The 6 Traits Of A Successful Entrepreneur (#431)

If— no, if— now this is the theory. This is the big— this is the big part. If you can make other people good at their jobs, not just you good at your job, but if you can lead other people and set them up for success and make other people good at their job, you are the 10xer. You're the 10xer. Welcome to My First Million. Thanks for joining me, Sam.

All right. So Sean is in California. There's a power outage. Last minute, I called Nick Huber. We're going to give you, uh, like the proper introduction, but basically, um, you were on a month ago, 6 weeks ago, and it was—

Yeah, one month.

I think it was the second most downloaded pod in the last 90 days. It had something like 150 or even more downloads, something like that. So the people loved you and, uh, What was your introduction last time? Nick has at least $100 million in storage units, of which I am an investor in. So I always disclose that. And you also own 3 or 4 different companies right now that are doing really well, or own part of.

Yep.

Yep.

Dabbling in, dabbling in a lot of stuff. You texted me actually 1 hour and 6 minutes ago and you said, hey, can you come on the pod in 1 hour? And I said, yes. And you said, do you actually have good content? And I said, yes, I'm a content machine. I was just kidding with you. And you said, hey, you need to make a document and send it to me. Are you sure you have the fire? You put the pressure on me.

Because we don't ever, I never asked the same person twice, but I know that you're easy to work with and let's do it. I knew you'd show up in time.

Well, you blew up, you blew up my life, man. I mean, I, I looked back, you, you brought me on this show the very first time on November 11th, 2020. And then another time, February 16th, 2023, which was 4 weeks ago today. And honestly, it blew up my world.

I mean, I'm telling you, really, what are the results?

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

And that's like 4 grand a month or something, or 2 grand a month?

It just costs about 3 grand. It's 30% of the first year salary, 35% of the first year salary to make the placement. So average tickets between 3 and 4 grand. All the other businesses too that I mentioned on there got some leads. RECostSeg, WebRun.com. It's just crazy, man. Got reached out to by a lot of people and actually have kind of got started with a couple more businesses since then. So it's just been wild.

So I, uh, like, I went to Vancouver and I was hanging out with some guys that were like worth hundreds of millions and maybe one or two of them in the billionaire range. And we were having dinner and they wouldn't stop talking about that episode and they wouldn't stop talking about you. And they were like, I gotta meet Nick. I introduced you to one of them. Um, and, uh, Courtney and, um, but they wouldn't stop talking about you. And I was like, damn, people love Nick. It's amazing.

It's been amazing. I think the, the network effects of that have really impacted my life and man, have you to thank in a major way. So really, really, really appreciate it.

We were at a, I did like an MFM meetup last night. Jonathan organized it and we had, uh, 500 people RSVP. I don't know how many people showed up, but it was awesome. We got to like meet people and, uh, a lot of people were asking about you and, uh, it was really fun to get out from behind the microphone because what people don't, I always say this, I said this last night, what they don't realize is like Sean and I, at least we talk throughout the week, but we try to save our good. If we ever, if we're ever talking about something juicy, he'll just say like, don't, don't tell me, tell me me when we're live. And right now I'm just in my, I turned like a small bedroom into a little, it just has this desk and a camera. And you probably, it looks like you're in the same, you have like a small office in your house. And like, they don't realize that like, we're just a bunch of like doofuses behind a mic, just barely. I mean, we prepare, but like, we're just kind of like having a conversation with our friends and it's really cool to like see the people and like actually hear from them. And so we did that last night. It was exhausting, but I was very happy to do it. And so hopefully you, you've been able to meet some of the people as well.

It's crazy because we can sit here and talk and I'm a little bit nervous just because I know the impact of My First Million. I know that 100,000 people might listen to this, but imagine how nervous we would be if we were sitting in two chairs in the middle of Dallas Cowboys Stadium with 100,000 people watching. I mean, it would be— it would make it feel a lot more real. It would make it feel a lot more real.

We've had so many people say, why don't you guys do it in real life? Like you and Sean, like, and I'm like, well, it's just more convenient. But also it's like one time I recorded at a studio and there was like this like lady at the at like the soundboard and she was like hip and cool looking and was like a cute lady. And I remember she wouldn't laugh every once in a while when I thought I said something funny and I got in my head, I was like, shit, I didn't, I didn't, was that douchey? Was that lame? And then everyone, and then when she would laugh, I'd be like, all right, I got her. I got her. I got to keep going. And so like, she was my audience. And I remember I was like changing everything I did. And afterwards I was like, Ben, I can't do this with, with any of these people in this room anymore. It's getting in my head. I'm trying to impress them too much.

It's tough, man. It's tough. I'm having a live event on the 22nd in Athens, which you guys inspired me to do. I put it together right after that and 30 people have bought tickets to it. So I'm a little bit bummed out, but we're going to actually go through it next Wednesday night in Athens. We're going to actually have it, see how many people show up and see if it's a success. But yeah, when you put yourself out there for a live event, it comes with a new level of stress and anxiety for sure.

So I moved to San Francisco in 2012. I moved out there. And I moved up there from Tennessee and I, I'm still a little rough back then. I was really rough around the edges and this was right. Uh, yeah. And this, and this was like, basically I moved out there and like, I would wear jeans and like boots and a white t-shirt all the time. And people, and I've had a little bit of a twang, you know, and people would kind of tease me and I told them I'm from Tennessee and they're like, you know, what do you date your cousin? Like they would make fun of me. And I felt really. Like jealous of the Stanford kids. I would like, I remember I took a bus or a train out and to walk around Stanford's campus. I felt it was like Goodwill, a Goodwill Hunting moment. I was like, dude, am I gonna meet all these geniuses? What's gonna happen? And I got so envious. And so I created this thing called the Anti-MBA because I was envious that I didn't get my MBA from Stanford. Cause I would meet all these kids and they had this like awesome network. And so I created this book club and we would meet once a week. We would read one book a month and we would meet once a week. And go over the trailing, like, you know, week's reading. And then I would call in a guest to like lead the discussion and I would talk to them. And I, and I posted an ad on Craigslist. That's how I got my first people. And so Sieva, one of my best friends, Sieva, um, who's like a big entrepreneur, he was one of those people, you know, he's one of my closest friends. So I met him that way. And so I would host these book groups and we, it would be 10 people at first. And then the next time, like 12. And then over time, I did this for a year, every week for a year. I got like 3,000 people signed up to my email list. Then I hosted an event, uh, that was, uh, like maybe 80 people came. And then I hosted HustleCon and 300 people came, but it was very slow. Like these like events I did, very like, it was like a 4-year grind. And then at HustleCon, eventually we got like 2,500 people coming. And so like these events and, and then Sean and I did a live pod in Miami and like Maybe 100 people came and it wasn't that good. And then we did it again and it was a little bit better. So like these events, it takes time and it's hard. And it's hard because unlike the internet, when you, you know, with the internet you can delete some stuff. Within an event, you just are gonna embarrass yourself. You know what I mean? It's, so it is challenging, but it was like a grind to do the, do those events.

