00:00
What do you, I'm I'm an investor of yours. So you're,
00:04
I forget how much I invested, but
00:07
you're, like, Well, I don't really invest in anything other than, like, van, like, total index funds. And but you're, like, one of the few. I think you're one of three things that I did.
00:16
It's going great. I mean, I I see the returns.
00:20
But how much do you have in total, so self storage now? Like, a hundred million dollars or something? I think last time I came on, it was
00:27
fifteen properties or so and twenty million dollars for the storage. And
00:31
we now have
00:33
sixty one properties
00:35
one point eight million square feet of storage.
00:37
We've acquired it for a hundred and three million dollars.
00:41
We've
00:42
raised forty one million dollars from people like you who invested in both storage. It's been a whirlwind the last two years have been crazy.
00:50
Would you
00:52
say
00:53
a
00:55
hundred
00:57
million
00:58
dollars worth is that that's how much you paid for it. I I don't know how much it's worth.
01:02
I don't either. I mean, we could we could guess. We could try to guess, but look, the real estate market has no mark to market. Because like Elon Musk can see how many shares that Tesla has in the value of those shares.
01:12
I have no idea. I mean, I can make educated guesses, but We sold our portfolio today.
01:17
I don't know.
01:18
Six months ago, we might be able to sell it for hundred ninety million or so.
01:22
Oh, that'd be awesome. We,
01:24
the I think the way I met you was so,
01:27
you're you know, it's kind of a creepy story. Years ago, I dated this Polish girl.
01:33
And I remember seeing your picture
01:35
on Twitter if your this is so weird. Your face reminded me of hers.
01:44
That's the best compliment. That's the best compliment I can get. Are you Polish?
01:48
I'm German. Yeah. Huber. My my my mom is a Gettelfinger. So, yeah, we're very German. I remember the scene in your picture, and I was like, oh, my gosh, this guy looks Polish almost. And then
01:58
I was driving cross country,
02:01
and I did a Twitter live or something like that. I forget what I did. And you, like, commented, and I just called you on air. Or no, I called you on your phone. I just put it on speaker phone and we started talking. And that and that's how will you how we how we met, I think. Right? Yeah. And now now we know each other quite well. I think we've punched each other in the face. We've,
02:19
guarded each other and fouled each other in basketball.
02:22
We have, hung out at a couple conferences, and and we talk several times a week. So I appreciate your friendship, man.
02:28
I appreciate you too. I that he told me that he was, the Catholic. And I was, like, yeah, but you're fast. You're, like, you're not good. And then I looked up his times. I was, like, oh, he's better than I was.
02:40
It's and then that's why I like to do even more. OSHA four hundred times. I think you read forty seven.
02:45
Yeah. Open forty seven. There's, you know, splits are crazy because your coach wants to tell you that you running really fast splits to pump you up, but he told me I ran a forty six seven one time split.
02:54
I'd believe that. My so my fastest opens were only in forty eight and forty nines, and my splits
02:59
were forty seven. So you're probably a second faster than I was. But,
03:02
and did for those for for the like, you went hard on Twitter when we when, like, COVID started. So there's, like, we have this text message group. It's me, you, Sean,
03:11
Austin Reef, Nikita Bier, Sahil Bloom, Greg Isenberg.
03:15
I think that's everyone did I forget. Yeah. You were
03:19
you were, an addition that came on about six months or a year after the group started, but you added some good you've added some good, great banter to it.
03:27
And, like, but the reason the group started was you guys all went hard on Twitter around the same time, and he likes to share each other's stuff, your thread boys.
03:35
And then I remember you started doing that, but did of that hundred million dollars that you've raised or eighty million dollars that you raised. I forget how much how much has come from forty. You've raised forty. How much has come from Twitter?
03:45
Ninety, ninety six percent of it has come from Twitter. No way. Is that is that real?
03:50
Yeah. My my entire real estate private equity company was built on the back of Twitter. Yes. I had we bought and built our first self storage facility. We raised five hundred grand. My dad took a mortgage out on our house to do it. He didn't tell me that he did at the time because we're middle class and
04:05
I went around to his friends, basically, and he helped me raise the money for that first deal. Everybody says, you know,
04:10
you're not self made, and that's my not self made stories that my dad was the first investor in my first storage building, but,
04:16
no then we ran out of money, and we had to buy our second, third, fourth, and fifth properties with that with our own cash from our store from our storage company or or moving company. So then you know, fast forward to Twitter. I'm tweeting about deals. I'm tweeting about some of our properties.
04:29
And people are DMing me asking to get on our investor list and
04:33
Fast forward to today, we've raised forty million bucks from three hundred and twenty people, and we have two thousand people on our distribution list. And it's
04:41
changed my entire life.
04:42
What's,
04:43
forty million divided by three hundred? What's the average check?
04:47
Ben can help us out. Maybe I don't have a calculator on me, but Yeah. Fifty grand people start. We have some investors up over a million bucks.
04:54
That's crazy. I wish I would have done a million dollars when when I saw, like, the checks out for the year.
04:59
That deal that you're in is gonna be a really good deal. We've we refinanced it in a really crappy refi environment, but we're gonna build some climate control storage on that property and that was a deal that was really big and was uncomfortable, man. I mean, we bought a nine the one I did. Yeah. It was a big deal for us. That was our biggest deal so far. It was, like, hard for us to, like, get the money together and and and raise the money for it.
05:19
Nine million bucks, and then we bought another small property after that, another, you know, portfolio after that included all on the same one or basis is about fifteen million, and I can I got my spreadsheet up here?
05:30
Dude I don't even know what that means. What's basis mean? That's how much you're paying for. Yeah. Total cost. Total cost. But but you're in for,
05:38
twenty percent of fifteen. Right? Because you only put or twenty five percent down.
05:42
Yeah. Exactly right. So we we put about thirty percent down. We have, you know,
05:48
twelve million of debt.
05:49
Because we refi it, refi'd out some cash. But now it's got a million dollars of net operating income, and it's, you know,
05:56
twenty, twenty million dollar plus property, which is great. That's crazy. Yeah. I remember seeing that check. Well, what do you wanna talk about today? I wanna talk about all all types of stuff. Dude, we have can you talk about the shepherd thing that you're doing?
06:07
Yeah. So,
06:09
that company is a phenomenal company, and and I kinda it kinda kick can kick off our,
06:14
discussion because my goal real estate's a little bit slow. The company's in a really good spot. I still spend a ton of time saying thumbs up, thumbs down to deals and thinking strategy and working on it, but
06:24
I have a lot of time, and I also have thirty million impressions a month on Twitter. And you know what that's like when you have a podcast like this and the distribution that you have,
06:33
But, yeah, my my goal right now is to is to build a portfolio of
06:37
ownership trunks and and great small companies. Sweaty startups.
06:42
It's in Austin, our friend Austin Rief who founded MorningBrew. He was supposed to come on today. And, he had, like, a last minute board meeting. So Axel Springer. Thanks a lot. The owner of MorningBrew, thanks, guys.
06:53
Yeah. But, anyway, I was, like, awesome. Which should we talk about? And, you and me and awesome were the thing. And a group chat. And he was like, let's talk about because he knows that I hate advertising.
07:03
And I, like, make fun of him. I used to make fun of him as, like, an enemy. Now I make fun of him as a friend. And,
07:09
about how much you love. Make fun of everybody, Sam.
07:12
Not really. Do I?
07:14
I don't know. It's good. It it it you just you just make jokes that are at people's expense and it's hilarious.
