also doing it in like a bunch of Sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, my equity in that is maybe, you know, $10 to $20 million. Yeah.

So, and, and so that, and then like you operate this successful business, so it's not like it's just because of Twitter, you know, you make smart decisions beyond that, but you are also doing it a few different ways. I'm actually a customer of your other business, which is a cost seg business. I almost use Shepherd, which I don't know if you are a part owner or if you're just an affiliate for, but you're doing it in a bunch of different ways. And I want to talk about the ways that you're monetizing in non-ad ways. Of your audience.

Yeah. So Shepherd is the ideal story. I mean, it was late 2020, November, December. I wanted to hire somebody in the Philippines. I met Marshall Haas, who owns Support Shepherd, and I was his customer. I made a deposit for them to hire somebody, and my goal was to get somebody on the phone in my self-storage facility that could, you know, press 1 to make a payment. You're going to go to this person and they're just going to process the payments for us. Just some extra help doing very simple things. I gave them— actually, they built the job description. They got me 3 candidates ready to interview. I got on and interviewed them all in the course of an hour and I was absolutely blown away and hired all 3 of the people. I'm like, this company is incredible.

What was the rate per hour?

$5 an hour, $800 a month to get these people to come and work for my service company.

And they're awesome.

Fast forward. Yeah, they were, they were incredible. Fast forward 4 hours, you know, 4 months later, I had 15 of these people working inside of my company and not only were they doing the simple stuff, but they were answering sales calls. They were guiding the logistics of a customer in, in one of my facilities looking for a specific unit. They were just able to do exactly what our American reps do, except instead of paying $60,000 or $70,000 a year, they pay— we pay, you know, $10,000 a year. So it was a game changer. Now we have our whole finance departments in Colombia. Shepherd has helped us find those folks in Colombia. So the business blew my mind and I went to Marshall in 2022 or 2021, May. I said, hey, I wanna be an affiliate of this company. Like, gimme a cut of what I can bring in and I'll do some tweeting. Um, at that time they were doing about $50 grand a month in revenue. Shepherd was, that's their net.

I got it. Their, that, that's the net of the net of payouts to the, the workers.

No, that's like total revenue. Total revenue for Shepherd. Okay. As a company, as that business, the one that like does the headhunting and finds the employees for American companies. Um, So they were doing, you know, 50 placements a month or less and they were growing fast. It was a good company. And I started tweeting and pissing off the woke mob and recommending support Shepherd for like a 15% cut of revenue that I brought.

Say what those tweets were. They're hilarious.

I would say like, I'm going to weather this recession for one main reason. My, my employees all work for $5 an hour in the Philippines and they're absolutely incredible. And then it made me look like a complete idiot. But the woke mob would just blow these threads up, totally blow them up. We're talking to the tune of 3 to 5 million impressions. And so that really accelerated the growth of Shepherd. They were getting a ton of business as it was. They started growing like crazy. Fast forward a year later and Shepherd had 7x'd. The size of that company had, had grown by 7x.

And how long? One year?

One year. And it wasn't just because of me. It wasn't just because of me. It's because they started offering folks in Colombia. They started doing a ton of work. And they, and they added like 50 more—

but you were a part of the, you were a part of the puzzle, a big part of the puzzle to help it grow.

So I went to Marshall and I was like, Marshall, this business is way too good. I'm not getting enough money. Like, I want to own part of Support Shepherd. And he's like, no way. Like, that's, that's, that's ridiculous. You're just a, you're just an influencer. And I was like, well, man, I'm going to go start another company that does exactly this. Or I could be a partner of yours. And he was, and he's like, He's like, okay, um, you're right. Like, let's make a deal. And we negotiated and I own 15% of Shepherd. And you fast forward to—

and what's the deal? Like, you have to keep referring a certain amount of customers and you still get your payout? Affiliate payout?

No, the affiliate payout was canceled. I got 15% of profits and he just trusted me that I was going to be motivated to continue to do what I do. And now once a month I just piss off the woke mob on Twitter. I send some newsletter, you know, ads and I kind of sit on the board and do a little bit of ops things and recommend, but I mostly just drive those guys nuts when it comes to that.

Well, wait, I want, I want, I need you to redeem yourself really quick because you're like, you're like, I'm pissing people off. But the reality is, is that like, what's the salary? $10,000 a year is what to them?

Yeah. These people, me and my, one of my reps were talking the other day and it's like, yeah, I bought a house, Nick. It's incredible. I bought a house in the Philippines. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And he's like, Yeah, this is my home. It's a 3-bedroom house that I bought. And, uh, me and Dan talk all the time that our, that our employees in Colombia and the Philippines are just as wealthy as us. They have the same exact lifestyle as we do because yeah, they get on a bus, they commute 2 hours and they work for like, you know, $2 an hour over there with, with not the best conditions. And then they get to work for American companies and it changes their lives. So the reality is that the woke mob has no idea what they're talking about. This is an incredible opportunity for them and for us. Um, and now a lot of people are, you know, making that switch and getting employees over there, which is great.

So, all right, I interrupted you because I wanted you to redeem yourself, but what were you saying about, uh—

So you fast forward a year now and another year of promoting and the business growing, and I think 51% of their business is repeat customers who want to come back to get more, um, you know, help, but it's a multi-seven-figure profit business. Business a year. Um, I make $50 grand a month personally from my 15% ownership in Sheppard.

God, that's so funny. Dude, you would not have wanted to go and start a competitor to them, would you? That would— it sounds hard. It sounds like a hard business to operate.

It's really hard. They got 150 employees. I was mostly bluffing. I mean, it's a super hard business to start. They have a ton of really good talent and a ton of like sales reps and like the way that they do business is really difficult. They gotta go and recruit and interview all these people over there and vet them and grade their English and like get all these people, these employees put, put in front of these business owners. So yeah. Um, it was—

and Marshall's a pretty good entrepreneur. I like Marshall a lot. I mean, he's done like 8 different companies and a few of them have done really well.

Very good entrepreneur.

