Nick Huber
I don't think real estate is the best place for somebody to start. Even if you win the game and you get rich, it still will humble you.
June 17, 2025 · 1 hr
Nick Huber: Building a $100M Self-Storage Empire with Social Media
With Nick Huber — Entrepreneur & Self-Storage Investor
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Can you go from hauling student storage boxes to wiring $52 million in under a decade? In this episode of No Vacancy, Taylor Avakian sits down with entrepreneur and real estate operator Nick Huber…
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Episode show notes
Can you go from hauling student storage boxes to wiring $52 million in under a decade? In this episode of No Vacancy, Taylor Avakian sits down with entrepreneur and real estate operator Nick Huber to unpack the mindset and mechanics of his rise. From building self-storage facilities to launching 11 businesses, Nick shares how he leverages systems, social media, and international teams to grow fast — and stay lean. Learn how top operators are: - Using stress and momentum as compounding advantages - Building leverage to escape the “one decision ruins everything” trap - Spotting Alpha in crowded real estate niches - Scaling companies with global teams and refined tech stacks - Turning content into cash and followers into deals If you’re trying to scale without burning out — this episode is your blueprint. Subscribe and Stay Ahead! Stay informed and empowered in the multifamily real estate market. Subscribe to the channel for exclusive insights, rental updates, and expert analyses on the Los Angeles market. 🔔 Don’t miss out on the latest trends and tips to maximize your property's potential: https://www.youtube.com/c/TaylorAvakian Guest Companies: http://amprconsulting.com http://finchhammer.com http://kingsarch.com 📈 Connect with me: Website: https://www.thegroupcre.com/ Email: taylor@thegroupcre.com X: https://x.com/TAYVAY_ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tayloravakian/ #NoVacancyPodcast #NickHuber #RealEstatePodcast #Entrepreneurship #SelfStorage #SweatyStartup #BusinessLeverage #ScaleSmarter #BrokerLife #CostSeg #RemoteTeams #SalesMindset #TechInRealEstate
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Episode transcript
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0:00–10:00
Taylor Avakian
Social media, I think it's trust at a mass scale.
Nick Huber
Twitter is an amazing thing because people get to look into your mind. You're selling 24/7. Sales is hard.
Taylor Avakian
You get thick skin and you got to get through it.
Nick Huber
I'd have eight or 10 self- storage facilities and that's about it. But instead, I have 60 plus. I love real estate. It's in my blood. Real estate is the same thing as entrepreneurship. If you don't like sales, you need to go get a job right now because life is
Taylor Avakian
sales.
Nick Huber
Welcome to the show.
Taylor Avakian
My name is Taylor Avakian. Uh this is the No Vacancy Podcast, and I'm here with my esteemed guest, Nick Huber.
Nick Huber
Nick, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, man. I'm excited. I uh I talk a lot small business, but I I love I love real estate. It's in my blood.
Taylor Avakian
So, we're going to dig into it for sure. Um and speaking of of real estate, but more
Nick Huber
on the mindset stuff. So Nick, in 2013
Taylor Avakian
you were chock tagging storage, student storage at 6 am on with your holes, your jeans wearing out holes in your knees. Today you can wire $52 million in
Nick Huber
41 days, which is just crazy.
Taylor Avakian
What single mindset shift bridged those two worlds?
Nick Huber
It has been a heck of a journey. To to be clear for the folks listening, I I only wired 20 million and none of it was mine life. Uh, but I did I did Even more impressive.
Taylor Avakian
I mean, no.
Nick Huber
Yeah, it took 21 million of other people's money. Yeah, it was 20 million 20 million um to buy 58% of the business. Um, so yeah, man. It's it's a it's a wild ride. Um, I think life is directly your success in life is directly correlated to how much stress you can you can handle. And I'm building the muscle of handling stress. Um, you know, 15 years in in it, man. And and I think it's another thing is a testament to momentum like 10 years into my journey in 2020. You know, I was just getting started and just getting rolling and it's been exponential since then.
Taylor Avakian
So did you en envision the path the way that you've built a business through social media and stuff? Like was that something that you had premeditated?
Nick Huber
No. Um, and I think if you go about social media wanting that or trying to make that happen and trying to force it almost, it gets harder. I love writing. Um, I love teaching. I love sharing openly what I'm doing. And I also have an ego. So, I, you know, wanted the following and the likes and things like that. So, it's it was a perfect storm. But, yeah, it accelerated my career in a major way because without it, I'd have eight or 10 self- storage facilities and that's about it. But instead, I have 60 plus. We've raised almost 50 million bucks to buy storage. We have 2 million square feet and two other business two other businesses that I own already cost seg and uh somewhere.com are both growing very fast. So I just yeah I'm blessed man.
Taylor Avakian
That's I mean shoot man it is uh it's pretty crazy the power of of what attention in media and relationships because really I think what you know social media is going towards they're saying it's not social it's just like media now but I think it's trust at a m max scale it's building relationships and and everything we do is humanto human from the storage business which you know closing deals like you have to build rapport with those owners for them to select you and want to get a deal done. Um, so I think being able to be candid, which you clearly are are very good at, but you also, and we'll get into this later, is like the strategy behind it. I can tell you think very strategically about crafting narratives and messages. And that is a skill in itself because I struggle with that in terms of the
Taylor Avakian
way that I craft what I want people to see me as in terms of a broker, right? because there's there's the broker Taylor and there's Taylor outside of the office and they mesh very closely together because they spend so much time doing doing uh the business, but it's also okay, what is my goal here? How my goal is to get more sales and listings. So, what's the narrative that we're crafting behind that to actually make that achieve achievable? Um, can you paint the scene for me? That first storage development that you did, right? you had to convince the first investor to wire you the money. What did you say? Or more importantly, what did they need to hear?
Nick Huber
Oh man, you covered so much that there in the intro. I think first of all like Twitter is an amazing thing because people get to look into your mind at scale. Instead of talking to one person on the phone or or several people in a group chat or a room full of people, you get to talk to hundreds of thousands of people and they get to look into your mind. Um, so that's a blessing and a curse, but it it did allow me to build that trust. But the first deal, I didn't have any of that. Um, I didn't have a network. I didn't have any I I grew up a middle-ass family in a very rural area of southern Indiana. I did not grow up at a country club. I did not. And it turned out all these meetings that I was taking, which
Nick Huber
was basically all my college friends parents and my dad's friends, most of them didn't actually have money and I didn't know it. So I was going around trying to raise money from people who had no idea what real estate private equity was. And um so it took me a 100 plus meetings to raise money for that first deal. Um my dad put in 125 grand, got three of his buddies to do it. I got um a person, one of my friend friends parents to do it, and then the the broker who sold me the land to build the building on was the last the last check-in. So I was doing I was doing anything and everything I could to to fill that deal. Took 100 plus meetings. Um but yeah and uh a huge part of what I believe is that life is sales.
