The Richest People I Know Do One Thing

Shaan Puri

Alright, look: on **YouTube** everybody talks about how they're crushing it. Every business podcast, every business influencer is saying how great everything is going. But on today's podcast my buddy **Nick** is coming on and he's doing the opposite. He's talking about a bunch of the big mistakes he's made. He's eating humble pie publicly on the podcast and discussing some of the things he's learned from it. I want you to tune into this episode. He's talking about how he made the biggest acquisition of his life when he bought **Somewhere.com**, how he might have screwed up certain things, and how he's trying to recover from those mistakes. That's another side to Nick. If you know Nick, he's a popular guy online, but you don't always get to see the humble side. I think it's a great episode with Nick — enjoy. Alright, what's up? We got **Nick Huber** here, friend of the pod. Nick, what's up, man?

Nick Huber

Sean, thanks for having me. It's been a long time.

Shaan Puri

Dude, you've written something. We have every guest do a little prep doc — like, "Hey, what are some things on your mind? Stories or ideas you want to share?" You wrote one that I think is very interesting to people who've been following Nick Hubert. So you've built up this online personality of being confident—borderline cocky. You have strong opinions and you're not afraid to piss some people off. And you wrote in the document: "I have been humbled of my cocky attitude in my thirties." Is this a... do we have a **heel turn**? What's the **face turn**, like in wrestling where the bad guy becomes good? What's going on?

Nick Huber

Yeah, man. I think the last five years in business... I mean, five years ago you guys had me on the pod. I felt like I knew everything, man. I think it was that *irrational confidence* early in my career that I wouldn't trade for anything, because it led to a lot of success and put me out there. But yeah, man—you just realize that business is hard. Business is really hard. 2024 and 2025 are not the same as 2022 and 2023 for any entrepreneur I know.

Shaan Puri

So give me an example of how Nick — what Nick was thinking then versus Nick thinking now. There's this great phrase: *"Everyone's a genius in a bull market."* I think part of what you're going to talk about is that, back in 2019, 2020, 2021 — during that era — it felt like you could do no wrong. But give me a Nick back then: he was thinking X, Y, Z about himself or the world. And now, what is Nick thinking?

Nick Huber

I thought business was easy. I thought building executive teams was easy. I thought customers just came. I thought I could do no wrong because I had this personal brand and had started all these companies—**10+ companies** over three years.

Shaan Puri

Midas touched.

Nick Huber

Four of them have been shut down, so yeah, it's *not all roses*.

Shaan Puri

"It's not all roses, but you are, you know, I guess *older and wiser* now. Some things have shut down, but other things you've doubled down on and have started to work. What do you think caused that? Was it just the market kicking your ass a little bit in certain areas that made you reassess? Were you wrong about a specific thing?"

Nick Huber

I thought with a **personal brand** that's strong enough, you could build an agency or a business of any kind and *go to the moon* — whether you did a couple things right or a couple things wrong, whatever. Then, yeah, the **algorithm changed**. Business got a little harder. People started really watching how they're spending money. So I just think it's harder now than it was, man. I know a lot of people who are making less money now than they were three years ago.

Shaan Puri

"Right, right. Okay — I want to jump around into some of your new ideas, so things you're feeling and thinking right now. You mentioned being sort of humbled, and you mentioned your portfolio going from... how many companies did you have, kind of like at your peak, and how many do you have now? **11**"

Nick Huber

Yeah, I started **11** companies. 2016 was my first, you know...

Shaan Puri

You were like, "I'm gonna do an SEO company. I got a storage company. I got a... what else did you have? You had a bunch of others, yeah."

Nick Huber

I had a marketing company — a pay-per-click marketing company called *AdRhino*. I had a sales consulting company called *Huber Method*. I had a business brokerage. I had, you know... on and on and on. So I went through a phase where I was like, "I can't—I'm on a hot streak. My audience is super powerful; let's scale up some companies."

Shaan Puri

Do you remember, at your peak, what the group revenue—or the revenue or cash flow of the companies you owned the majority of—was at the peak? Because it was... it was working for...

Nick Huber

A little while, right? Yeah. Well, group cash flow right now is actually way higher than it was, but it's only because of a three-headed monster of companies that rose to the top. So it's kind of a *power-law* thing, right? Of the six bottom ones, we were up to $500,000 a month of total revenue, maybe, and I shut down four. Two of them are treading water right now.

Shaan Puri

Right. So, I think the most interesting lesson — because I've had to see it from the inside — is from when we were both partners in a company called **Shepherd**. People don't know the backstory here, so here's the context. Marshall, who was the founder and owned the majority of the company, called and said, "Hey, I got an acquisition offer. I think I'm gonna take it." At the time Nick and I each had a good chunk, but we were in the minority. He told us that Andrew Wilkinson — our buddy (another friend from the pod) — made an offer to buy the company for **$52,000,000**. This was great: it was a company Marshall had bootstrapped and hadn't raised any money, so potentially a big exit. But it was a stock-based deal, and Marshall was going to take it. Marshall had worked for Andrew when he was young and had a lot of respect for him, so part of it felt like *a full-circle validation moment*. On the phone, I realized very quickly that he had actually already decided. It was a "let me just let you know" call disguised as a "what do you think?" call. Not to be deterred — I'm a very opinionated guy — I gave my take. I said, "We're growing really fast. I like our stock. Why would we trade our stock for another person's stock? We should keep our stock. It's growing. It's a small company, so by nature it's going to grow much faster than these larger companies. That stock might not be that liquid. Are you sure this is the deal you want to do?" Then I called Nick and asked, "What do you think?" He had a very similar view. We also had the idea that if Marshall wanted to sell, maybe we could buy the company ourselves. Originally that was part of the idea, but I said, "Look, my life will get too crazy and complicated; I don't want to do this." You, however, said you were going to do it. So, Walk — that's where the story begins. Walk me through what happened. First of all, was that your same history? Did I mess anything up there? And then it was a... yeah, it was...

Nick Huber

A $4,747,000,000 valuation. The company was three years old and growing really fast — about 150 employees. I was a customer and then became an investor, and I had started to build worldwide teams. But yeah, here we are. Marshall calls me, "Andrew, Andrew wants to make an offer to buy the company." I realized, "Hey, I don't want to sell any of this company; if anything, I want more of this business." This was peak — this was also just *peak Nick Huber*, you know, not-humble Nick Huber thinking, "I can do anything and I can't go wrong."

