00:00
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,
00:07
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,
00:14
you are the 10x-er. You're the 10x-er.
00:24
Welcome to my first million. Thanks for joining me, Sam.
00:28
Alright. So
00:29
Shaan is in California. There's a power outage.
00:33
Last minute,
00:34
I called Nick Huber. We're gonna give you, like, the proper introduction, but basically,
00:39
you were on a month ago six weeks ago, and it was one month. I think it was the second most downloaded pod in the last ninety days. It had something like a hundred and fifty or even more downloads, something like that. So the people loved you. And,
00:55
what what was your introduction last time? Nick has at least a hundred million dollars in storage units of which I am an investor in. So I always disclose that. And you also own three or four different companies right now that are doing really well or own part of. Yep. Yep. Dabbling in dabbling in a lot of stuff. You texted me actually one hour and six minutes ago, and you said, Hey, can you come on the pod in one hour?
01:18
And I said, yes. And you said, do you actually have good content?
01:22
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?
01:32
You put the pressure on me.
01:36
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 eleven two thousand twenty.
01:52
And then another time, February sixteenth two thousand twenty three, which was four weeks ago today.
01:58
And honestly, it blew up my world. I mean, I'm telling you Really, what are the results?
02:04
I mean
02:05
SupportShepard, the company that I use to hire a lot of, you know, VA's and and I'm a partner in. Two hundred plus leads
02:13
of people, business owners who reached out for the first time to hire their first VA, which is freaking awesome. And that's, like, four grand a month or something or two grand a month? It just costs about three grand. It's thirty percent of the first year salary, thirty five percent of the first year salary to make the placement. So average tickets between three and four grand.
02:29
All the other businesses too that I mentioned on there. Got some leads. I'm ari cost seg,
02:35
webrun dot com.
02:37
It's just crazy man. Got reached out to by a lot of people and actually
02:41
have
02:42
have have kind of got started with a couple more businesses since then. So it's just been a while. So I,
02:48
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.
02:55
And we were having dinner, and
02:57
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,
03:06
and, Courtney. And,
03:08
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, a MFM meetup last night. Jonathan organized it. And we had,
03:27
five hundred people RSVP. I don't know how many people showed up. But it was awesome. We got to, like, meet people and, a lot of people were asking about you. And, 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,
03:43
Sean and I, at least, we talk throughout the week, but we try to save our if we ever if we're ever talking about something juicy, he'll just say, like, don't don't tell me. Tell me when we're live. And right now, I'm just in my when I turned, like, a small bedroom into a little, it just has his 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
04:05
just barely I mean, we prepare, but, like, we're just kinda, like, having a conversation with our friends, and it's really cool to, like, see the people and, like, actually hear from them. And so we did that last night. It was exhausting, but I was very happy to do it. And so, hopefully, you you've been able to meet some of the people as well. It's crazy because we consider in talking
04:22
I'm I'm a little bit nervous just because I know the impact of my first million. I know that hundred thousand people might listen to this, but imagine how nervous we would be if we were sitting in two chairs in the middle Dallas Cowboys stadium with a hundred thousand 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, one guys do it in real life. Like, you and Sean, like, one and I'm like, well, it's just more coming in, but also
04:43
it's like, I one time I I recorded at a studio and there was like this, like, lady at the,
04:49
at, like, the sound board. And she was, like, hip and cool looking and was, like, a cute lady. And I remember
04:55
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, alright. I got her. I got her. I gotta 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 when with Eddie these people in this room anymore. It's getting in my head. I'm trying to impress him too much. It's tough, man. It's tough. I'm having a live event on the twenty second in Athens. Which you guys inspired me to do. I put it together right after that, and thirty people have bought tickets to it. So, I'm a little bit bummed out, but we're gonna actually go through its next Wednesday night in Athens. We're gonna actually have it see how many people show up and see if it's a success. But, yeah, when you put yourself out for a live event, it comes with a new level of stress and anxiety for sure. So I moved to San Francisco in two thousand and twelve. I moved out there and I moved out there from Tennessee And I I'm still a little rough back then. I was really rough around the edges.
05:50
And this was right.
05:52
Yeah. And this and this was, like, basically,
05:54
I moved out there
05:56
And,
05:57
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.
06:04
You know, and people would kinda tease me. And I told them I'm from Tennessee, and they're like,
06:08
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 a good a good will hunting moment. I was like, 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 because 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, weeks reading, and then I would call in a guest to, like, lead the discussion. I would talk to them. And at and I posted an ad on Craigslist. That's how I got my first people. And so Seva, one of my best friends, Seva,
06:52
who's like a big entrepreneur. He was one of those people. You know, he's one of my closest friends of, so I met him that way. And so I would host these book groups, and we it would be ten people at first. And then
07:01
the next time, like, twelve. And then over time, I did this for a year, every week for a year. I got, like, three thousand people signed up to my email list. Then I hosted an event
07:10
that was, like, maybe eighty people came. And then I hosted hustle count and three hundred people came, but
07:18
it was very slow. Like, these, like, events, I had been very, like, it was, like, a four year grind. And then at Hussicon, eventually, we got, like, twenty five hundred people coming And so, like, these events, and and then Sean and I did a live pod in Miami and, like, maybe a hundred people came and it wasn't that good. And then we did it again. It was a little bit better. So, like, these events,
07:37
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 event,
07:44
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 in the Cuba show, all they gotta do is flip through flip through podcasts click a little button. If they don't like it, they're gone, getting somebody to buy a ticket, drive somewhere, the uncomfort of meeting other people, you know, it's diff more difficult.
08:07
Where do you wanna go today? Where what you wanna drive? So I wanna talk about
08:12
the traits of a successful entrepreneur. What made what makes a whether it's a partner and 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 an organization,
08:25
what makes those people
08:27
really, really good at what they do.
