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The BetterLife Podcast
How To Build Wealth With "Boring" Businesses & Sweaty Startups | Nick Huber (EP 143)
01:29:58
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- [00:00]
A
This is the Better Life podcast with Brandon Turner here with my co host, Mr. Cam Cathcart. Cam Cathcart, man. What's up, dude?
- [00:08]
B
Not much, man. How you doing?
- [00:09]
A
I'm good, man. I just adopted a dog from a blacksmith. Like a. From a black. Yeah. As soon as I brought him home, he made a bolt for the door.
- [00:20]
B
Did you know that I was once kidnapped by mimes?
- [00:23]
A
You were?
- [00:24]
B
Yeah. They did unspeakable things to me.
- [00:28]
A
Dude, that's. I'll give that an 8. I'll give that an 8 out of 10. That was pretty good. Oh, what's been new, man?
- [00:34]
B
Dude, not much. Just living life, you know, I painted my back wall. I don't know if you noticed that.
- [00:38]
A
I did notice that. I love it. I saw a picture of you on Instagram painting that. You mean my back wall? That's not your back wall. Actually. Black. It looks better with the black color. That's pretty sweet. Good job.
- [00:48]
C
So.
- [00:49]
A
Well, man, speaking of a good job, you know who did a good job? Our guest today, Nick Huber.
- [00:56]
B
Incredible.
- [00:57]
A
So good. Hey, if you guys want to like become a millionaire and you want to do it in the non flashy, like, you know, like, I'm going to charge you $100,000 to teach you how to become a millionaire sort of way. Like just like real, like here's actually how you do it. That's what today's episode's about. How to grow an actual like what Nick calls a sweaty startup. Like, you know, just the work. So good, dude.
- [01:17]
B
And I feel like there was something that he said that stuck out to me where he was just talking about how, how. How does somebody become a millionaire as quickly as possible. And I've always been like, real estate, real estate, real estate. And he said, no, real estate's that the long term wealth. But you have to have something that is a product or an active business that you are. You're pursuing. And he said in those companies, you can go to a millionaire in six months to a year.
- [01:43]
A
Yeah, unless he did. He did that. One thing. We'll get to you guys and listen for it. Unless you know a certain type of person, then real estate should be your first shot. I thought that was a super interesting way of looking at it. I never thought of it that way. So that's. That's one thing we talk about today. We talk about virtual assistants. Not just assistants, virtual team members growing an entire team of individuals for a fraction of the price because you have a international employee base, which is pretty awesome. We talk about how to make people really, really angry on Twitter or X.
- [02:12]
C
And.
- [02:13]
A
And then we have a great conversation about raising children and being a good husband and what that looks like as an entrepreneur and a lot more. All right, well, with that said, time to get into the show. Quick plug first, just in case you have not yet got your ticket for the summit. It's going to be amazing. It's going to be in Austin the 1st through 3rd of June. I want you there. I'm going to be there. Cam's going to be there. It's going to be amazing. Go to REI summit2025.com and come join a thousand other real estate obsessed people who want to grow while also being good, just people. Right. How do you build wealth without losing your soul? You come to the REI Summit.
- [02:48]
C
Yeah.
- [02:48]
A
So I'll see all there. Nick Huber, welcome to the podcast, man. So good to have you.
- [02:52]
C
Brandon, Cam. Thank you all. Your mission is.
- [02:55]
A
All right, so I've been following you online forever and I know a bit about your story, which we'll get into later. But I want to start with a big question that I, I think a lot of people struggle with. They want to get that financial freedom, get out of a job, whatever, and, and you know, they listen to me for real estate advice maybe, or they listen to other people for business advice or real estate. What would you advise for somebody who was going from basically nothing? They want to get financial freedom and as fast as possible. What would you tell them?
- [03:20]
C
As fast as possible. Entrepreneurship's really the only way to get wealthy. So something on the side. I mean, in my opinion, it's a mindset shift and you got to have a, that perfect balance between confidence. I had unrealistic confidence when I was a young entrepreneur, and then that humility on the other side that'll, you know, keep you listening to people around you and changing your mind.
- [03:40]
A
Do you have a, do you have a specific, like industry you'd stay away from? You'd go into. Is there any tactical advice?
- [03:48]
C
There's man, yeah. I think business is really funny because you don't get style points. There's no, it's, it's not, it's not a Olympic, Olympic gymnastics routine. It's not a David Goggins workout. You can get paid really well to do simple things over and over again. So I stay away from all the sexy stuff that everybody loves because there's a lot of competition there. It's generally harder. I pretty firmly believe, and very few people agree with me, that if you want to Change the world. And you want to do something new and you want to start a business that nobody's ever done before, you better be rich already or have very wealthy parents. Other than that, you need to do something boring. That's been done.
- [04:26]
A
Oh, can you expand on that?
- [04:28]
C
Yeah. Look, you. You walking around the street and you see somebody random and you say, hey, what is entrepreneurship? Who is. Who is an entrepreneur? What does it mean to you? They're going to point to Silicon Valley and Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and Shark Tank and new ideas and venture capital. When I walk around the world and look at people who do whatever they want whenever they want, people at my country club who play golf on Tuesdays, people who get on their private jets here in Athens and fly down to Hilton Head, like the people in my life who I actually see as wealthy. Not the people on tv, not the stories we read about. Dude, they all did boring things. None of them tried to change the world. None of them raised the venture capital.
- [05:04]
A
Yeah. So good, man. All right, well, let's go to your story a little bit. So I know you. I mean, I've been following you online a bit. We've never actually, you know, hung out in person yet. We will. So I know you as a, you know, real estate guy. I know you. That's part of what you do and part of your story, and I want to get into that today. I know you do some self storage, but I also know you buy and build businesses as well. I know you as one of the more controversial people that I follow on Twitter who gets a lot of love and a lot of hate, and I'm. I'm all there for it. I love that. And, yeah, I know you got started early in college, so let's go back. So if that's who you are today, who was Nick Huber and how did you get into this world?
- [05:38]
C
I was not somebody who considered myself an entrepreneur. I was running around college doing what everybody else was doing. I was trying to find a girl. I was trying to make friends. I was trying to, you know, do well in sports. But an opportunity came along. I started that first moving and storage business because I had two apartments, put somebody's stuff in one of them and started driving around cars and picking up people's stuff and storing it over the summer. Over the next five years, that became a business that, you know, did $2 million a year. @ its peak, only made a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in profit. But, man, we learned a ton because we had 12 states, 25 colleges picking up and delivering boxes. 300 part time employees driving box trucks around major cities. It was a total nightmare. And you know, 2015 came along and we're like, man, we got to get out of this moving business. We got a little bit of cash on the side and skipping ahead now, but that's when we built our first self storage facility and kind of never looked back.
- [06:31]
A
Dude, that's awesome. Hey, real quick, I know it's Cam. I know you got one too. Just, I just want to acknowledge something I love, Nick, that you just said. We did a few million dollars, only a couple hundred thousand of that was profit. Because every entrepreneur I ever meet never says the profit number. Right. Everyone loves to talk about the revenue number.
- [06:48]
C
Oh yeah, technically I was 24 years old. A multi million dollar entrepreneur. Yeah, I didn't get guacamole at Chipotle though.
- [06:55]
A
Yeah. Oh no, don't do that. I knew a guy one time who did millions of dollars a year in selling like playground equipment online, like really expensive stuff, like $10,000 stuff. But he would spend everything. Like he, he zero profit. But he made million, like sold millions of dollars. He just did it for the credit card points. That's all he wanted it for, was credit card points. But he had a multimillion dollar business that he could brag about.
- [07:18]
C
But it's funny, made no money. There was somebody on Twitter bragging about credit card points and how flying miles is funny. And I think Naval commented and said, didn't you sell a company? Yes.
- [07:30]
B
I saw that, but dude, so I've been following you on Twitter for a while and so you started your business and I think this is, is really, really great. Like with chalk on a sidewalk. Is that, can, can you, can you talk about that for a little bit? Because I think that's amazing. You guys bootstrapped it.
- [07:45]
C
We had our first, you know, two million dollar year of revenue. And I think in the early days before we add some overhead, we cleared almost a half million maybe in Profit. This is 2016. Our only marketing was we knew exactly where our customers were. We knew where they walked on Cornell's campus. There's one bridge that you walk across. All the freshmen walk across this one bridge to every single class. So I got up at, you know, 7:40 and started writing chalk ads, very simple chalk ads that said need storage storagesquad.com free boxes, free tape, free pickup, free delivery. And I wrote that over and over and over again until I wore holes in the soles of my, you know, jeans. The Knees were wearing out of my jeans and I was going through boxes and boxes of sidewalk chalk. But sure enough, for the 8:40 class, the 9:10 class, the 10:10 class, the kids would get up and just start walking and I'd be on my phone and I would just get. I get sign ups like, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And like, that is how we grew. The entire company is sidewalk chalk and, and throwing flyers under doors, sneaking into dorms and throwing flyers under dorms.
- [08:48]
A
Dude, that's legit. I love that. I, I think that, I think you even said it in the book of something along the lines of, like, being able to sell is like the most important skill for a business owner. Like, if you can't, if you can't get your, you know, market and sell your product, like, you can't get there. And most people, I feel like anyway, and this is my own industry specific thing with, with education products. But like, most people don't know how to market outside of like, oh, just put up a Facebook ad and hope that you get something. Or in the real estate world, they don't know how to market outside of. Put an ad on Zillow and hope you get something on. On Craigslist and a Facebook marketplace. It's like that skill is so difficult to learn. Do you feel like that is innate? Did you, did you learn creative marketing and sales or how did that.