Shaan Puri

And, by the way, we had just **tripled** the business that year. So it wasn't like we had any reason not to have confidence — the business had just tripled in cash flow, and that was good.

Nick Huber

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Hey — I got something pretty cool to share with you guys. If you're like me, you listen to podcasts or YouTube videos and you take notes because you're here to learn. That's a lot of effort sometimes, and when you're on the go you can't always do it. The folks at **HubSpot**, who are sponsoring the podcast, have done something pretty cool for you. They've created the **"MFM Vault."** It's a place to find notes and resources pulled from the different episodes we do. If we have a guest who shares a five-point framework, they write down those five points with the examples the guest gave and put the notes in the vault for you. If you want to access the vault, it's totally free. All you have to do is click the link in the description below and you can access all the notes and the other material in the vault. We're going to keep adding to this and try to make it better over time. Thank you to HubSpot — this is a very cool way for them to sponsor the podcast. Instead of telling you to go buy their stuff, they're actually giving you something. Okay, carry on. So you decide, "I'm gonna..." I tell you, "Hey, I think I'm probably not gonna do it," but you're like, "I'm gonna do this anyways."

Nick Huber

Yeah, I say, "Marshall, actually, I want to be the one to buy your company. You shouldn't sell it to Andrew; you should sell it to me."

Shaan Puri

And his *initial reaction* is like, "You and what money?" Yeah.

Nick Huber

He had a lot of questions; his jaw almost hit the floor. He was like, "Nick, this is insane. Are you kidding me? This is life-changing money." You sold 51%—it was a **51% deal** because he still needed, remember, he still needed me and you in, since we were sending a lot of business. He still wanted **Marshall** to have some skin in the game. And yeah, man, the next three months... I sold Marshall on the fact that I could raise **$20,000,000**. I negotiated a seller note for a chunk of it. I had to get very creative with how I structured this deal because I realized real quick that it's not the same as real estate in terms of how much skin I could get in the game.

Shaan Puri

So, let's talk through this. A lot of people will give high-level numbers—valuation, sale price—but **terms** is where, like, anybody who's done deals knows structure and terms matter a ton. The way a deal gets done can vary: an all-stock deal, an all-cash deal up front, an earn-out, contingency-based, seller finance... there's a big array of different ways a deal can go down. So, can you just give us the simple version of, like, what was...

Nick Huber

The deal was originally a $47,000,000 offer from Andrew, but the business kept growing. Over the next six months, as we kind of got the deal done, it became a $52,000,000 purchase/acquisition price. And let me be clear about Andrew — early on, it kind of felt like me and Andrew negotiating against each other: "*Holy shit, I'm negotiating against a titan.*"

Shaan Puri

"This guy's bought **40** companies. You've bought **zero**."

Nick Huber

Yeah. A publicly traded business — a billionaire on paper for a while, a great friend of ours. Then Andrew kind of just thought about some AI risk. He saw maybe some headwinds and he said, "You know what, Nick, like, maybe we'll do this together." It was kind of a conversation throughout; it wasn't as if we had any animosity between each other. But yeah, it was... I was going to raise **$20 million** to buy about **40%** of the company from Marshall. I realized that if I go out and raise **$20 million** to buy this company, I'm only entitled to a **20% carry** on top once everybody gets their money back.

Shaan Puri

Right, so the structure is: you go to investors. Investors give you $20,000,000. Your deal with them is, "I get a **20% carry** or profit share of that." So, like, you're only owning... so the **$2,020,000,000** buys you what percentage of the company? We'll go over that. [The second dollar amount was spoken as "$2,020,000,000" in the original transcription.]

Nick Huber

The whole numbers: there's **39.25** for, like, *20 and change*, but let's say **40%**. I would need to get them all made whole — their money back plus a hurdle — to then get an 8% upside, which is **20% of $40,000,000**. So my ownership stake would go from about **12%** to about **20%**. I'd have to raise **$20,000,000**. I'd put my name on the line. I would take all this risk and do all this work very quickly. I realized I can't do this deal — it would be foolish for me to do it. So I went back to Marshall and said, "Hey, I need to buy more of the company." This is where we kind of got creative, and I carved out an **18% seller note** directly from Marshall to me.

Shaan Puri

**Seller note** — a seller note is basically the seller saying, "I will lend you, essentially, the money to pay me, and you're going to pay me every year or every quarter, whatever you guys decide." "So what was that?" "That was—8?" "What, 18,000,000?" "What did you just say? How much was—" "No, it was like $10,000,000."

Nick Huber

About **$9 million** for **18%** of the company.

Shaan Puri

Alright, so you're all in: you raised **$20,000,000** from investors. You get **$9,000,000**—*9-something million*—from Marshall. So you're in **$29,000,000**, and now you're in charge.

Nick Huber

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

And you've got *peak energy*, and I'm talking to you, and we both are like, "Dude, we've had so many ideas of how we could turn this business from X to Y. This is going to be great." And then what happens?

Nick Huber

**Three things changed drastically.** **Number one:** We changed the name from "Support Shepherd." I'd sat over too many people's shoulders watching them spell "shepherd" incorrectly. Smart people, too, know that—holy cow, we cannot grow a big company with this name. So we bought "somewhere.com" for $400,000. Shortly after closing, we changed the name from "supportshepherd.com" to "somewhere.com." Our SEO — our search engine optimization — and our brand recognition vanished overnight. In that one fell swoop, we lost about 300 leads a month out of about 1,000 leads that we had.

Shaan Puri

So you lose a third of your traffic on your *brilliant* name change. Okay—next.

Nick Huber

Yeah, let me look at my notes. So, number two: **Elon bought Twitter**. He bought Twitter and quickly started drastically messing with the algorithm. It went from me being able to tweet about hiring somebody in the Philippines for $5 an hour and driving about 3,000 website visits and 200, 300, 400 leads to the company—to virtually nothing.

Shaan Puri

Right.

Nick Huber

So, my ability to send business to the company with my *personal brand* vanished.

Shaan Puri

Okay.

Nick Huber

The third thing is I wasn't the only one to think **international hiring** was a beautiful business. Many, many competitors started over the next six months to a year.