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

Where do you want to go today? Where, where you want to drive?

So I want to talk about the traits of a successful entrepreneur. What made, what makes a, whether it's a partner, an operator, a manager at a company. And when I say entrepreneur, I don't necessarily just mean somebody who starts a business. I mean somebody who leads other people inside of an organization. What makes those people really, really good at what they do. And I think you have a lot of experience tracking down and identifying these people who are killers. We'll call them 10xers. They're the people who, you know, I have a theory that 80% of workers are just kind of skating by and maybe they're adding a little bit of value to a company, but the top 20% are generating outsized return for the company that they work for or themselves if they're an entrepreneur. What makes those people tick. I want to talk about that. All right. The most interesting thing about this is that it's kind of— this will morph into a tactical guide of literally starting a company, because when you start to identify these things and you track down these people and you bring them together, a company is nothing more than just a group of people that all work together. So if you can find these people and put them together, which I know you can, which I'm confident that I can, and anybody who scales of business can do, um, you can, you can make a lot of money fast. So let's dig in.

Well, when I, when I first started my career, it was basically just, can I make enough money to pay for my own bills? And then once you get past that point, maybe that point is, it's different for everyone. For us, it was in the $30,000 a month range. Once we got to $30,000 a month, I realized, cool, it's sustainable to a certain level. I need to hire people. And I hired one or two people in a few of my different companies where once we got to like $30,000 and $40,000 a month, when you hire the right person, it can 10x fairly quickly. And at that $30,000 mark, I realized at a young age, I am in the collection of people business. I just have to collect interesting people. And you have to play like a long-term game because it doesn't, you can't, they're not always available, but if you like play the long game, relationships last a long time. So I've done a good job of collecting people and I, you asked me this, so I made a list. Um, mm-hmm. So, uh, uh, 4 traits that I always look for. The first is I look for emotionally stable people. The reason I look for that is I'm not exactly the most emotionally stable person. I'm the fire. So when, when it comes to starting stuff, I don't need anyone to motivate me. I'm the flame. I'll get it started. I don't need any gasoline. I don't need anything of that like that, but I need people who can when you're the type of person like me and you have really high highs and I can motivate someone and I can get them to do crazy shit that you typically, those people, it's almost like a comedian. They're often, if they're great on stage, that means they're probably sad a lot of times or they get like down or like for, in my case, I'm like, this is gonna fail, this sucks. And so I always look for someone who's like pretty stable and they're a rock who can like sustain like a pretty even pace and they, I can motivate them to get excited, but they don't get down too easily. I also look for people who follow through.

Let's go one, let's go one for one. You say one trait, I say one trait. So for me, it's, it's very, very similar to what you just described in yourself. And it is that, that fire, that sense of urgency and that energy. I think most people out there, just in general, a lot of people, they, they, they're like, they're in slow motion. They walk slow, they think slow, they talk slow, they make decisions slow. They're just kind of lollygagging through life. They go into work, they clock in at 9:00 AM, they do the bare minimum all day to get paid next Friday and not get fired. And then they clock out and they go home and drink a couple beers. They're not that excited about hobbies. They're not that excited about much at all, which is fine. Yeah, it's fine.

I just don't want to, and you need those people a lot of times. You need, you need bottom seats. Yeah. Which is fine.

Those people are fine and they serve a purpose, but then you get those people that have that energy. You get those people that have that, okay, I'm going to get out of bed today and I'm going to attack this thing and we're going to make decisions fast. We're going to move fast, we're going to talk fast, we're going to take action fast and we're going to get shit done. And those people, when you bring them in, they can do all the other things on this list. I think everything else on my list and your list feeds from, hey, we are going to get stuff done quick. When I started my very first company, It was a moving company that pick up and delivery storage for students. We bought a cargo van on Craigslist for $3,000 and we drove it back to the track house. This is kind of a good example of the different— the way that people think about business and opportunity. We were jacked up, me and my business partner. We were all excited about the idea of starting a company and going out and trying to make some money. We drove this van back and we're like, we're going to start doing pickup and delivery storage for students. And some of our Buddies, they were sitting around, we were sitting around the track house playing beer pong and they're like, you guys are freaking crazy. What is exciting?

Like, what do you know about that?

What, what beer pong? No.

What do you, what do you know about moving? Like, you know, like who, you're not qualified.

Yeah. They're, they're just like, why is that exciting? You're gonna go, what, we're gonna go have fun this weekend. You're gonna go around and sweat and pick up boxes for $30 a piece. Like, that And they would have quit or given up in a week or two, whereas we were energetic, we were excited, we got after it, and we were able to convince some other people to come along. And, you know, that was, you know, that's, that's the whole thing.

There's this great, there's this great book, Robert, you know, Robert Greene, the author Robert Greene. He wrote that book, 48 Laws of Power. He has another book that was way less popular called The 50th Law. And it's really weird because he wrote it about 50 Cent and it's actually a great book. I know it sounds weird. But, uh, he, because he, Robert Greene, he's into like, uh, philosophy and all this, all this stuff. But he talks about like rappers and he loves hip hop culture. And he, uh, and he's like, 50 Cent is really good at this because he has done a good job reinventing himself a bunch of times. He's, uh, changed his image a bunch of times, whatever. And he said the key to 50's, uh, success was his sense of urgency. And if you don't have a sense of urgency in everything that you do, it, it ruins everything. And he doesn't just talk about business people. He talks about poets. He talks about, people who discover, who invent different medicines, like, you know, poets, writers, whatever. It's always about urgency.

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

I used, I used to have a rule when I saw, this is how I met my wife. When I saw a cute girl who I wanted to talk to, the, the, I could only give myself 5 seconds after seeing her before I spoke to her.

Urgency, baby.

5-second rule. It was a 5-second rule because if you don't talk to them within a couple seconds, you're never gonna do it. And the longer you wait, the harder it gets. And so I, I always had the 5-second rule.

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

Yeah, go, go one more.