- [09:26]
C
Yeah, so I, I was at a mentor, a mentor of mine in college. I was a junior. It was a couple weeks after the first, like, startup. I was excited. I said, okay, I'm an entrepreneur now. I need to meet with all the entrepreneurs. I sit down at coffee with this guy and he's like, nick, do you like sales? And something was off. I was like, I know I should say yes, but I was honest with him. I was like, oh, no, I, I hate sales. I want to be the operator, the visionary. I want to. I picture myself like on the whiteboard, you know, just making decisions. And he goes, okay, well, this might be a short breakfast because what I'm about to say might piss you off, but if you don't like sales, you need to go get a job. And I'm like, whoa, what? Hold on, what do you mean? And he goes, like, if you are an entrepreneur, if you want to be an entrepreneur, not only are you selling your customers, but you're selling your employees on trusting you because you have nothing. You're selling your vendors on, like selling to you, you're selling the, the real estate owners on leasing a warehouse to you, you're selling the, the, you're. You're just non stop sales all the time. And then when I actually zoom out and look at life, man, I'm selling my freaking 5 year old to get in the car in the morning to like go to school. Life is sales. And entre. As an entrepreneur, you are selling yourself all the time. Very uncomfortable conversations, negotiations, trying to get people to do what you need them to do and get them to want to do it. And so that shook me to my core when I was, you know, 21 years old. But I took it very serious because the rest of the conversation, he told me that, hey, nobody's naturally good at sales. You gotta wake up and get the reps in. Mm.
- [10:59]
B
And is that how you grew as a salesperson? Because now you own, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate and businesses and, and it is the way that you grew in sales, just getting out there and putting in.
- [11:12]
C
The reps. Yeah, yeah. Get told no a bunch of times. You guys know this. You guys know this game. Like raising money for that first deal As a 26 year old, I needed to raise a half million bucks to build a storage facility. I sat down at 100 people's kitchen tables. I didn't know that I was kind of sitting at the wrong tables of the people who didn't have money, but. But I sure as hell took my licks. I had people laugh at me. I had people tell me that, you know, 2015, we're at the top of the, you know, real estate's been on a three year bull run. We're at the top of the cycle. I had, I went to see 10 banks, and the last bank, Tompkins Trust Co. In upstate New York, gave me the loan for that deal. I write the loan officer on the anniversary every year, and I'd be like, hey, Jason, thanks for taking that bet on me. But yeah, man, like, take licks, show up with confidence and like, people think, like, decision making and sales are very similar. People think that can read a book or listen to a podcast and get good at it. Now if you want to, you want to put on muscle. You don't like, study Arnold Schwarzenegger and take a bunch of supplements and like watch YouTube videos and build your workout plan? No, you go to the, Go to the damn gym.
- [12:10]
A
Yeah, that's so good, man. Hey, I want to dig into the self storage stuff. Why you got into that? You know where you grew it to, what it's at today? Before we get there, one thing we do on the show is we dedicate all the profits from the podcast towards charities of the guest choosing. So where are we sending the money from today's show? From all the ads from today's show. Where are we sending it, and why?
- [12:28]
C
Yeah, my favorite charity is here in Athens, Georgia. It's called Extra Special people. They take 300 people with disabilities in all ages and put them through summer camps, day camps, you know, it's amazing. So my favorite place.
- [12:41]
A
That's awesome, man. Why does that. Why does that affect you? Why do you care?
- [12:45]
C
We have some friends with kids with special needs, and I think it's a blessing in one way because they're really awesome people and you have them in your house for. For their whole lives. But it's also a real struggle, and these families need some support. So I'm really passionate about it.
- [12:59]
A
Very cool, man. Yeah, I worked my way through college working group homes for developmentally disabled adults.
- [13:04]
C
It is so good. It is so amazing for the high schoolers and, you know, college kids that work there as well.
- [13:09]
A
Yeah. So good. All right, man. All right. So picture this. I just signed a lease with a tenant. They seem great on paper. Then a few months in, everything kind of started going sideways. Suddenly they're missing rent deadlines, there's a broken window, the neighbors are complaining about them. I realized I put someone in my rental property without properly screening them, and now I was living a landlord's nightmare. But lucky for you, you don't have to make the same mistakes as I made early on because you have the luxury of using Turbo Tenant. So if you're managing any rental properties right now and you're still trying to vet tenants and collect rent and keep track of work orders and market all your vacancies, Look, Turbo Tenant is going to be your best friend. It's an app that allows you to do all, all of that and so much more all in the same platform. Plus, it's, like, stupid cheap. Like, seriously less than your Netflix subscription. I don't even know why it's so cheap. And if you want it even cheaper, I got a discount for you. Just go to turbotenant.com betterlife and use code brandon10 for 10% off. Or go to my Instagram and DM me the word toolbox, and I'll send you a link to a bunch of cool, free tools that they have, like the rent estimator, financial freedom calculator, and more.
- [14:14]
C
All right, we're back.
- [14:15]
A
Let's talk about self storage. So why. Why originally, even, like, in college the self storage business, where that idea even come from?
- [14:22]
C
Yep. So I. I was in a really hard business. My partner and I were looking at, looking down, saying, damn, we are literally paying college kids minimum wage to drive box trucks around cities. We're moving stuff, we're dropping stuff. It's getting broken. Warehouses are flooding. People are ripping tops off trucks on Stero drive in Boston. Like, it was crazy. Like, there's got to be an easier way. So we like, analyzed our competition, looked out there and said, hey, where do we see some not really spectacular people making phenomenal money, frankly? Like, where are the dumb people getting rich? And it didn't take long for us to stumble on self storage. We had storage in our name, even though we had nothing to do with real estate. We had never leased a storage unit. But we thought just because we had storage squad in our name, we might be able to convince some bankers and investors to give us some money to go do that first deal.
- [15:10]
A
Yeah, that's wild.
- [15:11]
C
Do you.
- [15:12]
A
You still do sell storage then, right?
- [15:13]
C
Yeah. Quite a portfolio. 63 properties got about 50 people managing the. Managing it. We've raised. I think we're 45. 50 million we've raised. We've bought about 100, 120 million of self storage. Wild. Most of it in 2021, which was a good time to buy. Yeah. Refinancing all those loans in the last year has been a little stressful, but, you know.
- [15:34]
A
It's been a little stressful. Yeah, a little bit. All right, man, so let's talk about building that. Like, what does that look like?
- [15:41]
C
Why?
- [15:41]
A
Let me, let me even go back more basic. Like, what's the appeal to self storage? Like, why, why should people consider that? Should they still consider it?
- [15:47]
C
Maybe we saw. We saw a bunch of operators in 2015, 14, who didn't answer the phone on the weekends. They were sitting in an office at their storage property. Their units were full, their units were underpriced. And we generally thought, hey, like, this isn't rocket science. We can run a moving operation while we are in Boston. We can run that in Philadelphia. We can sure as hell run a self storage facility with 200 doors where people, you know, visit their unit once a quarter on average. So then we started running the numbers, we started looking into the business and the. The smart thing to do back in 2015 would have been to buy some existing properties because they were still very affordable. Like, damn, I wish I would have started buying self storage properties in 2015. But we are crazy and full of energy and had that confidence, and we decided to go build one from the ground up. We got a property under contract for a quarter million bucks. We raised half a million bucks, put in about 200k of our own cash, borrowed 2.2 million from the bank, and built a storage facility for $2.9 million all in. It was a really stressful construction project. I had to go back and ask everybody for more money. But we got the doors open and started leasing units. And we realized, holy cow, this is a spectacular business. This is really cool.
- [17:08]
A
I'm curious. How does the guy, without a lot of experience at a young age go and raise half a million dollars? What was that process like?
- [17:14]
C
Yeah, look, I built a cash flow model. I built a marketing plan. I had a piece of land that I acted like I had under contract in a city. I'm not really that proud of this, but I sent it to public storage and life storage and extra space storage and had them give me pro formas on it so that I could see how they think about storage. I took meetings as if I was a big time real estate developer. And we're thinking about hiring them to manage our property.
- [17:40]
B
So that's brilliant.
- [17:41]
C
The scrappy. The scrappy way, I guess that is. So.
- [17:45]
B
So you acted like you had a piece of land under contract and then got the performance from these bigger companies of like, hey, what would it look like if you guys came and built on this?
- [17:54]
C
And frankly, we were looking at the land like it wasn't. It wasn't a full, you know, charade, but like, we had, hey, we want to build this property outside of Nashville. We're looking at this piece of land, extra space, management team, like, pitch us on, you know, doing that. And they're like, oh, we won't even pitch. We'll put you on building it for you. Like, here's our. Here's how we would budget it. Here's how, you know, we would do lease up. Here's how much marketing we would spend. Here's how our cash flow models look. I didn't know how to discount, you know, street rates to, you know, unit occupancy to economic occupancy. But I learned real fast looking at those models.