07:21
And sometimes they're funny. And and I was like, Austin, what what do you wanna talk about? And he's like, let's talk about non ways or non advertising ways to monetize media followings. And
07:32
you did it. So you did it. I don't know what your net worth would be or what, like, the the the value of your percentage of your thing would be, but you've done it to the tune of like a hundred million dollars of real estate. That's your non advertising way of monetizing your audience. Yeah. My You're also doing it in, like, a bunch of sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. My equity in that is maybe you know, ten to twenty million. Yeah. So And and so that and then, like, you operate this successful business. So it's not like it's just because of Twitter, you know, you make smart decisions beyond that. But you are also doing it a few different ways. I'm actually a customer of your other business, which is a cost save business. I almost use shepherd, which I don't know if you are a part owner or if you're just an affiliate for, but you're doing it in a bunch of different ways. And I wanna talk about the ways that you're monetizing
08:14
in non ad ways. Of your audience. Yeah.
08:18
So Shepherd is the ideal story. I mean, it was late two thousand twenty,
08:22
November, December,
08:23
I wanted to hire somebody in the Philippines. I met Marshall Hasu, owns support Shepard, and I was just customer. I made a deposit for them to hire somebody, and my goal was to on the phone in my self storage facility that could, you know, press one to make a payment, you're gonna go to this person, and they're just gonna process the payments for us. Just some extra help doing very simple things.
08:41
I gave them actually, they built the job description. They got me three candidates ready to interview. I got on and interviewed them all in the course of an hour.
08:48
And I was absolutely blown away and hired all three of the people. And I'm like, this company is incredible. The rate per hour.
08:54
Five dollars an hour, eight hundred dollars a month, get these people to come and work for my service company. And And they're awesome. Fast forward. Yeah. They were they were incredible. Fast forward four out, you know, four months later,
09:04
I had fifteen of these people working inside of my company, and not only were they doing the simple stuff, but they were answering sales calls, They were guiding the logistics of a customer in a in one of my facilities looking for a specific unit. They were just able to
09:18
do exactly what our American reps do except instead of paying sixty or seventy grand a year, they pay, we pay, you know,
09:25
ten grand a year. So it was a it was a game changer. Now we have whole finance department's in Columbia. Sheppard has helped us find those folks in Columbia.
09:32
So the the business blew my mind, and I went to Marshall in two thousand twenty two or two two thousand twenty one, May, I said, Hey, I wanna be an affiliate of this company. Like, give me a cut of what I can bring in and I'll do some tweeting.
09:44
At that time, they were doing about fifty grand a month in revenue. Sheppard was. That's their I gotta their that that's the net of the net of payouts to the the workers.
09:54
No. That's like total revenue. Total revenue or sheppard Okay. As a company, as that business, the one that, like, does the headhunting and finds the employees for American companies.
10:03
So they were doing, you know, fifty placements a month or or less, and they were growing fast. It was a good company. And I started tweeting and pissing off the woke mob and recommending
10:13
Port Shepherd for, like, a fifteen percent cut of revenue that I brought. Well, say what those tweets were. They're they're hilarious.
10:18
I I would say, like, I'm gonna weather this recession for one main reason. My my employees all work for five dollars an hour in the Philippines, and they're absolutely incredible. And then
10:28
It made me look like a complete idiot,
10:30
but the woke mob would just blow these threads up, totally blow them up, we're talking to the tune of three to five million impressions.
10:38
And so that really accelerated the growth of Shepard. They're getting a ton of business as it was. They started growing like crazy, fast forward a year later, and Shepard had seven x. The size of that company had had grown by seven seven x. And how long? So one year? One year. And it wasn't just because of me. It wasn't just because of me. It's because I started offering folks in Columbia. They started doing a ton of work. And they and they have, like, fifty one percent. But you're a part of the you're a part of the puzzle. A big part of the puzzle to help it grow. So I went to Marshall, and I was like, Marshall, this business is way too good. I'm not getting enough money. Like, I wanna own part of support Shepard. And he's like, No way. Like, that's that's that's ridiculous. You're just you're just an influencer. I was like, well, man, I'm gonna go start another company
11:19
that does exactly this, or I could be
11:22
a partner of yours.
11:24
And he was
11:25
and he's like he's like, okay.
11:28
You're right. Like, let's make a deal and we negotiated and I own fifteen percent of Shepard. And you fast forward to And what's the deal? Like, you have to keep referring a certain amount of customers and just still get your pay out. We
11:39
no. The the affiliate payout was cancelled. I got fifteen percent of profits, and he just trusted me that I was
11:45
gonna motivated to continue to do what I do. And now once a month, I just pissed off a woke mob on Twitter. I sent some newsletter at, you know, ads, and I kinda sat on the board and do a little bit ops things and and recommend, but I mostly just drive those guys, and that's when it comes to that. Well, what wait. I want I want I need you to read redeem yourself really quick. Because you're, like, you're, like, pissing people off. But the reality is is that, like, what's the salary? Ten grand a year is what? To them.
12:11
Yeah. These people,
12:12
me and my one of my reps were talking the other day, and it's like, yeah, I I bought a house. Nick, it's incredible. I bought a house in the Philippines. And I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, yeah, this is my home. It's a three bedroom house that I bought. And,
12:25
me and Dan talk all the time that our that our employees in Columbia and the Philippines are are just as wealthy as us. They have the same exact lifestyle as we do. Because, yeah, they get on a bus. They commute two hours, and they work for, like, you know, two dollars an hour over there with with not the best conditions, and then they get to work for American companies, and it changes their lives. So the reality is that the woke mob has no idea what they're talking about. This is an incredible opportunity for them and for us.
12:49
And now a lot of people are, you know, making that switch and getting employees over there, which is Alright. I I interrupted you because I wanted you to redeem yourself. But what were you saying about
12:58
So you fast forward a year now and, another year of promoting and the business growing, and I think fifty one percent of their their business is repeat customers who wanna come back for get to get more.
13:09
You know, help, but
13:11
it's a multi seven figure profit business a year.
13:15
I make fifty grand a month personally.
13:18
From my fifteen percent o ship to shepherd.
13:22
God, that's so funny. Well, dude, you would not have wanted go and start a competitor to them. Would you that would it sounds hard. It sounds like a hard business opry. It's really hard. They got a hundred and fifty employees. I was mostly bluffing. I mean, it's super hard business to start. They have a ton of really good talent and a ton of like sales reps and like the way that they do business is really difficult. They gotta go and recruit and interview all these people over there and vet them and grade their English and, like, get all these people these employees put put in front of these business owners. So, yeah,
13:50
it was And Marshall's a a pretty good I like Marshall a lot. I mean, he's done, like, eight different companies and and a few of them have done really well. Very good entrepreneur.
13:59
So, yeah, that's hilarious. I can't believe you you worked that out. I mean, I think that's a good deal. I've had so I've had a few people. So I am there's this guy who did this guy Diego
14:08
what's his website? Is it, like, short z? I think it's, like, like, short clips. I'll have to find it. But anyway, he, this dude DMed me He, I think he's
14:19
is he Cuban or he's not from America? I forget what he is, but he,
14:23
he deems me, and I get these DMs all the time.
14:27
But they're like, I'm gonna make videos for you. You you get those with, like, I wanna I'm like, dude, shut up. Oh, I get three a day that people wanna write my newsletter for me. Yeah. I it's, like, stuff like that all the time. And nine out of ten of them, they're just, like, really bad. They're not good, at what they do. And this guy just kept dming me And I was like,
14:45
screw it. Fine.
14:47
Screw it.
14:48
Like, just make clips for me. Send me ten of them. Like, I just said something stupid or something like that just to, like, get them off my back. Any, like, within before the night was over, he sent me, like, ten, and they were pretty good.