So yeah, that's hilarious. I can't believe you, you worked that out. I mean, I think that's a good deal. I've had, so I've had a few people, so I, um, there's this guy who did This guy, Diego, um, what's his website? Is it like ShortZ? I think it's like, like short clips. I'll have to find it. But anyway, he, uh, this dude DM'd me. He, uh, I think he's, is he Cuban or he's not from America? I forget what he is, but he, uh, he DMs me and I get these DMs all the time where they're like, I'm going to make videos for you. You get those with like, I want to, I'm like, dude, shut up.

I get 3 a day that people want to write my newsletter for me.

Yeah, it's like stuff like that all the time. And 9 out of 10 of them, they're just like really bad. They're not good, uh, at what they do. And this guy just kept DMing me and I was like, screw it, fine. Like, just make clips for me, send me 10 of them. Like, I just said something stupid or something like that just to like get them off my back. And he like, within, before the night was over, he sent me like 10 and they were pretty good. And, uh, I was like, uh, All right. Well, I don't want to post these. I'm going to make you post it for me. I'm going to give you my Instagram password. Um, send me a picture of your driver's license, your social security card. And he told me at one point he lived with his girlfriend. He goes, send me your girlfriend's driver's license too. And he sends me a picture of all of them. And I go, great. I know a lot about you. I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, we're going to have an issue if you screw me. Here's my password to my Instagram. Make it work. And he does, and he kills it. And I go from like 1,000 followers to like 10,000 followers in a week. And then like up now to 50,000. He kills it.

How much did you pay him?

So get this. So I was like, all right, you're right. You're awesome. But here's the deal. You're gonna do this for me for free for a long time. And in exchange, I'm gonna tell all of my friends about you. And, uh, I'm eventually, once you prove it to my friends, I'm gonna tweet out that I think you're great. Um, and he said, great. And so within a month of him messaging me, we got him up to like $20 grand a month or something like that. I forget, like a, a really good wage. Um, and he's like, has this thriving business. And then I tweet him out and we send tons of customers to him. And so I also do the same thing where I take a small percentage of the profits and I'm loving this, but I would rather have the profits rather than equity in the business. But really, I think—

you mean like a cut, a cut of revenue? You'd have a revenue, rather have a revenue share than an equity slice?

That's the mistake.

Sahil sent me a text yesterday and said, Nick, what's your 3 biggest regrets in life? And one of them—

why did he ask you that question? What a weird question to ask.

He works on this dumbass content online. Who knows what he's going to tweet about?

Why is he asking you that? Okay, go ahead.

One of them was not going to Marshall a year earlier and getting equity instead of freaking a cut of profits. Or a cut of revenue.

Yeah. Uh, yeah. I just don't know if a clip agency is ever going to sell.

Yeah. I love agency. I love agency businesses.

And I don't want to like give advice to people all the time. Do you know what I mean? I think it's different when you're with Marshall because Marshall is like a very proven entrepreneur who has a couple exits under his belt. But like sometimes when I'm helping people—

Yeah, he doesn't want to listen. Yeah. They don't need or want me to get involved in their operations. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm like, dude, I don't want to like, uh, I don't want to guide you. I just want to send you customers. And, um, I like, I, I sometimes I prefer transactional is what I mean.

Um, yeah. So I love, I love leaning in. I love leaning into the ops. Uh, my business partner's an operational mastermind and, you know, yeah, I have 3 other companies that I'm working on launching right now on the, on a very same, very similar trajectory as Support Shepherd.

By the way, Diego's company, it's called Short. It's like a short clip. And then zy.co, shortz.co. So short and then zy.co. I'm giving him a shout out.

Yeah, man, you should own 25% of his company. Mm.

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe, maybe I will end up regretting that, but I'm, I'm happy with the deal.

Yeah.

But we, uh, and so, uh, what were the other two regrets?

Oh, Um, I don't know. Let me look. I think it was, um, go ahead and get married a little earlier and have kids a little earlier, even though I did it when I was almost 30.

Um, and then you weren't married until you're 30 or first kid?

I got married when I was 27 and I had my first kid at 29. And I kind of, if that was 3 years earlier, I would have been just as happy.

But in general, I told him like so many, so many people I talked to say they wish they would have had their kids earlier, by the way. And I'm shocked that people say that.

Are you, are you excited to be a dad at some point? I know you and Sarah have started to talk about it. Are you, what do you, what do you think about, how do you think that's gonna change your life?

I'm pumped. I'm so pumped. I, I think that, um, A, I agree. I wish I would've done it earlier. Um, and I am so pumped. I think it's gonna be life-changing. I think I was talking to Sarah about this last night. I was like, so we've achieved a lot of like interesting things at a relatively young age. Like, professionally, like we're known in our field and like we have some respect amongst some peers. Financially, like we've achieved some things. Like, and then we were like, parents say like, well, you're never ready. And I was thinking last night, I'm like, dude, I'm totally ready. Like, what else do I need to do? This is like, it feels like the next step. So I'm incredibly ready and I don't really care about this, but I actually think it's gonna turbocharge my career. I think that like, it's gonna make you feel like amped up. Like before it was, I was earning. So I don't know why I was earning. I was trying to make money for ego, egotistical reasons. And then after that I was like, now I'm in the place where I make money because I do shit that's fun. And because my fun hobbies, often the outcome is income. I pick and choose different things. Now I think it's gonna feel like I want something for my children. I want to impress them. I wanna show them how to work hard. I think that there's gonna be like a little bit of that. And it's also gonna be like, I don't wanna spend all of my time after like 6:00 PM working. And so I have to pick and choose my battles and I think that's gonna actually force focus and the outcome will be better financially. Am I wrong?

I think you are right on the money with your two things. There's two more. Number one is that you are going to get so much more emotionally mature when you have kids. At least for me, I was highs, lows. I would, it, it just, it just puts stress in relative form. When you know you have a human that you have to care for and the stress level of when that human is sick or when they scream or when they cry or when they hurt themselves or when they suffer, that puts it all in perspective. So you just get like better at dealing with stress. The second thing is like, I got more focused and I was able to get more work done when I couldn't travel the world. I couldn't go play golf all the time. I couldn't just get on a plane and go be spontaneous and go spend 2 weeks in Europe. So instead, I would spend really good quality time with my family in my house and then pop to my computer to, you know, tinker inside of my business and make my business better. It's just more, I don't know.