08:29
And I think you have a lot of experience tracking down
08:32
and identifying these people who are killers. We'll call them ten extras. They're the people who, you know, I I have a theory that eighty percent of of of workers
08:42
are just kind of skating by and maybe they're adding a little bit of value to a company. But the top twenty percent
08:48
are generating outsized return for the company that they work for or themselves if they're an entrepreneur, what makes those people tick on talk about that. Alright.
08:56
The the most interesting thing apart about this is that it's kind of this will morph into
09:02
a tactical guide of literally starting a company because when you start to identify these things and you track down these people and you bring them together, a company is nothing more than just a group of people that all work together. So if you can find these people and put them together, which I know you can, which I'm confident that I can and anybody who scales a business can do.
09:24
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?
09:33
And then once you get past that point, maybe that point is it's different for everyone.
09:38
For us, it was in the thirty thousand dollar a month range. Once we got to thirty thousand dollars a month, I realized,
09:44
cool. It's sustainable
09:46
to a certain level.
09:47
I need to hire people, and I hired one or two people in in a few of my different companies where once we got to, like, thirty and forty thousand a month, when you hire the right person, it can ten x fairly quickly.
09:58
And at that thirty thousand mark, I realized at a young age,
10:01
I am in the collection of people, business. So I just have to collect interesting people. And you have to play like a long term game because not 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.
10:19
So,
10:20
four traits that I always look for. The first is I look for emotionally stable people. The reason I look for that is I'm not exactly the most an 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
10:41
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 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 then 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 on it. Let's go on for one. You you say one trait. I say one trait. So for me, it's it's very very similar to what you just described in yourself. And it is that that fire, that sense of urgency, and that energy.
11:21
I think most people
11:23
out there, just in general, a lot of people
11:26
They're they're they're like they're in slow motion. They
11:29
walk slow. They think slow. They talk slow. They make decisions slow. They're just kinda lolly gagging through life.
11:35
They go into work. They clock in at nine AM. They do the bare minimum all day to get paid next Friday and not get fired. 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.
11:47
Which is fine. Yeah. It's fine. I just don't wanna and and you need those people A lot of times. You need you just don't
11:55
yeah. Which is fine. Those people are fine, and they serve a purpose.
11:59
But then you get those people that have that energy.
12:02
You get those people that have that okay. I'm gonna get out of bed today, and I'm gonna attack this thing, and we're gonna make decisions fast. We're gonna move fast, we're gonna talk fast, we're gonna take action fast, and we're gonna get shit done. And those people,
12:16
when you bring them in,
12:18
They can do all the other things on this list. I think everything else on my list and your list feeds from, hey, we are going to get stuff done quick. When I started my very first company, It was a a moving company that'd pick up in delivery storage for students.
12:32
We bought a cargo van on Craigslist list for three thousand dollars, and we drove it back to the track So this is kind of a good example of of the different the way that people think about business and opportunity.
12:42
We were jacked up. Me and my business partner, we were all excited
12:45
about the idea of starting a company and going out and trying to make some money. We drove this van back, and we're like, we're gonna start doing pickup and delivery storage for students. And some of our buddies. They're sitting around. We're sitting around the track house playing beer pong, and they're like, you guys are freaking crazy.
12:59
What is exciting about that?
13:02
What? What? What? Beer pong?
13:04
No. What do you what do you know about moving? Like, you know, like, who you're not qualified?
13:08
Yeah. They're they're just like, why is that exciting? You're gonna go we're gonna go have fun this weekend. You're gonna go around sweat and pick up boxes for thirty bucks a piece. Like, that does not sound fun to me. I am I have zero energy and zero excitement around that, and they would have quit or given up in a week or two, whereas we were
13:26
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
13:33
yeah. That's that's the whole thing. There's this great there's this great book, Robert you know Robert Green, the author, Robert Green. He wrote that book forty Alls of Power. He has another book that was way less popular called the fiftieth law, and it's really weird because he wrote it about fifty cent. And it's actually a great book. You know, I know it sounds weird.
13:49
But, he because he Robert Green, he's into, like, philosophy and all this, all this stuff, but he talks about, like, rappers, and he loves hip hop culture. And he, he's like fifty cent is really good at those because he has done a good job reinventing himself a bunch of times. He's,
14:03
changed his image a bunch of times, whatever. And he said the key to fifties,
14:08
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,
14:20
to invent different medicines, like, you know, poets, writers, whatever. It's all about making urgent decisions. Doing anything, doing anything that makes your life better.
14:30
Is uncomfortable.
14:31
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.
14:39
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 wanna talk to, the I could only give myself five seconds after seeing her before I spoke to her. Urgency,
14:54
baby.
14:55
It was a five second rule because if you don't talk to them within a couple seconds, you're never gonna do it. And the longer you wait, the harder it gets. And so I I was with the five second rule.
15:04
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 you're starting a company and people ask me a lot after our last episode where I spoke about the four or five companies that I'm starting, Nick, how do you have time to do this? How are you doing it yourself? And the answer is I'm not. I'm going and I'm tracking down people who are really good. And I want you to riff on this too, Sam, because you're a master of bringing people together.
15:30
And I have this theory about recruiting
15:32
employees or partners or people in your early company, which step one is always
15:37
you know, the website, getting your click funnels, getting your copy writing down, getting your service put together, but then it's attracting people. That's all it is. As an entrepreneur, all you're doing is attracting people, I have a theory about this. So ten percent of people are in career, Nirvana.
15:51
Meaning, they love their job. They're perfectly motivated.
15:55
And they are under no circumstance, are they gonna go and do something else?
15:59
Another ten percent of people are literally actively looking for something else. Either they're unemployed,
16:04
or they really hate their job, and they are very open, and they're actively looking for jobs. These are the people that are looking on job boards, posting around, you know, for anything that might be another opportunity for them. And then there's eighty percent of people that are in the middle.
16:17
Eight out of ten people have
16:20
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.
16:29
Which typically is the those are the winners. Those are the winners. I've every ten extra that I've ever hired, and I've
16:37
been lucky enough to bring a lot of ten extras and 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 head on. Like, I'm literally turning into a salesman. I'm going to try to attract talent to come along on my mission.