Nick Huber
And if you don't like sales, you need to go get a job. Whether it's whether you're interested in entrepreneurship or real estate, which real estate is the same thing as entrepreneurship. Um if you don't like sales, you need to go get a job because you're selling 24/7. You're selling your employees on trusting you. You're selling your investors on investing with you, bankers on lending to you, vendors on selling to you, customers on buying from you. So if you don't like sales, go get a job.
Taylor Avakian
Did you have the gift of gab or was it did you study sales? What h how did you improve those skills? Was it just repetitions and you iterated like cuz sales is [bleep] hard, man.
Nick Huber
Sales is hard.
Taylor Avakian
I've been doing this for eight years now and like there's still days where I get hung up on it and I'm like [bleep] that person so much.
Nick Huber
like I hate you. Uh but it's I mean you know you get thick skin and you got to get through it.
Taylor Avakian
So how did you how did you learn sales?
Nick Huber
Sales is just like hiring. It's just like delegation. It's just like decision- making and that nobody's born with it. Nobody's born with the ability to do it. The only way you do it is by practicing it and getting better at it. It's a muscle. If you're not willing to go to the go to the gym and lift the weights, you're not going to improve it. So, everybody wants to be Arnold Schwarzenegger and build muscle, but then they just eat protein, you know, make the workout plan, watch videos, study, learn, and really the only way to build muscle is go go to the gym. So, I'll put that out there for you. But I I had a had a meeting in Ithaca, New York with a mentor of mine, right, when I started my first company. I was an entrepreneur.
Nick Huber
Now, I'm going to go meet with this this guy named Dan Cohen. Had sold a foundation repair business, an original sweaty startup for almost 10 million bucks. and he was the um entrepreneur and residence at Cornell. So, lightning in a bottle is what I caught. And I and I got lunch with him. We sit down at lunch and the very first thing he says to me is he's like, "Nick, do you like sales?" And I knew what I needed to say because of the way he said it. Um he's like, "Sider yourself a good salesman." But I was honest and I said, "No, I'm, you know, I don't like sales. I'm more of the visionary. I'm the operator. I'm I'm the guy on the whiteboard. I'm the one making the decisions. I'm the leader. and he kind of rolled his eyes and he said, "Nick, if you don't like
Nick Huber
sales, you need to go get a job right now because life is sales." And he went on to tell me about all those things that, hey, look, when when you're in those early days, no employee is going to trust you with their career. Nobody's going to lease you that warehouse when you're 25 and you don't have any money. I was trying to lease 30,000 foot warehouses in Boston. So, she's like, "You better you better get good at sales or go get a job." But the good news is that you can get good at sales. And a huge part of a huge part of this book is about sales because I think it's the number one skill in life. I'm selling my 5-year-old on getting in the car. I'm selling my wife on staying with me every day. You know, it's like it's a
Nick Huber
nobody does anything they don't want to do. That's a that's an experienced weathered man.
Taylor Avakian
Um someone who's been in sales for that long. I mean, I can only imagine the stories and the negotiations, those those tables. That's I would love to be a fly in the wall on some of those like highle negotiations because it's just so fascinating to me and I know we're both history buffs. So it's like looking into the looking into a piece of time when it was so vital or a big decision was made is uh is kind of like something that gets me all warm and fuzzy when I
Nick Huber
think about it. Yeah. Um your views on
Taylor Avakian
real estate, right? Have have they changed in terms of primary wealth engine versus like a storage of value?
Nick Huber
Um I don't think real estate is the best place for somebody to start real estate GP like being a principal buying buying assets because it's the most capital intensive business in the world. Um and it's not the easiest fastest way to make money. Operating businesses are. So luckily I came from a business that was creating money and allowed me to put that money into my first deal. But that first deal is what generated 80% of my wealth. So, I'm speaking out of both sides of my mouth there. But I love I love the path of brokerage. I love
10:00–20:00
Nick Huber
the path of property management. I love the path of, you know, closing related services. I love everything around real estate and especially construction. I'm founding um actually I already founded a a construction services business. We're we're doing a multif family design build in LA actually. There we go. Um no [bleep] That's called It's called Bolt Builders and we have a team of architects and engineers in Colombia along with a United States-based architect to stamp plans. So, it's a it's a design build firm that is basically an architect without 100 plus grand a month to get to get permit permit drawings and wow and all that. So yeah, I love all those niche services that lend themselves later to owning assets because all those skills, whether it's development, brokerage, any of it, lends itself to spotting deals and spotting alpha and being able to get in the business of real estate.
Nick Huber
So but but is it the best primary wealth driver?
Taylor Avakian
Not in my opinion. So speaking of spotting alpha because that is I would say especially in real estate as an antiquated business. It's still such still so old old boy old money you know mostly old white dudes is the stereotype and it is it's a
Nick Huber
lot of old white dudes.
Taylor Avakian
Um how do you spot alpha?
Nick Huber
Like what do you what do you look for? Well, the the we can talk storage, but storage got really really hard because and why it got very very hard is because you can give me an address right now, Taylor, of a of a of a self-s storage facility. Only an address. And I can give you a ballpark number of what that propertyy's worth in about 40 seconds. Mhm. Anywhere in the world. Not in the world. In the USA, there's 50 to 60,000 self- storage facilities. you drop me a pen and let me look at it on Google Street View and let me look at it from above and measure some things and I can tell you about what it's worth with no other information. That makes our business very hard. That's why things like multif family, it matters what the inside of the building looks like in storage. It doesn't.
Nick Huber
Yeah. Um, you know, so so it makes it very hard when we are competing. We're competing with no geographical moat because there's a deal that's for sale. You have to either cold call them at the right time or have the right relationship with a broker or have the right relationship with an owner, but anybody in America could buy that deal because remote management now of self storage is is a big thing. So does that does that change your
Taylor Avakian
future outlook on what kind of assets you would want to invest in? Because there is that the alpha is harder to come by and multif family inherently has more moving parts with tenants but again there's the headache involved with it too.
Nick Huber
Love headache. I love the harder operationally it is to run a building on the better it is.
Taylor Avakian
Do you want to buy some rent controlled Los Angeles multif family properties cuz that is the biggest headache that I think anyone can deal with.
Nick Huber
Well, there's there's so much demand for that product and so much capital chasing it that I have no interest in playing those games. I'm not rich enough. But I love I don't know about that. Bought two industrial bought two industrial build. Well, there's people buying multif family in in LA that require zero return and I'm not that rich. I'll never be that rich. Yeah. Um, so I love I love industrial, but it's also very very very hard to underwrite outside of your core market. We So we bought two deals in Athens, Georgia, and that's it. Um, so so yeah, we'll we'll see. But no, I think the storage market's going to come back around. People are getting washed out. Like it's we still have a ton of moving parts. We have a lot of maintenance. We have a lot of tenants. Um, you got to be able to out operate.