Does that make sense? Yeah, it totally makes sense. And I'm pumped. Well, you have 3 kids now?

Yeah. 5, 3, and 9 months.

Yeah, man. I'm pumped for it. And I think the out— I don't care about this, but I think the outcome will be a better career because of children. That's my prediction.

I think you're right.

I want to talk about the cost seg business because that thing, that seems like it's going even better than, um, Support Shepherd. So, uh, I'm a customer. I used it. I got it for free though. So I am a customer and I, uh, I'm using—

you did a video. So cost seg is we have engineers who go in and they break out the different parts of a commercial property or an income property, a piece of real estate. And then they give you a schedule of which you can depreciate that to the IRS, meaning like—

because normally it's what, 27 years?

It's normally 27 years straight-line depreciation. They take it so that, oh, the windows, those are only a 5-year life, you know, the landscaping outside, that only has a 5-year life. Then you got all these ground improvements that we're going to make and all these other things that can be accelerated a little faster. So, and then there's something called bonus depreciation. We're going way in the weeds, you don't need to know that. But basically our engineers come in the building, they draw a picture of the property, they split it out into different values, and they give you document that you can give to the IRS to get way more depreciation and save money year one.

So I haven't gotten my, I haven't gotten my report yet though, but let's just make believe on a million dollar property that what's a million divided by 27 is what?

Yeah. You're going to get $27,000. Is it much? $27,000 a year. Yeah. Okay.

And depreciation, duh.

Uh, 2.2%, maybe something like that.

And then on, um, with this, it would be what, like $200 grand in year 1?

Yeah. On a self-storage facility, anywhere from 20 to 30% year 1 depreciation. Um, an industrial property might be 10 to 20%. An RV park might be 60, 70%. It just depends on how many ground, how much ground improvements you've done, like work to the outside of the property, landscaping, you know, windows, doors.

You might then do, do you pay that? Do I pay that tax back if I sell the property before 27 years?

Um, yeah, it's called recapture. So if you don't plan to hold the property for a while, then you need to keep some money because your basis drops basically. Your taxable basis drops by the amount that you depreciate. So that gap is called recapture and you pay that at the recapture rate, stuff like that. So yeah.

And where's your team doing this?

Um, we have my friend Mitchell Baldridge, who, you know, his wife Mel, um, they are my partners. My business partner Dan is minority owner as well. Um, I own 45% of RE Cost Seg. And I mean, Mitchell, Mitchell had done 100+ of these. Before we started this company and he'd never really thought about, hey, we can, we can find some engineers and do this stuff really well. We created a Twitter account, RE Cost Seg. We got really competitive pricing because instead of me flying somebody to your property in Texas, we did a FaceTime. You FaceTimed with one of our guys and he walked around, took some screenshots. What was that like?

My property manager did it and I was out there with her and I think She was on her phone. I wish she was on her phone and she said the guy sounded Italian. Are they in Italy or something? They're all over.

Yeah. We have some people in Miami. Um, Florida's pretty popular. Colombia, Philippines. We've hired, uh, 7 people from support through Support Shepherd for this company. Um, it's, which is another funny part about it, but yeah, we have 23, 23 employees. Um, Mitchell's wife, Mel, who spent 8 years at KP, MgR. Yeah, yeah, one of the big, one of the big consulting firms. She was a management consultant. She's the CEO of the company. And yeah, we're 9 months old and we did $250,000 of revenue last month.

Dude, that's crazy. And I remember like, so Jen, my PM, it took her like 20 or 30 minutes. And so my property's big. It's like 20 acres, but there's like a 4,000-square-foot house and then like a barn that has a gym. It's this for an Airbnb I have. And she like spent maybe 20 minutes walking around and he was like, what's that thing? And they're like, oh, that's like our water purifying system. And he was like, all right, cool. Let me see that. All right, cool. Show me all the windows.

Yeah, they look like, okay, what can we depreciate faster? And they're like, show me this, show me that.

Yeah, yeah. And she was like, we have two garage doors here. And he was like, all right, cool. Let me see that garage door. I forget what else it was, but like, like she was just walking around and he like had a checklist. But then also he would see stuff and like ask like, wait, let me see that water filtration system, or like, you know, this, my property's out in the country, so we have like a well or something, and I think she was like, let me see the well, like, you know, like wanted to see all this stuff. And I haven't gotten a report yet. I think we just did it like 10 or 7 days ago. Yeah. But yeah, so.

Yeah, that's the business.

And there's one other company in the space that's doing it that I almost went with. It was called Madison Spec.

Yep.

Yeah.

They'll fly somebody out to your property and they'll charge you twice as much to do a cost seg because they got to get somebody out there. So it's a win-win scenario.

When I read about this, Mark Jenney— so we have this friend named Mark Jenney who we've talked about in the pod.

He's a badass.

Yeah, he's badass. He has like, I don't know, his portfolio is like mid-eight figures of Airbnbs.

The Barstool guys rented one of his houses for Super Bowl week.

Dude, I saw the— so the Barstool guys are in Arizona, I think, for— yeah. And I saw like the mini putt-putt course and basketball. And I was like, I bet this is Mark's. And then you or someone else told us that it was Mark's. And he, uh, I was— he's inspired me to get into Airbnbs. I was like, Mark, what should I read? And he like sent me some book and he told— and that's where I learned about accelerated depreciation. And I started Googling how to, how to do it. And I only found a couple firms doing it. So I thought this was going to be like a niche business. I didn't think it was going to be like a big business. What— how big do you think this is going to get?

My prediction, and again, I try not to make predictions because then I just set expectations and end up getting stress because of expectations and stress and that stuff. But yeah, I think we'll do $3 to $5 million of revenue over the next 12 months. And I think it'll become a, it'll become a, over the next 5 years, a $10 to $15 million a year revenue business.

I don't, I mean, you don't have to set expectations, but I will, but I feel like that is undershooting it. I think it could be potentially bigger. I don't know how big the market is, but I bet you there's just so many other services that you can begin to offer depending on how hard you want to work.