- [18:26]
B
Dude, that's brilliant. When I. So I'm a single family guy, and. And I had done, I don't know, 10 wholesale deals. This was in 2020. So I'm newer to real estate. And I realized there's a hedge fund that was buying a ton in St. Louis. There's a hedge fund in New York and in Arizona. And they're buying just like crazy. And so I found out who their, their acquisition manager was for both of those companies and actually went out to. And I acted like I was the biggest deal in St. Louis. Like that. All the houses run through me. I was their guy, sat down with them. They gave me their, their. Literally it's like a 30 page booklet of here's exactly what we're looking for. Our buy box, what we do buy, what we don't buy, how we make our offers. And then I just went and bought houses and wholesaled it to them. And I did become the biggest real real estate guy in St. Louis because I acted like it to them. And it was. I, I think that there's, there's. There's so much to be said about acting like you're there before you already are in, in a, in a humble way, obviously, but. But it, it can change things.
- [19:27]
C
That's an amazing story. I mean, look, it's uncomfort right? If you are willing to put yourself in uncomfortable situations, amazing things happen to you, which is sometimes acting like you're a lot bigger deal than you are. Yeah.
- [19:38]
B
So.
- [19:38]
A
All right, man, so you got this. Self storage. Was that first deal like that first one you built? Did that turn out like the way you thought it would? Better than it would than thought? Like where, where you succeed?
- [19:50]
C
We, we built it on. We had a $1.7 million budget, ended up costing us 2.4 million to build it. We bought the property across the street for half million bucks. So we're all in for 2.9 million. We had about 60, 55,000 rentable square feet. Two and a half years later, we refinanced it at a $7 million valuation and pulled out 2 million of tax free money.
- [20:11]
A
Wow, dude.
- [20:13]
C
A million for my partner, a mil and a million for me and some to the investors. And that is life changing for a guy who's 20, 28 years old.
- [20:23]
A
Is that because you built it and so you got all the equity by building it? Did re. Rents just go up a lot? Was it luck? Was it skill? How'd that, how'd that happen?
- [20:31]
C
I think we picked a good market. It's in Ithaca, New York. There wasn't a whole lot of other competition. We're the only people who have built a lot of storage there since. Really? Yeah, man. Like I think we got lucky, honestly. Yeah, I mean we operated it, we. We answered the phone, we kept it clean. Like I rented the first 400 units myself. I was the customer service rep. If the phone rang at 1am if the phone rang at 1:00am I answered it. My wife was not thrilled about that. But I learned the business.
- [20:58]
A
Now most people, most people looking at a guy like you or like me or Cam, really, I mean like they see us at like a, you know, an influencer sort of position in life where we're talking about it, we're teaching this stuff. They would never expect that we were out there, that you were out there answering phones and showing units. Just like they didn't expect me to be crawling their houses or Camel. They were door knocking on a seller's house. But so kind of how we all start, right?
- [21:20]
B
I unfortunately still am doing that.
- [21:22]
C
But dude, I, I, I'm a deal junkie. I don't think that ever goes away.
- [21:30]
A
Yeah. So I mean, what advice is, maybe I'll ask it this way. Is like the idea of the sweaty startup is that what you're referring to is the fact that you just get your hands dirty and you get sweaty. I mean, how would you define sweaty startup? That's name of your book, name of.
- [21:41]
C
Your Twitter, like sweaty startup is an official call out on the way media portrays entrepreneurship. The way media portrays entrepreneurship is the new idea. Change the world, raise money, go to California type of business. All the wealthiest people I know did the same thing other people did. They took the best pieces of different operators, they put them together, they innovated a little bit. Like, I love innovation, but I'm not trying to change a business model and flip it on its head. So like we took the money from that first deal. A unit went up from for auction in 2019 in Erie, Pennsylvania, 480k. We bought it all cash at auction. All the last dollar we had to put in there. But we got 40,000 square feet. It's doing like 26,000amonth of revenue today. And we're $3 million. Me and my partner, me and my partner own it outright.
- [22:32]
A
That's cool.
- [22:33]
C
So you got to have the guts. But yeah, the sweaty startup is like forget the flashy, sexy, fun things and just do what other people are doing. That's making money and innovate in little ways, become a better operator. Like new ideas. Ideas are bull. Like execution. Execution is what separates the men from the boys.
- [22:51]
A
Oh, so good. Yeah, I, I read that in your book. But also I've heard that years ago I saw a chart. It was called execution or execution is a multiplier. I don't know, maybe it wasn't even something you shared on Twitter, but it Was like an execution multiplayer. And it was like, an idea is worth 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 points, but execution's worth 110,000. A hundred thousand. You know, it's like, it's such a multiplier effect where, like, people are so concerned. I mean, how many times this happened to you guys? I'm sure it happens to me all the time where people like, I got a really good idea for a business. I'm not gonna tell you what it is. I don't steal my idea. I'm like, like, first of all, there's almost no good ideas that are new. There maybe are no good ideas that are new. And second of all, I have hard enough time executing my own businesses.
- [23:29]
C
I got. I got kicked out. I got kicked out of a pitch competition at uga. So at University of Georgia here in Athens, I go. I go in and judge the entrepreneurship courses. Pitch competition. Well, I did. I. I get in there. I'm one of the panelists, right? It's a bunch of, like, corporate people and startup people and venture capital people, and then me. These kids are all pitching their ideas, and one person's like. And they're all almost. They're almost all apps or marketplaces or social media things. And this guy's like, I know the recruiting business a little bit. He's like, I'm going to start a recruiting company. But the recruiting company, it's all messed up because the companies actually have to pay 30% of year one salary as the fee. They pay 30, $40,000 for a placement. That's bull crap. I'm gonna go create a job board where we're just matching, we're mixing, we're matching. And I'm like, raise my hand. I'm like, you're just. You just told me that you did not want to collect $30,000 fee. Like, what's the matter with the business model? Why do you want to flip that business model on its head? Korn Ferry does billions of dollars, hundreds of millions of profit. What's wrong with that? He's like, oh, well, you got to innovate. You got to change things. And I kept just. It did. It didn't go well, didn't end well. So.
- [24:38]
A
So people who are concerned with. Again, I've heard this too. I've heard people say, like, I wish I was an entrepreneur, but I just don't have any good ideas. You just think that's ridiculous.
- [24:45]
C
Yeah. And also, man, look, five years ago, I wanted everybody to be an entrepreneur. Like, I was on Twitter screaming at the top of my lungs that if you're not an entrepreneur, then you are messing up because it's the only way to get financial freedom. It's the only way to get wealthy, man. I, I'm to the point now where I think 60 to 70% of humans are totally incompetent and they have no business starting their own company because this is not easy stuff. It's not easy stuff. But no, I think it's like you can do this in a very low risk way. Like a super low risk way. I have a, the, the most highly visited website on my OR page on my website is sweatystartup.com ideas where there's like 400 sweaty startups, like boring business ideas like concrete, concrete washing, window washing. You just go down the list. Find a way to trade your time for money on the side. Like if you have a job, if you have things going on, find a way to trade your time for money on the side. Stop studying scale, stop studying marketing, stop studying building, you know, massive companies and organizational structure. Go trade your time for 50 or 100 bucks an hour until you run out of time and then hire somebody and then just grow your business over the course of five or ten years.
- [25:53]
A
Yeah, that's so good. And you know, kind of link back to what we just talked about a minute ago. Like the bar is very, I feel like the bar is very low in most businesses. Meaning like, most like for example, if you're a contractor and you're doing tile work and you answer your phone, you show up on time, you're in the top 10% just by answering your phone and showing up on time. And if you're in the, if you're in any trade, any business, pretty much if you answer your phone and show up on time, you're automatically, you don't have to have the fancy stuff and like the, the AI voice activated calling thing that schedules. Yeah, that's cool. You can dial in later on but like answer your phone, show up on time and like every time you get in the top 10%, every time you.
- [26:30]
C
Get busy, raise your prices. Yeah, yeah, you build a really, really good life that way. Really good life.
- [26:36]
A
Yeah. But it's way more sexy to talk about, hey, I went and raised $10 million and then we have a Runway and we got to be able to achieve that, hit that Runway. And then we don't and we run out of money, we shut down, we try it again. Maybe, and maybe they never recover from that. Versus like would you generally then advise, don't raise money in the beginning because I know you've raised money as well. So where does the money raising come in? When should somebody go out and do that? The, the more fun capital raising.
- [27:01]
C
I think raising money, raising money in a traditional private equity way is not an unheard of new business. And it's actually private equity is the best business in the world in my opinion. If you do it right, raising money on a idea that is not proven, that you're going to need two or three years to get cash flow coming in. I hate it. I hate everything about it. Yeah.
- [27:21]
B
And you're so. I've just from following you on Twitter, reading about you. You're a huge cash flow guy. You focus on cash flow way more than net worth. And, and so like even in your. How many businesses do you own right now?
- [27:35]
C
Three main businesses.
- [27:36]
B
Three main business.
- [27:37]
C
There's a power law. Like I, I have 11 businesses, but the top three are like the ones that are clearly going to grow. It's bolt storage somewhere.com, the recruiting business, which I bought middle of last year, early last year. And then a company called Re Cost Seg, which does cost. Like studies. You guys know that game? Yeah, it's growing really fast.
- [27:57]
A
I want to talk about, I want to talk about all three of those things, but can't keep going.
- [28:01]
B
Yeah, well, I was just going to say so like when you're, when you're underwriting those deals, when you're looking at them, I've got buddies that own companies that don't care at all about cash flow. They're just trying to get their, their revenue up and they're looking for an exit at some point. Like what, what are you looking for when you're, when you're looking at that for storage?
- [28:18]
C
Yeah, I'm looking to, I'm looking to get a 6 to 8% cash on cash year one and then grow from there with good management. That's what I'm looking for. And it's the one. The 1% rule applies almost directly to storage. Something's doing 10 grand a month. You can pay a million bucks for it. And you can if you're going to manage it pretty well and it's not in a super high tax area or you're not going to get 7ft of snow every month. Like it's going to do really well.