Nick Huber
So, um I'm I'm bullish long term, but the last two years in this in real estate in general has been brutal.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah, for sure. Interest rates I mean it's I think it's going to be worse for longer to be completely honest with you. We have a lot of conversations with owners of okay, is there going to be that 2008 2009? I don't think so. Um I do think there's going to be pain for longer and I think you'll be able to pick up good deals, but it's going to come from
Nick Huber
the relationships.
Taylor Avakian
It's going to come from do you know the banks that are getting getting rid of these properties? Do you know the broker who is dealing directly with a probate sale? Do you know uh
Nick Huber
it's it's all relationship based. Um when
Taylor Avakian
did you realize that leverage not ideas was your ticket to freedom? Like and and what maybe specific memory anchors you to that belief?
Nick Huber
If there is a single human being that could make one decision and negatively impact your life, you don't have leverage. For 95% of people, that's a boss. And if the boss decides that you're not adding value to your the company anymore, then you are now unable to feed your family and pay your rent. So in entrepreneurship it could be a big customer, could be a business partner, could be an investor, could be other people that if they sh if they decide something different, your whole world is turned upside down. Leverage is about minimizing the power of those other people. So that eventually if you actually have ultimate leverage is that there's not a single one person. There's not a single one person in the world who can make a decision on a whim that that stops
Nick Huber
your ability to cover your bills, build wealth, and feed your family. That's what leverage is.
Taylor Avakian
M and and it sounds like for you, you're constantly looking for ways to position yourself to have the most leverage possible to make that a reality in all your businesses cuz and I'm actually curious to know the
Nick Huber
structure.
Taylor Avakian
How do you structure your business opportunities because you have dozens of companies that you're a part of? Like how what does that structure look like so that you're in a good leveraged position?
Nick Huber
Well, I'm in a in any any one business, of course, I have partners that could have a negative impact on that business, of course. Um, but I have enough sources of income. I have enough businesses where um it wouldn't stop my ability to feed my family and pay and pay my bills as well.
Taylor Avakian
So, again, history buff here. Um, I'm a big fan of this podcast called Founders. And one of the overarching themes of David's podcast is that focus is like they the best entrepreneurs of history did one thing and they did
Nick Huber
it for a very long time.
Taylor Avakian
You have seemed to take a contrarian view on that.
Nick Huber
You're doing a lot of things. Um you know all at once.
Taylor Avakian
Do you agree with that? Do you disagree? Or do you feel like there's some truth to that? What what is your thought on focus?
Nick Huber
The beautiful thing about business and the hard part about writing my book was that there's five ways to win or 10 ways to win or a thousand ways to win. And there's an incredible amount of nuance to every single part of business. Not just how many businesses to start, but how to hire, how to manage, how to delegate, how to sell, how to make decisions. All this stuff is incredibly nuanced and incredibly difficult. Yeah. Nine out of 10 wealthy people that I know have one business. So, I'm I'm a I'm a I'm I'm an odds player, man. I'm an odds player. So, I love those odds. And I I would honestly I would probably recommend that folks start one business, but I found myself in a situation in 2015 where we realized that, hey, this market's only so big.
Nick Huber
I was moving college kids boxes at a company called Storage Squad. Our market was only so big. It was never going to be a $10 million revenue business, and it was always going to be high risk. it was always going to be very stressful during the busy seasons and it could not take us to where we wanted to go. So that's when we took the opportunity to build a self-s storage facility. I'm very very thankful that I got distracted and built that self- storage facility because again a couple years later it was 80% of my wealth and 20% of my headache and now it's my main business. Also very thankful I got involved in re costs back in 2022. very thankful I got involved in somewhere.com in 2021. So, and and there's a power law. I have 11 companies. We've shut three of them down already.
Nick Huber
Six of them have a lot of potential and three of them are going to be very big. So, Mhm.
Taylor Avakian
How do you know what's opportunity is going to be the one to go after?
Nick Huber
some I'm speaking out of both sides of my mouth. But I'll also go back and say that running a holding company is the sexy thing and it's the end thing right now online and everybody wants to be a holding company owner, aing holding company operator. I have a lot of entrepreneurs reach out to me and their business has never had $100,000 month of revenue and they're already talking about holding companies and doing something else and uh my advice to them, as you could guess, is pretty clear that you have no business doing that [bleep] Um, b business is business is really freaking hard as we as you and I both know. Yeah. Even if you win even if you win the game and you get rich doing business, it still will humble you. So, and I and I this is a
Nick Huber
controversial thing to say, but 90 70% of people in in the world are totally incompetent. They can't make decisions in their own life to stay fit, to stay in good relationships, to have mental health. Um, so just the fact that 70% of people are totally incompetent makes them disqualified to run a business. But then the rest, Mhm. you know, your ability to run multiple companies before you've been forged as an operator and you have the capital, you have the network, you have the ability is uh pretty foolish in my opinion.
Taylor Avakian
Uh, what business makes the most money that you have?
Nick Huber
Uh, my net worth, highest net worth is probably Bolt Storage. Um, okay. And then somewhere.com is growing really fast and re costg I think has a ton of potential to get really really big and also fault builders I'm pretty excited about because because that's just such a huge pain point for developers and real estate people.
20:00–30:00
Nick Huber
Yeah, I mean um we we'll have to talk about that after the pod because uh I might have some clientele for you. Um if you had to pick one business like they're like hey Nick sorry dude all these other
Taylor Avakian
businesses have to go. you only have one business that you have to focus on and spend
Nick Huber
all your time doing.
Taylor Avakian
What would which one would it be or what business would you want to go into?
Nick Huber
Oh man, we are doing exciting [bleep] at at re cost or I mean at Bolt Storage. So I I'm like when you increase revenue 15% year-over-year on a portfolio, that's $100 million and your NOI goes up like 23%. So sweet, huh? that that added more money in one year to my net worth than I could ever dream about making in cash. So, it would be really hard for me not to say like I'm in the weeds with my team at Bolt Storage rebuilding our sales team in from the Philippines in South Africa. When we did that, our close rate, the phone rings, our close rate went from 28% to 41%. When we rebuilt, when we also hired a head of sales in South Africa to help us with promos and train these people. So, a lot of things happened at once, but Mhm.