16:53
Every single ten xer that I've gotten involved
16:56
falls in that category.
16:57
They were previously employed. They had a job they didn't hate. And they had a boss that really didn't wanna let them go.
17:05
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?
17:17
It's it's sales. It's literally, I'm I'm selling them on my mission. And we can talk about Which looks like what?
17:24
Sales is another thing, but I'm I'm trying to make it I'm trying to tell them how they can win better than what they're winning right now with me. I can either make them more money They can have a better quality of life. We can do something more fun. I gotta get them to buy into my vision.
17:39
I gotta be charismatic
17:40
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 gotta drop it and come with me. And you do the same thing, Sam. Yeah. Usually, what I do is
17:54
I'll, like, I'll find someone interesting. And I 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?
18:02
And they'll just gush and tell you their story.
18:05
And
18:06
I act interested because I am interested.
18:09
And then,
18:10
usually I'm like, what where do you wanna be in a handful of years? What do you wanna do? And if they tell me something where I'm like, oh, I could help you get there. Sometimes I can't. Sometimes it's like, I I I can't help you get there. But,
18:21
if they if I can, then I tailor my pitch around
18:25
helping them get there. And I'll say something like, would you have to come me for a handful of years, and I bet you we can set you up nicely to get you to where you wanna go. And I and I tailor my pitch all about them and how I'm gonna help them achieve their goals.
18:37
And typically what I do,
18:39
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,
18:46
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.
18:53
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 treating 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
19:13
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.
19:27
I love it. And when I'm making a key higher,
19:30
do the exact same thing. I call it, like, the motivational interview. If I'm hiring somebody who's a little bit higher level and 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,
19:42
we're we're talking about this company right now, but let's pretend that we're five years in the future. You and I are sitting right here. We're in this office in five years,
19:50
and you walk into this office and you are gushing. You're excited. You're like, Nick, things are going freaking awesome.
19:58
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
20:14
can't
20:15
put that together, sometimes it's it's a it's a really valuable tool because a lot of times thirty, forty percent of the time I'll be like, wow.
20:23
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 in how these people tick. You know what I mean?
20:33
Yeah. Yeah. And you gotta tailor it. So the the third thing I or the second thing that I we won't talk about because we already did speed. I look for speed.
20:40
And that's quite hard to find. Most people aren't fast.
20:45
My my current partner Joe, Joe Spiser. He's the only person that I've worked with that I'm like, Joe, I keep you're going fast, man. It's hard for me to keep up. So I I look for speed a lot, but the third thing is follow through. So people who actually act, and I find that to be probably the hardest thing to find
21:03
and I actually a lot of things are trainable.
21:05
I don't think that that I think you either you you is or you ain't when it comes to following through and, like, actually doing stuff. And what I tend to do is I like to look at people who have products or projects that are live. So someone will be like, we had this one lady reply to one of our tweets and she's like I sold a hundred thousand dollars with a Taylor Swift t And I'm like, okay, that's that's all I need to know. You do stuff.
21:26
Or maybe they have a blog or maybe they tweet or maybe they have a YouTube channel or maybe they
21:31
have some type of hobby that in it involves like taking action, and I always look for those things. It could be like I org I organize clubs in college. There's anything where I see like, alright, you follow through. You say you're gonna do something and you do. 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.
21:49
And that knocks off if somebody's interested in joining Sandpar, the Sandpar ride and getting involved in one of your companies, one of these things. You're gonna give them something to do. And that'll knock off eighty percent of the people. And because 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, a landing page company. His name's Will Wallace. He's at Cody lives in Atlanta. One of the most brilliant dudes I know. And when I saw him, I was like, Will,
22:14
I need a I need I need a favor, and I was testing him. You 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 it was there, and it was freaking awesome. And he just moved so fast. You 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 ten xers are? How do you know who those ten xers are?
22:45
Getting a look into their mind with some of these ways that we're talking about. Like, you you're saying, give them something to do. Give them something to follow through on. Like, look at what they're actually doing. Often, I tell them I get pitched like five times a day. You probably do too. People wanna make short clips for me. Yep. And I almost ignore all of them. But every once in a while, I'll be like,
23:02
alright, make me a video then. And I and I'll tell them, I won't I I go, I'm not even gonna post it. So don't worry about free work. Like, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna profit off your work. Make me a video then.
23:13
And we used to do this all the time. People would apply to the hustle for writing writing. I go, okay. Right tomorrow's email.
23:19
And,
23:20
yeah.
23:21
Like, I'm I would every once in a while, we get a twelve hundred word thing the next day. I go, alright, 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 ten xer. So if you're going out and you're trying to build these teams, you can shoot from the hip you can put bring somebody in from an interview, and then you can make the hire, or you can try to get a preview. Try to get a preview. Another thing that I look for on my list these two blend together. I'm gonna talk about both these things. Clear and concise communication. So many people, you'll have a conversation and you'll listen to them
23:52
for sixty seconds, ninety seconds, and you'd be like, what the hell is this person even talking about? Get to the point. Whereas you have Nick Cuba on his on on your podcast, I can say exactly what I've done and where I've been and how many storage facilities I have, and I've given you three or four things to bite off all in the first twenty eight seconds that I've been on the show. Because I'm a very clear and concise communicator.
24:11
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
24:19
can you do it. And the ability to get points for how do you feel? Versus thirty is just mind blowing.
24:26
How would you feel if someone referred to themselves in the third person in an interview? Like, you just did.
24:31
That's a that's a that's a I'm out dog. That's an I'm out dog right away.
24:38
Everybody wants to hear about the social justice warrior tweet that I had a couple days ago.
24:43
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.
24:49
Somebody refers to themselves as Nick Cuban, the third person cut out.
24:53
Dude, the and the last thing that I have that's related is and this is hard to figure out a little bit, but I look for case and intelligence. Intelligence being, like, just like I always say, I'm like, does your oven burn hot? Like, are you just smart?