14:59
And, I was, like,
15:01
Alright. Well, I don't wanna post these. I'm gonna make you post it for me. I'm gonna give you my Instagram password.
15:07
Send me a picture of your driver's license. Your Social Security card. And he told me at one point, he looked at this girlfriend. I go, send me your girlfriend's driver's license too. And he
15:19
And he sends me a picture of Volvo, but I go, great. I know a lot about you. I'm gonna I'm gonna, you know, if we're gonna have an issue, if you screw me, Here's my password to my Instagram.
15:29
Make it work.
15:30
And he does, and he kills it. And I go from, like, a thousand followers
15:34
to, like, ten thousand followers in a week and then, like, up now to fifty thousand. It kills how much do you pay him?
15:40
So get this. So I was, like, alright. You're right. You're awesome. But here's the deal.
15:45
You're gonna do this for me for free for a long time. And in exchange, I'm gonna tell all of my friends about you And,
15:52
I'm eventually, once you prove it to my friends, I'm gonna tweet out that I think you're great.
15:56
And he said great. And so within a month of him messaging me, we got him up to, like, twenty grand a month or something like that. I forget, like, a a really good wage.
16:05
And he's, like, has this thriving business. And then I tweet him out and we send tons of customers to them. And so I also do the same thing where I take a small percentage of the profits.
16:14
And I'm loving this, but I would rather have the profits rather than equity in the business. But Really? I think
16:21
You mean like a cut a cut of revenue? You'd have a revenue rather have a revenue share than equity slice?
16:26
That's the mistake.
16:28
Tahoe. Tahoe sent me a text yesterday and said, Nick, what's your three biggest regrets in life? And one of them Why does not do he asked you that question. What a weird question to ask you. He works on he works on this dumbass content online. Who knows what he's gonna put tweet about?
16:42
Why is he asking you that? Okay. Go ahead. One of them was not going to Marshall
16:47
a year earlier and getting equity instead of freaking a cut of profits.
16:52
Or a cloud revenue.
16:53
Yeah.
16:56
Yeah. I I just don't know if a clip agency is ever gonna sell. Yeah.
17:00
I love agency. I love agency businesses.
17:03
And I I don't wanna, like, give advice to people all the time. Do you know what I mean? I think different when you're with Marshall, because Marshall is, like, a very proven entrepreneur who has a couple of exits under under spelt. But, like, sometimes when I He doesn't wanna listen. Yeah. They don't meet or want me to get involved operations. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, dude, I don't wanna, like, I don't wanna guide you. I just wanna send you customers. And,
17:22
I, like, I sometimes I prefer transactional is what I mean. Yeah. So I love I love leaning in. I love leaning into the ops. My business partners, operational master Minden,
17:33
you know, yeah, but I have three other companies that I'm working on launching right now on on a very same,
17:39
very similar trajectory as support Shepard.
17:43
By the way, Diego's company, it's called short. It's like, a short clip, and then z y dot co. Short z dot co. So short and then z y dot co. I'm giving her his job. You should own you should own twenty five percent of his company.
17:58
Yeah. I don't know. Maybe maybe I will end up regretting that, but I'm I'm happy with the deal. Yeah. But we,
18:04
and so, what were the other two regrets?
18:07
Oh,
18:10
I don't know.
18:11
Let me look.
18:12
I think it was,
18:14
go ahead and get married a little earlier and have kids a little earlier, even though I did it when I was almost thirty,
18:20
and then You you aren't married until you're thirty or first kid? I got married when I was twenty seven when I had my first kid at twenty nine. And I kinda if if it was three years earlier, I would have been just as happy.
18:30
But in general, I told my colleague. So many so many people I talked to say they wish they would have their kids earlier, by the way. Mhmm. And I'm shocked that people say that. Are you are you excited to be a dad at some point? I know you and Sarah started to talk about it. Are you what do you what do you think about? How do you think that's gonna change your life? I'm pumped. I'm so pumped. I I think that,
18:49
a, I agree. I wish I would have done it earlier.
18:52
And I am so pumped. I think it's gonna be life changing. I think I was talking to Sarah about this last night. I was like
18:58
so we've achieved a lot of, like, interesting things at a relatively young age. Like professionally,
19:03
like, we're known in our field. And, like, we have some respect amongst some peers. Financially.
19:08
Like, we've achieved some things.
19:10
Like and then we were, like,
19:13
parents say, like, well, you're never ready. And I was thinking last night, I'm, like, Dude, I'm totally ready. Like, what else do I need to do? This is like it feels like the next step. So I'm incredibly
19:22
ready, and I don't really care about this, but I actually think it's gonna turbocharge my career.
19:26
I think that, like, it's gonna make you feel, like, amped up, like, before it was I was earning
19:33
So I don't know why I was earning I was trying to make money for ego egotistical reasons. And then after that, I was like, now I'm in the place where I make money because I do shit that's fun. And because of my fun hobbies, often the outcome is income, I pick and choose different things. Now I think it's gonna feel like I want something for my children. I want to impress them.
19:52
I wanna show them how to work hard. I think that there's gonna be like a little bit of that. And it's also gonna be like, I don't wanna spend all of my time
19:59
after like six PM working. And so I have to pick and choose my battles, and I think that's gonna actually force focus, and the outcome will be better financially. Am I wrong? I think you are right on the money with your two things. There's two more.
20:12
Number one is that you are going to get so much more emotionally mature
20:17
when you have kids.
20:18
At least for me, I was high as lows. I would it it just it just puts stress in relative form when you know you have a human
20:26
that you have to care for and the stress level of when that human is sick or when when they scream or when they cry or when they hurt themselves or when they suffer,
20:33
that that puts it all in perspective. So you just get like, better at dealing with stress. The second thing is, like, I got more focused and I was able to get more work done when I couldn't travel the world, I couldn't go play golf all the time. I couldn't just get on a plane and go be spontaneous and go spend two weeks in Europe.
20:50
So instead,
20:51
I would spend really good quality time with my family and my house and then pop to my computer to,
20:57
you know, tinker inside of my business and make my business better. It's just more don't know. Does that make sense? Yeah. It it totally makes sense. And I'm pumped. We have three kids now. Yeah. Five five three and nine months.
21:08
Yeah, man. I'm I'm I'm pumped for it. And I I think the out I don't care about this, but I think the outcome will be a better career because of children. That's that that's my prediction.
21:16
I think you're right.
21:18
I wanna talk about the cost side business because that thing so that seems like it's going even better than,
21:24
support Shepard. So
21:26
I'm a customer. I used it. Mhmm. I got it for free, though. So but I I am a customer and I,
21:32
I'm using You did a you did a video. So a cost tag is we have engineers who go in and they break out the different parts of a commercial property or an income property, a piece of real and then they give you a schedule of which you can depreciate that to the IRS. Meaning, like It's normally twenty seven years. It's normally twenty seven years straight line depreciation
21:52
they take it so that, oh, the windows, those are only a five year life. You know, the landscaping outside, that only has a five year life. Then you got all these ground improvements we're gonna make, and all these other things that can be accelerated a little faster. So, and then there's something called bonus depreciation. We're going way in the weeds. You don't need to know that. But basically, our engineers come in the building. They draw a picture of the property. Split it out into different values, and they give you a document that you can give to the IRS to get way more depreciation and save money. You're one. Well, I haven't got my I haven't got my yet though. But let's just make believe on a million dollar property that what's a million divided by twenty seven is what?