Nick Huber
we're paying 150 bucks for the phone to rent. And when you can go from closing 28% to closing 31% of new phone calls, that adds massive, massive value to us and our investors. Massive. Without somewhere.com, recruiting those South As salespeople. And then I have the tax advantages of all this. And I I mean I stroked a 900k check to Uncle Sam in in April, but that would have been 1.5 million without re cost. So it's it's I'm learning things at somewhere and applying them to bolt storage and applying them to re costg and vice versa. So those three businesses like the operators inside these companies know each other. They are in slack groups together. They're talking about best practices. my revenue ops guy at somewhere is helping us rebuild our our workflows at RA cost seg.
Nick Huber
So it's it's impossible now for me to say that these aren't almost all the
Taylor Avakian
same company. What um do you know what was implemented to increase that conversion percentage?
Nick Huber
Yeah. So when when a client in the United States hears a Filipino accent, they immediately know they're talking to somebody on the other side of the world. Mhm. And the tone changes. We still have a lot of Filipinos across our portfolio. I will always hire these folks. Unbelievable people. I have some on my team. They're amazing. Yeah. But the tone of the conversation changed with my rural America clientele when they're talking to somebody in the Philippines. More disrespect, less patience. And when they get on the phone with somebody in South Africa who has a British accent or an African accent, which is Eastern Europe, um they are asking them if they live in Australia, for example. It's totally different. They're like, "Oh, do you live in the States and you just happen to be a Brit? Like, tell me about you." And my folks can relate.
Nick Huber
And also, there's just a massive sales culture of not just taking orders and doing what you're told, but you know, um pushing pushing the conversation forward and doing what you need to do from a sales perspective. So we've rebuilt our sales team at somewhere.com in South Africa. We've rebuilt we've rebuilt our sales team at bolt storage and at re cost all in South Africa and it's that's the biggest that's the most important decision I've made as a leader of these companies over the past year.
Taylor Avakian
How do you know what because typically so I'm a big Warren Buffet guy and um he makes like one good decision a year right and it adds a significant amount of value to his net worth. Maybe a few good decisions, but it's not very many. How do you know what one decision or do you know what one decision is gonna turn 20% to 40%. Or really shift the business in the right direction? Like do you do you think about this? Do you go and on a walk? How do you determine what the best business move is to make? Because there's so many moving parts.
Nick Huber
There's so many open loops.
Taylor Avakian
Like how do you think about that decision-making process?
Nick Huber
I've gotten better as an operator of companies looking at my business unemotionally and thinking about the funnel from search engine optimization to paid marketing to organic traffic to referrals to how people find out about my companies and how to maximize the chances that they become my customer. I've gotten super super in the weeds about what revenue operations is, what follow-up sequences are, what tools you can use to automatically text and leave voicemails and send emails to all of your potential leads to increase those funnels. Um, but I look at every branch of my business that way. At somewhere.com, we get 30,000 applicants a month from all over the world of people who want to work with somewhere. So I had the decision as you know the one of the folks who control that business.
Taylor Avakian
How do how do we make sense of this? How do we figure out who's the best?
Nick Huber
Well, let's implement a typing test. And if we give everybody a typing test, it's not only directly correlated with their competence working remotely, but it'll weed out 90% of the people that apply. So it made things open up and it made our pipeline get way better and it made somewhere service as a to our clients get way way better. So, it's just little things like that that I can look at each branch of the business and figure out, hey, what's the lowest hanging fruit here? Of course, we have a ton of work to do. I look at any of my businesses and I'm like, [bleep] this is a mess. We got a ton of work to do, but how can I how can I look at each branch of the business and figure out where the lowest hanging fruit is and then
Nick Huber
the whole team sprints to improve that until it's no longer the lowest hanging piece of fruit.
Taylor Avakian
What does your tech stack currently look like?
Nick Huber
Yeah, if you can. Um, we we are hiring through somewhere massively at all my companies. That's the main competitive advantage that my companies have is that I can run a real estate private equity firm with cold outreach, with HubSpot, with Zoom Info, with Co-Star data, with all the things I need, but I have 1.3 million a year of overhead on people with almost 60 employees. Whereas my competitors who are running a similar size PE shop or bro, you translate this to brokerage, whatever, they're spending five, six million dollars on people alone a year. So I can grow faster, I can hire faster, I can take chances, I can experiment with things all because I can hire internationally. And it's just like they're working right next to me because of the technology, which is Slack. We use Slack all the freaking time. We use Fathom to record all of our meetings.
Nick Huber
Um we use open phone and ring over for phones. We use HubSpot. Um yeah, Zoom info for data.
Taylor Avakian
Is there any So uh this leads into my next hypothetical question which selfishly I'm going to ask you this because I'm going to use this as a consulting uh period for for myself. So, if you woke up tomorrow, all right, and you're an apartment broker in Los Angeles, how would you become the number one name in town and have the most market share for apartment sales across the city?
Nick Huber
Do your do your brokers have a cold caller that works right-handed with them in South Africa for $1,600 a month? Are you asking me or is that that seems like a way to double the productivity while the same person who they're setting appointments for still gets to manage those relationships because you can't get away from the relationship. You can't outsource your business. You need 20 Americans on your team if you're going to grow at scale. But but my thought as a business owner is how can I how can I increase the impact of these brokers so that they can do more? And I would think a a high ticket salesperson in South Africa with perfect English um working side by side each of them as kind of like their their virtual partner um would would potentially do that.
Taylor Avakian
So what you do so let me see if I understand. So what you would do is you would have an outbound sales team in South Africa who is basically generating the leads to then funnel to the brokers to then close the deals.
Nick Huber
Yeah. And I'd have my design I'd have a very good design shop doing the OM. the the property offering memorandums um in Latin America. So, I'd probably go to Brazil for my design. I would go to South Africa for a head of finance and operations to help with the underwriting because it's a finance hub as well. I would hire probably an analyst in Cairo to help me with all the numbers because it's $700 a month for somebody who can work magic and Excel. There's no reason to hire an American analyst anymore. Um then I would hire a head of finance kind of a somebody who can write really good English. It's kind of like the equivalent of investor relations for me, but it's broker. It's it's, you know, client relations to write the memos in South Africa. Again, maybe three grand a month for that person.
Nick Huber
Um, two or three designers in Brazil for $1,200 a month. And then I would pair all my brokers with an outbound sales team that's setting appointments. And as soon as they get a hot lead, it gets assigned it gets assigned to one of your producers. And then I hire a head of sales to manage them and coach them and performance manage them because as you know like without revenue op and then you have revenue operations where you really need somebody in the background working logistics so that these people can call all day and not have to sort through leads because your best callers you want them on the phone. So the revenue operations side of thing is ma side of things is massive. But that's how I would structure my my company.
Taylor Avakian
Do you think the broker's business model is a good business model?