Shaan Puri

You guys were pretty loud about the acquisition, which also invites competition, right? You tried telling me over...

Nick Huber

The years, by the way.

Shaan Puri

"I tried telling you this, but everybody wanted to *pound their chest* — honestly. I get it; there's actually an upside to it too. To be fair, the month we announced the acquisition — and the two months after — was actually *peak growth*. A lot of people went and checked it out and realized, "Wow, there's a reason why all these people use this service. There's a reason why there's a high repeat rate — it's probably pretty good." So it did initially cause a burst. But it also emboldened the existing competitors to go harder, and it created, let's say, ten new competitors."

Nick Huber

Yep. And then the economy started to shift — **interest rates went up**, and a general, almost *silent recession* happened in a lot of different industries.

Shaan Puri

Our customer base was not super well-funded AI companies — where, you know, spending was just sloshing money around. We help **real businesses**. Whether it's small-business agency owners who own 100% of the business and for whom cash flow matters, or e‑commerce businesses operating on tight margins and leveraging global talent to improve those margins, these customers are **cost-sensitive**. They might even stop hiring or shrink their workforce. Tariffs are coming; you don't know what's going to happen with that, so you shrink your workforce. We also serve tech companies that are more responsible with their cash. All of these business owners are great customers to have and a big part of our audience. They are obviously cost-sensitive because they live in the real world — they're not VC-subsidized with $50 million rounds where you can just aggressively spend against macroeconomic headwinds.

Nick Huber

Yeah — e-commerce **headwinds**, home-service **headwinds**, construction **headwinds**, real-estate **headwinds**. It means lots of people are hiring, lots of people are growing their...

Shaan Puri

Teams, right?

Nick Huber

I made a lot of **bold, quick executive changes** inside of [the company] when I acquired it. The company had grown very quickly. It was doing 95% of its hiring in the Philippines — executive assistants, right? We started to invest in Latin America. We started to invest in South Africa, finance talent in Egypt, building executive teams in South Africa, and hiring performance marketers — high-skilled people who actually know how to structure and build a company from the ground up internationally.

Shaan Puri

It's an important part. I'm making fun of some of the decisions because there is a *happy ending* — it all works out. The company's back; it's growing well, all that good stuff. So then it's fun to laugh about the mistakes. It's not so fun when things go poorly: you don't laugh about the mistakes as much — you cry about them.

Nick Huber

Yeah, we're making it sound like we're gonna end up bankrupt, but...

Shaan Puri

No, no. I guess the *spoiler* here: you give the spoiler, then we'll kind of keep going.

Nick Huber

Over the last four months, compared to before the acquisition — and note that those four months were when I was negotiating the deal — we're up about **60%** from a revenue perspective. Over last year, it's **28%**. So I'm still behind my pro forma of what I hoped to do with the company when I bought it, but revenue is growing very healthily and our team is awesome. I think we're doing a *phenomenal* job of finding people all over the world. I've learned a ton about worldwide recruiting, and I want to give some people tips on how to do this themselves — what to look for. But yeah, it's been a lot of changes.

Shaan Puri

So, the reason I wanted to share this is because 99% of people talking about their experiences buying and running businesses—**the selection effect**—is that the people who are failing shut up and the people who are succeeding get really loud. I think what's cool about you is that you can give it and you can take it. You are bold: you say what you mean, you say what you feel. You're not afraid to be wrong, and if you're wrong you say, "I was wrong." I really love and respect that about you. I think that's actually quite rare. In this case, you're basically saying, "Hey, I went and did this deal," and then here are a bunch of things that immediately went wrong for me. I had to figure out how to do better, and I think that's quite admirable. The second part of it: in sports they call it "new owner syndrome"—anytime a sports owner buys a team they immediately start changing everything because they're like, "Oh, I could do no wrong; I know how to fix this. I'm going to do all these great things in year one." One of the things I think is interesting here is that even though we run this *global talent company* and we were finding talent all over the globe, we were mostly finding junior and mid-level talent. For example: assistants—executive assistants were a huge part of our business—salespeople, and similar roles. C-suite folks, we would typically assume, are people I want to hire locally or American hires: expensive, big pay packages, lots of pedigree with companies I recognize. So we did that—we hired a bunch of executives, and that made total sense on paper. One of the cool things you figured out that I didn't see going into this was that you actually rebuilt not just the junior and mid-level team but the executive team with executive talent from elsewhere. That opened my eyes. I thought, "Oh, I should do that in my businesses," because it's an even bigger hack. You were like, "Dude, here's this person in South Africa: they've got an MBA, they speak perfect English, they've worked for international—and American—companies for 12 years, they've been a financial controller managing these budgets, and you can hire that person at this price." That's incredible. You're saving huge amounts of money on really great, hungry, low-maintenance, hardworking talent all around the globe. That was one of the bigger surprises to me—something we got wrong and then corrected. I don't know if you want to say a quick thing about that.

Nick Huber

Yeah. I have six Americans somewhere out of 160 employees. Ari Costa — another company in my portfolio that's growing really fast — has 130 employees, seven Americans. **Bolt Storage** has six Americans out of 60 employees, and they're all in sales and account management because I just can't replicate the Americans' ability to close *high-ticket deals*. Now, we're close with a couple of South Africans. A COO at RA Kosteg in Johannesburg, South Africa; a head of performance marketing in Bogotá, Colombia; a head of finance; and an IT consultant who got me through SOC 2 compliance. We got a certificate this week in Cape Town, South Africa. So I used to think, "Okay, I need repeatable tasks and I need to outsource those to the Philippines, South Africa, Colombia, whatever." Now I'm realizing that the people who can run my company can do it better and cheaper internationally.

Shaan Puri

And I don't want this to be a Somewhere plug, but you were like, "Dude, I could tell you how to do this without Somewhere." I was like, "Oh, that's like an *anti-ad* — so great. You could do it Somewhere, but here's how you do it without us." So how do you do it *without us*?

Nick Huber

Alright, so we get 60,000 applicants a month. Half of those are from **LinkedIn**, **Indeed**, and **Monster** promoted job postings. I can tell you—I'm gonna tell you—exactly how we do it. The other half are from referrals and ads that we run out on the open market for people that already have jobs. If you wanna make your own hire, go on **LinkedIn** and post a job. I'd recommend **Colombia**, **Brazil**, **South Africa**, and **the Philippines** — those are the four hottest places to hire. If you're looking for finance, there's **Egypt**. For engineers, try **Eastern Europe** and some other countries. Promote the job on LinkedIn with $100 a day and run it for five days. Post the job in those countries on LinkedIn, promote it with $100 a day, and run it for five days. So you're in, what, for maybe **$2** — you're gonna get a thousand applicants.