Okay. So I think this one feeds into the next one, which is when you're starting a company and people ask me a lot after our last episode where I spoke about the 4 or 5 companies that I'm starting. Nick, how do you have time to do this? How are you doing it yourself? And the answer is I'm not. I'm going and I'm tracking down people who are really good. And I want you to riff on this too, Sam, because you're a master of bringing people together. And I have this theory about recruiting employees or partners or people in your early company, which step 1 is always, you know, the website, getting your ClickFunnels, getting your copywriting down, getting your service put together. But then it's attracting people. That's all it is. As an entrepreneur, all you're doing is attracting people. I have a theory about this. So 10% of people are in career nirvana, meaning they love their job, they're perfectly motivated, and they are— under no circumstance are they gonna go and do something else. Another 10% of people are literally actively looking for something else. Either they're unemployed or they really hate their job and they're very open and they're actively looking for jobs. These are the people that are looking on job boards, posting around, you know, for anything that might be another opportunity for them. And then there's 80% of people that are in the middle. 8 out of 10 people have somewhere in the middle. They like their job, but they're open to other things, or they could be open to other things, but they're not gonna go on Monster or on Indeed or on LinkedIn and actually apply for jobs.

Which typically is the, those are the winners.

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

How do you convince them?

It's, it's sales. It's literally I'm, I'm selling them on my mission. We can talk about sales.

Which looks like what?

Sales is another thing, but I'm, I'm trying to make it, I'm trying to tell them how they can win better than what they're winning right now with me. I can either make them more money, they can have a better quality of life, we can do something more fun. I got to get them to buy into my vision. I got to be charismatic and, and convince them that they need to stop what they're doing. They need to make a big life change, which is a career is a huge change to make, and they got to drop it and come with me. And you do the same thing, Sam. Yeah.

Usually what I do is I'll like, I'll find someone interesting and I just chat them up and I go, I'll be like, I usually like to flatter people. So I say, you're amazing. What's your story? And they'll just gush and tell you their story. And I act interested because I am interested. And then, um, usually I'm like, what, where do you want to be in a handful of years? What do you want to do? And if they tell me something where I'm like, oh, I could help you get there. Sometimes I can't, sometimes it's like, I can't help you get there. But, um, if they, if I can, then I tailor my pitch around helping them get there. And I'll say something like, would you like to come join me for a handful of years? And I bet you we could set you up nicely to get you to where you want to go. And I, and I tailor my pitch all about them and how I'm gonna help them achieve their goals. And typically what I do, I've said this a bunch of times, which is the world wants people to be vanilla. They want you to fit into a very, uh, safe box. And I think a lot of people dread that even though they are living that life. And so I tend to go the excitement and fun angle because a lot of the times I'm not necessarily building the next SpaceX. Like if you're like work at NASA, there is some big vision, which is like we're putting someone on the moon. Or if you look at work at some type of company that's like creating a life-saving drug, I'm like, we're gonna save lives. But I don't really do stuff like that. I just do awesome stuff, like fun stuff. And so I typically lean into excitement where it's like, look, we're gonna build this pirate ship together and you're gonna be leading it or you're gonna be contributing it in a way where we're gonna agree on the rules. But you could, as long as you play within those rules, you could do whatever you want. And so that's typically how I pitch.

I love it. And when I'm making a key hire, I do the exact same thing. I call it like, the motivational interview. If I'm hiring somebody who's a little bit higher level, I'm making an investment, they're making a big change. I need them to do some pretty important stuff. I'll sit there in the interview and I'll be like, Sam, we're talking about this company right now, but let's pretend that we're 5 years in the future. You and I are sitting right here. We're in this office in 5 years and you walk into this office and you are gushing. You're excited. You're like, Nick, things are going freaking awesome. Tell me what is going on. Tell me how much money you're making. Tell me how big your team is. Tell me if you're working from home, how much you're working. Tell me what kind of projects you're working on. And then I just shut up and I let them talk and I get to hear what makes them tick and where they want to go. And if my company can't put that together, sometimes it's, it's a, it's a really valuable tool because a lot of times, 30, 40% of the time, I'll be like, wow. I can't deliver on this. My company can't deliver on this.

Yeah.

But then other times I'll be like, okay, I just— it just gives you a look into how these people tick, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. And you got to tailor it. So the third thing I— or the second thing that we won't talk about because we already did is speed. I look for speed and that's quite hard to find. Most people aren't fast. My current partner, Joe, Joe Spicer, he's the only person I've worked with that I'm like, Joe, you're going fast, man. It's hard for me to keep up. So I look for speed a lot. But the third thing is follow through. So people who actually act, and I find that to be probably the hardest thing to find. And I actually, a lot of things are trainable. I don't think that, that, I think you either, you is or you ain't when it comes to following through and like actually doing stuff. And what I tend to do is I like to look at people who have products or projects that are live. So someone will be like, we had this one lady reply to one of our tweets and she's like, I sold $100,000 worth of Taylor Swift t-shirts. And I'm like, okay, that's, that's all I need to know. You do stuff. Or maybe they have a blog or maybe they tweet or maybe they have a YouTube channel or maybe they, um, have some type of hobby that in involves like taking action. And I always look for those things. It could be like, I org— I organize clubs in college.

Yeah.

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

And you also, you, you've told me this in the group chat is that you will give them a small job and that knocks off. If somebody's interested in joining Sam Parr, the Sam Parr Ride and getting involved in one of your companies, one of these things, you're gonna give 'em something to do and that'll knock off 80% of the people. And 'cause they're not gonna follow through, they're not gonna follow through. I think the, I got a good story. WebRun, the guy that I found to, to start this front-end web development, the landing page company, his name's Will Wallace. He's a coder. He lives in Atlanta. One of the most brilliant dudes I know. And when I saw him, I was like, Will, I need a, I need, I need a favor. And I was testing him. He didn't know it. I, I need a favor. I need a landing page and I need something to form up on my website. I need it like right away. And then boom, the next morning I woke up and it was there and it was freaking awesome. And he just moved so fast. He just got stuff done so quickly. That speed and sense of urgency that you're talking about. If you can find a way to get a look into their mind, and it goes back to like, hey, we're looking to assemble a group of people. As an entrepreneur, we're looking to assemble a group of people. How do you know who those 10Xers are? How do you know who those 10Xers are? Getting a look into their mind with some of these ways that we're talking about. Like you're saying, give them something to do, give them something to follow through on.

Like, look at what they're actually doing. Often I tell them, I get pitched like 5 times a day. You probably do too. People who want to make short clips for me.

Yep.

And I almost ignore all of them, but every once in a while I'll be like, um, all right, make me a video then. And I'll tell them, I won't, I go, I'm not even going to post it. So it's, don't worry about free work. Like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna profit off your work. Make me a video then. Um, and we used to do this all the time. People would apply to The Hustle for writing, writing. I go, okay, write tomorrow's email. And, uh, yeah, like I would, every once in a while I would get a 1,200-word thing the next day. I go, all right, sick, we'll talk.