Yeah, we're launching— so that's reCostSeg.com. We're launching TaxCreditHunter.com as well to do ERC credits and employee retention credits. Same partnership group, Mitchell, Mitchell and Mel. That's when you didn't— if you didn't lay off employees during COVID and you own a small business, you can get employee retention tax credits back from the IRS. And you need Mitchell— you need Mitchell to really talk about that stuff. I can't guide. But basically, if you didn't fire your employees when COVID hit, and you kept them on, the government is offering massive tax credits to your business. And very few entrepreneurs know it. They expire in 2025. And yeah, it's, it's, it's significant. We're talking the guys that we know who are running companies with 150 employees are looking at $100,000 to $1 million in tax credits, $100,000 to $1 million.

There's a company called Main Street.

Main Street. They do the exact same thing.

I think Sean either invested or knows the guy who founded it named Doug, and they were an advertiser with The Hustle. They're a good company, but what they did was How much money did they raise? I think they raised, they did the exact same thing you're saying. They probably had like a tech play to it. I don't remember exactly, but they're still around. But I think they raised like $200 or $300 million. Like a, I forget the exact number, but like a huge amount. And I think they just recently laid off a ton of people, not because the business stinks, but I think they just like raised a ton of money and hired a ton of people. Um, but I do think that that's proof that this, if I'm in your position, And I'm like, oh, well, you guys have just validated the idea and concept. We're not going to raise money because we don't want to screw up our cap table. But I bet we can do this because we already have a little bit of money. We already have an audience. Maybe we won't grow as fast, but we'll own the whole thing and do it our way.

And I think the audience is the key. I mean, the Ari Kostek Twitter account, which I run and Mitchell runs, it's got 13,000— over 13,000 followers already.

No shit. What are you tweeting on there to make people follow it?

Um, just all about cost seg, all about real estate investors, client examples, anonymous client examples about how much money we save clients. Um, it blows people's mind when they realize that real estate investors, you can make, I mean, I'm an example of this. You can make $2, $3 million a year from operating companies. And if you're a real estate professional and you buy property each year and you cost seg them and depreciate them, you can have zero tax liability. Zero.

Yeah. But becoming a real estate professional is a pain in the butt. I tried to do it. I tried to do it. And I was like, there's no way I can justify, like, basically to, if I remember correctly, to become a real estate professional, you have to, uh, I forget exactly, but—

700 hours you have to spend. You have to be the person who spends the most time in the business.

Yeah.

There's, you need a good CPA to really like log your time and create a rock solid case.

And then you also have to, I think a certain, I think the majority of your income has to come from real estate if I remember correctly, or you can't. Is there something where like the— where is it like you're outside your— all your revenue streams can't add up to be more than your, than your real estate income? Is it something like that? I thought that there was something where like you can't make too much money. Well, maybe I'm wrong, but I remember the 700 hours thing. I was like, there's no way I can qualify. I think you can get some advance. I think you can get some— I don't want to talk out of my ass here. I don't remember exactly, but I think if you do 360 hours, you can, you can get some Uh, in short-term rentals, short-term rentals, there's a loophole in it right now.

We're doing a ton of cost segs on people who have short-term rentals because they don't have to be a real estate professional. They just have to spend more time on that rental property than anybody else. And there's some threads that Mitchell Baldridge has, and if you search it, if you search short-term rental on the RE Cost Seg account, you could read the thread. But yeah, it's a, there's a loophole around, uh, short-term rentals.

Well, that's sick, dude. I think that potentially those businesses can be bigger than like your storage thing. But that's just because that's what I know is like internet businesses. But I think that actually could be pretty massive, right?

I think I am very bullish on what could happen. I'm excited. Yeah. And then I'm also buying a— I'm buying and rebranding a property and casualty insurance company.

What the hell is that?

They provide property insurance. Like if you have a commercial piece of property, self-storage facility or a multifamily unit, you need to get property insurance on that in case there's a tornado or a fire or somebody slips and falls outside.

Yeah, I mean, I have it at my Airbnb. I think, I think it's expensive. I'm pretty sure I pay $5,000 or $6,000 a year. Does that sound right?

Yeah, that sounds right. We pay over $400,000 or over $350,000 annually to insure our self-storage portfolio. But it's also a pain to work with these insurance companies. Like, the brokerages operate like it's 1950.

You have to press— Yeah, dude, I can't even, like, log— I don't have, like, a login. I think I just have, like, a PDF that, like, they sent me. And then they sent me more questions that said like, hey, did you ever fix this handrail or something like that? And anyway, like, it's pretty antiquated.

It's my business partner. We were working with a top 10 firm in the country, brokerage firm, top 10. This is one of the biggest companies. And my business partner Dan had to go into that business and build a system for them to quickly get us quotes on properties and to bind our coverage. We can't pay online. Things move slow as hell. Nobody responds to us. So yeah, we're buying an insurance company in Kansas City. We're rebranding it as Titan Risk. Um, TitanRisk.com is the shout out. Um, and we're going to spin up a property and casualty insurance company on the back of, again, the, the, the following, uh, your website's down.

So you got to, is it TitanRisk.com? You said?

Yeah. All right.

Yeah.

It'll be up soon.

It'll be up.

It'll be up by tomorrow, hopefully.

All right. Good. I, I, I don't know. I think this episode might go live tomorrow, so you gotta get it up by then on Thursday. What, uh, what did you pay for that?

Um, the guy was doing—

he, he—

we found a guy who had a really good contract base with carriers because that's the key. Like, everybody goes to the same carriers, but you have to have contracts with those really good carriers. Um, we found a guy in Kansas City who had that, and he was— I think he's doing $1 million, $1.5 million of revenue inside of his shop. He's the producer. He has 4 back office. We're going to hire folks through Shepherd and some Americans as well, um, account admins, and we're going to lean on his shop at the beginning and kind of spin up a secondary brand. So if I come on in 6 months, I'd be able to share a ton because this is in its infancy, but I'm more excited about this business than I am about RE Cost Seg and tax credit hunter.

Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best. HubSpot. Grow better. I want to ask you about the fourth one, but for the first three, did you put up any capital for any of them?