Shaan Puri

Alright, but that's *too many*. How do I filter?

Nick Huber

Yeah. So we have figured out — and I'm gonna pass this on to you — that of our 60,000 applicants every month, **85%** of them can't type **35 words per minute**. And if we're talking about remote work in any role — from engineering to marketing to graphic design, to admin, to sales, to executive leadership — this is relevant.

Shaan Puri

Your easiest, immediate filter is **typing speed** — an **English test**, basically.

Nick Huber

Yeah — we're getting that down to **5,000 people a month** who are coming in the door.

Shaan Puri

"What about, whatever—80% of people right away? Great. What's the next easiest heuristic to find great talent?"

Nick Huber

We’re going to send them a request for a **one-minute video**—where they film themselves introducing who they are for one minute. **Eighty percent (80%)** of people are just not willing to do the work. They’re not that serious about looking for a job. So the other **20%**... you’re left with maybe a thousand. This is our talent pool. If you posted a job and got a thousand applicants, you’re left with maybe **thirty or forty** people who can type over **30–35 words per minute** and who have sent you the video. You watch the videos. You look at professional maturity. You look at how they communicate, which is a big part of the job. Then you pick your favorite **five** to hire. I also love assessments. If they’re coming into a sales role, I’ll send them five calls from my sales team and say, “Hey, break these down. Record a **three-minute video** on missed opportunities or how you would improve them.” Then you’ll be left with **three or four** really great candidates—and hire them.

Shaan Puri

Right. **Task-based testing over interviews** is huge. We do that with all of our staff.

Nick Huber

"Mention the interview, I guess."

Shaan Puri

Alright, I don't even get to an interview at this stage. This is how we do it when I do this with Ben and our companies, and it's actually useful for you. When you sit down and say, "If I was going to give somebody a test they could do in 60 to 90 minutes, what would most closely simulate the type of stuff I want to see them able to do?" — now you get clarity on what you're actually looking for. Most people, when they go into interviews, don't even know what they're looking for. That's the dirty secret behind why you make a lot of bad hires. Once you define that, candidates actually show you. You're no longer asking, "Hey, you talked to this person — how'd you like him?" "I liked him; he's so nice." No. We have an objective way to say, "Here's what one person produced; here's what the other person produced." We start with *production* because that's what we'll want in the end. We will often — I don't know if you do this — pay them: "I'll pay you for an hour of time, two hours of time, whatever it is." This is a *paid task trial* because you're actually saving me money and time on interviewing and avoiding making a false hire. You might like someone after a nice chat, but they actually weren't good at doing the thing.

Nick Huber

> "Yep, exactly. I want to give some people advice on where to go as well, because I've learned a ton about what cities and countries are hot spots for which types of talent. > > **Cairo, Egypt** is the cheapest city in the world, and you can find people who can work magic in **Microsoft Excel** and **Power BI** from a finance/data-analyst perspective. > > **Colombia** and **Brazil** are unbelievable for operations — they're in your same time zone. For virtually every single role that doesn't require perfect English or a sales background, South America is amazing. > > **South Africa** is a sales and finance hub. There are 30,000 South Africans who get on a plane and go to America every year to do audit and tax work for Big Four consulting firms. They go back to South Africa, and you can hire them for $3 a month to be a controller at your small business. > > So yes, there are unbelievable areas. I love **Sri Lanka** as well for almost all roles. **The Philippines**, obviously — there are 30,000,000 Filipinos working for American companies today; it's just deeply ingrained in their culture."

Shaan Puri

So, to give people an example of the assessment real quick, I just pulled one up. This is what I used to find my assistant. I basically gave this out and said: I want you to do the task and record a Loom video explaining what you did as you do each task. That tells me their thought process, shows me how they work (not just the end product), and lets me hear how they communicate—whether they're easy to communicate with. For my assistant task, I said: pretend you're booking a vacation from L.A. to Paris for my wife and me. Our ideal dates are these, but we're flexible by a day or two. Here are our preferences. Send me a couple options: the lowest-cost option, the best option that balances convenience and cost, and maybe the most luxurious option (more expensive). I want to see them put together a kind of menu of options, because that's typically how I work with my assistant: get me to 90% and then I pick and choose what I want. Another task: I said I put a voice note on SoundCloud of me dictating while driving. Draft two emails based on what I mentioned in that voice note. In the note I'm like, "Hey, oh, I gotta—I promised X to so-and-so; I would introduce them to so-and-so. I met them at lunch…" I try to see if they can quickly grok messy input. Basically: can I write a fuzzy address on an envelope and will it still get there? I'm not going to get perfect instructions most of the time, so how do they deal with imperfect instructions? I'll have them do simple things like: "I've just moved from Texas to Wyoming and haven't changed my driver's license. Can you figure out how I need to go about getting a new license? Could you do it all the way, and if not, what steps do you need me to do?" I also ask them to make a birthday card in Canva for my daughter's birthday. I want to see if they have basic design and event-organization skills. The last one was research: "I'm looking for influencers for this new pro-fitness product I have. Find me 10 fitness influencers that fit this criteria." I want to see if they're able to quickly do data collection and research and provide something useful to me. Those are examples of the tasks I put out there. I put them in a one-page Google Doc, and they send me a Loom video of them doing each task. That's how I quickly filter through, you know, 50 people. Basically, it was like: here's 50 people—here are the four we like best. I gave them the assessment. I didn't like the first four, then they gave me another batch of four and immediately there was someone who was great.

Nick Huber

Yeah. They shine. The person who's *competent* will rise to the top of the crowd without any work on your end. It's a *beautiful* thing.

Shaan Puri

"You were basically saying that you find all these different talents, so people can go find them themselves. If they wanted to find it somewhere, what is the simplest way to do that?"

Nick Huber

I mean, we prepared kind of a *special thing* for your audience. Do you want to talk about that now, or do you just want to talk generally about how the company works? Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Well, what is it? What do you have?