Nick Huber
Yeah, I love it. Mhm. Yeah. that you don't pay really pay people unless they produce. It's one of the few business It's one of the few businesses where if your entire workforce stops producing, you don't have to keep paying them as the owner. Correct. As the broker, it's a very interesting because I think about that
Taylor Avakian
a lot because I think about leverage and one of the things I look up to is people who create systems and and businesses that don't require time for money because really brokerage as a broker is
30:00–40:00
Nick Huber
time for money.
Taylor Avakian
If you're not communicating with people, right, you're not making money unless you have people who are working underneath you and you basically become the broker owner at that point.
Nick Huber
And so what you're saying is brokerage is a good business model. If you become a broker owner, but as a single broker, maybe not the highest leverage. Still a great business model. It's an entrepreneurial it's it's an entrepreneur. If you're a great salesperson and you're going to outwork everybody, you're going to earn you're going to earn a massive amount of money. So I love those businesses.
Taylor Avakian
Are you kidding me?
Nick Huber
That's it's a high lever career. It's a high leverage career and you can also build a team and build relationships so that you get paid more with less work over time as a good broker. So, if I were if I were the owner of the firm and think about scaling my business, I would find the best brokers with the best relationships in LA and I would go out and try to sell them and try to build a system that was going to be better than the shop they're working for currently. And if I can say, "Hey, you're going to come to me. Not only are we the most tech-savvy business in LA, but we have this lead generation model on the back end that you kind of adopt and I can find a way to make the economics work a little bit better for you so
Nick Huber
that you you can work you can make more money working for me and then as the owner I would just spend almost all my time tracking down these high producers and trying to sell them on my vision in my
Taylor Avakian
company.
Nick Huber
Very interesting.
Taylor Avakian
How um how are you thinking about AI?
Nick Huber
Um, I think it's an amazing tool like content creation, um, SEO, it's it's it's going to change a lot of things. Also, producing OM, um, you know, anything text related, I think it's amazing. Performance management, I think, is really good. You can have an AI bot in the email inbox of every single one of your people. You can measure response times. You can see when customers are unhappy. You can parachute in and save deals. We're using that across a lot of our companies. But the AI agents, spoken AI agents, I think are a total absolute joke. It's laughable. And the people trying to sell it and talk about it are are losing all of my all of my
Taylor Avakian
respect. What uh it it I think I agree with you.
Nick Huber
I agree with you.
Taylor Avakian
I think it aentic AI is going to be the future. It's it's something that I think about just because of the the business that I'm in in terms of I'm a conduit, right? I'm the I'm the middle person between a deal getting done. Like if if I was a storage broker and I was able to find a deal, I have to then communicate that deal
Nick Huber
to you for for both to buy.
Taylor Avakian
And so if you can do that at scale or prospect at scale or build relationships at scale and trust at scale, which is again the ultimate goal of a broker is to to
Nick Huber
build relationships. There's AI implementation of that I think turns a single broker into 10 brokers or 100 brokers, which
Taylor Avakian
is super interesting to me. um especially from somewhere perspective because
Nick Huber
then one of the most fascinating things that I didn't see happening at somewhere is that we we have an a kind of a AI training module where if if you just hire somebody if you hire an executive assistant a salesperson whatever you have the option to put them through a 10-day training and a lot of that's AI how to use the right AI tools how to get the tech stack ready and the demand for that after hire has skyrocketed so yeah is AI going to replace a bunch of employees I mean, maybe you tell me. I'm following very closely. But I think before that, it'll make employees more efficient. And yeah, it's the lawn. It's the lawn mower. When the lawn mower came around, they said lawn care companies were going to go out of business. It's not true.
Nick Huber
More more and more people are paying more people are paying for their lawn to get cut than ever. And the lawn mowing companies are using the
Taylor Avakian
lawnmowers. I love like roofing companies, plumbing companies. I think those service based businesses, they're they're run by fantastic people, but fantastic people who've built the business 40 years ago and uh and they're they're maybe not open or thinking about what using some of these tools can do from an efficiency and actual growth perspective. So, the person who can crack the service-based businesses where an AI can't fix your, you know, pipes and your plumbing, right? Um, I think that's going to be like an incredible business if you
Nick Huber
can figure whoever figures that out. Yeah, I the most visited page on my website at sweaty startup is a is a is a list of 200 plus business ideas just like this like plumbing, you know, pick move something, clean something, repair something, build something is basically what this list is. It's at swaystartup.com if people want to look at it while we're talking. Yeah. But the the interesting thing about this stuff is that people under people think like they have this plan of just hey I'm gonna buy a business a sweaty startup. I'm going to buy a business or I'm going to start a business and I'm just going to use digital marketing and I'm going to use AI tools and I'm going to use all the things that the old operator doesn't use. And let me just warn folks that these old boomers know how to
Nick Huber
run businesses a little better than you think.
Taylor Avakian
They are savages, man. They are savages.
Nick Huber
is they grew up in a different era and they will they will take your lunch money. Man, it is uh it's very hard to beat someone who's done something for a very long time.
Taylor Avakian
If you expect yourself to come in and and beat someone who has spent their life trying to be
Nick Huber
really good at something like business with a fax machine, imagine how good at sales, relationship management, leadership, communication. Imagine how good they are as an operator in other areas.
Taylor Avakian
100%.
Nick Huber
100%.
Taylor Avakian
Um, okay. Let's get into social media a little bit because that's something that I've dabbled in and it's been fantastic in terms of opportunities, but also it's
Nick Huber
[bleep] hard, man.
Taylor Avakian
So, can you walk me through like your social media machine from ideiation to the writing schedule to the platforms? Like, what's the workflow look like for you?
Nick Huber
So, I I make pretty significant investments of about 300 grand a year in my team. I have a head of content. I have two audio video editors. I have and then two executive assistants. So my team is six people. Um the and also social media doesn't work like it worked three years ago. In 2021 2022 I could make a tweet and it would get hundreds of thousands of impressions and I would get 3 to 4,000 new followers. I haven't added 3,000 followers in a month in over a year. And I'm making better content than ever and trying harder on it than I ever have. It's harder to sell something. It's harder to promote yourself. It's harder to get people to sign up for your email newsletters. So, yeah, that's maybe not what folks want to hear listening to this, but social media, especially X, is not the same
Nick Huber
as it was in 2021.
Taylor Avakian
What does the current workflow look like for you now?
Nick Huber
Um, I have a bank of 10,000 tweets and my team has them sorted by likes and impressions. So we have the last 5 years worth of data and what struck a chord with people sorted in order of popularity and we recycle because Twitter's moving like it's a new crowd gets on Twitter and gets into Nick Huber every couple months. So I'm not, you know, a billboard. It's a parade, right? I have to I have to keep repeating myself and my message and who I am and what I do. So that's what me and my team do. We recycle a lot of the content that is core to my message. And I also write new stuff and tweet when I when I can and when I want to, but for the most part, if I passed away today or tomorrow, my Twitter would never stop.