Yeah, we funded a checking account, um, for Ari Costa. We put $50 grand in there and then the two months later, you know, we were making distributions.

That's nothing, right? I mean, that's nothing. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And Dude, that's crazy to me.

The great thing about hiring an employee, even if you hire a really good engineer for $100,000, you're only paying them $8,300 a month.

Do you have engineers for these companies?

Yeah, you need— we have civil engineers inside of our cost seg. So yeah, it's, it's, this is, this stuff's not easy, right? Mel Baldridge is a badass. Like she's managing 23 people. We're doing a ton of volume of sales, doing all these CAD drawings, breaking down these properties. Marshall's team is really badass. Like, none of these companies are easy by any means.

Who's building the system? So like, and then not civil engineers, but I mean like web.

Yeah, we're using Airtable as a CRM. We have a lot of out-of-the-pocket tech, but yeah, we're getting some web work done as well. And I'm starting a web, a web landing page front-end development company as well called webrun.com. But that's with another guy that's going to be spun up in the next month. So yeah, I mean, it's getting, it's getting fun.

I want to ask you about this last one. And then, uh, I want to ask you more questions about all this stuff. I'm going to write my questions down because I don't want to interrupt you. What's this pest thing?

Oh, the pest control business. Um, I have a, I have an LP, a good friend of mine who owns 6 branches of a pest control company. And he needs to, he needs capital to go buy additional properties and he's got some capital, but not, you know, $5 or $10 million. And I said properties, I meant additional companies to latch on to his, to his business. But, um, I might do a deal with him where I sit on the board and I advise operationally. I help them hire, um, overseas talent through Support Shepherd and implement them inside the company and then, uh, raise the money from my real estate investors to buy the business. But that's in its infancy as well. I need more time to, to really talk on that.

So, um, about Between 2 and 6 months ago, Sean and I on this pod talked about a few things. I told him, I was like, basically like on Instagram you have like Rihanna and the Kardashians, and then there's like thousands and thousands of more. But those two, those, the, the Kardashians and Rihanna are like two prominent examples of people who have built hundreds of millions or billions of dollars worth of, uh, net worth via Instagram. On YouTube, we have MrBeast. He's like the common, he's the one everyone talks about. Um, and then, you know, there's way more, uh, of people who have built, like, there's the lady who started Ipsy, I think it's called, the makeup brand. There's just tons of them. On Facebook, you could say that like BuzzFeed and like, uh, um, a bunch of other people like, you know, built multi-billion dollar businesses on the backs of Facebook. Now, there hasn't really been one who's done it on Twitter. The— and Snapchat, same thing. We can think of a few more examples. The reason Twitter, maybe it hasn't worked, is because I think people haven't taken it seriously. And also there's only like 350 million people on it as opposed to Instagram, there's like what, billions? But I think that's changing. And what we haven't seen yet is someone who has built like the, the equivalent of the Kardashians, uh, on Twitter, except instead of selling makeup, I think they're gonna be selling B2B or professional, whatever that is considered, you know, B2B services or something where it's like a higher-end person, not a young woman buying like $12 makeup. And we haven't seen that yet. And then Sean was like, yeah, and then we have like the guy mafia. So you have people like the strip mall. It's like these anonymous accounts, like the strip mall guy who I know who he is. I'm friends with him and he has a large business and I don't know what it— what has come from Twitter, but he has a large business. And then there's like 5 or 6 other guys. There's like the used car salesperson guy, and he's like potentially gonna build a large business. And like, it's very predictable.

Luxury watch guys is selling shitloads of watches on Twitter.

Yeah, I almost bought a Rolex from him. He like had these Datejusts that I wanted.

Mm-hmm.

No one has done this to the extent of like hundreds of millions. I guess you kind of almost have already, but no one has done this to the extent that I think possible. You might be one of the first, or at least one of the people that I know closely who might be one of these early people to build a multihundred million or even a billion dollar fortune mostly because of your audience on Twitter. Do you think that's, that's, uh, uh, accurate?

I think these companies are so in, so in their infancy and it's really easy to get to $250 grand of revenue, but ask guys like Andrew Wilkinson how hard it is to go from $250,000 a month to, you know, $250 million a year in revenue. Like those types of jumps is on another level, right? I don't know if I have what it takes to do things like that.

Um, you're saying you don't think you, you, you have what it takes? How can you— No, I'm gonna try that.

I'm gonna try. Hell yeah, I'm gonna try.

But I mean, what I'm saying is, harder can it be than what you're doing now, but you give it 10 or 15 years to mature?

I don't know. I think what Austin Reef does at Morning Brew, like managing these bigger companies, is just a different skill set. It's different.

Like, but you're not doing it.

But I'd have to become a billionaire, wouldn't I?

I don't know, because Dude, it's kind of like you're like the Ryan Reynolds of Twitter a little bit, you know what I mean? Like he's got Mint Mobile, he has the soccer team that he partakes in, he's got, uh, I don't, the, the alcohol drink that he has, uh, I think he has a few more. I, I mean, that guy's not operating those companies.

Conor McGregor's not operating the whiskey thing, but like, and I can't operate, frankly, I can't operate my companies either. I'm focused on my real estate and everything else. Yeah.

And so my point being is if you're just, if you have 10 to 20 or 30%, of a handful of things, one of 'em could hit. There's this guy named Felix Dennis. Have you ever read, uh, this awesome book called How to Get Rich?

I, I love that book.

Yeah, I love that book. I recommend that book to everyone. It's horribly titled, but it's the best book I've ever read.

You should have equity in that. You should have equity in that book, Sam.

Dude, I, uh, whenever we mention in the pod, we'll notice the next day it goes up the charts like a ton. And, uh, well, he, he's dead now, but he, he built like a publishing empire that was like, it made him a, a lot of money, But the bulk of his wealth was he owned 10 or 20% of this thing called Micro Warehouse, which went public for multi-billions. And he made many, many hundreds of millions from it. And he had the same thing where he was like, look, I own the magazines that I'm going to promote you guys in there for free. And I'm also going to be like an advisor, but I'm going to be considered a co-founder. And this was my idea and I hired you guys. But he didn't manage the company. He met with the, with the other founders a lot and he gave his opinion, but he wasn't like running the day-to-day thing. I don't see why you, you couldn't do that with a few more things.