22:25
Yeah. You're gonna get twenty seven thousand. Is it much twenty seven thousand dollars a year. Yeah. Okay. And depreciation.
22:32
Two point two percent, maybe something like that. And then on,
22:36
with this, it would be what, like,
22:38
two hundred grand in year one? Yeah. And on a on a self storage facilities anywhere from twenty to thirty percent, year one depreciation,
22:45
an industrial property might be ten to twenty percent, and RV park might be sixty, seventy percent. It just depends on how many ground how much ground improvements you've done, like work to the outside of the property, landscaping, you know, windows, doors. You you might then do do do you pay that do I pay that tax back if I sell the property before twenty seven years?
23:03
Yeah, it's it's called recapture. So if you don't plan to hold the property for a while, then you need to keep some money because your basis drops, basically. Your taxable basis drops by the amount that you'd appreciate. So that gap is called recapture, and you pay that at the recapture rate, stuff like that. So
23:17
yeah. And where are you waiting for the team doing this?
23:21
We have
23:22
my my friend Mitchell Baldwin, who, you know, his wife Mel, they are my partners, my business partner, Dan, is minority owner as well. I own forty five percent of Ari cost egg.
23:31
And,
23:32
I mean, Mitchell Mitchell had done
23:35
hundred plus of these. Before we started this company, and he'd never really thought about, hey, we can we can find some engineers and do this stuff really well.
23:44
We created a Twitter account, Ari cost seg,
23:46
We
23:47
got really competitive pricing because instead of
23:51
me flying somebody to your property in Texas, we did a Facetime, you FaceTime with one of our guys, and he walked around, took some screenshots. What was that like? My property manager did it, and I was out there with her. And I think
24:03
she was on her phone. I she was on her phone, and she said the guy sounded Italian. Are they in Italy or something? They're all over. Yeah. We have some people in Miami.
24:13
Florida's pretty popular, Columbia, Philippines. We've hired,
24:17
seven people from support through support Shepard for this company,
24:21
it's which is another funny part about it. But, yeah, we have twenty three twenty three employees.
24:25
Mitchell's wife, Mel, who spent eight years at KPMG
24:29
or, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of the big one of the big consulting firms. She was a management consultant. She's the CEO of the company.
24:35
And, yeah, we're nine months old and we did two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of revenue last month.
24:40
Dude, that's crazy. And I remember, like, so, Jen, my PM
24:45
she took her, like, twenty or thirty minutes. And so my property's big. It's, like, twenty acres, but there's, like, a four thousand square foot house. And then,
24:53
like a barn that has a gym. It's this for an airbnb I have. And she, like, spent maybe twenty minutes walking around, and he was like, What's that thing? And they're like, oh, that's like our water purifying system. And he's like, alright. Cool. Let me see that. Alright. Cool. Show me all the windows.
25:08
They look at, like, okay. What can we depreciate faster? And they're like, show me this. Show me that. Yeah. Yeah. And he and she was like, we have two garage doors here. And he was like, alright. Cool. See the garage door. I forget what else it was, but, like, she, like, she was just walking around and he, like, had a checklist, but then also he would see stuff and, like, ask, like, wait, Let me see that, water filtration system or, like, you know, this my property's out in the country. So we have, like, a well or something. I think she can do is, like, let me see the well. Like, I, like, you're, like, wanting to see all this stuff. And I haven't got a report yet. I think we just get it did it, like, ten or seven days ago. Yeah.
25:41
But, yeah, so that's the business.
25:43
And there's one other
25:45
company in the space that's doing it that I almost went with. It was called the Madison spec as
25:50
Yep. Is that Yeah. And they'll they'll fly somebody out to your property, and they'll charge you twice as much to do a cost lag because they gotta get somebody out there. So It's a different win scenario. When I read about this, Mark Jenny. So we have this friend named Mark Jenny who talked about the pub. He's a badass. Yeah. He's badass. He has, like, I don't know. His portfolio is like mid eight figures of Airbnb. The bar stool guys rented one of his houses for Super Bowl week. Dude, I saw the so the Barcelona guys are in Arizona, I think, for, yeah, and I saw, like, the mini putt putt course in basketball. And I was, like, I bet this is Mark's. And then you or someone else told us that it was Mark's. And he,
26:26
I was he's inspired me to get into Airbnb's. I was like, Mark, what should I read? And he, like, sent me some and he told and that's where I learned about accelerated depreciation. And I started googling how to how to do it. And I only found a couple firms doing it. So I thought this was gonna be like a niche I didn't think it was gonna be like a big business. What how big do you think this is gonna get?
26:43
My prediction, and again, I I try not to make predictions because then I just set expectations and end up getting you know, stress because of expectations and stress and that stuff. But, yeah, I think
26:54
we'll do three to five million of revenue over the next twelve months. And what about I think it'll become a it'll become a over the next five years, ten to fifteen million dollar a year revenue business?
27:04
I don't I mean, you don't have to set expectations, but I will, but I feel like that is under shooting. I think it could be potentially bigger. I don't know how big the market is, but I bet you there's so many other services that you can begin to offer depending on how hard you wanna work. Yeah. We're we're launching so that's r a cost tech dot com. We're launching tax credit hunter dot com as well to do ERC credits, employee retention credits. Same partnership group Mitchell Mitchell and Mel.
27:27
That's when you didn't if you didn't lay off employees during COVID and you own a small business, you can get
27:32
and to employee retention tax credits back from the IRS. And you need Mitchell you need Mitchell on to really talk about that stuff. I can't
27:39
guide, but basically if you didn't fire your employees when COVID hit and you kept them on, the government is offering massive tax credits to your business. And very few entrepreneurs know it. They expire in two thousand twenty five, and,
27:51
yeah, it's it's it's significant. We're talking the the guys that we know who are running companies hundred fifty employees are looking at
27:58
hundred to a million dollars in tax credits. Hundred thousand to a million. There's a company called Main Street main street. They do the exact same thing. I think Sean either invested or knows the guy who founded it named Doug, and they were an advertiser with the hustle. They're a good company, but what they did was How much money did they raise? I think they raised they did the exact same thing. You're saying they probably had like a tech play to it. I don't remember exactly, but they're still around. But I think they raised
28:23
like, two or three hundred million dollars. Like, I forget the exact number, but, like, a huge amount. And I think they just recently laid off a ton of people, not because the business stinks, but I think they just, like, raised a ton of money and hired a ton of people.
28:36
But I do think that that's proof that this if I'm in your position and I'm, like,
28:41
Oh, well, you guys have just validated the idea and concept. We're not gonna raise money because we don't wanna screw up our cap table, but I bet we can do this because we already have a little bit of money. We already have an audience maybe we won't grow as fast, but we'll own the whole thing and do it our way. And I think Yeah. The audience is the key. I mean, the the Ari cost tech Twitter account which I I run-in Mitchell runs.
29:02
It's got thirteen over thirteen thousand followers already.
29:05
No, shit. What are you tweeting on there to to make people follow it?
29:09
Just all about cost seg, all about real estate investors, client, client examples, anonymous client examples about how much money we save clients,
29:15
it blows people's mind when they realize that real estate investors, you can make I mean, I'm an example of this. You can make two, three million dollars a year from operating companies. And if you're a real estate professional and you buy property each year and you cost seg them and appreciate them,
29:29
you can have zero tax liability, zero.