Taylor Avakian
Wow, that's [bleep] sick. Um, what uh if you had to start from zero today, right, what do you think you would do to grow a social following?
Nick Huber
Uh, I would follow what Chris Corner is doing and uh, Hermoszi and Cody and I would make short short form video. It's the only way to grow, but I don't like it and I'm not good at it, so it's not a game I'm going to play.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah, I think I think that's very insightful. Um, you seem to have a lot of self-awareness, which is something that I think people should get better at and and get get better at understanding themselves because if you don't like something, if you're not good at it, like what the [bleep] Don't don't try to be someone you're not, which you talk a lot about um weaknesses versus strengths and lean into that. So, how do you think about strengths versus weaknesses?
Nick Huber
I think I'll speak out of both sides of my mouth again and I'll give conflicting information. What you just said is true. If you're not good at something and it sucks for you, don't do it. But at the other on the other side of it, like you need to be totally unemotional about what you're doing and you're following the path of least resistance and trying to accomplish what you want to accomplish regardless of what is what it is you're actually doing. Taylor, I bet you were not like designing your dream life and it's like, oh, I'm going to start by cold calling for five years of my life. No, that's hell, right? But you did it because to accomplish goals that you had personally. So yeah, I think you forget about what you want to be doing and what you're good
Nick Huber
at and you go do what go play where the opportunity is. So luckily I already have my following. I have my book now out. I have these these things that are happening. I love media. I love teaching, but I just I'm running too many companies to have a video crew follow me around and and make and edit uh you know
Taylor Avakian
reels.
Nick Huber
Yeah.
Taylor Avakian
What um what's one management move that basically tells you if something's going to sink or scale?
Nick Huber
I think when when somebody makes a very critical decision at your company without you. The first deal the first deal I'm sure you remember your first deal at your brokerage that closed without you talking to either party. You didn't talk to the buyer or the seller. I'm sure you remember that. And that's when you're like, "Holy cow, I just made five grand, 10 grand, 20 grand, 100 grand, half million bucks." And I didn't do anything. I had that similar experience in, you know, 2021 with in the real estate business where I didn't find the deal. I didn't talk to the seller. I didn't make
40:00–50:00
Nick Huber
the OM. I didn't raise the money. All I did was look at the spreadsheet and give the thumbs up on whether or not we should buy it. And then my team did everything else. And that felt good.
Taylor Avakian
It does feel pretty good, right? You're like, that's the business I want to be in.
Nick Huber
It's really, it is [bleep] hard. You delegate writing an OM. You delegate talking to your most high value investors. You delegate talking to key bank, your number one lender. Like, you're not going to do any of that stuff. You know, there's balance here. You should definitely hold some of the most important tasks close. But if you have people who are amazing, which I am lucky to have a couple people who are unbelievable in my real estate team, you just keep giving them more and more until, you know, till they prove they can't do it.
Taylor Avakian
How do you hire A players? How do you find and hire A players?
Nick Huber
When you figure that out, let me know. Um, there's also a huge part of the sweaty startup book that's dedicated on hiring and management. And there are ways absolutely to go hunt for talent. The best way to go find is to go find people who are doing their job at a very high level. Now, if I were in your shoes, I would be chasing the highest producing brokers because literally there's a scoreboard and it's how much revenue they've generated and it's very clear in your business who's in the A player and who's not. Um, in many other positions, it's not as simple to figure out who the A players are, but I do have a pretty important piece of advice and that is to around keeping A players. Um, there's two things that a players absolutely hate. And that's a boss or an owner of a company that makes
Nick Huber
slow decisions and doesn't make anything happen. Meaning, they bring problems to the boss and say, "Hey, here's my problem. Here's how I want to solve it. These are the things I want to do." And the manager or the owner talks a big game. Hey, okay, this is amazing. We're going to do all this stuff. And then nothing, absolutely nothing happens. That is hell for a high performer. And the second thing is being surrounded by low performers. If you do not fire your poor performers, which is hard, by the way. I had to get on a call this morning and let somebody go. Very, very, very difficult. I I never It never is not difficult. I've done it hundreds of times. If you refuse to do it for the best for the betterment of the company and you surround your
Nick Huber
A players with C players, you're going to watch your A players walk away. So, you have two choices. You can fire your C players or you can watch your A players walk away. Which one do you want to do? But if you but the competence of your organization falls or rises to the level that you tolerate. So if you tolerate C players and you let people hide who are low performers and you let people make the same mistakes over and over again and you let people be lazy and you let all of it slide, the culture of your entire company will fall to that. Period. There's no way around it. If you tolerate it, your entire company will become it because your A players are going to be gone and you're going to foster an environment where low performers can hide.
Nick Huber
So, if you do not let your low your low performers go, you're going to watch your A players walk away and your entire organization is going to become a C-level organization.
Taylor Avakian
I think we got a clip for your your team. I think that was that was pretty that was pretty damn good, man. [bleep] speak the truth. That is um it's very important.
Nick Huber
So, I say I would say my piece of advice for anyone listening is if you're a business owner and you have an employee who just can't seem to get it and you always have, you know, every time they make a mistake, you're like, damn, maybe with a little bit more training, they they would do better. Maybe this is on me. Maybe I'm not setting them up for success, but then they make another mistake. Then something else happens. Fire that person now. Get off of this podcast. Shut shut your phone and set up the termination of this person right away, as soon as possible. Because two or three days later, you're going to wish you had done it six months ago. Yeah. Offer them a great severance. Help them in the next phase of life. I'm not telling you to be heartless. But if you put up with
Nick Huber
incompetence, people don't change, man. Like they do. They very very rarely do. One in seven or eight employees with the right training, the right coaching, the right performance improvement plan will turn from a B player to an A player or C player to a B player, but the other seven out of eight times they're not going to. So me as a business owner, how can I afford to take those odds when on average people do not change? So for me as a business owner, people are going to show me who they are. My job is to believe them, not to change them. And as a business owner and as an entrepreneur who has confidence, who has um optimism, we always think we can change people. Dave Ramsey has this great quote where he's talking to somebody on the phone and she's like, "Dave, I'm just having problems with my husband.
Nick Huber
He spends all of our money. He sits on the couch drinking beer every Sunday, all Sunday. Um, he's got terrible spending habits. We can't build wealth. He doesn't work hard. He has no side hustles. He has no ambition. And Dave says, "Was he like that before he got married?" Well, yeah.
Taylor Avakian
Did Did he watch football before he got married?
Nick Huber
Yeah.
Taylor Avakian
Did he drink beer before he got married?
Nick Huber
Yeah.