I think the, you know, the power of blowing up a brand is one thing. The power of spotting and reading and hiring and delegating to really good operators is something, is another thing as well that's underrated and something that I think that I'm good at finding people who really think about business the right way. And to build these companies, I can't operate them. I'm an investor, I'm an advisor, and I pump their stuff on Twitter and I'm a customer. And I, you know, help, but you gotta find somebody who really is really good at running a company. And that's where I wish I, I made a joke on Twitter that offended a couple of my good friends a couple days ago that said like, I need to do more angel investing so that I can invest in these companies. I can see how these founders think about business and how they make decisions and how they write their updates and how they fight through. And I can get a look into their brain and, and I can spot the killers, right? I can find those, those guys that are just really good at business, and then I can pull them aside when they give up. And I made a, a, a statement like the hell, you know, when they want to leave the hellscape that is venture capital. And that's not true. Um, it was, it was, uh, it was just not cool for me to say that about my buddies who add so much value to the world in, in that space. But anyway, and you're joking. I was, I was half joking, half being serious because I want to pull these people away and, and basically found and start and buy businesses that I think that they could come in and run great businesses that are ran like crap and just accelerate their growth and make them better.

Dude, Austin Reef is an amazing operator. And I remember when I first met him, I was probably 28 or 29 or 30. And he's younger than me. He's 4 years younger than me. And I was like, you're the first person— you're one of the very few people who's like my peer, but younger than me who I'm a little intimidated by. I'm like, you, you, I remember telling him, I was like, dude, I'm a lot better than you at a few things. You are so much better than me at a few other things. And I wish I would have met you earlier.

Listening to the way that he thinks about business problems and the way that he talks through them and the way that he paints a story in a clear and concise way when you're asking him about his business is, that's what I'm talking about. That's the 10xer. Austin is the 10xer. He's 100xer. He's on another level. But like when you're around a lot of these people and you talk to them, you start asking questions and hearing the way they think about business. You can do it too. Like you can just tell, you can tell when somebody's different, when somebody's really got it. You know what I mean?

Dude, he's the best. But I would also say like Andrew Wilkinson's a great friend of mine. I don't know what his empire's worth, but in the $500 to a billion range, depending on public markets, he, uh, when I talk to him, I don't feel like I'm like, Andrew, I don't feel you're out of my league. You've just been doing it for longer and you are really creative and you were the first person, you were, you were bolder and smarter than, than me to like believe that this could actually become a thing. And you did the thing and then you did it for years and years and you didn't give up and you never bowed down and you always did it your way. But in terms of like your vision and my vision, uh, you know, my vision now that I see you could do it, I'm like, I don't think I think you're ball— I think we're in the same ballpark of like intellect. Um, and so that's why when I see him, I'm like, dude, you're inspiring to me because I kind of feel like we're almost the same, although the results are not the same. And I find that to be very inspirational. And that's kind of the same for you. Maybe like you look at a guy like him and be like, oh man, Andrew is my idol.

Yeah. I mean, that man understands leverage and delegation unlike anybody that I've ever met. Right. He can find somebody, he can, he can, his, his brain is so good at analyzing the pros and the cons of making a bet. He does business like a poker player, right? When the odds are in his favor, he's going to go big. And he's just proven that he can make those bets better than anybody else. You find those excellent operators. And I think he's an undercover killer, too. I mean, I know that he comes off really humble, but the dude is—

I think he's a killer, too. He's a killer. And anyone who's that successful is not, not a killer.

Yeah, you're right.

And he does a good job because he, like, is a— I always tease him. I'm like, dude, you're always dressed so nice and you have slicked back hair. Like, you, like, have this, like, designer, like, look to you, but like, you're like, quit acting like you're like, not a killer because you definitely are.

He's got it.

Why? What do you, what do you do with your money? Do you, what do you invest in?

Well, real estate. I'm not that liquid, right? I haven't sold a company. I haven't sold any properties. So I personally guarantee, you know, $50 million plus of debt and I only have $3.6 million liquid. So I'd be foolish to start spending that on houses, cars and boats. Right. So Um, I keep a lot of cash, about a million in cash. I keep another, another $2.5 million in public equities that I can create cash.

Are you trading? Are you trading?

No, I buy, I buy, buy stocks and hold them for a long time. I'm way too dumb to try to guess what's going to happen inside of a market.

But you didn't used to be that way.

Um, I bought some dumb— we talk about our friend Austin Reef. I bought some dumb stocks that I then sold 6 months later for a big loss. Absolutely. But I'm not trying to day trade in time. Markets.

Austin told us all that, that Zillow was like the buy. He was like, I didn't buy it, but it was a fair argument.

Oh, we bought it at $150. It went up to $200 and I was getting texts from Austin that the, that, you know, let's, let's go. Like, this is incredible. Now it's $30 or something. Um, but no, I mean, Google and Facebook and Microsoft and Apple, all the best companies in the world, all got 50% cheaper. So I bought a lot of those and I'm going to hold them for 5 years and I'm sure that I'll do fine.

What's motivating you right now?

I just think it's fun. I mean, the building, the building is really fun. Is that what you— I mean, I want to talk about you now too, Sam, because your earnout's over here. How many years post-exit? Are you 4 years out?

No, dude, 2.

2 years. Okay, never mind. Yeah, I mean, you build something, you sell something, you have that event, and then when it's over, you're like, well, shit, I kind of— I love, I love building. I love tinkering. I love entrepreneurship and business.