What you're looking for is a look into the mind of these people to figure out if they're a 10xer. So if you're going out and you're trying to build these teams, you can shoot from the hip. You can put— bring somebody in for an interview and then you can make the hire, or you can try to get a preview. Try to get a preview. Another thing that I look for on my list, and these two blend together, I'm going to talk about both these things: clear and concise communication. So many people, you'll have a conversation and you'll listen to them for 60 seconds, 90 seconds, and you'll be like, what the hell is this person even talking about? Get to the point. Whereas you have Nick Huber on your podcast I can say exactly what I've done and where I've been and how many storage facilities I have. And I've given you 3 or 4 things to bite off on the first 28 seconds that I've been on the show because I'm a very clear and concise communicator. So I look for that. I listen to that when I'm talking to other business people. Hey, you're trying to tell me a story, you're trying to get a point across. How quick, how clear, and how concise can you do it? And the ability to get points across—

how would you feel?

—versus 30 is just mind-blowing.

How would you feel if someone referred to themself in the third person in an interview like you just did? That's a, that's a, that's a, I'm out, dog. That's an I'm out, dog, right away.

We can talk, we can talk about— everybody wants to hear about the social justice warrior tweet that I had a couple days ago. But yeah, I mean, there's a lot of red flags too that are instant cuts. You're just looking for red flags. That's what you're doing. Red flag, cut. Somebody refers to themselves as Nick Huber in the third person, cut.

Out, dude. The, and the last thing that I have that's related is, and this is hard to figure out a little bit, but I look for taste and intelligence. Intelligence being like, uh, just like I always say, I'm like, does your oven burn hot? Like, are you just smart? Or, um, and can you like, do you have like emotional intelligence, but also, um, taste. So I like to ask people what content they consume. I'd be like, you like to read? What do you read? Um, I'm like, where do you, where do you get your news? Or if they're like, I'm like, seriously, just tell me like, who do you follow on Instagram? Or what subreddits do you like to read? Anything. I just wanna know a little bit about your taste. I've noticed that. And that's a real—

when, when somebody puts you on the spot like that, that's really tough because what they wanna do is please Sam. They wanna say what you wanna hear, but they don't know. It's like somebody saying, hey, what's your political affiliation? Tell me who you voted for. And they'd be like, oh, oh, I don't know. Who did you vote for? I voted for them.

No. And I don't care what they read. I'm just like, explain to me why it's exciting. Because if you're not excited about what you consume every day, then you're boring. And I don't I want to be around you and you and, and, but I also want to know what their taste is because I'll hire certain people and they like write in a certain way that's maybe too corporate or, uh, like my brand is fun. And so like if they're just not fun or they don't get that, I'm like, this is just, it's a bad culture fit that we're not going to blend well. So I look for taste a lot and I ask them what they consume or I do this thing called the bottom fourth of the resume. So at the very bottom of people's resume is like where they put like the hobbies or like what they did in college. And they'll say like, I studied philosophy. I'm like, all right, cool. I mean, I don't really care about philosophy, but I'm like, what was your favorite class? And if they say, I'm not sure, I'm like, oh, you're out. But if they like, if they say like, you know, well, this philosophy class, which I don't even know about, I'll just be like, well, why? And if they can entertain me and convince me that it was interesting, I'm like, all right, cool. You're all right. So I look for taste a lot on the bottom fourth of the resume.

This data is wrong every freaking time. Have you heard of HubSpot?

HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

Whoa, I can see the client's whole history— calls, support tickets, emails— and here's a task from 3 days ago I totally missed. HubSpot. Grow better. I have a theory that you can get paid really, really well and you can earn a great living if you're good at your job. If you're good at your job, you're worth, you're worth a heck of a lot to a lot of companies. What do you—

Albert Einstein, congratulations on that great theory.

If— no, if— now this is the theory. This is the big— this is the big part. If you can make other people good at their jobs, not just you good at your job, but if you can lead other people and set them up for success and make other people good at their job, you are the 10xer. You're the 10xer. So I'm going to look for delegators who can do that, who can lead other people and grow the business beyond. Because look, if I hire somebody and I'm their direct report, but they can't be the direct report of other people, They're going to be a bottleneck. I'm going to be bottleneck. They're not going to help me grow the company. Now, the two things that I think are related to that, that are kind of counterintuitive. Number one is copywriting. They're really good copywriter. I think that's directly correlated to be able to being able to delegate and lead other people. Because if you can write really concisely, if you can write clearly and concisely the way people can understand it, you can lead others. You can give directions. You can be on Slack, text, email. The way that we run our businesses is through the written word. Very luckily, I can see how people write. I can see it because they're DMing me, I'm reading their tweets. I get a look into how they write. And I think I took your, your email course. I want to talk about this because I took this 9 months ago or so, blew my mind. It made me a better copywriter. And now I have— Did it? Did it work with you? Yeah. So Sam has a course where for 10 days in a row, he's going to send— 10 weeks in a row. Is it days in a row or is it once a week?

Days. One day, uh, one a day for 10 days. One a day for 10 days. Monday to Friday. So 2 weeks.

You send an email that teaches people how to do copywriting. And I did it. I got the email the first day and I spent, my wife comes in and I got a notebook full of copy written down. She's like, what the hell are you doing? And I was like, well, Sam told me it's gonna work. Just trust me. So 10 days I write and I copy these styles and I start to learn how clear and concise communication and hooks and throw away all the words that don't matter.

Where's that located again, by the way? Copy, copythat.com. Copythat.com. So the word copy and then that.

Yeah. $150 or something. And it's been worth, I would, you know, $50 grand added to my career. Easy. The best. Do you know why that works?

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

So if you could get good at writing and getting your ideas across and also selling other people, because people think delegating is just telling people what to do. No, you have to make them want to do it. And it's sales. Life is sales.

So it's, it's a beautiful resource. Do you have a few more or no? Yeah.