Nick Huber

Yeah. *In advance of this episode, I personally vetted and interviewed:* - 10 salespeople in South Africa. - 10 finance folks in Egypt, LatAm, and South Africa. - 10 executive assistants in Sri Lanka, LatAm, and South Africa.

Shaan Puri

"Gotcha. So you did a personal vet shortlist?"

Nick Huber

For each, I watched their videos and analyzed their résumés.

Shaan Puri

"What do you want people to email you? Or how do people get access to that? Yeah."

Nick Huber

So, if they email me at **nickswateystartup.com**, I can hook them up with some of these profiles, let them see them, and hopefully help them grow their team.

Shaan Puri

That's cool. I'm curious, man — you are always meeting interesting people, partly due to having a presence on **Twitter**, and partly just... you know, you have one foot in the *sweaty startup world* and one foot in the tech/online media world. I'm just curious: who have you met recently that either inspired you, or *broke your frame* in some way, or somebody you think is doing cool stuff?

Nick Huber

I have one person in mind who's building a pest control, like, *monster of a company*. I don't want to out him — it's just incredible to me. You know, you've actually taught me a lot of this stuff: they find one thing that really works inside their company, and they just run the same play for five or ten years to grow a monster business. Just hammer it. I didn't think that business worked that way, yeah.

Shaan Puri

That you.

Nick Huber

You could do *one thing* really well and everything else... you're not hiring internationally, you're not using the latest software, you haven't even looked at AI, and you're not answering the phone past 5:01 p.m., right? But you do this *one thing* well, and you're worth **$100,000,000**.

Shaan Puri

Right. Have you ever seen that **Peter Thiel** taught a class at **Stanford** and they put the class notes online? It's been there for a long time. It's called the "Blake Masters notes," or something like that. Did you ever read those?

Nick Huber

"No, what's the *main takeaway*?"

Shaan Puri

So he's got one, which is: he's like, "I get a lot of investor pitches, and yeah, I've invested in—I was the seed investor in Facebook." If you have some huge winners and a bunch of losers, what do you notice with them? He's basically: one of the biggest poker tells with a business is when they have seven revenue streams. They puff their chest and say, "Look, we've got seven." He's like, "All they've told me is they don't have one great one." Same thing with distribution channels. When I ask them, "How are you gonna get customers?" or "How do you get customers today?" and they tell me seven things, all that tells me is they don't have one amazing thing. All the best companies — this is the best companies — they find one. They basically end up with **one distribution channel that really, really works** and **one revenue stream that really, really works**. So, for Facebook, for example, the distribution channel that worked was viral photo tagging on campuses initially, and then eventually off-campus. The monetization was ads. Facebook didn't need to sell stickers or do a thousand other things that all the other social networks were doing — like MySpace doing a homepage takeover and signing deals with movie studios to run campaign partnerships. Facebook was like, "Self-serve banner ads will be the thing," and that was the growth tactic.

Nick Huber

**Brad Jacobs.** Brad Jacobs, with how he grew United Rentals and several of these other companies — he ran the same place.

Shaan Puri

What was his—what was his play? I actually don't know. I'm sure he...

Nick Huber

He had several different plays. But **how you make a few billion dollars** is: you find a way to grow—say, an equipment rental business. Is it local ads? Is it outbound sales? They had a really good outbound sales team for contractors, and then—boom—the business skyrocketed. He pulled the same executive team, pulled his main players out of that company once it went public, put them in the next one, and boom. You know, that's how you grow five companies in a row: figuring out what companies that play will work for.

Shaan Puri

Right. I've told this story before, but it's probably one of my most humbling and insightful moments — a hard lesson learned very quickly, like a band-aid ripped off. We have a buddy, Sully, who to me is my business *Yoda*. If I have a business problem, I go to Yoda. He can't always explain it; he just sees through all the noise I bring him and finds the thing. My e-commerce business was early on and growing. We were at maybe $100,000 a month in revenue — so, roughly a million-dollar run rate. How did we get there? We were doing Facebook ads. Sully told me to do Facebook ads and focus on Facebook ads. I kept asking, “But what about Google?” He’d say, “What about what I just told you?” I said okay. Facebook ads were working; I felt accomplished. We went from zero to $100k in about three months. I went to him with ideas: “Dude, it’s working. I think we should do influencers and spin up Google. Who doesn’t do Google? I really think influencers could work — here’s this cool influencer idea I have.” He basically cut me off and said, “You wanna win, right?” I said yeah. He said, “Cool. Don’t say the word ‘influencers’ until you’re at $300,000 a month just off of Facebook.” I asked, “Would it be bad to do both?” He said, “Is there any reason you believe Facebook can’t get you to $300k? It got us to $100k — why couldn’t it get us to $300k? And if we couldn’t get Facebook to $300k, do you think any amount of influencers is going to save us?” It was like, no. A successful e-commerce brand should be spending basically $1,000,000+ per month on Facebook ads — which means you’re making more than $1,000,000 off of Facebook. That’s the goal. You kind of have a broken company if you can’t get there. Most e-commerce companies scaled off Facebook ads, so you should try to win off Facebook before doing all the other stuff. To end: I expected when I asked him for advice that he’d give me amazing strategies, new hacks, brilliant tactics. Actually, the most useful thing he did was tell me, “Don’t say the word ‘influencers’ until Facebook is cranking $300,000 a month to your business.” By the way, we kept it going — after $300k we did $500k; after $500k we did $1 million. You just keep going off of those things. Guess what: five years later I still don't do influencers. We didn’t need it. I definitely would have distracted myself with something that sounds like a good idea. It comes back to the Steve Jobs quote: “Focus is not about what you say yes to; it’s about saying no to otherwise great ideas.”

Nick Huber

One of my companies was spending upwards of $150,000 a month on paid ads. We realized that our **ROAS** [return on ad spend] was barely breaking even. We calculated it down to profit and realized that that piece of the company was making us maybe **$15,000 to $20,000** a month in profit.

Shaan Puri

And we.

Nick Huber

We were spending tons of executive time and energy trying to get that to work. We looked at the other part of our revenue stream: **referrals**. Referrals coming in the door were generating $250,000 of profit per month on maybe $30,000 of referral fees and discounts. Why? What would happen if, for six months, our entire executive team laser-focused on growing that referral number? Do we think we'd be better off than, say, the last year and a half we've been trying to slam a round peg into a square hole? And I think...