I needed, so I gave myself one year to, I basically wrote the rules where I was like, I'm gonna read anything that interests me, whether that's, so I read a lot of fiction and I read, I don't read business books anymore. Um, and then I also said, I'm just gonna search. I'm just gonna search. So I'm just gonna plot and search and just whatever interests me, I'm just gonna pursue it. You know, I was like, I was like, I'm just gonna, a dog on a walk following my nose and I'm not gonna like feel guilty about that. And I noticed that after about 6 months I was ready to roll again. I made some mistake. I made some irreversible decisions at my company, like some culture decisions. Basically when I started the company, I was 25. And then when I about sold it, I was about 30 and like I was a different person and I'm more solid on who I am now. So I would have different values when I start my next things. But anyway, I made some mistakes. So I basically kind of had to sell the company or in order to like get out. And so I was pumped about it, but at the same time I was like, I wish I, was wealth. I wish I was— I wasn't wealthy when I started a business. I had nothing. I was like, I wish I was wealthy so I didn't have to sell this to get liquidity because I would have liked to have owned it forever. But I was very, very, very happy to get that time to relax and to seek. And then after about 6 months, I was like, dude, I need action. I need to gamble. I felt— I remember watching a James Bond movie and I'm like, should I become a cop? Like, I need to go out and like get into trouble. Like, I need to experience like It's the uncertainty, I think.

It's like, it's the, it's making a decision where you don't know what the answer is going to be. And then waiting and seeing what happens. That is just incredibly addicting about entrepreneurship and business.

Dude, I just like, like being a shithead with my friends. I love our group chat. Like when it gets spicy, I like think about it all the time. Like it's so funny. And I'm like, I gotta go do something now to one-up the guys here. And that's how I feel. So like my, my best the time I have that I love the best when it comes to work is when I'm with like my partner Joe or someone like that. And we're like, we can't pull this off, can we? Ah, fuck, let's go try it. Like that, that adrenaline, that's like my version of like James Bond when I'm watching him like having like a car chase. I'm like, dude, let's, this is our, this is our nerdy version of a car chase. I need that thrill. And it just so happens that the outcome typically is money. And so that's what I'm motivated by is like the thrill. I don't give a shit about legacy. When people talk about legacy, I'm like, I don't give a shit, dude. I'm going to— I'm like, imagine the feeling that you had when you— before you were born. That's what I think I'm going to have when I'm dead. Why do I care what people think about me? You know, I want to like leave something to my children because I love them. But like, I don't give a fuck about what anyone else thinks. I don't care about legacy. I just want to have fun and like have excitement in the moment. And that's what I'm motivated by.

Yeah. Making these— making these business deals and these business decisions and these and these calculated bets, we'll call them, like, fuckin' with you and, and all these things I'm working on, they're just calculated bets. And when you, when you put the money in, you just never know what's gonna happen. You never know what's gonna happen when you try to sell it, when you start to get customers, when you start to solve problems. And it's, it's addicting for sure.

By the way, well, we can keep this on, but Producer Ben, we have to bleep out the name of what he just said. I haven't announced that yet.

Ah, but can we talk about it? Can we?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can, we can't say what it is, but we can, we can, we can mention I have a thing that I'm gonna be announcing in a month. I'm gonna, I might get one month. Nick just said the name of it. We gotta bleep that out. I'll be announcing it in one month. I've been doing it low key for two reasons. One, I wanted to prove that I can do it without my audience. Um, and two, I wanted to make sure that it worked and was life-changing. It's a wonderful product before I'm, I like get like an influx. But I'm going to announce that in a month. Um, what else do we want to talk about? Anything else?

I mean, I mean, I've been thinking a little bit about like what holds people back and anxiety and the decision-making that like the whole thing.

You have anxiety?

No, I just mean like the uncertainty, like the fear of failure. Like it's, it's in everybody. Not, not that I guess anxiety is a, is a bad term, more like insecurity, right? I have insecurity. And the, and it holds me back from making big decisions. And the problem with it is, is the more insecure you are, the less decisions you make. And decision-making is like something that you have to practice to get really good at. If you don't make decisions with a lot on the line, you have to, you're never going to get better at it, ever going to get better at it. So then you have unmade decisions and that equals stress because stress is a decision that hasn't yet been made. And then it just cycles and snowballs. So people who are They have insecurity, they have anxiety around making decisions. Then they get stressed out because they have these decisions and it's just a big compounding snowball of, of like, it just holds people back from kicking so much ass. Like every high performer that I know, they, they make a ton of decisions. They make some of them wrong. They lose some money. Like there's downside, of course, but they just make them and make them and make them and they make them quick and they get better at it and better at it and better at it. And that's when the leverage kicks in and they can just build and grow and build. Grow.

My parents, when I was a younger kid, I would like sell CDs or like sell used stuff on eBay. And I remember making mistakes and they're like, oh, that's all right. You can't get a hit unless you're in the game. And, uh, they're like, uh, you're swinging your miss, but you know, you gotta, you gotta swing to get the hit and you can't get hit unless you're in the game. I remember hearing that and that like changed my life. And so now whenever I screw up, I'm like, uh, whatever. Like, you know, a.300 batting average in baseball is great. So I'm like, that's all I need. Like that in business is fine. In fact, in business you actually need less. If you try 100 times and one thing works, it makes up for all the 99 things. Um, and that's what I always tell people. I'm like, dude, you gotta, you gotta, you can't get a hit unless you're in the game.

I've been asking high performers this because now I have a 5-year-old. I'm thinking about what I can do for my kids to help them just get better at making decisions and get, you know, more, a more solid foundation, a more solid foundation in the event of insecurity. Did your parents just like let you struggle a little bit? Like that's something that I found is very common among entrepreneurs and successful people because so many parents nowadays, they really mess up because they like shelter their kids from all decision-making. They like make the decisions for the kids. They like, they, they keep them from getting in any pain at all. They're going to keep them from having to deal with the uncomfort of pain. They're going to put them in a bubble. And I look back on my parents and my, my parents would like, They would make me make the little decisions when I was a kid so that I got better at making the decisions. And then when they were bigger, I wasn't overwhelmed with fear and insecurity.