- [28:40]
A
Business.
- [28:41]
C
Yeah, man. Like my whole game is to find good businesses and my strategy is to hire people from all over the world to kind of lower costs so I can have more cash flow.
- [28:50]
A
I want to, I want to Talk about that as well first if somebody's trying to get cash flow, I'm curious your perspective on this. I'm a real estate guy more than I'm a business guy but I got both. I'm same with you. If you had to choose for cash flow like quit your job cash flow as soon as possible real estate or small business.
- [29:09]
C
So my I would ask one question to determine which of those two answers are you. Do you know a lot of wealthy people? If you know a lot of wealthy people, real estate is a great business because you can raise money, you can charge fees, you can get a chunk, you can get a chunk of the upside in the promote in the management fees. You can build a great company. But if you have nowhere to like real estate is the most capital intensive business in the world. That's why I love owning two businesses that print money and one business that just eats money and saves me taxes. Like so yeah I think Bolt storage is my long term almost like my venture capital play where the majority of my net worth is in this thing is the majority of my cash flow is now majority of my cash flow comes from somewhere.com and recall for sure.
- [29:54]
A
Yeah same with me. I think the majority of my income these days comes from like the cash flow comes from like first deal or not better life because that's a charity but some from the 50 and book royalties like I love, I love all that stuff because that pays the bills and it makes it I don't have to take a salary from my, my open door capital but that's the you know the billion dollar portfolio that I'm just going to keep building. And yeah my investors get most of that because I'm raising capital for it.
- [30:16]
C
But so my answer would be, my answer would be like real estate 10 years is 10 years is the, the thing that does the diff is the difference like well manage your property for 10 years. Unbelievable things happen. Yep. Small business six months can be a total game changer and you can go from 1,000amonth to 10,000amonth or 10,000 to 50,000. So the quicker way to make cash flow is definitely small business in my opinion.
- [30:40]
A
Yeah, I agree. And then there's of course the balance of like Cam here who combine the two together. So like flipping or wholesaling is the kind of the sweet spot of both. If you're good at business and you run a business that happens to transact in buying and selling houses quickly, you can make a lot of money right away. I mean Cam, your first year you did what, a million bucks in profit or something like that?
- [30:58]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [30:58]
C
It was a good first year.
- [30:59]
A
Yeah.
- [31:01]
C
My favorite type of entrepreneurship is like, that stuff that leads directly into real estate, property management, brokerage. Like, I love both of those businesses because they go directly into, you know, getting equity.
- [31:16]
A
Yeah.
- [31:17]
B
So. And you were saying before we started recording that your team, most of your team is in South Africa. I know that you own a virtual assistant company. And. And I'm so fascinated by that, because we're right now looking for a CFO in our company. I don't want to pay somebody 100 grand a year to be our CFO, but that's what it looks like we have to do. And so I want to get your take, because I. I think that VAs can change the face of a business. Like, right now, my executive assistant is a VA and is amazing. And so, like, talk to me about how you use VAs to help run your company and really valuable situation or v. Valuable roles as well.
- [31:55]
C
Well, I'll just put in perspective. I just hired a CFO in South Africa for 4, $800 a month. Yeah. And he spent four years of his career getting on an airplane and flying to New York City and doing audit for Price Waterhouse Cooper in New York City.
- [32:11]
B
So, yeah, like what I'm looking at.
- [32:14]
C
Everybody thinks virtual assistant, but my head of sales, my. My chief revenue officer somewhere is South Africa. South African. My full sales team. Everybody except for my head of acquisition. Like, if you. If we go to my real estate company, I have a head of finance in America. He is an extension to me because he's running our private equity deals. He's saying yes or no. He's doing investor relations. But his right hand is in South Africa. His two analysts. One is in Egypt. Two are in Colombia. South. South, South America. We have a head of acquisitions in America and four cold callers in South Africa. They have a smooth accent. Um, it's very, very approachable. And then my management company is almost all based in Colombia. My sales. I sell units. My sales team is in South Africa and the Philippines, but my operations team is in Colombia. They speak Spanish. They're dealing with all my vendors, dealing with all maintenance requests, like paying all the bills, managing my property. So 50 employees at my property management and private equity company. My annual overhead is 1.3 million a year, whereas the private equity firm that's doing what I do in Atlanta with an office is spending five or six million dollars a year.
- [33:17]
A
Yeah.
- [33:18]
C
So it is. It's just. And frankly, we would not have been able to survive the last two years of real estate. Tough, you know, tough market with, with 5 million a year of overhead. We just want to be able to do it. Yeah.
- [33:33]
A
Go ahead, Go ahead.
- [33:34]
B
You go ahead. So this is something that I'm interested in because my company is all remote, or at least I'm remote. How do you keep strong, like company culture?
- [33:43]
C
Look, you reward your high performers, man, these people are killers. I to keep the high, to keep a strong company culture. For me, it's like keep giving my high performers more exciting stuff to do. More decisions, cut the low performers and make decisions really fast. Like if you make decisions slow and you keep C players around, like you're going to watch your A players walk away. So like, when it comes, when it comes to company culture, you have an option. Fire your C players or watch your A players walk away. So my high performers love that mentality because they don't have to work with incompetent people. At most companies you do. And I as a boss and a leader, make decisions quickly to make their life and job easier. And frankly, we're just phenomenally ambitious. Like, we're getting after it. We're doing a lot of fun things. So these guys are loving it, man.
- [34:31]
A
Why South Africa, man?
- [34:33]
C
Johannesburg is like the New York City of, of the world. It's. It's amazing. Like these, the culture there is unbelievable. There's, you know, British, Afrikaans accent. It's not, you know, English as a second language is almost everywhere in the world. Not South Africa. They speak English, you know, as, as kids. So management talent, like there's some big companies there. They do a lot of remote work into London, Germany, even the United States. So I think for sales and finance and executive like rev ops, like, you know, HubSpot work, like building out acquisitions like method. South Africa has been unbelievable. But there's strengths in any area like a $750 analyst, $750 a month analyst who can work magic in Microsoft Excel in Cairo, Egypt, because an apartment is 50 bucks a month in Cairo, Egypt. We'll go to Poland and Serbia for development. If we're doing some software stuff, we'll go to Latin America for almost all construction stuff. Architects, civilization, project management, design. So every place in the world has its strengths, but people think VA and man, it's like executive, executive level talent overseas. Yeah.
- [35:41]
A
How do you find talent? What is your secret to finding and hiring, you know, and attracting the best people? Is it a series of tests or.
- [35:48]
C
What do you do somewhere? You mean like when we're hiring internationally.
- [35:52]
A
Yeah, yeah. You want to hire internationally. You can't get. You can't sit down with them, you know, for a beer and chat with them. So how do you. How do you know they're. They're a. A players?
- [35:59]
C
I'll put it in perspective. We get 50,000 applicants a month@ somewhere.com. we give them all. The first thing we do is give them a typing assessment. And 90% of them can't type over 35 words per minute. And you can't work a remote job. You're totally incompetent. So we sort our entire occupant pool on typing speed and we call and we work the top. Like, it's very rare to find somebody in Colombia, for example, where they speak Spanish, you type 70 words per minute. They're likely a total badass. We're going to find them a job easy. But, yeah, then it's a screening call. Then it's, you know, a lot of work to get to that. We place 200 people a month. 5,50,000 applicants. We place 200 people a Month. So it is a. It is a ton of work. I think of our placed people of our 200 last month, 50% came from referrals. So people who had. We had hired in the past or our outreach on LinkedIn. The other half, it was split between applicants on LinkedIn. Indeed. And then ads that were running on social media. Was it last? Like 20%. So, man, it's a hard game. But if you're going to hire and you don't want to pay a recruiter, you can use somewhere.com. you can go post a job on LinkedIn. You're going to get 300 applicants. Make sure you get them all. A typing test first.
- [37:17]
A
Yeah, that's such a good tip. Yeah, I'd not heard that before, but that's.
- [37:20]
C
I do it for American. Like, I do it for all hires at all at all of my companies.
- [37:24]
A
Because typing, there's a story I tell often. And she probably has heard me tell it, and I feel bad, but, Tracy, I love you. But when I first hired my very first assistant ever, I set her up on a. I set her up in a new office. My first assistant, I was like 28 or 29, and I give her this Big Mac computer and I set it all up for her. And I meet her at the office. I'm doing training. I'm like, all right, go to your desktop. And she goes, what's a desktop? I was like, it's like the computer, the screen. She's like, okay, where all the icons are. And she goes, okay, what's an icon? And I was like, oh no. I was like, have you ever used a computer before? The answer was no. She had never used a computer in her life. And I hired to be my digital assistant, like my online virtual, you know, assistant. That was a good lesson learned.
- [38:07]
C
Sure.
- [38:07]
B
She was a really nice lady though.
- [38:09]
A
She was so nice. Yeah. What we ended up actually doing is funny. It was eight years. Yeah, it was, it was eight years ago. So I was 32 almost. And because it was right when Rosie or Heather was pregnant with Rosie and so we ended up having her put together all the baby furniture and take care of our house and what like I shifted her role to like personal assistant.
- [38:25]
C
Yeah.
- [38:25]
A
And she crushed it at that until I moved to Hawaii.