29:33
Yeah. But becoming a real estate professional is a pain in the butt. I tried to do it. I tried to do it. And I I was like, there's no way I can justify. Like, basically, to if I remember correctly, to become a real estate professional, you have to
29:43
I forget exactly. Seven hundred hours. You have to spend. You have to be the person who spends the most time in the business. Yeah. There's you you need a good CPA to really like log your time and create a a rock solid case. And then you also have to I think a certain I think a the majority of your income has to come from real estate, if I remember correctly, or you can't
30:02
Is there something where, like, the or where is it, like, your outside,
30:06
your all your revenue streams can't add up to be more than your,
30:10
than your
30:11
real estate income. Is it something like that? I thought that there was something where, like, you can't make much money.
30:16
Well, maybe I'm wrong, but I remember the seven hundred dollars thing. I was like, there's no way I think you can get some, I think you can get some. I don't wanna talk in my ass here. I don't remember you exactly, but I think if you do three hundred and sixty hours, you can you can get some,
30:28
In short term rentals, short term rentals, there's a loophole in it right now. We're doing a ton of cost saves on people who have short term rentals because
30:35
they
30:36
don't have to be a real estate professional. They just have to spend more time on that rental property than anybody else, and there's some threads that Mitchell Baldwin has. And if you search it if you search short term rental on the Ari cost tech account. You could read the thread. But, yeah, it's a there's a loophole around,
30:49
short term rentals. Well, that's sick, dude. I think that potentially those businesses can be bigger than, like, your storage thing. But that's just because that's what I know is, like, internet businesses,
30:59
but I think that actually could be pretty massive. Right?
31:02
I think I I'm very bullish on what could happen. I'm excited. Yeah. And then the I'm also buying a I'm buying and rebranding a property and casualty insurance company. What the hell is that? They they provide
31:13
property insurance. Like, if you have a a commercial piece of property, self storage facility, or a multifamily unit,
31:19
you need to get property insurance on that in case there's a tornado or a fire or somebody slips and falls outside. Yeah. I mean, I have it at my Airbnb. Think I think it's expensive. I'm pretty sure I pay five or six thousand a year. Does that sound right? Yeah. That sounds right. We pay over four hundred thousand or over three hundred fifty thousand dollars annually to an here our self storage portfolio,
31:38
but it's also a pain to work with these insurance companies. Like, the brokerages operate like it's nineteen fifty have to push it back. Like, I don't have, like, a login. I think I just have, like, a PDF that, like, they sent me. And then they sent me more questions that said, like, hey, did did you ever fix this handrail or something like that?
31:54
And, anyway, like, it's pretty antiquated.
31:57
It's my business partner. We were working with a top ten firm in the country, brokerage firm. Top ten. Is one of the biggest companies, and my business partner Dan had to go into that business and build a system for them to quickly get us quotes on properties and to bind our coverage. We can't pay online.
32:12
Things move slow as hell. Nobody responds to us. So, yeah, we're buying an insurance company in Kansas City. We're rebranding it as Titan risk.
32:19
Titan risk dot com is the shout out and we're gonna spin off a property and casualty insurance company on the back of, again, the
32:26
the the following.
32:28
Your website's down. So you gotta is it is tightened risk dot dot com, you said? Yeah. Alright. Yeah. It'll be up. It'll be up. It'll be up it'll be up by tomorrow, hopefully.
32:37
Alright. Good. I I I don't know. I think this episode might go live tomorrow. So you gotta get it up by then on Thursday. What what did you pay for that?
32:45
The guy was doing He he we found a guy who had a really good contract base with carriers because that's the key. Like, everybody goes to the same carriers, but you have to have contracts with those really good carriers. We found a guy in Kansas City who had that, and he was I think he's doing million, million and a half of revenue inside of a shop. He's the producer. He has four back office. We're gonna hire folks through Shepard and some Americans as well,
33:09
account admins, and we're gonna lean on his shop at the beginning and kinda spin up a a secondary brand. So
33:15
so if if I come on if I come on in six months, I'd give you I'd be able to share a ton because this is in its infancy, but I'm more excited about this business than I am about,
33:24
Arie Cassegg and and, type tax tax credit hunter. Our soft
33:32
where's the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot?
33:34
See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous.
33:41
Of our new CRM. Our software is the best. Hubspot,
33:45
grow better.
33:46
I wanna ask you about the fourth one. But for the first three, did you put up any capital for any of them? Yeah. We funded a checking account,
33:55
for Ari costs that we put fifty grand in there, and then the two months later, you know, we were making distributions.
34:00
That's nothing.
34:01
Right? Nothing. Yeah. That's nothing. And
34:04
Dude, that's crazy to me. The great thing about hiring an employee, even if you hire a a really good engineer for a hundred thousand dollars,
34:10
you're only paying them eighty three hundred dollars a month. Do you have engineers for these companies?
34:16
Yeah. You need we have civil engineers inside of our acoustics. So, yeah, it's it's this is this stuff's not easy. Right? Mel Baldwin is a bad ass. Like, she's managing twenty three people. We're doing a ton of volume of sales, doing all these cad drawings, breaking down these properties,
34:30
Marshall's team is really bad ass. Like, none of these companies are easy, by any means. Who's building the system? So, like, and then not civil engineers, but I mean, like,
34:38
web.
34:39
Yeah. We're using air tables as CRM.
34:42
We have a lot of out of the pocket tech, but, yeah, we're getting some web work done as well. And I'm starting a
34:48
web, a web landing page front end development company as well called webrun dot com, but that's with another guy that's gonna be spun up in the next month. So, yeah, I mean,
34:57
it's getting it's getting fun. I wanna ask you about this last one, and then, I wanna ask you more about all this stuff. I'm gonna write my questions down because I wanna interrupt you. What's this pest thing? Oh, the pest control business. I have a I have an l p, a good friend of mine who owns six branches of a pest control company,
35:13
and
35:14
he needs the he needs capital to go buy additional properties. And he's got some capital, but not you know, five or ten million dollars. And I said properties. I meant additional companies to latch on to his to his business, but,
35:26
I might do a deal with him where I sit on the board and I advise operationally, I help them hire,
35:31
overseas talent through support Shepard and implement them inside the company, and then,
35:36
raise the money from my real estate investors. To buy the business.
35:40
But that's in its infancy as well. I need more time to to really talk on that. So,
35:46
About
35:47
between two and six months ago, Sean and I on this pod talked about a few things. I told him I was, like, basically,
35:55
like, on Instagram,
35:56
you have, like, Rihanna and the Kardashians, and then there's, like, thousands and thousands of more. But those two, those the the Kardashians
36:04
and Rihanna are like two prominent examples of people who have built hundreds of millions or billions of dollars worth of, net worth via Instagram.
36:14
On YouTube, we have mister Beast. He's like the common he's the one everyone talks about.
36:20
And then, you know, there's way more, of people who have built. Like, there's a lady who started ipsy. I think it's called the makeup brand. There's just tons of them. On Facebook, you could say that, like, Buzzfeed and, like,
36:31
a bunch of other people, like, you know, built multi billion dollar businesses on the backs of Facebook. Now,
36:37
There hasn't really been one who's done it on Twitter.
36:40
The in Snapchat, same thing. We can think of a few more examples. The reason Twitter maybe it hasn't worked is because I think people haven't take it seriously. And also there's only, like, three hundred and fifty million people on it as opposed to Instagram. There's, like, what, billions?