I want to ask you about that tweet. So I want to go through how I think about sales because I think this is really important because life is sales and as an entrepreneur you're selling to customers, You're selling to investors and partners and you're selling to your employees. Just like I said, you got to go find these people who have jobs and you got to sell your idea and your vision on them. So I wanted to give you kind of a breakdown on how I think about sales and how I kind of flip the script. And I can give you kind of an example of that. The old school way to sell is you're going to be pushy, you're going to ask directly, you're going to speak the language, you're going to prove that you're an expert, and then you're going to talk about all the benefits and all the great things, and then you're going to hand them a clipboard and ask for their signature. I think that that way is a terrible way to actually sell people in today's world of so many options. So my way to do it is I speak the language briefly and prove that I'm a professional without being braggadocious or bragging on me or the product that I'm trying to sell. Then what I do is I dive right into talking about the downsides, why I'm worried about it, why the deal might not work, all the things that we need to stress about. And then I ask them, given those downsides, why they still wanna do the deal or why they still wanna work with me or why they still wanna work for my company. And then I shut up and I let them, it kind of flips the script to where they become the salesperson. They become the salesperson. So like, Sam, you're about to start working for me as, you know, you wanna come to work for Nick really bad and we're gonna start this company together. I'll say, dude, this is an agency business. It's really hard. It might take 6 months before we make any money at all. We might be stuck in it. Worst case scenario, we're gonna waste a year of our life. Why do you want to come join me? Another really great example of this is for my investors in my real estate deals. They're going to— they get on a call with me and they expect me to just sit there and regurgitate all the great things about storage, all the great things about real estate investments, the tax benefits, why I'm such a good operator, all that stuff. I don't do any of that. I get on a call with somebody, a Zoom call with somebody, and they already know me. They're already on a call. They're already interested in investing in storage. So I talk about all the downsides. I'll say, look, Sam, let's do an example here. You give me this $50 grand, you're going to invest with me. And let's say interest rates spike, the economy tanks, people don't use storage as much. And all of a sudden, this deal is worth 20 or 30% less than what it was. And instead of giving you an 8% cash-on-cash return, I'm going to give you a 2% cash-on-cash return. Now, it's my job to make sure we don't lose the properties. I'm going to do this, this, and this to think about risk. But why do you want to invest in storage? Boom. Flip the script. Flip the script. And the person will say, well, Nick, it seems like you've thought a lot about these risks. Like you're worried about this stuff. I don't have to worry about this stuff. I don't need cash flow off of this. It's a long-term investment. All the other reasons why, you know, might work that way.

When you're starting these new things, how much do you fund them with?

RecruitJet, we put $50,000 in the bank account. WebRun, we put $10 grand in the bank account. Blue Key Capital, we're going to put $50 grand in the bank account.

Did I tell you about Kevin Ryan? You know who that is? You're doing what he does. Kevin Ryan. I've talked to him about him a bunch on this pod. He's kind of my hero. He started— he was the CEO of DoubleClick, which eventually sold to Google for multiple billions and it became AdWords or whatever. AdWords or AdSense, I think AdSense, one of those. Like the, the way Google makes all their money. So it's like the best acquisition ever. He was, uh, like employee 20 there, and then he took over as CEO, sold the company for multiple billions, and then he went and started, um, he took like his, whatever he made, $10 million, and this other guy who worked at DoubleClick named Dwight, and they go, we're gonna start this thing called Silicon Alley. So they were based in New York. So it was like the take on Silicon Valley. And they invested, he goes, we would put our whole shtick was we're gonna invest $300,000 into a handful of interesting ideas. We have and we'll try to find someone to partner and we'll try to make them big and we want big outcomes. And with this method, he started, uh, Gilt, you know, like the women's fashion clothing company. It, it, it didn't work out, but it got to like hundreds of millions of revenue. He started Business Insider, which had a $600 million exit. He started MongoDB, which is a publicly traded database company at, I don't know, it ranges between $20 and $30 billion on, on, on the market, uh, market cap. Uh, what else did he start? He started, um, Zola, which is like the wedding registry business. He started, uh, like maybe 3 other things that are big. And he goes, I give each company 6 months and $300,000 or $400,000, something like that. And, you know, $300K is kind of a lot. I mean, it's definitely a lot of money, but it's not that much money for how much value he creates. And he gives it $300K in 6 months. And that's how long it takes him to like figure out if an idea is going to be, uh, worth it.

It all depends on the opportunity. I mean, some of these, the, the guy that we're partnering with on RecruitJet, um, me and Sahil and Marshall from Support Shepherd are starting a company called RecruitJet to headhunt US talent this exact way. Like, hey, we're gonna go into that 80% of people, we're gonna find 'em for companies. The guy that's our head recruiter, he's been a recruiter for 15 years. He's done work for me. He's a complete badass. He's not gonna leave his job. He's not gonna leave his job until we get our first contract signed. Like, so we don't have any expenses yet. On the other side of the table, I'm trying to start a debt brokerage firm, meaning we're going to be the middleman that finds and secures debt for giant commercial real estate projects. We're going to go to all the banks, we're going to shop them, we're going to put the packages together and close the loans. I'm right now on the road trying to attract a partner in that business. I have somebody in mind. I'm going to have to shell out a lot of money because this guy makes $450 grand for a bank right now. He's our best loan officer. He's a 10xer. He's a killer. I'm gonna have to make him an offer where it's a little bit less equity, less of a percentage of sales. But I'm going to guarantee him $200 grand a year for 2 years. Me personally, off my personal check. Hey, this is— I'm gonna sign a contract with you. Because I already know how he thinks. I already know he's a 10xer. I know he's incredible. He's done incredible things for our company when it comes to sourcing debt. Come to work for Blue Key Capital. I'm going to guarantee you, I'm going to promise you 2 years of runway at $200 grand a year.

But are you going to put any additional capital?

Yeah, we'll have to. We need to hire some additional people. But for the most part, it'll be website, landing page, customer.io, automatic replies to emails, you know, just be building the infrastructure that I'm so good at doing for all these other companies. It will create—

And you're actually going to do it? You're going to write all the copy, you're going to set up the email? WebRun. I'm going to have WebRun do that.

And then I'm going to create a Twitter account, make the follow account, and then I do a software called Birdflow that has an automatic DM.

So I told you about that.

Yep. You told me about it. Every time somebody follows the account, they get a DM and it'll say, hey, if you're placing any debt on any big projects or you're buying something, you need help with banks, give us a call. And we'll just drive leads that way. So it'll be— Does that—

does this person have a family? What's that? Does this person have a family?

Yeah, he's got a 12-year-old and a 9-year-old and his wife.

Doesn't that freak you out? It's very—

it's very freaky. Yeah, it's— it drives pretty significant insecurity. Yeah. I mean, even Will— even Will at Red Ron, he had to leave a job where he's making $400 grand to start an agency with me. So like selling these people, like identifying the 10Xers and selling them on coming to join the Nick Huber mission like that's, that's what it all is. Like that's, that's the hardest part of this stuff.

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

The stakes go up and it definitely have some times where I'll wake up at night and I'll be like, what the hell am I doing? Like, am I really think we can drive enough business to support this person? And I'm convincing them to leave their job and their livelihood. They make $450 grand a year right now.