- [38:28]
C
But once you have somebody you're about to hire, once you have somebody you're about to hire, make them do an assessment. If it's paid, like if it's an analyst, have them show you a discount cash flow model they built. Have them show you a Power Bi model they build. If it's a salesperson, send them four of your team's sales calls is what we do in storage. Send them four of your team sales calls and ask them to record a two minute video on each, critiquing them on missed opportunities, you know, so on and so forth so you get a preview of the work that they're going to do. You can do this in almost any field. You name a specialty. I'll tell you like a very simple three or four hour assessment that you can have them do. But it's so, it's so worth it. Just saves so much headache.
- [39:06]
A
I got a per personal question that probably doesn't apply to anybody listening to the podcast, but I'll ask you it. So I need a marketing like a CMO probably. Like somebody that's like I, I have like a dozen companies, like three or four main ones, right. Maybe five like main ones. Everything from the big real estate to education companies to my mortgage company. And it's all tied to the Brandon Turner brand, like on, through Instagram or through social media. So I need somebody to oversee all of it, like at a very high level that really understands it. That's, that's an expensive, expensive, expensive job in the US Like I, I don't want to pay. And I, yeah, I mean, I know that role pays for itself, they say, but like I don't want to pay half a million dollars for like a, you know, Fortune 500 level C suite.
- [39:43]
C
Yeah.
- [39:44]
A
Can I hire that person overseas?
- [39:45]
C
Yeah.
- [39:46]
A
Do you think I get that?
- [39:47]
C
I would, I would target Portugal, Thailand and South Africa and I would call it a cmo. Do you need, do you need a performance marketer by trade or would you need somebody who's like I love hiring people who started out in like ads.
- [40:00]
A
Yeah, me too. I think that's what I'd want. Yeah.
- [40:03]
C
And work. I, I'd, I'd find a performance manager by trade in South Africa who's got 10 years of experience growing brands and companies.
- [40:12]
A
Okay. Yeah. I don't know why I never thought about it.
- [40:15]
C
5 to 7k a month probably for somebody really good because like you said like these folks are very, very valuable to companies.
- [40:21]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't mind paying for it but yeah. When I'm looking at like what that level is in the U.S. it's just absurd. And I'm like well maybe I'm just shooting too high but I'm like no, I need.
- [40:31]
C
Sales is another one. Sales is another one. That's so frustrating. We tried to hire a US based salesperson and like 90k comp then next thing you know they're in California so you're going to have you know, FICA is going to eat, you know, be another 20K. You can't fire them if they're in California. Then that comes in negotiation. They want full benefit package. They want to accelerator on their bonus. They want to make 250k all in. And you're, before you know it you're just like holy cow, I can get somebody, I can get somebody for three grand a month in South Africa who's done five grand ticket B2B software sales. Like why, why would I hire anywhere else?
- [41:03]
A
Such a good idea. Yeah.
- [41:06]
B
We in our education company, we've used some salespeople from South Africa and they've been amazing especially because they're, they're, their English is perfect and they do not want anywhere near what somebody in the United States. I feel like people in the United States right now that they're, they're all asking for 120 plus which is ridiculous because five years ago I was making $40,000 a year. I'm like, that's like 120 plus is just like going right now.
- [41:36]
C
If anybody wants to see profiles. If you're listening, I don't want to throw in the sales pitch here but you can email me nick startup.com Happy, happy to tell you more about how somewhere works but yeah man, you can do this yourself. Too. Like open a job on LinkedIn, get a bunch of applicants, try to find somebody great. Like they're out there.
- [41:51]
A
Yeah, Wild man. Hey, well, let's talk about somewhere the actual process of buying that business. I mean, that was a, that was a hefty purchase, right?
- [41:58]
C
Yeah. It was a deal that I was not ready for. It was a deal that I was insecure about. It's a deal that was stressful and still stressful just because of the size and scale. And I feel like when opportunities come to you in life, you're never going to have permission and you're never going to feel like you're perfectly ready. So it was, it was fall of 2023. The business was really growing. It had doubled the previous, you know, eight month period. It had doubled in size. 800K a month of cash flow, probably. That's what it was. Yeah. An offer. An offer comes in and my partner, the majority owner, calls me and says, nick, I want to. I'm thinking about selling 51 of the company. Like, would you want to sell half your Shares? I own 15 at the time. I'm like, okay, hold on, 52 million or 47 million divided by damn, I could make like three and a half million bucks. But something told me that like, hey man, like, you're not going to run across a business like this ever again. And it's a business that I think could be a massive, like $250 million revenue company. So over the next, over the next month and a half, I convinced Marshall to sell the company to me instead and structured a deal where I had a 39.25% of the company was was purchased in a private equity tranche with a 20% promote. I raised 20 million bucks from a bunch of investors, 39 people. And then an 18 seller note was directly to me with Marsh, between me and Marshall. And I already owned 12.75%, so I kind of con. I control 70% of the company today.
- [43:25]
A
Wow. What lessons have you learned in the process? Like now that's a, it's different than, much different than self storage. So what have you learned about getting into that world of an online business like that?
- [43:34]
C
Yeah, look, entrepreneurship, it's not freaking easy, man. They're stressful things. The company's grown. Revenue's up 40% since I acquired the company. So that can, that can make a lot of things go easier. But there's a, there's a natural trial. We rebranded. So our SEO got demolished. We changed our name from some Support shepherd to somewhere.com it's just now starting to really come back. We've rebuilt the sales team, we've rebuilt the recruiting team. We've rebuilt how we source and how we screen candidates. So, yeah, when you. When you raise $20 million from people and it's an operating company where revenue can be 1.6 million in the next month, it can be 1.25, and expenses are going to stay where they are. Whole new ball game, I'll tell you that.
- [44:14]
A
Yeah. What was the difference between raising money? I've raised a lot of money for real estate deals. Was that same process pretty much, or was it. Is it totally different? Like, what's the difference?
- [44:22]
C
The cash definitely calls the shots in business because there's more risk. Like, there's no tangible asset on the ground. There's no typical model on how things work. There's the 2 and 20 is a typical private equity carry model. I thought I could get fancy and get a higher promote than 20%, because in my early storage deals, we were able to get a 35, 40, 50% promote on some really hefty deals. Like, guys, this is a home run. We're buying it at five times earnings. Why can't you give me a 30% promote? Turns out people with millions of dollars who buy companies understand that it's a risky game. So, yeah, I got it worked out so that if the business does grow, I think so far I've paid back my investors in a year, 15. 15 of the money that they gave me. But, yeah, if it, if it goes well, if the company really grows, I'll own. I'll own about 38% of it is the end goal.
- [45:14]
A
Beautiful, man. That's fun.
- [45:16]
B
That's incredible. And so how did you. Did you start that company with Marshall or was. Did you buy into that at some point?
- [45:22]
C
So Marshall started it. A year in, I became the a customer. I hired three Filipino reps to change my life. That was 2020, late 2020. And then I became a affiliate and I started talking about it. And then a year after that, in 2022, April, I bought in at a minority stake, 15%, and then bought the rest of the business, unfortunately, when it was much, much larger. Year and a half.
- [45:45]
B
Yeah, that's. That's amazing. Yeah, I, I know we ran into Marshall because he owned a Hotel in St. Louis.
- [45:52]
C
There was.
- [45:53]
B
And so, um, but that. That company was. Company that you bought now is incredible. Um, been following along with it for. For a long time now.
- [46:02]
C
So appreciate it. It's. It. It all looks incredible on the Outside and I'm, I'm happy I did the deal. But man, running a business is stressful. It's humbling. It's a roller coaster. Yeah.
- [46:13]
A
How do you, how do you personally. Couple questions around that. How are you managing your companies specifically? Like how do you manage your time, your company, how do you pick which one you put your focus on? And then I'd love to dig into some of the kind of the organizational structure you have with them and how do you keep your head on straight?
- [46:28]
C
Yeah, so there's every team from Re cost seg is also growing really fast. We're going to have our million dollar first million dollar month of revenue soon. Which is unbelievable for a company that's, you know, less than three years old. Every company has the sales team, the delivery team and the operations on the back. Right. And then there's marketing and other things. But I go in with each head of each business and I say, hey, what is the simplest thing we can do right now to make the sales team better? What's the simplest thing we can do? And we set it as a priority, we agree on it and then we get to work and I help where needed and if. And so basically it's just going through every branch of the company and picking the lowest hanging fruit and picking it up and just doing that and doing that over and over and over again. But we iterate like we iterate really, really fast in the last year we've hired 70 people and let go about 45 people somewhere in the last year. So like when we see that like something's working, we're going to double down, we're going to get after it. We're going to do better at performance management. We're going to figure out who's our top performers and give them raises. A lot going on in the storage business. It's very recently we moved our call center, our storage leasing team from just like a taking orders approach in the Philippines to an actual sales function where somebody calls in from a unit, we're gonna have the ability to discount on the phone. We're gonna take it, we're gonna train people as a sales team. We hired a head of sales in South Africa three or four months ago. It's been the best hire we've made already and watch the conversion rate go up. We have all of our facilities like based on occupancy, like red, yellow, green, the red ones. Like our reps are going to do anything they can to get people in the door by discounting off our rent credits. They have all this stuff up their sleeves. They're like turn into true salespeople. And that's been, that's made like our, our occupancy is up 11% year over year. So yeah, like little. I pick up the lowest hanging fruit in each division of each company, but my head's in a lot of places for sure.