25:06
Or, and can you, like, do you have, like, emotional intelligence? But also,
25:11
taste. So I like to ask people what content they consume. I'd be like, you you like to read? What do you read? Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, where do you 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.
25:27
I've noticed that that's on fire. When when somebody puts you on bought 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. They'd be like, oh, oh, I don't know. Who did you vote for? I voted for them.
25:44
No. And I don't care what they read. I'm just like explain to me why it's exciting because if you're not excited about you consume every day, then you're boring, and I don't wanna be around you. And you and and but I also wanna know what their taste is because
25:55
I'll hire certain people and they, like, write in a certain way that's maybe too corporate or,
26:01
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 we're not gonna blend well. So I look for taste a lot, and I ask them what they consume. Or
26:11
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.
26:21
I'm like, alright. Cool. I mean, I don't really care about philosophy, but I'm like, what was your favorite class?
26:25
And if they say, oh, I'm not sure. I'm like, oh, you're out. But if they like And 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, alright. Cool. That you're alright.
26:38
So I look for taste a lot on the bottom fourth of the of the resume.
26:43
This data is wrong every freaking time.
26:46
Have you heard of HubSpot?
26:49
HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully into Well, I can see the client's whole history, calls, support tickets, emails. And here's a test from three days ago, I totally missed.
27:01
HubSpot, grow better.
27:03
I have a theory that,
27:05
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. Congratulations on that great theory. If. No. If. No. This is the theory. This is the big this is the big part. If you can make other people good at their jobs,
27:25
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,
27:31
you are the ten xer. You're the tenexer. So I'm gonna look for delegators who can do that, who can lead other people and grow the business beyond because Look, if I hire somebody and I'm their direct report, but they can't be the direct report of other people, they're gonna be a bottleneck. I'm gonna be bottleneck. They're not gonna help me grow the company. Now the two things that I think are related to that that are kinda counterintuitive. Number one is copywriting.
27:53
They're a really good copywriter. I think that's directly correlated to be able being able to delegate and lead other people. Because if you can write clearly and concisely,
28:00
if you can write clearly and concisely, the way people can understand 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.
28:11
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
28:21
your
28:22
email course. I wanna talk about this because I took this nine months ago or so. It blew my mind. It made me a better copywriter.
28:29
And now I have -- Did it? -- every video.
28:31
Yeah. So Sam has a course where for ten days in a row, he's gonna send ten weeks in a row. Is it days in a row or is it once a week?
28:39
Days. One day
28:40
one a day for ten days. One a day for ten days. So two 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 ten 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 copy that dot com. Copy that dot com. So the word copy and then that -- Yeah. -- dot com. A hundred and fifty bucks or something, and it's been worth I would, you know, fifty grand added to my career. Easy, the best.
29:17
Do you know why that works? I I I tried to explain it in that in the thing. It's called copy work, and it's how I learned how to write in it was like this way that they used to teach kids how to write.
29:28
And in the nineteen thirties and forties, I think there was like a change in the public schools and this thing got thrown to the side, but
29:35
It's called copy work. And, like, if, like, Ben Franklin used to write this way, Hunter Thompson,
29:41
he, like, said, this is how he write Judd appetite, the director, And what they would do is they would find like scripts or, like, if you're Judd Habitat, you would find like a funny script that you wanna emulate. Or if you're Hunter s Thompson, you would find you would do catch her in the rye or some book that you like because when you copy it by hand, you start seeing the patterns
29:58
and the re the texture of something in the same way where you want to learn how to play guitar, you're not gonna like get the guitar in 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 rift from guns and roses, it kinda reminds me of this rift 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. And there's actually science behind it where it like it imprints into your brain and you learn the flow of certain things.
30:30
So if you could get good at writing,
30:32
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 do you have a few more or no? Yeah. So I wanna go
30:48
through
30:49
how I think about sales because I think this is really important because life is sales
30:53
and as an entrepreneur,
30:55
you're selling to customers
30:57
you're selling to investors and and partners,
30:59
and you're selling to your employees. Just like I said, you gotta go find these people who have jobs, and you gotta sell your idea and your vision on them, I wanted to give you kind of a breakdown
31:08
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
31:15
You're gonna be pushy, you're gonna ask directly, you're gonna speak the language, you're gonna prove that you're an expert, and then you're gonna talk about all the benefits and all the great things, and then you're gonna hand them a clipboard and ask for their signature.
31:25
I think that that way is a terrible way to actually sell people in today's world of so many options.
31:31
So my way to do it is
31:33
I speak the language briefly and prove that I'm professional without being braggadocious or bragging on me or the pro or or the product that I'm trying to sell.
31:41
Then what I do is I dive right into talking about the downsides.
31:44
Why I'm worried about it, why the deal might not work, all the things that we need to stress about,
31:49
And then I ask them, given those downsides,
31:52
why they still wanna do the deal, or why they still wanna work with me, or why they still wanna work for my company?
31:57
And then I shut up. And I let them, it kinda flips the script to where they -- I did all the salesperson.
32:03
They become the salesperson.
32:05
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 six months before we make any money at all. We might be stuck in it worst case scenario. We're gonna waste a year of our life.
32:20
Why do you wanna come join me?
32:22
Another really
32:23
a great example of this is for my investors and my real estate deals.
32:27
They're gonna they they get on a call with me and they expect me to just sit there and regurgitate all the great things about storage. All the great things about real estate investments, the tax benefits, why I'm such a good operator,
32:37
all that stuff. I don't do any of that. I get on a call with somebody, a Zoom call with somebody,
32:43
and they already know me. They're already on a call. They're already interested in investing in storage.
32:48
So I talk about all the downsides. I'll say, look, Sam.