Shaan Puri

Right.

Nick Huber

It's unbelievable. The job of a **CEO** sometimes is literally just to tell your team "no" and to get them focused on what's already working.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah — exactly. And not hedge. I would say "no," but then we kind of green-light this little test. I would say "no," but then, two weeks later, we just do it anyway. What happened to our "no"? Was that not a real "no"? I think there are all these ways where you can think you're compromising, or you're having your cake and eating it too, but actually you're just spilling your cake on the floor. It's better to not do that. You said running a **holdco** is overrated. I think the trend will die down. Most rich guys I know are focused on one big business and build it for a long time. So **holdcos** — or these portfolios of businesses like you were doing — were a very, very big idea, a popular idea in our circles, in our bubble about five years ago. It's not a new idea; **holdcos** have been around for a long time. Give me your updated thoughts on the **holdco**.

Nick Huber

Man, I think over the last three or four years I've been kind of labeled as one of the "holdco" guys. There are several more of us, but I've had a lot of people reach out: "I got this plan — I'm gonna buy more companies, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna grow to five, eight, ten companies and the synergies and all this stuff." I think you really have to *know your shit* to run more than one company. The majority of people I know who run more than one company ran just one company for a long time, made it really good, made it really profitable, learned how to build executive teams, learned how to build compensation plans, and learned how to work the funnel and convert at the highest rate all the way down the funnel. If you don't know those things and you start buying different companies—especially if you use leverage, borrow money to do it—things can go really wrong really quick. Unlike real estate, which was my first business where you get a couple clients in and they pay rent every single month, operating companies can have massive swings in revenue and profit. So yeah, I think everybody thinks it's cool. Another thing about it is you just solve freaking problems all the time. The biggest problems in each individual company bubble up and come to you. So yeah... I don't know. When I look at some of the wealthiest people I know, and some of the wealthiest people you've had on your pod, almost all of them focused on one thing and made that one thing really big. I think there's something to that.

Shaan Puri

One source of problems rather than ten. Alright — another one you have here: **"Consistency is underrated."** You're on the consistency train. What's your take here?

Nick Huber

Yeah, I think it's really easy to get excited about something and jump in, becoming delusionally focused on one thing for a year or even two—whether it's a business idea or your physical health. I know people who are either training for a marathon, cutting calories, super fit, super clean, and super healthy, or they're totally falling off the rails and doing the opposite while they're focused on something else. It's kind of sexy to just jump in and be totally obsessed with something. The people who win are **even‑keeled**. Maybe they aren't working 70–80 hours a week; maybe they work 50 hours every single week for their whole career, or even 20, 30, 40—whatever it is. But it's hard. It's hard to stay excited about something for a long time without getting burned out. I think being even‑keeled is a superpower. If you can be steady in all areas of life—not just business, though mostly business—you'll have an easier time. For example, if you can avoid gaining weight the first time, it's going to be a lot easier to stay healthy for the rest of your life. If you can stay focused on one business or a consistent way of doing things and really get after it, you can win. I know a lot of guys who are either kicking ass inside their companies or they're totally checked out and ignoring the hard decisions.

Shaan Puri

I

Nick Huber

I think that's... yeah.

Shaan Puri

And they wouldn't have thought they would get there. But how do you get there? You get there because you didn't understand how to have a sustainable burn. You had a bonfire and then it goes out. I used to be in college — a proud procrastinator. I would wait till the last minute, pull an all-nighter, study, pass the test, and wear that like a *badge of honor*. It became a terrible habit and an identity to build around: “When I turn it on, I have this crazy intensity; nobody can work harder than me for those 72 hours.” But then I'd crash and procrastinate because I knew I always had that in the tank. It's the tortoise and the hare thing — the tortoises win in life. The tortoises who just keep putting one foot in front of the other every single day win. I've shifted my philosophy. Now, when I hear about somebody who has that same attitude I used to have — the *badge of honor* about how hard they go and how crazy they're working — I see it as a sign of weakness. It means you don't have systems. You don't understand leverage. You don't have good judgment. You don't know where to put your energy, so you're just putting it everywhere. I used to be that guy. I slept in the office when I was 24. I remember I slept in the office 224 days out of the year. I thought that was me grinding. Actually, it was me waving a flag saying, "I'm an idiot. I don't know what to do," so I'm just here all the time, manically doing anything I could think of. Now I have a totally different productivity routine, which I call the **"one big thing" method**. Every morning I decide the one thing that matters — the one thing I'd get done today. I put all my core focus on it and give myself two hours to focus on it first thing in the morning. No distractions. Don't check Slack, don't check the mail, don't check Twitter — don't check anything. I just focus on that one thing for two hours. After I'm done with that one thing, anything else I do that day is gravy. I can go play with my kids, work out, or do a little more work if I want. What I realized is the person who wakes up every day — 365 days — identifies the proper single thing that matters and puts full focus on that one thing for a two- to two-and-a-half-hour time frame. They will crush the average person who doesn't even identify the one big thing. Do that for 365 days and you have a hell of a year.

Nick Huber

It's the ability to *zoom out*. So many entrepreneurs are so focused, so intense, so jammed up in the weeds inside their company. And look, sometimes you have to do that. I've been in the weeds in several of my companies. But the people who can really zoom out—like you're saying—ask, "What really matters here?" And you do that for four or five years, six years, ten years, twenty years.

Shaan Puri

Right.

Nick Huber

Man, *father time*... Like, it's really sexy to build businesses fast and see *exponential growth*. You hear about all these stories — we read about them — and it takes over the media, especially social media.