- [48:24]
B
How do you find time for that? Because I've got, I've got four companies right now and I feel like. And none of them are anywhere near the size of yours, but I feel like every single one, when I commit time, like when I'm like, oh, there's a fire in this company, I commit time to that. Then there's three, there's fires in all three other companies and then I'm like, got to put out this fire in this fire. And then the company that I was putting all my time towards is now falling apart and it's so stressful and I feel like in my opinion, I got into this, I am on Twitter and social media. I see all these ultra wealthy people. They're like, you have to have multiple streams of income. So I'm like, I'm going to open up multiple different businesses and I'm going to be like that cool guy. And I'm looking back on, I'm like, I did that too quick. Where it was like I needed to build one company and it be incredibly healthy before I stepped out of it, but now I'm past that point. And so like how do you manage your time to, to grow all of your companies? They said you have 11 of them and three that are, yeah, really focused on.
- [49:22]
C
It's, it's delegation and I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty and tell people what to do. So if I see a change I want to make, like instantly. If I see a change I want to make, it's my job. It's my job. I go in and do it like, hey, hey, outbound sales team, like, let's get on a call. I'm going to make 20 cold calls right now in front of you guys. We're going to go over this script. Then it's our job. Then my head of sales, like, okay, we got this. Then I check back a week later and if they got it, I move on. Now it's your job. If they don't have it like, okay, let's have another meeting. Like, let's do this again. Let's change something else. It's not working. So like when you hire internationally and you can find phenomenal talent for 3 to 5k a month. Like, it's easier and less stressful to build that team around me to take some stress off myself. But, man, yeah, it comes at you. How do you.
- [50:04]
A
On that note, so I, I, I deal with this problem continually in my companies now where I'm not the smartest one, where, I mean, like, they're all just way better than me, than almost everything, which is a good place to be at. Right? But then I don't know how to help my people. Like, I can't sit there and be like, let's do cold calls. Because I'm just not as good as they are at cold calls. I can't get help my marketing guys, my sales guys, because everybody's just better than me at this point. How do you help people when you don't know what to do? When I can't physically help them?
- [50:27]
C
Yeah. There's a lot of times where there's no clear answer. We have to figure it out. And we sit in a meeting and we're like, all right, guys, nobody knows what's going on here. We're all in over our head. Maybe it's everything's on fire. Like Cam was talking about. When things are falling apart and you're like, we don't know what to do, let's talk about the options. Let's agree on one to go forward with and then let's enact it. But yeah, many, many times, I'm not the guy who's in the trenches because I do have some really competent management. You have to have competent decision makers. I think there's, there's two levels of delegation. There's delegating tasks, which is just telling somebody what to do. That's the easy part. You can actually get wealthy doing that. Like, you can. I know people who run here in town, who run big companies, multi millions of dollars, 10 employees, where every decision comes to them, every single decision. Then there's delegating decisions, which is harder. But when you can start delegating decisions, like what happened to me a couple weeks ago in an all hands meeting. I wish this would have happened earlier so I could have put it in my book. I was on a. I was on all hands call with my operating team and my storage facility, and they start talking about the collapse. Oh, yeah, the collapse is, you know, we got the roof back on, Two of our tenants are in. We're, you know, remodeling the last two units. And I'm like, hold on, guys. The collapse? And they're like, oh, yeah, Nick. Thanksgiving, Erie, Pennsylvania got like four feet of snow and our entire front, our entire retail, like the roof collapsed. And I'm like, why, why didn't I know this? And they're like, well, if we would have told you, it would have ruined your Thanksgiving and you would have been a giant pain in our ass. Yeah. So sometimes, sometimes your team can handle stuff, but I have enough trust with that individual that I trusted him to handle it. Yeah.
- [52:07]
A
Yeah. It's beautiful. It's a good spot to get to.
- [52:09]
C
Yeah.
- [52:10]
B
Amazing. Well, hey, I also want to know just with. Because you're a family man, Correct. Do you have, you have kids?
- [52:16]
C
Yeah, man. It's the most important, it's the most important thing for me. It's like the, the most important. Like my North Star, my life goal is to be 80 years old and three things, really. Be able to walk 18 holes of golf with a back with a, with my bag on. Be able to get on the ground with my great grandkids and play like on the ground. Never seen any of my grandparents get on the ground. And then I want to be sitting in a leather chair in a big ass house with my son in laws, my daughter in laws, my daughters, my sons and all their kids. And I just want it to be madness. Like, that is a life well lived for me.
- [52:51]
B
That's amazing. Yeah, we just, we just bought, actually I bought Brandon's old house here. Spent way too much money on it.
- [52:58]
A
But one of totally ripped it off.
- [53:01]
B
One of the reasons when we did that was I, I remember sitting on the lanai overlooking the ocean and we've got three kids with, my wife's pregnant with two more. So we'll have five kids. And I'm like, imagine 50 years from now, like our kids are gonna have kids that are teenagers. Not even 50, 30 years from now and we're gonna have, we're gonna have 20 grandkids running around our kids. Like how magical and incredible that it gives me chills just thinking about it. Like, it will be the coolest moment. I, I, I'm just designing my life for that moment right now. And I'm so excited about it. And tell me with, with the, the burden that you carry with running businesses and, and dealing with multi, multi, millions of dollars, investors, money, like that's a heavy, heavy burden. How do you not bring that into the home and bring that into being a father and a husband? Like, how do you, how do you compartmentalize?
- [53:58]
C
I guess I'll tell you that I wish I was better at it and there's times when, like, this game humbles you, man. Like, the reason why we love business is because it can be really fun when you're winning. And I'm really proud of a lot of things that I've accomplished. But I would lie to you if, you know, in 2017, when a warehouse flooded or we didn't have a roof on yet on these builds, or I needed to go back to the bank for another half million bucks, and I was. I was, like, shaken as a man because our identity is tied up in what we do and how we make money. Where I didn't come home and I curl up in a little ball in my bed and I just start crying to my wife. Yeah. Like, so how do you. How do you compartmentalize it? You get better at it. And I think it's a muscle, honestly. Like, I just. I just have gotten better over the years at dealing with stress. The numbers have gotten larger, but it all feels the same. Like, the initial first car accident that one of my drivers had when I didn't have the money to pay for the damage he did. Feels the same to me now as, you know, a stressful month when you have. When you raise $20 million and you got a bunch of other people's money. But, yeah, look, I'm. I'm so passionate about children and family. Like, everybody I know over the age of 50 and most people I know over the age of 40, all they care about is their kids and their grandkids. So, yeah, I'm more and more of my writing and, you know, message has been around trying to convince people to have kids because I think it's just a disaster what's happening in these cities with people wait until they're 35, 40 years old to get serious about it.
- [55:21]
A
Yeah, most. Most young people I know now don't want kids. Like, people in their 20s, almost all of them that I'm friends with don't want kids. And I'm like, that's just wild to me. Like, what. How does civilization survive when nobody wants children anymore?
- [55:32]
C
It's just.
- [55:34]
B
But also, you miss out on so much. And. And I know that there's going to be people that are listening to this that have decided they're not going to have kids and they're gonna.
- [55:42]
C
They.
- [55:42]
B
They want to make a bunch of money, they want to travel, and that's fun for a night, for a month, but kids have been the most. It's given my life purpose in every action, purpose in my life. And. And it is like, I just I don't know. I have kids, so it's, it's different for me, but I can't imagine having fulfilling life without kids. And that sounds, people will get mad about hearing that, but I can't imagine not having kids.
- [56:10]
C
I totally agree with you. It is the most important thing.
- [56:15]
A
Hey, Nick, if you could only pass down, like, three core, we'll call them like principles to your children about life and success and money, what would you want them to be like? Yeah, I know this principle for my dad.
- [56:27]
C
Yeah. I would want them to have that irrational confidence as a young person in their career, because that got me so far. Like, I know a lot of people who make amazing money just simply because they're not insecure. So if I can raise them to be confident, my, like, I know a lot of really dumb people who make a lot an absurd amount of money simply because they're not insecure and they don't care what people think.
- [56:49]
A
Yeah.
- [56:49]
C
So if I can pass on that confidence to my kids while also passing on humility and the ability to, like, look at things rationally and admit when they're wrong and not be a, a jerk. Because there's a lot of things to balance with, like having means and the travel and the things that we do. When you're trying to raise really good kids and then to change. They can change their mind often and kind of see the world logically. That'd be amazing.
- [57:16]
B
That's amazing.
- [57:16]
A
How do you keep. How are you keeping your kids from getting spoiled? And cam, I'll ask you the same question afterwards, but how do you keep your kids now? Your kids are raised rich, just like mine are, and just like cams are, how do we keep getting spoiled?
- [57:26]
C
I spend a lot of time talking to people about this. I, I, I. Because I've met a lot of very wealthy people in the last five years of my online journey, and some of them have really amazing kids. Amazing kids. Kids that you would never know. They grew up in a $20 million house and with a, you know, a G5 at the airport. So I asked him, like, hey, how did you raise good kids? Because I also see kids who think they're rich in their town and turn into total because their, their dad can afford an Escalade.
- [57:55]
A
Yeah.