I'm, I'm, I'm insane, dude. It's scary. What about, um, What did you— you messaged something, or you tweeted something out there today that got— you got a lot of flack for. What did you—

what did you say? I'll just read the tweet because it's funny. So, um, we talk about social justice warriors a lot inside of our group chat.

Um, how many— when— what would you— what's a social justice warrior?

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

That's significantly more positive than how I use it. A social justice warrior to me is someone who, like, is very closed-minded. Very outspoken and will not be well-balanced or open-minded to new ideas and new facts, or— and who will automatically dislike you because you do believe in something regardless if you're like, for example, let's say you're— this is a controversial one, but pro or anti-abortion, it doesn't matter which side you fall on. Yeah. You can probably have a conversation with either side. A lot of people can be like, well, I disagree with you on that, but I understand your perspective and I don't hate you for it. You just have different opinions than I do. Whereas a social justice warrior is like, well, you're wrong regardless of how you feel.

Yep. That's ex— you, you put it exactly right. So I made this tweet. The worst thing you can do as an entrepreneur is hire a social justice warrior. People who are very radical politically are way more likely to sue you or your business, upset your customers, and upset your team members. Either side of the aisle. I said, luckily politics is not a protected class, so I'm allowed to view somebody's social media before making a hire. And then I said, these folks bash people that they don't know on Twitter and social media constantly. And I, and I said, you don't think they'll take to a public forum to bash you and your company when you fire them for missing work to attend the 8th rally or march of the year? And so what do people say to that?

No, you didn't get any hate, did you? Oh yeah, oh yeah.

The people who— it's got 64 quote tweets right now. Um, this guy says, bro, just say that you don't hire Black people, it's way easier. Um, like, people are just really calling me a racist and calling me a lot of really mean things, which I'm not at all. I'm, I'm, I am trying to— I'm trying to weed out people who are closed-minded, because if you're radically politically left or radically politically right That just tells me that you're not balanced because nobody that I know is super radical politically. It's just a giant waste of time and energy. So I just think it's a good practice if you're a business owner, look at the way people spend their time. Where are they? If they told you they were in Reddit Antiwork when you asked them that question earlier, like what content are you consuming? Oh, I'm in Reddit Antiwork. Okay, out.

Well, I— but they could make a good argument as to why they enjoy it. So for example, I like reading— have you seen the subreddit called What's the one where people have multiple jobs? Oh yeah. Yeah.

That is, that is fascinating. Entertainment value is another thing.

It's these people who get multiple jobs, like sometimes 3 or 4 jobs and they'll, and I've known a couple of people who have done this. It's called overemployed. It's called overemployed. It's a pretty funny name. And like, I've no dude, I've known people who have done this. So they get a job at Facebook and Google. And so they'll, and they call it J1 and J2. And so they'll post like advice, like, hey, so my J-1 has me working from like, I can get it done from like 8 to 10:00 AM. And then J-2 is like noon to 3. How do you people like, uh, get your manager to only put meetings for J-1 in the AM or something like that? And it's crazy. And I've known a guy who had a job at Facebook and Google, $250,000 or something like crazy for each job. So is, and they'll say like, so total income is $600,000. That's broken up with J-1 at $200,000, J-2 at $300,000. And they'll like, say this. It's hilarious. And I read it all the time because I'm like, well, I'm pretty sure I'm against that because that's unethical. It's not illegal, but I wouldn't like that if someone did it to me. But then I'm like, but is that wrong? And so anyway, I like to like read that to like just explore new ideas. And it's also just hilarious. So someone told me they read Antiwork or Overemployed. I'd be like, okay, why? Tell me, what do you learn?

Uh, it goes really, it goes really deep. As I'm diving into this stuff on RecruitJet and learning how recruiting companies work, and I've talked to probably 15 recruiters in the past month and just asked them, you know, what about— there are people who will literally show up to an interview like this, an interview like this, and their mouth is moving, but somebody else is talking to them. And it's the people who are trying to—

No way. No way. Yes. Tell me, tell me about that.

So what happens if you're— so you're a recruiter, somebody hires you to go place a tech position. You're a technical recruiter. You're going to find somebody to work for Google for $250,000 a year. You're gonna go in and you're gonna sort through LinkedIn. You're gonna bring in all these applicants and you gotta try to find a way to scan out a third of the applicants. A third of these people are trying to get more than one job being a, being a software developer. And you literally can talk to them on the phone and that can't do it because then they can wire in somebody else to talk. If you— And that's why they do that.

They, that's why they do video is for that reason.

They have to do video. I should have asked the guy a lot more questions about it. If you're following me and Sam and you're listening to this and you obviously know about this occurrence, tweet us because I wanna know more about this as well. But he told me that you're on a Zoom call with somebody and it's blurry and you, and their voice is not really the one talking and it's people who are trying to get more than one freaking job.

Crazy. That's ridiculous. That's, that's, that's kind of amazing. And, and, and like there's some way you gotta look at from a like, that's sleazy, don't do that. But also you're like, that's pretty amazing. You know, it's like a lot of my, my sleazy friends in high school, they would like pay someone to take the ACT form. And I remember thinking like, I don't know, man, that's pretty, that's almost as impressive as actually doing a good job. You know what I mean? I'm like, I don't want to work with you, but like, kinda I do. If like, if you, if you could use that for good.

You see so many criminals get caught doing all this crazy stuff and you just think that if they put that energy towards something productive, how rich they could get.

We had, um, we had this guy named Michael Harris. Michael Harris founded Death Row Records. You know, Death Row, they like created Tupac, Dr. Dre, N.W.A. Like, they basically invented, like, modern hip-hop, or they invented, like, gangster rap marketing. They were the marketing machine behind those guys, right? Yeah. And so Michael Harris partnered with Suge Knight, and Michael Harris did it from prison. He was serving, um, 25 to life. He got in trouble for attempted murder, which eventually he got exonerated by Trump 2 years ago, and he got let out. But he served 30 years partially on death row. And the other charge that he was convicted of that I think he, I, I'm, he admitted to doing was he was selling at times $2 million a day of cocaine, of crack. And he was talking about it and he was like, once I started getting all that money coming in, I started realizing like, I also need to go legit and do things the right way. And so he started buying real estate and he started doing all this other stuff. And he was like, I was killing it in the drug game. But like I killed it even harder, like just doing the legal stuff. Like, I, you know, he's like, I had the cash flow from it. So like, I definitely profited off of it. But he bought buildings. He started a limo company. He eventually— Death Row was bringing in like north of $100 million in revenue because CDs at the time were $19 and it was like a dollar to make a CD. And he was like, we killed it the right way. But I did all this bad stuff, so I had to pay the price.