Shaan Puri

Well, you have seen that meme almost at this point. It's not supposed to be a meme, but it looks like a meme now. It's like "fastest company to $100,000,000 ARR" and there are these charts. It's like, "Well, Slack took seven years," and then someone else says, "We did it in two weeks." There's the new AI company that's got a straight line up, and then somebody else comes in and says, "We did it in two minutes," or, "We did it in two seconds." They're all trying to beat each other in this sprint to low-quality revenue. I think it's so funny. It's like in The Big Short, where someone asks, "Why are they confessing?" and the reply is, "They're not confessing; they're bragging." [from the movie The Big Short] I think they honestly think that's a great thing. The more impressive chart is the one that looks like Qualtrics. We had the founder of Qualtrics on, and he said he has a huge sign in his home office that just says, "Tune out the noise. Play the long game." He was like, "Dude, for seven years nobody cared about what we were doing. We were single-mindedly focused on getting 150 universities to use our product because we knew that was super important. If we did that, we had a real business." It took time, but they stayed scrappy and focused, and they did that for years before they ever got any press, any social media, any of that. That's who you don't want to compete against — somebody who can do that, because they're building a giant foundation for what they're trying to do. It doesn't mean *go slow.* It just means don't get fooled into thinking you need to quickly sprint and grab some revenue number out of thin air as what success looks like. Success is this sort of **durability over time**.

Nick Huber

There's **expectations**. People have to realize that the expectations of yourself as an entrepreneur — in your career — depend on your last six months, your last twelve months, your last two years. If you've had that *"hockey-stick" exponential growth*, think about how you have to follow that up. I think some of those entrepreneurs kind of dream of a world where there's no investors, nobody watching, and they can grow slowly over time, building something sustainable.

Shaan Puri

Yeah. Well, okay—you have some other ones here. You said, "being a YouTuber is the hardest job in the world." I think some—like coal miners—might disagree. But go ahead.

Nick Huber

Well, I think social media is changing. We can talk about how the X algorithms [X, formerly Twitter] change how it feels to be a content creator. It's totally different now — you almost have to be *video-first*. I don't know if you feel this, Sean, but if you aren't on YouTube, you are not growing right now.

Shaan Puri

That's true. I think there are always exceptions, but it's largely true. I've said this before: *video is the native language of the internet.* It's like going to a country—if you don't speak video, you are not going to be able to communicate, because that's what everybody here speaks: video. Short form, long form—doesn't matter.

Nick Huber

Yeah, as an entrepreneur, I'm really hesitant to get on that *hamster wheel*, because I see what the life is like. Okay, you got this "banger" video—your influence grows. You have to follow it up the next week, and the next week, and the next week. You have to be on. We go back to that consistency conversation we just had: living that life for 10 years—how would that look? How would that feel? I think it's a very difficult job. I have a ton of respect for people who do it. I think it's still worth it, but in my opinion the value of a personal brand on all things—not just video—is going down.

Shaan Puri

Alright—one more spicy opinion here. This might be the spiciest of all: > "AI is bullshit and unsustainable and will decrease quality of life for the 99%." Wow. Say some words about that.

Nick Huber

This is just like the internet boom. **One percent** of the companies will survive whatever happens when the bubble changes, and we'll go on to change the world over the next twenty years. I'm not doubting the long‑term power of **AI**. I'm just looking at the money, the hype, the energy that's being poured into it. I'm spending a lot of time inside my companies trying to implement AI — we're adding tools — and I'm just not seeing it, Sean. AI is unbelievable for, you know, me having a doctor in my pocket, or me doing recipes, or my wife doing little things. But where is the long‑term value? Then, when I think about where it's going, I'm seeing my energy bill in Athens, Georgia — which is not an area with an energy crisis like some areas of Texas and California. My energy bills went up **60 percent** in the last three years; they've raised it six times.

Shaan Puri

Wow. That's because... what—*data centers* being built, or...?

Nick Huber

There's been a huge build-out: about 30 data centers have come online in Georgia in the last four years, and there's still 30 more in the pipeline being built right now. Many of them have negotiated unsustainable energy rates with the local municipalities. Where does it stop? Okay, companies can put AI in place to replace employees, but consider the energy cost. This is why I think—for 1% of people it could get really ugly, and for the rest of the people it could also get really ugly. What about your ability to run a dishwasher, an air conditioner, or a heater in your house? They all require a massive amount of electricity, which is getting more expensive for almost everybody. You have less money to spend on other things that make quality of life better. So yeah, *hot take*, but man—I'm very bearish on AI right now.

Shaan Puri

You said "**it's bullshit and unsustainable**," but you also said "**in the next 20 years it's going to change everything**." So it's not that you think the long term is worthless — you're saying that something today is over‑promised. What is it? And you're saying personally you're getting value: "doctor in your pocket," recipes, life day‑to‑day stuff... But it's the business use that you're not seeing?

Nick Huber

I've added **15 AI** tools across my portfolio. We've canceled thirteen, eleven — like, there are some that I really like. The others... it's really, really hard to justify the cost already. And they're subsidized all the way down the chain. You know, **Nvidia** is selling the chips — they're "making the bank." But, you know, **Amazon Cloud Services**, they're subsidizing it all the way down to the actual company that's VC-backed. It's subsidizing the data usage to try to do the land grab. So it's going to get more expensive. I also feel it's kind of like electric cars and self-driving with **Elon Musk** — how he's been promising us for twenty years that self-driving is five years away. It's going to get harder and harder to continue to improve **AI** from here, and it will require exponentially more energy. So I worry about energy mostly. If we had nuclear power plants all over the place, I'd feel much different about **AI**.

Shaan Puri

"Do you have a Tesla?"

Nick Huber

As soon as they make a Cybertruck that doesn't look like a Cybertruck, I'm all in. I want **Full Self-Driving**. I know how safe it is. I'm not one to drive a sedan because they're not safe. Somebody tells me...

Shaan Puri

Dude, I bought one. The self-driving is *unbelievable* — it is so good. Before I bought this car, I thought the narrative was that Elon has been promising but hasn't delivered. I thought it might be harder than you think. Maybe you can't even do it without LiDAR or whatever. Then I bought the car, I pushed the button, and it drives me everywhere flawlessly. I'm like, "This is here. This is already working." This is incredible, and I think the data backs up the personal experience.

Nick Huber

Yeah, I have. I have ridden in Full Self-Driving, and it is *mind-blowing*. It's *mind-blowing*. I want it; I need it. But is it going to be widespread? Are we going to have robo-taxis like [those in] San Francisco all over the country? I still think we're ten years away from it, and Elon said it'd be 2012 that we were gonna have this happen.

Shaan Puri

Yeah. His timelines have been wrong, but I think that's less to do with the tech and more to do with regulation at this point. So, which I think is a different question — you mentioned *pest control*. Are there other businesses that you found interesting? Or, like, you've been surprised at how well they're doing, or a niche that you nerded out about?