- [57:55]
C
Yeah. How, how, what's, what's different? And the theme is that there's a, there's a, there's a habit and a, and a natural ability of parents, a natural desire to, like, protect the kids from every bit of pain. Protect them, put them in a bubble and don't hold them accountable for their mistakes and their actions. Because the truth is that life is really hard, Business is really hard, career is really hard for anybody, for anybody. No matter how wealthy you are, you're going to get sick at the wrong time, something's going to get messed up, you're going to have business stress, you're going to have relationship stress, your physical body is going to fall apart over time. Life is really hard. If you can't struggle with grace and like build that muscle of dealing with hard things, then you're never going to, you're never going to hack it. So for me it's like having my little 5 year old and 7 year old start to make some low consequence decisions, start to make some low consequence decisions, ride their bike without their helmet for a few minutes, fall. And when they, when they fall and they crash, I'm not going to go, I'm not going to run over there and protect them and hold them in a bubble. So that's, that's maybe a poor example. I thought of it off the top of my head. But if you can teach these kids to struggle with grace, like hold them accountable for what they decide to do, let them practice making decisions when they're low risk decisions, you can raise kids who just have, have taken their knocks and they're a lot stronger for it. Yeah, I love that.
- [59:14]
B
That's good. Yeah. I think with, with us it kind of goes back to like extreme ownership. As a, as a parent knowing that, that I have a responsibility to raise my kids not my, the school teachers, not nanny it like it is my responsibility. And I, I truly. This, this might sound really dumb, but I don't, I don't worry about that because I know me and Lexi and we are. I, I drive a 1993 Ford F150 that like I, right now I am wearing a nice shirt, but I'm wearing sweatpants and Crocs like that. I am wearing pants today, but pants and Crocs underneath, underneath this nice shirt. Like it's just who I am. And, and I think that for me it's, it's just about quality time. Spending quality like letting them see me love other people the way that, that I treat other people the way that I spend money. Lexi and I are not frivolous. We're not like we will spend money on, but we're not don't buy the nicest things. And, and, and when they want something, I'm never just buying them something. They have to work for it. And and so.
- [60:26]
C
So it's.
- [60:26]
B
It's one of those things where it's like, I know I. I probably should have, like, a strategic game plan for that, but really, it's like, you're doing that. I just want them to spend quality time with me and Lexi because I know me and Lexi are doing it right. For the most part, we. We still fail and mess up, but as long as we can just be, like, the. The person in their life that they look up to, and we're their heroes. And. And. And part of that's Lexi and I having a loving relationship and treating each other well. And. But as long as we can do that, like, I'm not worried about my kids in that. That aspect.
- [60:58]
C
Yeah. One of the best. One of the most common ways to raise insecure kids is like, the. The father not treating the wife really, really, really well. Brandon, you got a riff on it too, man, because I know you've thought a lot about this. We both. We both gave our go. Like, how are you raising good kids?
- [61:14]
A
Yeah, I mean, I'm not. They're just gonna be horrible. Little human. Yeah, No, I think. I know this is gonna sound just, like, mean, right? But I know I'll even. I don't swear on podcasts very much, but I know little kids who are raised by poor families, and I know little kids are raised by rich families, and I do not see a common thread other than just the parents not being close to their kids. That's the only. That's the only common thread is, are parents close to their kids? Are they raising them themselves, or are they just letting the. The iPad raise them? Or, you know, back in the day, the TV raised them. So I think anytime you look at, yeah, spoiled kids, they're spoiled kids that are on welfare, and they're spoiled kids that have a, you know, private jet. Spoiling is a heart issue and not a dollar amount issue. So I'm just trying to be, like. Just like you guys said, intentional about being with my kids, raising my kids, giving them rules that even though I don't want to, even though it'd be easier to not fight about the screen time and the iPad and the amount of time they're on it and knowing it's going to cause a meltdown, it's saying, I'm going to do the hard thing. And now, so that they don't have to do the hard thing for the next 60 years of their life, I'm going to instill those boundaries and those rules and try to teach them the power of ownership. Plus most of those things, the ownership, the how you treat one another, the empathy, the stuff that we want them to have. You can't teach that anything. It's caught, not taught. Right. So they're gonna catch it. Just like you said, when you're, when you're honoring your wife and you're, you're dating her purposefully. When I come home every day, like, I immediately go. And I learned this from actually somebody on this podcast told me I've been doing ever since. When I come home, the first thing I do is I go to Heather and give her a kiss, like, hello, not the kids. Like, I walk right by the kids and I give Heather a hug and kiss and say, I'm so glad to see you. Now I go to the kids because I want them to see what like, true commitment and love is. You know, kids will be out of the house at some point. They'll be gone. They'll, you know, hopefully come visit, but they'll be gone. But I'll be with heather until I'm 100, until I die. And so like, she's the most important thing in my life and I want my kids to know that so they treat their significant other someday the same way.
- [63:12]
C
Yeah.
- [63:12]
B
And it goes back to that whole quote that money doesn't change who you are, it just reveals who you are. And so like I, I think that there's a lot of terrible people that have gotten rich and they're going to raise really terrible kids. But. And then the other thing that, that does. We both all, we've all touched on this, but I'm so passionate about it is like having an incredible relationship with your, with your spouse. Like, unfortunately, the statistics show that if you come from a broken home, like just there's, there's a way high, highly higher likelihood of. As an adult. Not. I'm not saying that everybody's like this, but, but there's just such a higher likelihood of things not working out for you when you're an adult. And so do you guys have daughters cherishing. And what, do you have daughters as well? Yeah, so I'll have four. Four daughters and, and one boy. Yeah. So right now it's two daughters and a boy. Yeah. But the other thing, every day I.
- [64:09]
C
Try to teach my daughter who she should pick in a husband by showing her how I treat my, my wife.
- [64:17]
A
Yeah.
- [64:18]
B
So do you have boys, girls?
- [64:20]
C
What's your. I have two boys, seven and five, and then a two year old girl.
- [64:23]
B
Okay, so you need to read heavy. Have. This is The Intentional Father by John Tyson. The best book I've ever read on being a parent. And it's for sons, but it translates to daughters as well, where like just being intentional with how you raise your kids. Being intentional talks a lot about this is, it's, it's actually a guy who's a Christian who wrote it, but he, he looked at the, the Mormon community and was like, Mormons, they just, there's. They're successful and they love people and they treat people well. And why is that? And Mormons have like a very structured way of raising their kids and different milestones. And he talks about like, even back hundreds of, if not thousands of years ago, as you raised your sons, there was different, like structured points throughout that process and we've kind of lost that where it's like, hey, go to school, come home from school and watch, watch YouTube and then we'll put you to bed. And there's not this intentionality behind like, I'm going to teach you how to be a man.
- [65:27]
C
I'm not.
- [65:28]
B
I'm going to teach you how to, to be a, a woman as you, as you grow up. And obviously that's. My wife knows way more about that with our daughters. But in, in reading this book was just mind blowing of. Here are the things that I want to impart on my kid by my son as he grows up. And how am I going to do that?
- [65:47]
C
Our kids, our kids learned how to use YouTube. So I think YouTube terrible. I think YouTube is terrible. Like, they had no, they had no attention span to want to read books. They had no attention span to like, want to go adventure with me and do some things already. And I'm like, all right, we're done with this. Yeah. Yeah.
- [66:01]
A
I was gonna ask you, what is your current screen time policy for the kids? It's something I'm juggling and I'm about to change up quite a bit.
- [66:06]
C
Yeah, we, we have to, you have to use it sometimes when it's madness. Right. You're cooking dinner, things are crazy. We have a little help around the house, but not all the time at all. So we, we stick to shows and we don't let them pick because YouTube, they'll find these shorts and their mind just starts to get tick tocked. It really starts to get tick tocked. And they don't want to read. My 7 year old's finally like reading chapter books and like liking it and looking forward to it, which I'm so excited about because I never did it as a kid and it held Me back in a lot of ways, like writing. But yeah, they watch shows, like full length shows that are more boring than the, Than the short. The short stuff.
- [66:42]
A
Yeah, yeah, I'm trying, I'm trying to do the same. The other day I said a stupid line to Heather, and it's so funny to say out loud, but I'll mock myself. I said, you know, if I had a magic wand, I would just get rid of all the TVs and tablets in our house. And she looked at me, she's like, you. You're literally in charge. You literally have that magic wand. You do that.
- [66:59]
C
I was like, video.
- [67:00]
A
You're right, actually.
- [67:01]
C
Video games, I think, are a total disaster on society, man. I really do.
- [67:05]
A
Yeah, I agree.
- [67:06]
C
Very, very, very anti video game.
- [67:09]
A
Yeah, me too. Yeah. And I see the trend with my son. I see how much he loves video games. Like right now it's Minecraft. Loves it. And I, I justify because I'm like, hey, it's like Legos. It's creative and it is, it's creative, it's learning, it's. It's community based. He does it with like his sister. And I love all that. But I'm like, I see the addiction already in him, like, to video games. And I'm like. And he. Now he's trying to, you know, move over to other games that his friends are playing. And I'm like, you're. You're five, you're not gonna go play Fortnite at five years old? He's like, but, you know, my cousin's doing it. I'm like. Because I see that addiction already.
- [67:42]
C
My goal, my goal is to keep them off of it long enough to where they're so far behind that they get discouraged when they start playing with their friends.
- [67:48]
A
Yeah, that was my life. Yeah.
- [67:50]
C
My oldest is seven. He. He doesn't have it yet. I'm. He's starting to ask for it, but we're not gonna allow it. We're just gonna push it off as long as possible. I didn't have a video game system in my house. And when I went to college, I played. I played Call of Duty for all of about seven minutes and got a headshot 17 times in a row. And I was like, I'm gonna go drink a beer. You guys have fun.
- [68:09]
A
I was always, Yeah, I was always a device previous. You know, it's like when the PS2 came out, I was still in the 64. I just got one. Like, it was just like always behind. So I was like the dumbest. Like, Least cool kid in school.