But he was like, it's such a good example that business is simply a flywheel around these things that we've spoke about in this episode. If you can get these things right, attracting people, leading people, managing people, delegating, writing, it can work in any business. Once you learn these skills, I could put Sam Parr and I could take him and I could drop him in a grocery store chain. And I guarantee you, you would thrive. I guarantee you could succeed just because of the way that you think about business, the way that you can lead people and the decisions that you would make. So, um, I feel strongly that once you get the flywheel going and once you push yourself and once you start to learn some of these things, you can, you can crush it.

You're, you're doing something that I hate doing and I advise most people not to do it, but there's many examples of people doing it successfully, of which you're one of them, which is doing multiple things at once. In most cases, I think doing multiple things at once is a horrible idea. I think we saw a, The few times it does work is when there's like a Ryan Reynolds. You see Ryan Reynolds, uh, sold Mint Mobile today for like $1.5 billion or $2 billion, whatever it was. And then like last year he sold, what was his liquor? His liquor? Avion or Avion or something like that. He sold that for hundreds of millions. And you know, I don't have any idea, but it says like Ryan Reynolds sells his telephone company and I'm like, Probably he has nothing to do with it. He just does the commercials. Maybe he has something to do with it. I have no idea. And I have no idea. It says like Ryan Reynolds, his, his telecom company got sold. Maybe he only owns like 3 points. I have no idea. But in that case, someone like him, he does have multiple things. When it's you who you are doing a lot of the work and you're not, you're famous or you're a big deal, but you're not like everyone in America knows who you are. I think that it's scary and it's challenging. Why are you doing more than one thing versus just one thing?

I'm pushing myself. I don't know if I can do it. There's a lot of anxiety around it and some of these things will fail. I mean, look, it's 5 companies that we've started in the past year.

What will the collective revenue of those be, do you think, in 2024?

Okay, so you want me to make a prediction and then we can come back on and test it, actually. So I think RE Cost Seg will be doing $500,000 a month or, or so in EBITDA in 12 months in the year 2024. At the end of 2024, we'll look back on the year and I think it'll do $2.5 million in EBITDA probably. So, okay. WebRun, I think on what top line? Okay. 30% margins. So whatever that math is. WebRun, I think, will be 30 or 40.

Getting close to $10 million in sales.

Yep. Yep. I think RE Cost Seg will be really big in the year 2024. So 18 months from now, like trailing. Titan Risk, the, the commercial risk property insurance company, I think that one will do $3 million in sales at a 50% margin, probably for insurance brokerage. Okay. WebRun, I think, will be doing $200 grand a month of revenue. So maybe $70 to $100 grand a month of profit. RecruitJet, I think, will be a big company. I think RecruitJet will be $5 million of revenue and $3 million of EBITDA.

That's for— Okay, so collectively, you're, you're in the $6 million profit range or something like that. $7 million, I forget.

Yeah, what would— Blue Key Capital, Blue Key Capital could be the big one, the debt, the debt brokerage company for real estate firms. That one could be doing, again, $5 to $10 million of revenue as well. Pretty good margins, a small team.

And would you— so $2.5 million for cost seg, what would that be valued at? Could it be as high as 10 times profit? No, I don't think so.

Cost seg is politically dependent, you know, if if bonus depreciation rules go up and down, it changes the demand for cost segs, right? So I think 3 to 4 times EBITDA would probably be the value of that company. Wouldn't be worth selling.

So the cash flow is awesome. The multiples are shit. Everything that I've ever started, typically the cash flow is only okay, but the multiples are really, really good.

This is, this is what I—

20 times profit. Yep. This is what I can't stand.

I tried to convince a kid to come with me to do a web development agency. And I failed. My sales pitch failed. He didn't join me. And he kept saying, there's no enterprise value. He kept saying there's no EV in web development. And my entire thesis is screw EV. EV will come. I want to be making money every single month and cash flow every single year. That's the goal. And if we can do that, good things will happen over time. And we'll see which one of these companies really takes off.

But to play devil's advocate here, when I was first starting to hustle, I was doing the math and I was like, wherever I want to be by the age of 30. So in 5 years after starting or 4 years after starting, you have to make a ton of profit, like selling a company. If you can get 10 or 15 times earnings or 3 or 4 times revenue, that's a huge, that's a huge number. And for a lot of businesses, it's not impossible to get that. You know, you need some type of recurring revenue and a really big market and fast growth. But like to make like $20 to $50 million or significantly higher, my argument is it's way easier to get there by selling, selling to get capital gains. There's a lot of people who have done it. Like Andrew Wilkinson's company is just like killing it. And so he's doing it through cash flow. Um, but if you like do the math, Val, yeah, my friend Val is doing it. But he also sold a company. He sold a company. Uh, he sold two of them for tens of millions of dollars. I, my opinion is, and there's, there's so many examples where I'm wrong, but in most cases, I think you, it's significantly easier to sell something than it is to earn through income.

That's my problem, Sam, is I've never sold, I haven't sold a company right now. I've never, I've never sold something to create a massive liquidity event.

So I don't know. Would you?

Yeah, I think I would.

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

If you can really, if you can wait it out, I mean, time is on your side. You know what I mean? If you, if you're okay living— I look, I live in a, I live in a house that I bought for $290,000. I drive a truck that's worth about $12,000. Like, if I can just not buy a private plane or a $4 million house, I don't have to sell anything. And I think time will really help me. So I'm on the, I'm on the train.

How do you— but how are you not like, like, you know, desire is also like evil, you know, when it comes to this stuff, like when you want shit, you suffer. And so like, I know a lot of people that are really wealthy and I, every once in a while I fall into this trap where I'm like, 5 years ago, if I knew, if, if I, my, my 5, you know, my 25-year-old, if they knew where I was today, they'd be like, oh, you're fine. And then I get to where I am now and I'm like, oh, but there's another step. Or what about a $10 or $20 million home? Or what about, uh, having a warehouse full of cars? Or what about doing this or that or owning a sports team? Like, okay, You need more. You don't desire things or a $50,000 watch or something?

Of course I do, man. Of course I do. I really want an airplane. I really want a PC-12. And that's my goal is to have— How much is that? It's a $5 million airplane.

I want to fly yourself.

I would fly my family and fly my nanny, and we could go from here to LA without stopping for gas. That's your goal. That's a goal of mine.

But, but why own it instead of rent? I knew a guy. I know a guy who bought a jet for $16 million during the pandemic when he had just sold the company for $100 million. He owned it for 6 months and he was like, what the hell am I doing with this? And he ended up selling it for $20 million. He goes, I made a profit on it, which was lucky, but it was looking like a horrible financial, financial decision because I had to spend all this money to store it. It was like it was the stupidest thing ever.