32:51
Let's do an example here. You give me this fifty grand. You're gonna invest with me. And let's say interest rates spike the economy tanks,
32:59
people don't use storage as much, and all of a sudden this deal is worth twenty or thirty percent less than what it was. Instead of giving you an eight percent cash on cash return, I'm gonna give you a two percent cash on cash return. Now, it's my job to make sure we don't lose the properties. I'm gonna do this to this and this to think about risk, but
33:14
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.
33:31
When you're starting these new things, how much do you fund them with?
33:35
Recruit jet. We put,
33:38
fifty grand in the bank account. Web run, we put ten grand in the bank account.
33:44
Blue key capital, we're gonna put fifty grand in the bank account.
33:47
Did I tell you about Kevin Ryan? You know who that is? You're kinda you're doing what he does.
33:51
Kevin Ryan, I've talked to him about him a bunch of this pod. He's kind of my hero.
33:56
He started he was the CEO of DoubleClick, which eventually sold to Google for multiple billions and it became
34:02
AdWords or what whatever AdWords or I forget the AdSense. I think AdSense. One of those like, the the way Google makes all their money. So it's like the best acquisition ever.
34:11
He was, like, employee twenty there, and then he took over as CEO.
34:16
He sold the company for multiple billions,
34:18
and then he went and started,
34:20
he took, like, his whatever he made, ten million dollars and this other guy who worked at double click 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
34:32
invested. He goes, we would put our whole shtick was we're gonna invest three hundred thousand dollars 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.
34:44
And with this method, he started,
34:46
guilt, 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 six hundred million dollar exit.
34:57
He started MongoDB,
34:58
which is a publicly traded database company at I don't know. It's range of thinking twenty and thirty billion on on on the mark, market cap.
35:06
What else did he start? He started,
35:08
Zola, which is like the wedding registry business he started,
35:12
like, maybe three other things that are big. And he goes, I give each company six months and three hundred or four hundred thousand dollars, something like that. And
35:20
you know, three hundred k 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 three hundred k in six months. And that's how long it takes them to, like, figure out if an idea is gonna be, worth it. It all depends on the opportunity.
35:34
I mean, some of these, the the guy that we're partnering with on recruit jet.
35:39
Me and Tahoe and Marshall from support Shepard are starting a company called recruit Jet to
35:44
head hunt US talent, this exact way. Like, hey, we're gonna go into that eighty percent of people. We're gonna find them for companies. The guy that's our head recruiter, he's been recruiter for fifteen years. He's done work for me. He's a complete badass.
35:54
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.
36:01
On the other side of the
36:03
table, I'm trying to start a debt brokerage firm, meaning we're gonna be the middle man that fines and secures debt for giant commercial real estate projects. We're gonna go to all the banks. We're gonna shop them. We're gonna put the packages together and close the loans.
36:18
I'm right now on the road trying to attract a partner in that business. I have somebody in mind.
36:23
I'm gonna have to shell out a lot of money because this guy makes four hundred and fifty grand for a bank right now. He's our best loan officer. He's a ten xer. He's a killer.
36:30
I'm gonna have to make him an offer where it's a little bit less equity. Less of a percentage of sales,
36:36
but
36:37
I'm gonna guarantee him two hundred grand a year for two years. Me, personally, off my off my personal checkout. Hey, this is gonna sign a contract with you because I already know how he thinks. I already know he's a ten xer. I know he's incredible. He's done incredible things for our company when it comes to sourcing debt.
36:51
Come to work for BlueKey Capital.
36:53
I'm gonna guarantee you I'm gonna promise you two years of runway at two hundred grand a year.
36:58
Are you gonna put any additional capital?
37:00
Yeah. We'll have to. We need to hire some additional people. But for the most part, it'll be
37:05
website, landing page,
37:07
customer.io, automatic replies to emails, you know, it'd just be building the infrastructure that I'm so good at doing for all these other companies.
37:13
It will And they're actually gonna do gonna write all the copy. You're gonna set up the email.
37:19
Web run. I'm gonna have web run do that.
37:21
And then I'm gonna create a
37:25
a Twitter account.
37:27
You can make the follow account, and then I do,
37:29
a software called,
37:31
birdflow.
37:32
That has an automatic DM. I told you about that. Yep. You told me about it. Every time somebody follows the account, they get a DM, and they'll say, hey, if you're placing any debt on any big projects or you're buying something you need help with banks,
37:43
give us a call, and we'll just drive leads that way. So it'll be Does that does this bring down the family? What's that? Does this person have a family? Yeah. He's got a twelve year old and a and a nine year old, and his wife doesn't freak you out.
37:56
It's very it's very
37:58
freaky. Yeah. It's it's it drives pretty significant security. Yeah. I mean, even will. Even will at Chevron, he had to leave a a job where he's making four hundred grand to start an agency with me. So, like selling these people, identifying the ten xers and selling them on coming to join a Nickuber mission.
38:15
Like, that's
38:17
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,
38:24
I remember thinking, like, that when we hired them, I was like,
38:28
I have a family.
38:29
I was like, I now have a family. You know, I was only twenty six, and I was like, shit. Feels like I have a child and it's it shouldn't actually feel that way maybe, but in a way it kind of should where I'm like, oh shit. Like, I have, like, if this is no longer just necessarily about me. This is about, like, all these other people and stakeholders involved. And I remember freaking out. I was very nerve wracking. 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 person, and I'm convincing them to leave their job and their livelihood. They make four hundred and fifty grand a year right now. I'm I'm I'm insane.
39:06
Dude, it it's scary. What about,
39:09
What did you met you messaged something or you you tweeted something out the other day 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
39:18
we talk about
39:20
social justice warriors a lot inside of our group chat.
39:23
How many what what 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.
39:33
It can be somebody who is out on a mission to change the way that a certain group of people is totally mistreated. Whether it be people who wanna carry guns or whether it be minorities, whether it be
39:44
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. Is that a correct definition?
39:57
That's
39:57
significantly
39:58
more positive than how I use it.