36:54
But I think that's changing. And what we haven't seen yet is someone who has built, like, the the equivalent of the Kardashians,
37:01
on Twitter, except instead of selling makeup, I think they're gonna be selling
37:05
b to b or professional
37:07
whatever that is considered, you know, b to b services or
37:11
something where it's like a higher end person, not a young woman buying, like, twelve dollar makeup. And,
37:19
We haven't seen that yet. And then Sean was like, yeah. And then we have, like, the guy mafia. So you've had people, like, the strip mall it's like these anonymous accounts. So, like, the strip mall guy, who I know who he is. I'm friends with him, and he is a large business. And I don't know what it what has come from Twitter, but he has a large business. And then there's, like, five or six other guys. There's, like, the used car salesperson guy, and he's, like, potentially gonna build a large business. And, like, it's very predictable that your watch guys is selling shitloads watches on Twitter. Yeah. I almost bought a a a Rolex from a he, like, had these datejust that I wanted. Mhmm.
37:49
No one has done this to the extent of, like, hundreds of millions. I guess you kind of almost have already. But no one has done this to the extent that I think possible.
37:58
You might be one of first ex or at least one of the people that I know closely who might be one of these early people to build a multi hundred million or even a billion dollar fortune
38:09
mostly because of your audience on Twitter. Do you think that's that's,
38:12
accurate?
38:13
I think these companies are so
38:16
in their infancy, and it's really easy to get to two hundred fifty grand of revenue, but ask guys like Andrew Wilkinson how hard it is to go from two hundred fifty thousand dollars a month to, you know, two hundred fifty million dollars a year in revenue. Like, those types of jumps is on another level. Right? I don't know if I have what it takes to do things like that.
38:33
You're saying you don't think you you you have what it takes? How can you No. How did you say that? I'm gonna try. Hell yeah. I'm gonna try. But, like, how much harder can it be than what you're doing now, but you give it ten or fifteen years to mature.
38:45
I don't know. I think what Austin Reef does at Morningbrew, like, managing these bigger companies is just a different skill set. Different. Like But you're not doing it.
38:53
But I'd have to to become a billionaire, wouldn't I?
38:56
I don't know. Because, dude, it's kinda like you're like the Ryan Reynolds of Twitter a little bit. You know what I mean? Like, he's got MIP mobile. He has the soccer team that he partakes in. He's got,
39:07
I don't the the alcohol drink that he has. I think he has a few more. I I mean, that guy's not operating those companies. Kind of MacGregor is not operating the whiskey thing, but, like And I can't operate frankly, I can't operate my companies either. I'm focused on my real state and everything else. Yeah. And so my point being is if you're just if you have ten to twenty or thirty percent of a handful of things,
39:29
One of them could hit. There's this guy named Felix Dennis. Have you ever read, this awesome book called How to Get Rich?
39:34
I I love that book. Yeah. I love that book. I recommend that book to everyone it's horribly titled, but it's the best book I've ever You should have equity in that you should have equity in that book, Sam.
39:43
Dude, I've, whenever we mentioned in the pod, we'll notice the next day it goes up the charts, like, a ton. And, well, he's dead now, but he he built, like, a publishing empire. That was, like, it made him much a a lot of money. But the bulk of his wealth was he owned ten or twenty percent of this thing called micro warehouse, which went public for multi billions. And he made many, many hundreds of millions from it. And he had the same thing where he was like, Look, I own the magazines that I'm gonna promote you guys in there for free. And I'm also gonna be like an advisor, but I'm gonna be considered a co founder, and this was my idea, and I hired you guys But he didn't manage the company. He he met with the with the other founders a lot, and he gave it his opinion, but he wasn't, like, running the day to day thing. I don't see why you you couldn't do that with a few more things. I think the,
40:25
you know,
40:26
the power of
40:27
blowing up a brand is one thing. The power of spotting
40:31
and reading and hiring and delegating to really good operators
40:35
is something is another thing as well that's underrated and something that I'm think that I'm good at finding people who really think about business the right way. And to build these companies, I can't operate them. I'm an investor, I'm an advisor, and I and I pump their stuff on Twitter, and I'm a customer, and I, you know, help, but you gotta find somebody who really is really good at running a company. And that's where I wish I'd I made a joke on Twitter that offended a couple of my good friends a couple days ago that said, like, I need to do more angel investing so that I can invest in these companies. I can see how these founders think about business and how they make decisions and how they write their updates and how they
41:11
fight through, and I can get a look into their brain and and I can spot the
41:15
killer Right? I can find those those guys that are just really good at business, and then I can pull them aside when they give up, and I made a a statement like the hell, you know, when they wanna leave the hellscape that is venture capital, and that's not true. It was it was,
41:28
it was just not cool for me to say that about my buddies who had so much value to the world in in that space. But, anyway, and you're joking.
41:35
I was I was half joking, half being serious because I wanna pull these people away and and basically found and start and buy businesses that I think that they could come in and run
41:45
great businesses that are ran like crap and just accelerate their growth and make them better.
41:50
Dude, Austin Reef is an amazing operator.
41:53
And,
41:55
I remember when I first met him
41:57
I was probably twenty eight or twenty nine or thirty, and he's younger than me. He's four years younger than me. And I was like, you're the first you're one of the very few people who's like my peer, but younger than me who
42:10
I'm I'm a little intimidated by. I'm like, you you I I'm, I remember telling him I was like, dude, I'm a lot better than you had a few things. You are so much better than me at a few other things. And I wish I wouldn't make it a year earlier. Listening to the way that he thinks about business problems. And the way that he talks through them and the way that he
42:28
paints a story in in a clear and concise way when you're asking him about his business is That's what I'm talking about. That's the ten xer. Austin is the ten xer. He's a hundred xer. He's on another level. But, like, when you're around a lot of these people and you talk to them, you start asking questions and hearing the way they think about business, You can do it too. Like, you can just tell. You can tell when somebody's different, when somebody's really got it.
42:48
Dude, he's the best. But I would also say, like, Andrew Wilkinson, a great friend of mine. I don't know what his
42:54
empire is worth, but in the five hundred to a billion range, depending on public markets, he,
43:00
When I talk to him,
43:02
I don't feel like
43:05
I'm like, Andrew, I don't feel out of my league. You just been doing it for longer, and you were really creative, and you were the first person. You were you were bolder and smarter than than me to, like, believe that this could actually become a thing and you did the thing. And then you did it for years and years and you didn't give up and you never bow down. You always did it your way. But in terms of, like, your vision and my vision,
43:27
you know, my vision now that I see. You could do it. I'm like, I don't think your ball I think we're in the same ballpark of, like, intellect
43:34
and so that's why when I see him, I'm like, dude, you're inspiring to me because I kind of feel like we're almost the same, although the results are not the same. And I find that to be very inspirational. And that's kind of the same for you. Maybe like you look at a guy like him and be like, oh, man. Andrew Andrew is my idol. Yeah. I mean, that man understands leverage. And delegation
43:51
unlike anybody that I've ever met. Right? He can find somebody. He can he can his his brain is so good at analyzing
43:57
the pros and the cons of making a bet, he he does business like a poker player. Right? When the odds are in his favor, he's gonna go big, and he's just proven that he can make those bets better than anybody you'd find those excellent operators. And I think he's a undercover killer too. I mean, I know that he comes off really humble, but the dude is I think he's a killer too. He's a killer. And anyone who's that successful is not not a killer.
44:18
Yeah. You're right. He and he and he does a good job because he's like, is a I always tease them. I'm like, dude, do you always dress so nice when you have slick back hair? Like, you, like, have this, like,
44:27
designer, like,
44:29
look to you, but, like, you're, like, quit acting like you're, like,
44:33
not a killer because you definitely are. He's got it. Why? What do you what do you do with your bunny? Do you what do you invest in?
44:40
Well, real estate, I'm not that liquid. Right? I haven't sold a company. I haven't sold any properties.