Taylor Avakian
Did he spend on stupid things before he got married?
Nick Huber
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you married a pitbull and you want a golden doodle. People don't change. People don't change. Yeah. The same exact thing applies to employees. If you try to change them, you will end up frustrated. stressed and broke. It is the unfortunate
Taylor Avakian
truths. So then what's the KPI that keeps you up at night the most?
Nick Huber
Oh, I mean [bleep] there's always stress. There's always people problems. Um that's why they pay That's why they pay us the big bucks, right? Is that when the phone rings, when my phone rings, it's very rarely good news. A customer saying, "Oh, Nick, it's just amazing." Or an employee saying, "You know what, Nick, I just want to thank you for being my boss. I'm so happy with everything." That doesn't happen. they want more money, they have a problem, they want a refund. So, um, there's constant stress in business. I can't really point to one thing, but I think just generally right now, I'm pretty bearish on the economy for the first time in a while. I've been pretty optimistic that it's going to turn around and uh the tariffs and things like that have me have me a little bit spooked. Yeah, for sure.
Taylor Avakian
I mean, has that been has that directly affected the way that you guys approach the business?
Nick Huber
not bolt storage. Um, but somewhere like we had a bunch of clients cancel at the finish line over the last three months or three weeks since the since you know all the all the tariffs were announced. So yeah, it's definitely just a weird feeling of uncertainty and uncertainty never helps real estate. It never helps hiring. It never helps some of these decisions around business planning because people wait for certainty to do things like that.
Taylor Avakian
What's the um what's the biggest skill that you're trying to improve right now or what's what's one thing that you're constantly because you seem like someone who is constantly learning is trying to improve themselves like what's that next skill that you want to get better at?
Nick Huber
Yeah, building building management teams is really really hard. Bu a company that can do you know two or three hundred grand a month of revenue. You can have a lot broken in a business and still do that. Hell even a million a month of revenue. You can have bad processes. you can have problems. But taking a company from a couple hundred grand a month to a million a month of revenue and trying to go to two and three million a month of revenue requires totally new structures and how businesses are set up to get there without everything breaking. So I bought somewhere.com when it was at a million dollars a month of revenue and setting that business up to go to two, three, four million a month of revenue required a lot of new skills of me that I've been having a blast doing.
Nick Huber
But it's uh it's something I need to improve. Do you think people should understand and set up the foundation for a good business before going and just breaking [bleep] and figuring out what works or like what is the foundational? It's very expensive to build a business for to scale, hiring a head of revops, hiring, you know, not only a head of sales but couple sales managers under them. um you're looking at um you know a lot of different tools and automations that need to be built to grow a company. How things are structured. So I'm my my I love building things that need to be rebuilt a year later. I think it's it's part of business and it's it's part of why things are fun. It's the alpha, right? So I I full speed ahead. Drive as much revenue as you possibly can and build your business based around
Nick Huber
that revenue is always my goal.
Taylor Avakian
What do you think are the fundamentals that when someone should be building a business? Like what are the the the foundation? What's the cornerstone they should have in place?
Nick Huber
Yeah. First thing you need to do before you make any management hires is you need to be making at least 20 grand a month of profit to you and then you can start to build a management team. And then when you're at 50 grand a month of profit, you can layer in more management and you know, different types of marketing. And then it's just way easier to build a business that scales when you have cash coming in the door. Nobody talk nobody talks about how hard it is to build a business when you're broke. Um, so get the damn cash coming in the door. Step one. Step one. That's That's exhibit A.
Taylor Avakian
How would you go from zero to 20K?
Nick Huber
Oh, I do a lot of work myself. I trade time for money. That's what you did to build your business. Sales. Yeah.
Taylor Avakian
I mean, phone calls, right?
Nick Huber
I I leased I leased storage units. I moved boxes. So, yeah, man. Like, do the work.
Taylor Avakian
Get ready.
Nick Huber
Get [bleep] dirty.
Taylor Avakian
I love that [bleep] Um, I want to talk about some of these tweets and just before we wrap up because I know we're we're coming up on it.
Nick Huber
Your most I think one of the most popular tweets was, uh, this kid saved up all week for an ice cream. Spent five bucks.
Taylor Avakian
He dropped it off after the fifth lick and I didn't buy him another one.
Nick Huber
Life is hard.
50:00–1:00:00
Nick Huber
He took it.
Taylor Avakian
Well, that was the funniest [bleep] tweet. The reactions on that are like I'm just comical.
Nick Huber
like give me the backstory on that and tell me what what ended up happening the story behind it. Yeah. So, to put in perspective, that tweet probably got 500 million impressions. Oh my god. It got 20 million impressions on Twitter. It got 240 million impressions on on an Instagram meme account. It got um a ton on Reddit. Um it was all over the place. Um, I got 150 death threats. Um, my wife's my wife's friends were asking her if I was crazy, if I was cruel. Um, my parents' friends were reaching out to my parents. Um, because everybody saw it. And it took a certain level of IQ to realize that it wasn't true, I guess. And a lot of people are below that threshold of IQ. Um, but no, it didn't. It didn't happen.
Nick Huber
Of course, I would have gotten my kid a new ice cream cone if he dropped it.
Taylor Avakian
So is is is part of your like that clearly you had a strategy behind that, right? You do I mean okay maybe you didn't have a strategy but you seem to me as you kind of like playing the heel a
Nick Huber
little bit. No I I have a weird sense of humor is is the only way to explain that. That does not advance my brand. It does not make my life better. I think it's freaking hilarious that people can be doing whatever they want to do and a guy sitting on a toilet writing 240 characters can make them visibly and physically upset. I think that's hilarious. Maybe I'm crazy, maybe I'm just a pick, but I think it's freaking hilarious that people cannot handle these joke tweets on the internet. So, but I think it's freaking funny, man. And that's who I am. I have a weird sense of humor. I love goofing off. Um, so yeah, it's it's uh but no, that was not a positive experience when it went totally viral. I can only imagine. I mean, do you do you do you think about um how to
Nick Huber
grow your social to grow the
Taylor Avakian
businesses versus just growing the followers or are they one and the same?
Nick Huber
Um, again, it's just so hard to get followers. I don't know how to do it now. Um, seriously, like I'm gonna I'll pull up my social blade here just to tell you how many followers I've gained. Um,
Nick Huber
but it's been not I mean, me growing the podcast growing a podcast, which I know you've been doing for a long time, is [bleep] hard. Yeah, it's it's even harder. It's even harder. Yeah. Let's see. So, I my YouTube is 150 in the last 30 days. That's crazy. Let me see. Yeah, I can't figure it out because they just changed the handle from X to or from Twitter to X. So, I can't locate I haven't looked at a long time, but let's say I've added Okay, I've added maybe 2,000 followers in the last month. I used to add that in I used to add that in a day. So, and and back to when I said I got 150 death threats, it was literally just stupid DMs saying you you're a terrible person, you should die. So, I guess that, you know, a technical death threat.