40:01
A social justice warrior to me as someone who, like, is very close minded,
40:06
very outspoken
40:07
and will not
40:09
be well balanced or open minded to new ideas and new facts or and who will automatically dislike you because
40:17
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. Yep.
40:28
You can probably have a conversation with either side. A lot of people can and be like, well, I disagree with you on that, but I understand your perspective and I don't hate you for it. You just have different opinions than I do, whereas a social justice warrior is like, well, you're wrong regardless of how you feel. Yep. That's a 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.
40:50
People who are very radical, politically, are way more likely to sue you or your business,
40:55
upset your customers, and upset your team members,
40:59
either side of the aisle.
41:00
I said, luckily politics is not a protected class, so I'm allowed to view somebody's social media before making me hire.
41:08
And then I said, these folks bash people that they don't know on Twitter and social media con con constantly.
41:14
And I and I said, you don't think they'll to a public forum to bash you and your company when you fire them for missing work to attend the eighth rally or March of the year.
41:23
And so what did you say to that?
41:25
No. I didn't get any hate. Did you? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The people who I it's got sixty four quote two tweets right now. This guy says bro, just say that you don't hire people. It's way easier.
41:36
Like, people are just really calling me a racist and and calling me a lot of really neat things, which I'm not at all. I'm I'm I am trying to
41:43
I'm trying to
41:44
weed out people who are closed minded because if you're radically politically left or radically politically right,
41:51
That just tells me that you're not balanced because I nobody that I know is super radical, politically. It's just a giant waste of time and energy. So I just think it's a good practice. If you're a business owner, look at the way people spend their time, where are they? If if they told you they were in Reddit anti work when you asked them that earlier? Like, what content are you consuming? Oh, I'm in Reddit anti work.
42:10
Okay. Out.
42:12
Well, I at but they could make a good argument as to why they enjoy it. So, for example, I like reading, have you seen this subreddit called,
42:19
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
42:27
who get multiple jobs, like, sometimes three or four jobs. And though, and I've known a couple of people who have done this. It's called over employed. It's called over employed. It's it's a pretty funny name.
42:37
And,
42:38
like, I've known, dude, I've known people who have done this, so they get a job at Facebook and Google.
42:43
And so they'll and they call it j one and j two. And so they'll post, like, advice. Like, hey, so my j one has me working from, like, I can get it done from, like, eight to ten AM and then j two is, like, noon to three. How do you people like,
42:56
get your manager to only put meetings for j one in the AM or something like that. And it's crazy. And I've known a guy who had
43:04
a job at Facebook and Google, two hundred fifty thousand or something like crazy for each job. So is and they'll say like, so total income is six hundred thousand. That's broken up with j one at hundred thousand j two at three hundred thousand and they'll, like, say this. It's hilarious.
43:17
And I read it all the time because I'm like, well,
43:21
I'm pretty sure I'm against that because that's unethical. It's not illegal, but I wouldn't like that some did it to me. But then I'm like,
43:27
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 anti work or over employed. I'd be like, okay. Why? Tell me, what do you learn?
43:39
It it goes really
43:41
it goes really deep. As I'm diving into this stuff on recruit jet and learning how recruiting companies work, and I've talked to probably fifteen recruiters in the past month and just ask 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?
44:04
If you're so you're a recruiter, somebody hires you to go place a tech position. You're a technical recruiter. You're gonna find somebody to to work for Google for two hundred fifty grand a 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 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 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 it from a, like, that sleazy. Don't do that, but also you're like, that's pretty amazing. You know, it's like a lot of my
45:03
My sleazy friends in high school, they would like pay someone to take the ACT form.
45:07
And I remember thinking like, I don't know, man. That's pretty that's almost as impressive as actually doing a good job.
45:13
You know what I mean? I'm like, I don't wanna work with you, but, like,
45:16
Kinda I do. If, like, if you if you could use that for good You see so many criminals
45:21
get caught doing all this crazy stuff, and you just think if they put that energy towards something productive, how rich they could get?
45:29
We had,
45:30
we had this guy named Michael Harris, Michael Harris founded Deathrow Records. You know, Deathrow, they, like, created
45:36
Tupock, Doctor. Drey, n w a. Like, they basically invented, like, modern hip hopper. They invented, like, gangster. They were marketing they were the marketing machine behind those guys. Right?
45:45
Yeah. And so Michael Harris partnered with Sugar Knight, and Michael Harris did it from prison. He was serving,
45:52
twenty five to life. He got in trouble for attempted murder, which eventually he got exonerated by Trump two years ago, and he got let out. But he served thirty 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
46:09
at times, two million dollars a day of cocaine,
46:13
of crack.
46:14
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 I definitely profited off of it, but
46:40
he bought buildings. He started a limo company.
46:42
He, eventually death row was bringing in, like, north of a hundred million in revenue because CDs at the time were nineteen dollars, 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.
47:03
If you can get these things right,
47:05
attracting people, leading people, managing people, delegating, writing,
47:10
It can work in any business. Once you learn these skills, I could put Sampar 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
47:27
I I feel strongly that once you get the flywheel going and once you push yourself and once you start to learn some of these things, you can you can crush it.
47:34
You you're doing something that I hate doing.
47:38
And I advise most people not to do it, but there's many examples of people doing 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
47:51
The few times it does work is when there's like a Ryan Reynolds. You see Ryan Reynolds,
47:56
sold mint mobile today for, like,
47:58
one point five billion or two bill, whatever it was. And then, like, last year, he sold -- His liquor. -- his liquor. His liquor. Yeah. Avion or Avion or something like that. He's sold that for hundreds of millions. And, you know, I don't have any idea.
48:12
But it says, like, Ryan Reynolds sells his telephone company here. And I'm like,
48:17
Probably he has nothing to do with it. He just does the commercials.
48:21
Maybe he has something to do with it. I have no idea. And I've no idea. It says like Ryan Reynolds his his telecom company got sold. Maybe he only owns, like, three points. I I have no idea. But in that case, someone like him, he does have multiple things.