I was always skateboarding and rollerblading and going to skate parks. And I remember I had a unicycle, I would, and I would try to ride it downstairs. And they were like, I was crazy. I was like, do all this crazy stuff. I remember when I was in 4th grade, I could ride a unicycle and juggle, and I would do all this crazy like skateboarding shit. And they would be like, uh, hey, let's go to the skate park. But the only rules they had was you have to wear a helmet. They go, as long as you wear a helmet, we don't care. And so I was in and out of the hospital, broken, broken, broken fingers, stitches on my eye, broke my arm, broke my collarbone. I've had a lot of broken bones. And they were— I always say my parents, they— once I left school, I wasn't financially—

like, they didn't—

they've never, like, helped me with the business or anything, but they supported me up until then. And So I had that, but they were emotionally supportive. So I remember when I left school and moved up to San Francisco and told them I was going to join this thing called Airbnb, they were like, this sounds like a multi-level marketing thing. Like, is this like, you're going to— and I was like, no guys, like, it's like, I think it's legit. Like at the time I was like 200 or 300 people worked there. It's legit. And they're like, you're going to leave school to go do this? And I was like, yeah, it's legit. And they were like, well, this sounds horrible, but, uh, You know, we'll see you Saturday. We'll come down there and help you move out. And so like, they did things like that that were like very emotionally supportive. And so, and that was like huge. And so a lot of my friends who don't take risks, oftentimes their parents were quite neurotic. And they, instead of saying, um, why, uh, you, instead of saying like, of course this can work, they would default to saying like, well, this will never work because of this, this, and this. Or like, you can't go study abroad. Like Mexico is dangerous. Haven't you seen that there's like shootings or Uh, you know, like people get sick when they, uh, do this and that. Like I remember like that was usually the default versus like, screw it. We'll, we'll, we'll handle it when we get there. Yeah.

Putting your kids in a bubble. And now that I have a 5-year-old, like it sucks to watch him struggle. And now, and I have a bunch of employees and it sucks to watch.

I don't know.

There's, there's a lot of similarities between like raising your kid.

You let your kid get hurt though? Like let's say your kid's riding a bike and he's wearing a helmet and you're like, dude, he's 100% about to knock his teeth out.

Um, if he's about to hurt himself bad and I'm gonna go to the emergency room, obviously I'm gonna run and try to catch him. But if he's over on the other side of the cul-de-sac and he hits a curb and he falls down and he starts screaming, I'm not gonna sprint over there and pick him up and coddle him. Does that make sense? Like, I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna let him, I'm gonna let him figure that crap out. But I just think it bleeds over into everything. Like, if you, if an employee walks into your office and they have a problem and you just say, get out of my way, I'm gonna solve that problem. Then that enables, that enables them to, A, it doesn't let them learn how to solve problems on their own. And B, it enables them to bring you more and more problems and just be completely unable to like get shit done without you as a boss.

Um, do you, uh, Ben just texted me and he wanted, he wanted me to ask you, you, you have all 3 boys, right?

I have a 5-year-old boy, 3-year-old boy, 2, uh, All right. 10-month-old girl.

Are you going to raise her the same way? I would imagine yes. Right.

Oh man. I don't know. I don't know if I will.

Yeah.

You got it. You got it.

If I have a daughter, I mean, this is my, I'm hypothetical. You're living it, but I think I would definitely, you got to do it the same way, right?

Yeah. Oh yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to raise strong, secure daughter for sure. Like, A, I'm going to show her that I'm going to treat her mother with a ton of respect and that her mother, should never take shit from me just because I'm a man. Right. That's, that's something like you cripple women in the long run if you like enable or like lead them to be insecure. So I'm going to try to raise like a really strong, confident, secure girl who can, yeah. Knows how to struggle with grace. Absolutely. So when she falls down on her bike, I'm not gonna run over there either, I guess.

Well, good, dude. I'm happy you came on. I like talking to you. Um, by the way, we do this thing on, on, on our YouTube channel. I'm going to do it now. I was supposed to do it earlier on. We talk about the gentleman's agreement. Have you heard me say this?

I have not. Damn, you're catching me totally blind.

So we, we've been growing our YouTube subscribers. Uh, I think last month we grew by 20,000 and the pitch was this, which I stole it from this guy named Jesse on Fire. So I'm not going to act like I came up with it, but it was, uh, we guilted people a little bit. We said, hey, hold on, hold on. I normally say this in the beginning.

I forgot to do it today.

I go, hold on. Unlike everything else on YouTube, our content is not for free. We actually work for you. And the way that you pay us back, it's kind of like when you go up and buy a, uh, you go up to 7-Eleven and you see like a jar for the muscle dystrophy and you take a piece of candy and you leave a quarter or you leave a dollar. That's what this YouTube channel is, except instead of the dollar, all you gotta do is click a like and subscribe on, on our little channel and we work for you. And so our content's not free. You have to subscribe if you watch more than one video and it's called the gentleman's agreement because we're not there. It's a handshake. So anyway, that is the gentleman's agreement. So you do have to subscribe to our channel. But dude, that pitch changed everything. Immediately we started close, seeing close to 1,000 people a day clicking subscribe. So it's, it's working. So you gotta have like a unique way of asking for it and it, and it's worked. And so now we have all types of people coming up to us. I had, I was riding my, I was on a walk yesterday and a guy drove by and goes, hey, I honored the gentleman's agreement. I swear to God in Austin, I had 2 people last week, uh, say that to me. So anyway, that's our gentleman's agreement. So if you're listening, if you've ever listened to more than one episode, This is the gentleman's agreement. It's an honor system. You have to do it. And we can't check this on you, but please do it. Everyone's doing it, apparently, if we're growing almost 1,000 a day. But Nick, I appreciate you. You're, um, you, uh, what's the, um, what's the promo? Uh, it's, uh, so support Shepherd's, the Shepherd thing.

Yeah, supportshepherd.com, sweatystartup.com, boltstorage.com, supportshepherd.com, recostseg.com, taxcredithunter.com.

Webrun.com, titanrisk.com, and Sweaty Startup on Twitter.

No, I mean, I really appreciate this. I mean, you bring me on here. I hope your audience got something from this because the value that this will add to me is, is phenomenal, man. You've always been incredibly supportive. I remember I was trying to launch a little community around real estate and you got on a call when you were busy as hell and I wasn't that big of a deal and you helped me set that whole thing up. I mean, generosity, uh, Sam, is freaking awesome.

Well, I appreciate that. And now, uh, maybe one day I'm gonna ask to be an affiliate of your affiliate or something like that.

So anything you need, anything you need, man, let me know. All right.

I appreciate you. Thank you very much. That's it. That's the pod.