Nick Huber
It wasn't like people were coming to my house, but um it very it very much upset
Taylor Avakian
everybody. Let me ask you too, because this is something that I struggle with, which you seem to have figured out. Um, how do you balance work and family? Because for me, I don't have a family yet.
Nick Huber
I'm single.
Taylor Avakian
Uh, work is my life at this point. 28 years old, so I got some time. I know you say get married early and and do that whole thing, it made you
Nick Huber
better in business, but how how I had my first kid when I was 27 and I still feel like I'm a little bit behind the eightball. So, you need to if I could spend some time trying to convince you to hustle up and change the mindset. And it's not about, oh, I just haven't met the right person. It's literally going into your day with a mindset of, hey, I'm I'm going to do the things required to like make this next step as a human. But because it takes [bleep] moves slow, man. You got to get to know somebody. You got to see how they react under pressure. You got to see if their morals are on your side. You got to get to know their family and what they're doing. Then you got to get married.
Nick Huber
Then you got to try for a baby, which they make you think in junior high it's going to, you know, you get pregnant if you look at a girl the wrong way. And that's not the case at all. So yeah, like if you move full speed ahead, you're going to have your first your first kid's going to be born when you're 32. Geez. Yeah, that's pretty crazy to think about. I mean, how how do you how do you balance growing a business and your family?
Taylor Avakian
Is there an order of family first, business?
Nick Huber
I started working on the important [bleep] and I got 10 times more effective as an operator and a business person when I had kids. I got more motivated and more ambitious than ever. I got better at time management. I got more disciplined. Um, I don't know anything about your life and your discipline in other areas. It seems like you have that dialed, but it was just it was kind of working on the right things for me. um the very high lever things. And it's amazing when you pull yourself out of the weeds of a business and you look at things a different way, you can actually be more impactful if you don't use it's like Parkets's law if you don't use that because it it was a crutch like how how to best explain the storage squad. We had 25 locations. Actually 14 locations, 25 major colleges.
Nick Huber
I could not be in every one at one time. I physically couldn't because it was all during finals week. There was no way I could be in p in State College, Pennsylvania and Champagne, Illinois on the same day. So, I had no choice but to sit on my computer and delegate everything. A lot of business owners will get in the weeds working deals, doing all these things that yes, it makes them more money, but it does not build their business in the long term the right way. So there's a part of this book, it's in like the third part three of like spending time on the important but not urgent things. The urgent [bleep] is like doing another deal and make another 100 grand. The important things are like going to find a broker who's going to do, you know, 60 70 million a year of transaction volume.
Nick Huber
Um, and when I had my first kid and now that I have a family, I'm not going to miss the soccer game. I'm not going to miss, you know, being with being really close to my wife for four weeks after she has a baby. I'm not going to miss um doing the things that are important. So therefore, I have to just very very very wisely prioritize what I do spend my time on. And it's made me a lot better at it.
Taylor Avakian
So you fast forward 30 years, Nick. Your kids are asked, "What did your dad actually do?" What would you love them to answer?
Nick Huber
It's hilarious because my seven-year-old is getting really smart and I'm talking to him all the time and I was like, I'm starting to teach him about money and I said, 'What does your dad do for money?
Taylor Avakian
What do I do for money?
Nick Huber
He goes, or I said, where does money come from first? He goes, your wallet. And I was like, okay, but what does dad do to put money in his wallet? It's like, well, you work on your computer. Okay, but what am I doing? And he he had absolutely no idea what I do. And I realized that explaining what I do is actually really, really hard to a seven-year-old. Well, there's these things called businesses, and there's people that work for them, and they do things for people, and they get paid, but at the end of the day, there's a little bit left over for the person who owns the business. It's very hard to explain. Um, so I just told him instead that I'm that I own storage units, and they're like little garage doors that people put their stuff in.
Taylor Avakian
Hopefully, he's thankful for that. you know, when he can grow, he'll be like um, you know, the uh the Rockefeller where he takes, you know, your your storage business and become, if he
Nick Huber
wants to, obviously, and builds it into the incredible I would love number one storage. I would love for my operator. I would love for my sons and daughters to get involved in my business. I'm not going to force them to, but I think I want them to remember me as somebody who built them up and made them confident instead of drugged them down. I had a lot of friends with a lot of potential in high school and college whose parents would get in the car after a basketball game and talk about how they didn't hustle for that ball and how they were lazy over here and I can't believe you missed that layup and you suck at this and just tear them down. My dad never did that. Built me up. I'm going to build them up. I'm going to make them think that they can do anything.
Nick Huber
I'm going to teach them how to struggle with grace so that they can start to make decisions and start to build the muscle of stress and and and because a lot of people just want to put their kids in a bubble and protect them from all pain and that's a very unhealthy thing for anybody who's going to go out in the real world because no matter how well off you are the the world is hard. So, I'm going to teach them how to struggle with grace. And then the most important thing is I'm going to show my sons and my daughters what it's like to be in a very committed relationship with my wife. And I'm going to hopefully raise a daughter that like knows how she deserves to be treated because of the way I treated her mom. Because there's so many women who are
Nick Huber
so insecure and they don't know how to get out of bad relationships and they let themselves be walked all over and they let themselves get abused by these loser guys. It's almost all because they were never modeled a healthy relationship. So the one of the most important things I can do as a dad is to show commitment and love to their their mom. Amen. brother.
Taylor Avakian
Um, last question before we wrap up because I know I'm I'm actually joining a Zoom call. You're going to be on in in about an hour.
Nick Huber
Um, finish this sentence for every investor, builder, person listening to this. If you aren't willing to blank, you have no business calling yourself an entrepreneur. Sell and deal with stress and do the hard stuff and manage expectations and delegate.
1:00:00–1:10:00
Nick Huber
and hire and solve problems all the time. There's a lot that goes into this and they're varying levels of importance, but I talk about them all. And not to just shamelessly plug the book, but plug the book, man. It's a great book. Sweaty startup book, which there's a link down below, is literally how I think about operating companies. It's how I think about picking opportunities. It's it's got a chapter on sales. It's got a chapter on hiring. It's got a chapter on management. It's got a chapter on delegation. the hard stuff because you don't you don't get a competitive advantage in business by picking up an idea. You get an advantage in business by out operating and out executing the other people in that business. And that's what this book is about. It's not about changing the world with a big idea. It's about doing the common things
Nick Huber
uncommonly well and out executing everybody. Nick Kever, everyone, thank you for being here, brother. Thanks, Ramy Taylor.