44:45
So
44:46
I personally guarantee, you know, fifty million dollars plus of debt, and I only have three point six million dollars liquid. So I'd be foolish to start spending that on houses, cars, and boats. Right? So
44:56
I keep a lot of cash, about a million in cash. I keep another another two and a half million in public equities that I can create
45:05
Are you trading? No. I buy I buy buy stocks and hold them for a long time. I'm way too dumb to try to guess what's gonna happen inside of a market. But you didn't used to be that way?
45:12
I bought some dumb talk about our friend Austin Reef. I bought some dumb stocks
45:17
that I then sold six months later for a big loss. Absolutely. But I'm not trying to day trade in time markets.
45:23
Austin told us all that that Zillow was, like, the buy.
45:27
He was, like, and I I didn't buy it, but I it it was a fair argument. We bought it at a hundred and fifty bucks. It went up to two hundred, and I was getting texts from Austin that the that, you know, let's let's go. It is incredible.
45:38
Now it's thirty bucks or something.
45:41
No. I mean, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, and Apple, all the best companies in the world, I'll got fifty percent cheaper. So I bought a lot of those, and I'm gonna hold them for five years, and I'm sure that I'll do fine. What's motivating you right now?
45:53
I just think it's fun. I mean, the building, the building is really fun. Is that what you I mean, I wanna talk about you now too, Sam, because you're
46:00
earnouts over here? How many years post exit? Are you four years out? No. Duke. Two. Two. Two. Okay. Never mind.
46:07
Yeah. I mean, you build something, you sell something, you have that event, and then when it's over, you're like,
46:12
well, shit. I kinda I love I love building. I love tinkering. I love entrepreneurship and business. I needed
46:19
so I gave myself one year to I basically wrote the rules where I was like, I'm gonna read anything that interests me, whether that's so I read a lot of fiction and I read I don't read business books anymore.
46:29
And then I also said, I'm just gonna search. I'm just gonna search. So I'm just gonna plot and search and just whatever Interest me, I'm just gonna pursue it. You know, I was like I was like, I'm just gonna dog on a walk following my nose, and I'm not gonna, like, feel guilty about that. And I noticed that after about six months, I was ready to roll again.
46:45
I
46:46
made some I made some irreversible decisions at my company, like some culture decisions. Basically, when I started the company, I was twenty five. And then when I about sold it. I was about thirty. And, like, I was a different person,
46:56
and I'm more solid on who I am now. So I would have different values when I start my next things. But anyway, I made some mistakes. So I basically kinda had to sell the company or in order to, like, get out. And so I was pumped about it.
47:09
But at the same time, I was like, I wish I was wealth. I wish I was I wasn't wealthy when I started a business. I had nothing. I was like, I wish I was wealthy, so I didn't have to sell this to get liquidity. Because I would have liked to have owned it forever, but I was very, very, very happy to get that time to relax and to seek. And then after about six months, I was like, dude, I need action. I need to gamble.
47:30
I felt I remember watching a James Bond movie. And I'm like, should I become a cop? Like, I need to go out and, like, get into trouble. Like, I need to experience,
47:38
like, it's the uncertainty, I think. It's like, it's the it's making a decision where you don't know what the answer's gonna be. And then waiting and seeing what happens that is just incredibly addicting about entrepreneurship
47:48
and business. Dude, I just, like, like being a shit head with my friends. I love our group chat. Like, when it gets spicy. I like to think about it all the time. Like, it's so funny. And I'm like, I gotta go do something now to one up the the guys here. And that's how I feel. So, like, my my best
48:04
The bet time I have that I love the best when it comes to work is when I'm with, like, my partner, Joe, or someone like that. And we're, like, We can't pull this off. Can we? Fuck. Let's go try it. Like, that that adrenaline, that's, like, my version of, like, James Bond. When I'm watching him, like, having, like, a car chase, I'm, like, dude, let's This is our this is our nerdy version of a car chase. I need that thrill. And it just so happens that the outcome typically is money. And so that's what I'm motivated by is, like, the thrill.
48:32
I don't give a shit about legacy. When people talk about legacy, I'm like, I don't give a shit, dude. I'm gonna I'm like, Imagine the feeling that you had when you before you were born, that's what I think I'm gonna have when I'm dead. Why do I care what people think about me? You know, I wanna, like, leave something to my children because I love them. But, like, I don't give a fuck about what everyone else thinks. I don't care about legacy. I just wanna have fun and, like, have excitement in the moment, and that's, what I'm motivated by. Yeah. Making these making these business deals and these business decisions and these and these calculated bets, we'll call them, like with you and and all these things I'm working on. They're just calculated bets. And when you when you put the money in, you just never know what's gonna happen. You never know what's gonna happen when you try to sell it, when you start to get customers, when you start to solve problems, and it's it's addicting for sure.
49:15
By the way, well, we can keep this on, but producer, Ben, we have to bleep out the name of what he just said. I haven't announced that yet.
49:23
But can we talk about it? Can we Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We can we can't say what it is, but we can we can we can mention I have a thing that I'm gonna be announcing in a month. I'm gonna
49:32
Nick just said the name of it. We gotta bleep that out. I'll be announcing it in one month. I've been doing that low key for two reasons. One, I wanted to prove that I can do it without my audience.
49:43
And two, I wanted to make sure that it worked and was life changing. It's a wonderful product before
49:48
I'm I, like, get, like, an influx, but I'm gonna announce that in a month.
49:53
What else do you wanna talk about anything else? I mean I mean, I've been thinking a little bit about, like, what holds people back
49:59
and
50:01
anxiety
50:02
and the decision making that like, the whole thing.
50:06
No. I just mean, like, the uncertainty, like, the the fear of failure. Like, it it's it's in everybody. Not not that I guess anxiety is a is a bad term, more like insecurity.
50:14
Right?
50:15
I have insecurity and
50:17
the and it holds me back from making big decisions.
50:21
And the problem with it is is the more insecure you are, the less decisions you make, and decision making is, like, something that you have to practice to get really good at. If you don't make sure decisions with a lot on the line, you have to you're never going to get better at it. Ever going to get better at it. So then you have un unmade decisions and that equals stress because stress is a decision that hasn't yet been made. And then it just cycles and snowballs.
50:41
So people who are they have insecurity, they have anxiety around making decisions,
50:46
then they get stressed out because they have these decisions, and it's just a big compounding snowball of
50:51
of, like, it just holds people back from kicking so much ass. Like, every high performer that I know They they make a ton of decisions.
50:58
They make some of them wrong. They lose some money. Like, there's downside, of course, but they just make them and make them and make them and they make them quick. And they get better at it and better at it and better at it. And that's when the leverage kicks in and they can just build and grow and build and grow. My parents, when I was a younger kid, I would like sell CDs or, like, sell, use stuff on eBay. And I I remember making mistakes, and they're like, oh, that's alright. You can't get a hit unless you're in the game. And, as they're like,
51:22
swinging your miss, but, you know, you gotta you gotta swing to get the hit and you can't get hit unless you're in the game. I remember hearing that and that, like, changed my life. And so now whenever I screw up. I'm like, whatever. Like, you know, a three hundred batting average in baseball is great. So I'm like, that's all I need. Like, that in business is fine. In fact, in business, do you actually need less. If you try a hundred times and one thing works, it makes up for all the ninety nine things.
51:44
But that's what I always tell people, I'm like, dude, you gotta you you gotta you can't get a hit unless you're in the game. I've been asking high performers this because now I have a five year old. I'm thinking about what I can do for my kids to help them
51:54
just get better at making decisions and get, you know, more a more solid foundation,
51:59
a more solid foundation in the event of insecurity.