48:34
When it's you
48:37
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?
48:49
I'm I'm pushing myself
48:51
I don't know if I can do it. There's a lot of anxiety around it, and some of these things will fail. I mean, look, it's five companies that I've we've started in the past year.
49:01
What what will the collective revenue of those be? Do you think in two thousand twenty four? Okay. So you want me to make a prediction and then we can come back on and test it actually. So I think
49:10
Ari cost seg will be doing
49:13
five hundred grand a month or
49:15
or so in EBITDA. In twelve in in twelve months.
49:19
In the year two thousand twenty four. At the end of two thousand twenty four, we'll look back on the year and I think it'll do two point five million in EBITDA probably. So Okay.
49:29
Webron,
49:30
I think On what top line?
49:32
Okay.
49:34
Six thirty percent margins. So whatever that math is.
49:38
Webrun, I think, will be thirty or forty Get getting close to ten million in in sales. Yep. Yep. I think Ari cost cycle will be really big in the year two thousand twenty four. So eighteen months from now, like, trailing.
49:50
Titan risk, the ins the commercial risk property insurance company. I think that one will do
49:56
three million in sales at a fifty fifty percent margin probably for insurance brokerage company.
50:02
Webron, I think, will be doing
50:04
two hundred grand a month.
50:07
If revenue,
50:08
so maybe seventy to a hundred grand a month of profit.
50:14
Recruit Jet, I think, will be a big company. I think Recruit Jet will be five million of EBIT of revenue and three million of EBITDA.
50:23
Okay. So collectively, you're you're in the six million profit range or something like that. Seven million, I forget. Yep. What would Blue key blue key capital blue key capital could be the big one. The debt the debt brokerage company for real estate firms. That one could be doing
50:38
Again, five to ten another five to ten million of revenue as well. Pretty good margins. The small team.
50:42
And would you
50:44
so,
50:45
two point five for cost seg, what would that be valued at? Could it be as high as ten times profit?
50:51
No. I don't think so. Cost seg is
50:54
politically dependent, you know, if if bonus depreciation rules go up and down, it changes the demand for cost saves. Right? So I think three to four times EBITDA would probably be the value of that company. Wouldn't be worth selling. So the cash flow is awesome.
51:08
The
51:10
multiples are shit. Everything that I've ever started Typically, the cash flow is only okay, but the multiples
51:16
are really, really good. This is this is what I heard. Twenty times profit. Yep. This is what I can't stand. I I tried to convince a kid to come with me to do a web development agency,
51:26
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.
51:35
And my entire thesis is screw EV.
51:39
EV will come.
51:40
I wanna be making
51:42
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.
51:51
But to play devil's advocate here, when I was first starting to hustle, I was doing the math.
51:56
And I was like, wherever I wanna be by the age of thirty, so in five years after starting or four years after starting,
52:02
you have to make a ton of profit. Like, Selling a company, if you can get ten or fifteen times earnings or three or four times revenue,
52:11
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 in a really big market and fast growth.
52:21
But, like, to make, like,
52:23
a twenty to fifty million dollars or significantly higher, my argument is
52:30
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. It's just, like, killing it. And so he's doing it through cash flow.
52:41
But if you, like, do the math,
52:43
Val, yeah, my friend Val is doing it. But he also sold the company. He sold the company.
52:49
He sold two of them for tens of millions of dollars.
52:52
I my opinion is,
52:54
and that there's
52:56
There's so many examples where I'm wrong, but in most cases, I think you it's significantly
53:01
easier
53:02
to sell something than it is to earn through
53:05
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. Hi. I think I would.
53:16
The I mean, unless you work in finance, maybe, like, in your one of your company two of your companies are financing related, unless you work in finance, I think it's hard to get a significant amount of income. But like,
53:27
I don't know, like, Donald Trump claims to have done it, like, a bunch of people have claimed to have done it. Through re through real estate and finance, but I think it's hard through a product,
53:35
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 two hundred ninety thousand dollars. I drive a truck. It's worth about twelve grand.
53:50
Like, if I can just
53:52
not buy a private plane or a four million dollar house, I don't have to sell anything, and I think time will really help So I'm on the I'm on the train now. But how do you
54:01
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.
54:10
And so, like, I know a lot of people that are really wealthy, and every once in a while, I fall into this trap where I'm like,
54:16
five years ago, if I knew if if I
54:20
my my five, you know, my twenty five 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 ten or twenty million dollar home, or what about, 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 fifty thousand dollar watch or something. Of course, I do, man. Of course, I do. I really want a airplane. I really want a PC twelve, and that's my goal as to how much is that? It's a five million dollar airplane.
54:51
I wanna To fly yourself?
54:53
Eight fly my family, fly my nanny,
54:56
and we could go from here to LA without stopping for gas.
54:59
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 sixteen million dollars during the pandemic when he had just sold the company for a hundred million He owned it for six months. And he was like, what the hell am I doing with this? And he ended up selling it for twenty million. He goes, I made a profit on it, which was lucky, but it was looking like a horrible finance financial decision because I had to spend all this money to -- Mhmm. -- store it. It's like it was the stupidest thing ever. Yeah. It's straight overhead. For sure. Straight overhead. But I need to I I live. My family lives seven hours from here, and driving with my family is something we're only gonna do once a year. So I can't get back to see
55:35
my dad and my mom and my grandfather who's only got a couple years left without easy access to get back. So it'd be really nice to have an airplane. But, yeah, I'm, I'm not gonna do it. Like I decided with my wife, we're gonna wait
55:45
because I just wanna show my kids that I'm not just gonna go out and buy everything I want, and I'm gonna suffer a little bit, and that's okay. And
55:53
you know, delayed gratification keeps me humble too. And but it's tough. I battle with it every day, man. I mean, it's really easy to spend on money.
56:01
What what's your what's your dream number?
56:04
Like, as far as personal net worth?
56:06
Yeah.
56:07
If I'm making a million dollars a month, I think I can then do whatever I want.