Yeah, it's straight overhead for sure. Straight overhead. But I need to— I live— my family lives 7 hours from here and driving with my family is something we're only going to do once a year. So I can't get back to see my dad and my mom and my grandfather, who's only got a couple of years left without easy access to get back. So it'd be really nice to have an airplane. But yeah, I'm, I'm not going to do it. Like I decided with my wife, we're going to wait because I just want to show my kids that I'm not just going to go out and buy everything I want and I'm going to suffer a little bit and that's okay. And, you know, delayed gratification keeps me humble too. And but it's tough. I battle with it every day, man.

I mean, it's really easy to say you want stuff. What's your dream number?

Like, as far as personal net worth? Yeah. If I'm making $1 million a month, I think I can then do whatever I want.

Isn't that funny? But I bet you would have thought that 10 years ago. If you are where you are now, you could do whatever you want.

If somebody would have told me 5 years ago that when I retire I am where I am right now, I would have given them a thumbs up and said, I'm happy. Please make that happen.

So, dude, the goal— the goalpost always changes.

It's so— it's so hard, man. And it's easy for me to cry and say, oh, it's tough, but it— it's like a— it's a tough thing to swallow as a man when like all of a sudden you have 7 figures in your checking account, you have hundreds of thousands of dollars a month that come your way, and you got to figure out what gets you out of bed and how you're going to not be an asshole and how you're going to raise good kids and how— and I don't know about you, but I get excited about hobbies and I'll pick up golf and I'll— or tennis or pickleball or airplanes, whatever. And I'll just get really, really, really into it. And then it's on to the next thing. It's on to the next thing, on to the next thing. And I don't like that about myself. I wish that I was more disciplined long term.

And how do you feel about that? I'm very disciplined, I think, compared Compared to a lot of people, I think I have a— I'm fairly disciplined. I think I, uh, we spend anywhere from— when we're in Austin, I spend $15,000 a month or so. When I'm in New York, I spend a little bit more. But because I don't drink and go out, like Monday to Friday, we don't go out at night because it's a school night. We say, we go, it's a school night, we're not going out. Um, I live in a house that was— is under $1 million. Or paid well under $1 million. So, which in Austin, um, um, it's kind of hard to find that stuff. But, um, I think I'm pretty disciplined long-term, but I do struggle with wanting more. And my wife is always like, stop wanting that. Like, you're going to drive yourself crazy. Uh, and so like, I do always want more stuff. Um, and I try to like, like, I want like, I want to buy just a huge garage in Brooklyn and just stash all types of cars and motorcycles. And then to have like a fantasy factory and just open up the garage door and just sit in front of it. And anyone who walks by and like admires it, I'll be like, oh, you want to come in and look? Like, I'll show you around. We could like play with it all. Like, I want that. But that's going to cost $20 million, maybe. Like, and it's a pointless thing because when you die, you don't get any of it.

But, uh, uh, I got a funny story. I ordered, I ordered a lot of bourbon lately, like high-end bourbon.

Like how much is a fancy thing of bourbon?

Um, the most expensive bottle was like $7,500. And this is going to make me sound rich.

You bought a $7,500— does it taste any different? What's it do?

This is me being vulnerable. I have zero life overhead. Like I could cut my spending to $5,000 a month and put my kids in daycare and pay for my house payment, which is $1,200. So I've avoided like the big expenses. I've avoided the big, big house, the plane, the big cars, whatever it is. So I splurge on some of the little things that sound huge and obnoxious to some people but aren't really that obnoxious. So I got some really nice bourbon, some bottles that are really special. And then I got them. I'm looking at them in my bar and I sent a text to like 4 of my boys. I'm like, hey, come over, let's try some bourbon. And nobody can come over and they can't come and hang out.

Nobody can come hang out.

They're all working or they're out of town or whatever. So the next morning I got up and I just looked at it. I opened one of the nicer bottles, I poured a little bit myself and I'm like, fuck, none of this matters. None of this matters. All it is all about the people and the people, how they feel about you, whether or not they care about you, whether or not they respect you, how you can help them, how you can help them become better versions of themselves. So the stuff is really just a distraction. That sounds cliché because everybody says that, but it hit me when I was looking at that bourbon and I'm like, fuck, my parents, my dad loves bourbon. He's 7 hours away. My brother's 9 hours away. He's not here. Sam Parr doesn't drink alcohol. He can't come over with me. You know what I mean?

Just hit me. Yeah. Does a $7,500 bottle taste any different than a $50 bottle? I haven't opened it yet.

It's the Michter's 20 Year.

Does a $1,000 bottle taste any different?

You know, I think it does because— sounds ridiculous. No, it doesn't, Sam. It doesn't. It fucking doesn't.

It's just a Pokémon card.

It's an ego thing, man. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a weak man who is after the ego sometimes, and I got to stay—

I just got to remind myself of that. It doesn't matter, does it? None of it matters. I bought like a decent car and that makes me happier. But besides that, most, most items don't.

And what am I going to do, like invite somebody cool over? There's a couple of pro golfers in town that I'm friendly with and I keep saying like, come over and drink some of my nice bourbon. And what am I going to be, that asshole guy who brings in this famous person into my house and is like, yeah, drink my awesome bourbon and just talking about how awesome— like, it's so fucking dumb. Like, I'm such an idiot.

I don't think it's dumb. Where do you, where do you buy this from? And you, you do cigars too.

Those are, those are, those are two of my hobbies. It's cigars and bourbon because I share them both with my dad and golf.

Can you be any more of a stereotype? Golly. But my house is so weak.

Like, it's literally sitting on— the bourbon is sitting on a $200 really shitty cabinet that I got from Home Depot when I redid my basement. But no, a guy over in Carrollton, Georgia, I'm his biggest customer. And every year he gets the releases and drives it over to me and I give him an envelope full of a lot of cash.

You got a guy, dude. I love having hobbies where you got a guy. That's the best. That's the best. Well, I appreciate you doing this. We had a good episode. What— anything you want to— you want to pimp out or promote?

A lot of people ask me where they could invest with Bolt Storage, and real estate's really slow, but you can go to boltstorage.com/investors if you're an accredited investor and you want to get storage exposure. And also my newsletter that I write every week. I think a lot about this stuff, a lot of the stuff we're talking about, like what— how many subscribers do you have on that? I'm up to 42,000. I'm working really hard. I'm adding like 600 a month. It's kind of, kind of weak. But I write a lot about a lot of this, like what makes a 10xer? How do you think about this stuff? How do you think about hiring management, like getting these teams together? So if you go to, if you go to my Twitter @SweatyStartup, there's a little link in my bio and you can join my newsletter. All right.

We appreciate you. Thanks for doing this.