Nick Huber

A little bit — everybody wants to start a marketplace. I think maybe five or ten *BMs* a month [unclear: "BMs"—possibly "businesses"]. Someone will say, “They found, you know, a kitchen-cleaning service: you go in at night, spray down hoods, and clean the inside of a kitchen. I want to start a marketplace that connects restaurants to these people,” right? I was doing a roof on one of my commercial properties and our bid came in to do this roof. It's about a 10,000-square-foot warehouse, at about $70 to do the roof. I thought, “That seems high — let’s do some more work.” I found out I can hire a subcontractor for about $30 of labor and buy about $15 of material. That’s the hard cost to do this job. These roofing companies are *making the spread*. They literally don't do the work: they sell the job, quote the job, carry insurance, then show up and stand there, watch, and make sure the crew does a really good job. They can make **$20,000** on a two-day job by getting a sub, selling the job, putting their name on it, billing the customer, collecting the money, paying the sub, and moving on. Is that sexy and exciting? No. But are there roofers running around every town in America making five- to ten-grand a day? Yes.

Shaan Puri

Did I give you a fun example? At my daughter's school I've gotten to know some of the other parents. It's like, "Oh, cool—what do you do?" One of the guys—he does framing. I'm so lacking in handy skills that I don't even really know these terms, but he does *framing*... I think framing is like...

Nick Huber

A, yeah—would, yeah.

Shaan Puri

But you know, you just kind of build part of it—you frame the building that you're going to build. I was like, "Cool. So how's it going? Where's the project? Have I seen it? What do you do?" He's like, "Oh, I do hotels." I asked, "Is it one I've stayed in here?" He said, "Alaska." His take was basically *work smarter, not harder*. He said, "I can be the thousandth-best framer in California right now—coming in as a new guy into the space who doesn't have twenty years of referral relationships with all the other contractors—and try to scrape and claw to do business with expensive labor here in California, and be competed down to the bare margin because they can bid it out to 30 guys. Whoever comes up with the lower-priced option is going to win." But, he continued, if he goes to Alaska, it turns out they just don't have very many framers or many families doing that work. "It's easier for me to get on a flight once a month and go to Alaska than it is for me to build that business here." I saw that and thought of Munger's great quote: "The secret to winning in life is weak competition." [Charlie Munger] It's basically like: go where there's fish but not other fishermen. That idea feels foreign to most people. If you're doing a business, you tend to think, "How do I live here? I should do something familiar where I see it." So we will go into a knowingly harder situation because it's familiar, rather than take on some unknown where there might be a total greenfield opportunity. He's not innovating—it's not like he needed a new framing technique—he just went to a place where there were not many people offering that service.

Nick Huber

Yep.

Shaan Puri

And I just think that one principle—if you're a hardworking person—can be the difference between being the thousandth contractor here with razor-thin margins and making great margins and having to get on a flight once a month. I think about a lot of people in my life who could benefit from that principle: **"go where the supply is low"** or where the competition is low, because it's unfamiliar to most, and you might prosper.

Nick Huber

We built our first self-storage facility six hours from where we were living. We borrowed **$2,000,000** from a bank and spent **$3,000,000** to build the facility six hours away. Now I'm in Athens, Georgia, which is a different city, and people are like, "Oh, you're in the self-storage business—which one in town do you own?" And I'm like, "They're nowhere near here. I'm sorry."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, in storage—what was the insight on *location* for you? Did you find that a certain strategy on location worked well for you?

Nick Huber

Yeah, we didn't even—we didn't even talk about real estate. It's been a chaotic, you know, three years in real estate. As interest rates have risen, it's been just *total carnage* in the business. Luckily, we've done some things operationally that, you know, give us a little bit of an advantage, but...

Shaan Puri

"I'm sorry. Explain why that is. For somebody who's not in real estate, why does interest rates going up create, as you said, *carnage* in the real estate market for you?"

Nick Huber

Because the biggest line item—the biggest expense—for a real estate investor, developer, syndicator, or anybody who buys real estate and holds it and tries to cash-flow is **debt**, right? We typically borrow anywhere from 50% to 70% of the value of a building. If you go from paying 3.5% on that debt—that's $35,000 to service $1,000,000 in debt—to paying 7% ($70,000), imagine if your labor cost quadrupled in a service business. That's essentially what happens in real estate. So it drives the value—what people can afford to pay down. All the buildings that you bought in 2021–2022… I mean, there's guys that are going broke in the real estate business right now in real time that I know. It's total carnage because they can't sell their buildings for what they were worth, because nobody else can afford to pay that higher amount of debt interest either. Does that make...

Shaan Puri

Makes sense, right? What's going on with your properties now? That was the time when you were buying, too.

Nick Huber

So yeah, we bought a lot and we had some stress, dude. We had some tough conversations. We got out without raising any additional money from our investors, and we replaced all of our loans, meaning we refinanced them. We didn't have to call a single dollar from our investors — **that's a massive win**. Many people are making capital calls or actually losing properties; we were able to increase revenue quite a bit when we bought a building. We've done things like replace our inbound sales team with South Africans who are sales-trained, and our conversion rate went from 30% in the Philippines to 42% in South Africa. So revenue's up **15% year‑over‑year**. But yeah, man — it's not easy. *It's brutal.*

Shaan Puri

Is the future for *Nick Huber* buying more storage facilities? Is it just running somewhere and growing, or is it something else? You know, five years from now—do you know what the future for Nick is?

Nick Huber

You know, I've—**my ego has written a lot of checks** over the last five years. Now I gotta go cash them. No, I'm pretty focused on growing some. I want to grow real estate, cost segregation, and I want to buy more storage. We have a couple of deals under contract now. The company's in a good place, and there's just so much less competition in the real estate business right now, so it's a double-edged sword. I just think business is naturally cyclical. It really is: there are really good times and there are harder times. Sometimes the hard times are good because you have to buckle up, operate, and make your business more efficient. It washes out the people that can't do that, and it becomes less competitive. So I'm **genuinely excited** about the real estate business over time. I think we're better than anybody in the world at finding amazing talent somewhere, and yeah—so I'm going to grow some of these companies. I want to grow some of them really large.

Shaan Puri

Very cool. Well, man, **I appreciate you coming on.** Oh, it was fun to catch up.

Nick Huber

Good deal. Thanks for having me, dude.