56:12
Isn't that funny? I but I bet you would have thought that
56:15
ten years ago, if you are where you are now, you could do whatever you want. If somebody would have told me
56:20
five years ago
56:22
that when I retire, I am where I am right now, I would have given them a thumbs up and and said, I'm happy. Please make that happen.
56:29
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,
56:38
it's a tough thing to swallow as a man when, like, all of a sudden, you have
56:42
seven figures in your checking account. You have hundreds of thousands of dollars a month that come your way and you gotta figure out what gets you out of bed and how you're gonna not be an asshole and how you're gonna raise good kids and how and I don't know about you, but I get excited about hobbies and I'll
56:57
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 I wish that I was more disciplined long term and
57:11
How do you feel about that? I'm very disciplined. I think, compared
57:21
compared to a lot of people, I'm I think I have a I'm I'm fairly disciplined. I think I,
57:26
we spend anywhere from we're in Austin, I spend fifteen thousand dollars a month or so. When I'm in New York, I spend a little bit more,
57:35
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.
57:44
I live in a house that was is under a million dollars or paid on well under a million dollars. So which in Austin,
57:52
It's kinda hard to find that stuff. But,
57:55
I think I'm pretty disciplined
57:57
long term, but do struggle with wanting more, and my wife is always like, stop wanting that. Like, you're gonna drive yourself crazy.
58:05
And so, like, I do always want more stuff.
58:09
And I try to, like, like, I want, like, I wanna
58:13
buy
58:14
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 in front of it and anyone who walks by and, like, admires it, I'll be like, oh, you wanna come in and look? Like, I'll show you around. We could, like, play with it all. Like, I want that. That's gonna cost twenty million bucks maybe. Like, I and and it's a pointless thing because when you die, you don't get any of it. But
58:39
I I got a full story. I ordered I ordered a lot of bourbon lately, like high end bourbon.
58:45
Like, how much is a fancy thing of bourbon?
58:48
The most expensive bottle was, like, seventy five hundred dollars. And this is gonna make me see You paid for a seventy five hundred you bought a seventy five hundred dollar. Does it taste any different? What's it do? This is me being vulnerable.
58:58
I have
58:59
I have zero
59:01
life overhead. Like, I could cut my spending to five grand a month and put my kids in daycare and pay for my house payment, which is hundred dollars.
59:08
So I've avoided, like, the big expenses. I've avoided the big, big house, the the plane, the big cars, whatever it is.
59:14
So I splurge on some of the little things that sound huge and and obnoxious to some people, but aren't really that obnoxious. So I got some really nice bourbon. Some bottles that are really special.
59:24
And then when I got them, I'm looking at them in my bar,
59:27
and I send a text to, like, four of my boys. I'm like, hey, come over. Let's try some bourbon.
59:33
And nobody can come over. But they can't come and hang out. Nobody can come and hang out. They're all working
59:39
or they're out of town or whatever. 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,
59:46
fuck. None of this matters. None of this matter is all. It is all about the people
59:52
and the people how they feel about you, whether or not they care about you, whether or not they respect you, how you can help them, how you can help them become better versions of their selves.
01:00:01
So the stuff is really just a distraction.
01:00:05
That sounds cliche because everybody says that, but it hit me when I was looking at that bourbon, and I'm like, my parents, my dad love bourbon. He's seven hours away. My brother's nine hours away. He's not here.
01:00:15
Sam par doesn't drink alcohol. They can't come over with me.
01:00:19
Do you know what I mean?
01:00:21
Does a seventy five hundred dollar bottle taste any different than a fifty dollar bottle? I haven't opened it yet. It's the Mictor's twenty year.
01:00:28
Does a a thousand dollar bottle taste any different?
01:00:31
You know, I think it does because
01:00:34
sounds ridiculous. No. It doesn't Sam. It doesn't. It fucking doesn't.
01:00:38
It's just a Pokemon car.
01:00:40
It's an ego thing, man. I'm a I'm a I'm a weak man who was after the ego sometimes, and I gotta stay. I just gotta remind myself of that. It doesn't matter, does it? It doesn't matter. Dude, I I bought, like, a decent car and that makes me a happier. But besides that, most most items don't And what am I gonna do? Like, invite somebody cool over. There's a couple pro golfers in town that I'm friendly with, and I keep saying, like, come over and drink some of my nice bourbon. And what am I gonna be 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.
01:01:15
I don't think it's dumb. Where where do you where do you, buy this from? And you you do cigars too. Those are -- Yep. -- those are
01:01:22
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?
01:01:30
Golly.
01:01:31
But my house is so weak. Like, it's literally sitting on the bourbon. It's sitting on a a two hundred dollar really shitty cabinet that I got from Home Depot whenever he did in my basement, but
01:01:42
no, a guy over in Carrollton, Georgia, I'm his biggest customer in every year. He gets the releases and drives it over to me, and I give him an envelope full of a lot of cash.
01:01:50
You got a guy. Dude, I love having hobbies where you got a guy. That's the best.
01:01:54
That's the best. Well,
01:01:57
I appreciate you doing this. We had a good episode.
01:02:00
What anything you wanna you wanna pimp out or promote?
01:02:04
A lot of people ask me where they could invest with bolt storage and real estate's really slow, but you can go to, bolt storage dot com slash investors if you're an accredited investor and you wanna get storage exposure.
01:02:14
Also my newsletter that I write every week. I think a lot about this stuff, a lot of the stuff we're talking about, like, what makes How many subscribers do you have on that? I'm up to forty two thousand. I'm working it really hard and adding, like, six hundred a month. It's kinda kinda weak, but,
01:02:27
I I write a lot about a lot of this. Like, what makes a ten xer? How do you think about this stuff? How do you think about hiring management? Like getting these these teams together? So if you go to if you go to my Twitter at sway startup, there's a little link in my bio, and you can join my join my newsletter. Alright. We appreciate you. Thanks for doing this.
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