52:02
Did your parents just like,
52:04
you struggle a little bit. Like, that's something that I found is very common among
52:08
entrepreneurs and successful people. If so many parents nowadays, they really mess up because they, like, shelter their kids from all decision making. They, like, make the decisions for the kids. They, like, they they keep them from getting in any pain at all. They're gonna keep them from having deal with the uncomfort of pain. They're gonna put them in a bubble, and I look back on my parents, and my my parents would like,
52:28
would make me make the little decisions when I was a kid so that I got better at making the decisions. And then when they they were bigger, I wasn't overwhelmed with fear and insecurity.
52:36
I was always skateboarding and rollerblading and going to skate parks. And I remember I had a unicycle. I would and I would try to ride it downstairs. And they were like,
52:43
I was crazy. I was like, do all this crazy stuff. I remember when I was in fourth grade, I could ride a new cyclone juggle, and I would do all this crazy, like skateboarding shit. And they would be like,
52:52
hey, let's go to the skate park.
52:54
But the only rules they had was you have to wear helmet. They go as long as you wear helmet, we don't cared. So I was in and out of the hospital, broken broken broken fingers,
53:03
stitches on my eye, broke my arm, broke my collarbone. I've had a lot of broken bones.
53:07
And they were I always say my parents,
53:10
they once I, left school, I wasn't financially,
53:13
like, they didn't they've never, like, helped me with the business or anything, but they supported me, up until then. And
53:20
so I had that, but they're emotionally supportive. So I remember when I left school and moved out to San Francisco and told them I was gonna join this thing called Airbnb.
53:29
They were like, this
53:31
sounds like a multi level marketing thing. Like, is this like yours? And I was like, no, guys. Like, it's like, I think it's legit. Like, at the time, I was like, two or three hundred people worked there. It's legit. And they're like, you're gonna leave school to go do this. And I was like, yeah, it's legit. And and they're like, that sounds horrible. But, you know, we'll see you Saturday. We'll come down there and help you move out. And so, like, they did things like that that were, like, very emotionally supportive. And so, and that was, like, huge. And so a lot of my friends who don't take risks oftentimes their parents were quite neurotic.
54:00
And they instead of saying,
54:03
why,
54:05
instead of saying, like, of course, this can work, they would default to saying, like, well, this will never work because of this, this, and this, or, like, you can't go study abroad. Like, Mexico is dangerous. Haven't you seen that there's, like, shootings or
54:15
you know, like, people get sick when they, do this and that. Like, I remember, like, that was usually the default versus, like,
54:22
screw it. We'll we'll handle it when we get there. Yeah. Putting your kids in a bubble. And now that I have a five year old, like, it sucks to watch him struggle. And now and I have a bunch of employees, and it sucks to watch I I don't know. There's there's a lot of similarities between, like, raising kids. You let your kid get hurt, though. Like, let's say your kid's riding a bike and he's wearing a helmet and you're like, dude, he's one hundred percent about the knock his teeth out.
54:41
If he's about to hurt himself bad and I'm gonna go to the emergency room, obviously, I'm gonna run and try to catch him. But if he he's on over on the other side of the cul de sac and he hits a curb and he falls down and he starts screaming,
54:50
I'm not gonna sprint over there and pick him up and coddle him. Does that make sense? Like, I'm gonna Yeah. I'm gonna let him I'm gonna let him figure that crap out, but just think it bleeds over into everything. Like, if you if an employee walks into your office and they they have a problem and you just say, get out of my way. I'm gonna solve that problem, then that enables that enables them to a, it doesn't let them learn how to solve problems on their own, and b, it enables them to bring you more and more problems and just be completely unable to,
55:17
like, get shit done without you as a boss.
55:21
Do you,
55:23
just texted me, and he wanted he wanted me to ask you. You you you have all three boys. Right?
55:27
I have a five year old boy, three year old boy, two,
55:32
Alright. Ten month old girl.
55:34
Are you gonna raise her the same way? I would imagine yes. Right?
55:38
Oh, man. I don't know. I don't know if I will.
55:42
Yeah. You got it. You
55:43
got it. If I have a daughter, I mean, this is my I'm hypothetical. You're living it, but I think I would definitely you gotta do it the same way. Right? Oh, yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna raise strong, secure
55:53
daughter, for sure. Like, a, I'm gonna show her that I'm gonna treat her mother with a ton of respect and that her mother should never take shit from me just because I'm a man. Right? That's that's something that, like, you cripple women in the long run if you, like, enable or, like, lead them to be insecure I'm gonna try to raise, like, a really strong, confident,
56:11
secure girl
56:12
who can, yeah, knows how to struggle with grace. Absolutely. So when she falls down on her bike, I'm not gonna run over there either, I guess.
56:18
Well, good, dude. I'm happy you came on and I like talking to you.
56:22
By the way, we do this thing on on on our YouTube channel. I'm gonna do it now. I supposed to do it earlier on. We talked about the gentleman's agreement. Have you heard me say this? I have not. Damn, you're catching me. I'm totally blind. So we we've been growing our YouTube subscribers,
56:37
I think last month we grew by twenty thousand.
56:40
And the pitch was this. I stole it from this guy named Jesse Unfire. So I'm I'm not gonna act like I came up with it. But it was, we guilted people a little bit. We said, hey, hold on. Hold on. I normally say this in the beginning. I forgot to do it today. Go hold on. Unlike everything else on YouTube, our content is not for free. We actually work for you. And the way that you pay us back, it's kinda like when you go up and buy, like, you up to seven eleven and you see, like, a jar for the muscle dystrophy, and you take a piece of candy and you leave a quarter, you leave a dollar. That's what this YouTube channel is, except instead of the dollar, all you gotta do is click like and subscribe on on our little channel, and we work for you. And so our content's not free. You have to subscribe if you watch more than one video, and it's called the gentleman's agreement because we're not there. It's a handshake. Anyway, that is the gentleman's agreement. So you do have to subscribe to our channel. But, dude, that pitch
57:28
changed everything. Immediately, we started close seeing close to a thousand people a day clicking subscribe. So it's it's working now. So you gotta have, like, a unique way of asking for it and it and it's worked now we have all types of people coming up to us. I had I was riding my I was on a walk yesterday and a guy drove by and goes, Hey, I honored the gentleman's agreement.
57:47
I swear to god, it Austin. I had two people last week, say that to me. So, anyway, that's our gentleman's agreement. So if you're listening if you've ever listened to more than one episode,
57:56
This is the gentleman's agreement. It's an honor system. You have to do it. And we can't check this on you, but please do it. Everyone's doing it, apparently, if we're growing almost a thousand a day. But Nick,
58:05
I appreciate you. You're,
58:08
you, what's the, what's the promote, it's, so support shepherds, the shepherd thing. Support Shepherd dot com. Swaddie startup dot com, full storage dot com support shepherd dot com, r e caustic dot com, tax credit hundred dot com. Webrun dot com, titanrisk dot com,
58:24
and sweaty start up on,
58:27
Twitter. Twitter.
58:28
No. I I mean, I really appreciate this. I mean, you bring me on here I hope your audience got something from this because the value that this will add to me is
58:36
is phenomenal, man. You've always been incredibly supportive. I remember I was trying to launch a little community around real estate, and you got on a call when you're busy as hell, and I wasn't that big of a deal. And you helped me set that whole thing up. I mean,
58:48
the generosity,
58:50
Sam is freaking awesome. Well, I appreciate that. And now,
58:53
maybe one day I'm gonna ask to be an affiliate of your affiliate. Or something like that. So Anything you need anything you need, man. Let me know.
59:01
Alright. I appreciate you. Thank you very much. That's the that's the pod.
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