- [68:21]
C
And that worked out really well.
- [68:22]
A
Actually. I can't, I don't play video games. I just can't.
- [68:24]
B
Neither do I. Yeah, but I was like you, Nick, where I didn't, I didn't play video games growing up and I went to college and that was like when Modern Warfare, Call of Duty, Modern Warfare just came out and my friends would stay up till 4am playing it and I just, I was so bad at it, it wasn't fun for me. So I just never, I've, I've never played video games before in my life.
- [68:42]
C
Thank you, dad, for that. That's awesome.
- [68:44]
B
Yeah.
- [68:45]
A
Well, hey, so another question before we can maybe move on just about your home life as well. It's like, what is the, like the biggest lesson you've learned around building these businesses but also being a good husband? Like how do you treat your wife with the level of care and, and love and respect that she deserves when you're also focused on so many things at once? Like what are you doing that works.
- [69:02]
C
We, we have a phone policy where it's hard, but I shut my, I leave my. Downstairs is my, is my office. I leave my phone down here, I go up, I have dinner, I read some books with the kids, hang out and then once I put the kids to bed I come back down generally because shit's happening and I need to answer more emails or do whatever try to go on. We wife and I went on a walk today. We go on date night. We have a scheduled date night every week and we have a second date night where we generally hang out with friends or do something a little bit more social. So yeah, luckily I'm not totally obsessed. Like I can delegate well enough where I'm not stuck literally throwing down 80 hour weeks. Have some flexibility. Love to adventure, love to travel. But I wish, I wish that like it's really addicting, it's really addicting to not only have 400,000 people on X at your fingertips that you can send a message and then see how, see what everybody's thinking to then also, you know, making business decisions one day and watching the balance sheet, you know, get impacted a couple weeks later. Like these are really fun things I'm working on. So I'm, I'm a full on addict for sure. I, if you guys got advice for me, let me know.
- [70:11]
A
I'm working on it. I'm actually working on, on a screen time slowly. I don't need a 13th business or whatever in my life, but I'm slowly working on A. A screen time app that I think not even for a money reason. I'm like, I just want to make the perfect screen time app to help myself not be so addicted. So I'll tell you about that when I'm all done with it or at some point we'll talk about it.
- [70:30]
C
But it's your beta. I'll be your beta test.
- [70:33]
B
I. I did just. Just two days ago. Got the. The brick.
- [70:38]
C
Yeah.
- [70:38]
B
I'm interested to see if that'll work. Yeah.
- [70:40]
A
Yeah, I'm not using it.
- [70:41]
B
You said you don't use it, but I. I think it's.
- [70:44]
A
I ordered the new light phone, too, which comes out, like, soon, which is like a dumb phone, basically. Yeah.
- [70:49]
B
Well, then I got an idea. I'm gonna put it in my ohana. So then it's. It. It. Which isn't that far, but if I'm sitting there and I want to get on Instagram or something. Yeah, I have to walk.
- [70:59]
C
Yeah.
- [71:00]
B
All the way to the ohana and back. But. But. Hey, so, Nick, I want to. I want to talk for a second. I know we have to wrap up here soon, but. But about X. Because you have. Have figured out how to grow your ex really, really quickly and put out. What would you call it? Rage bait. Is that the word that you say? Or.
- [71:20]
C
I have a mental. I have a mental disorder in that if I can't understand how somebody on the other end of the world sitting on their couch, doing whatever they're wanting to do with their life, can look at something I wrote a couple hundred characters and get angry, it's amazing. So when that happens, I just can't help myself but push those buttons because I think it's so absurd. So absurd. I've never read anything on Twitter that, like, makes me angry enough to, like, say a bunch of crazy things, make myself look foolish. So I'm a pick. Like, I have a weird sense of humor. So some of the stuff I say is true, but just pisses a lot of people off as well. Like, I'll. I'll say that there's a lot of truth to what I'm saying. That's why people get angry. Like, I've never seen. I've yet to meet a competent person with blue hair. If you guys know anybody, I'd love to meet them.
- [72:13]
A
Dude, that's funny. Yeah. What?
- [72:17]
B
You had one this morning, which I actually agreed with. I agreed with where you talked about dads and that when the second, third baby comes, like, dads have it really, really rough, which is. Is. Is True.
- [72:29]
C
Yeah. You said baby.
- [72:32]
A
Just had a third baby three months ago.
- [72:33]
C
I made a tweet like, you.
- [72:34]
A
You.
- [72:34]
C
You marry a woman and, like, you are the center. Like, she's loving on you. And I wouldn't say, like, I make my wife serve me. I'm traditional in that way at all. But she's, like, attentive. Like, she'll think of what I need and I'll think of what she needs. And we, like, have this little flirty thing around the house. That first baby comes and then it's Nick, I'm. I care about this baby, and I'm going to do everything about the baby, and then I take care of her. And it was still so special. We were communicating, like, sharing it with each other. When the second baby comes, all bets are off. That first baby becomes yours and the wife and anybody in the whole house gives you absolutely no attention, which is fine. It's fine. But I made a tweet about it, and people are getting so upset. So upset.
- [73:16]
B
That's what.
- [73:18]
A
What is your. Yeah, what's your. What's your process or strategy look like for, you know, X or Twitter in case people don't know what we're talking about? Like, what. Yeah, do you have an idea? You just immediately write it? Like, are you refining it?
- [73:28]
C
I have a media team. I have, like, because I have two podcasts, I have the newsletter that goes out every week, and I have a lot of stuff I write with. And frankly, my team is kind of a substitute growth team on all my companies as well, which is funny. So I have a head of media and then four kind of assistants on my marketing team. So we post and we iterate and we have a schedule and we kind of run social media as you should. But, yeah, I do. I do a lot of messing around. Look, X is not the place to go to grow right now. Unfortunately, like, the algorithm has changed. It's really hard to get followers there. I still use it for news. Still use it for a lot of stuff. Short form video is the way that all my friends are still growing. So Twitter, Twitter. Like, I'm. I'm adding 50, 60 followers a day. I was adding 3, 000 followers a day in 2021. So it's a different, different ball game.
- [74:15]
A
Wild. All right, man. Well, we gotta start moving towards the end. We got the next segment of the show coming up next, and that is the three, two, one, pivot. So the idea. I like the word pivot, meaning your life's going one direction and something gets in its Way to make it just change direction, hopefully in a more positive way. So we'll talk about three books. Let's start with three books that have changed the direction of your life.
- [74:35]
C
So Entre Leadership by Dave Ramsey, I think is a phenomenal book. It's just street smart, to the point. Business advice, leadership advice, life advice, Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss is an amazing sales and negotiation book. Man. The third one, that's going to be a tough one. Can I come back to that? What's the second part? Sure.
- [74:57]
A
Once you think about it, does your subconscious.
- [74:59]
B
Yes. The second question is two pivot people who are two people that have changed the direction of your life.
- [75:06]
C
Yeah. That mentor, his name's Dan Cohen, who sat me down and, and told me what entrepreneurship really was. I'm super, super thankful for him. He's the one who told me about sales and that it's life and just told me a lot of other things I didn't want to hear at the time. And I'm glad he had the courage to, to try to break me and do that. And then, man, my dad. My dad just has this infectious energy. And he was never a business owner, he was never an equity owner, never had rental properties, but he just had that confidence and that energy to go after things. A lot of people will see an opportunity go by, and it's like a dog watching a ball go by. Some dogs just want to get up and get after it. Other dogs will just let it go because they're old and lazy. I had the energy to look at a little sweaty opportunity of putting boxes in my car, and it changed my whole life because I had the energy to get up and go do it. That came straight from my dad. So those are the. Those are the two people that come to mind.
- [76:06]
B
Very cool.
- [76:07]
A
What about a pivot quote? Like a quote that's changed your life or kind of you live by change.
- [76:12]
C
Your mind often it's on my. It's on my mirror when I brush my teeth. Because as you get better and you naturally have ego, you naturally have some confidence. And I am. I'm become more sure of myself. I know what I'm doing. I'm confident. It's very easy to ignore people who disagree with you. It's very easy to ignore information that contradicts the way you want things to be. And I know that really bad things can happen if I don't have an open mind. And I'm not willing to admit that I'm wrong. Listen to smart people around me. So every morning When I brush my teeth, I see. Change your mind often because guys like me who think I'm, think I'm really awesome. Get, get yourself in trouble.
- [76:56]
B
Yeah, that's good. Awesome. We'll move to the, the next part which is past, present, future. And so we're going to look at little parts of your life from each and so let's, let's talk about past first. If you could go back to 20 year old Nick, what is the one piece of it can be life, business. What is, what's the one piece of advice that you would give them?
- [77:16]
C
Yeah, don't try to get it all right now. Like too much ambition is not good for a 20 year old because you'll chase things that you're not prepared to chase. In my opinion. To succeed, I talk about this in my book. You need capital, you need cash. Fortunately, that's a big part of like growing a company, growing a real estate empire, doing whatever. You need a network. You can't grow a network if you don't bring anything to the table. And you need operational chops. You need to have skills, you need to know things. So the first couple career steps need to be about like gathering those, like do the hard work. I'm so lucky. I went into that sweaty startup and just grinded my nose against the, you know, the iron to learn how to manage people, how to delegate, how to make decisions. I built a network, I accumulated a little bit of capital so that five years later I was in a spot to build a storage facility. But if, if, like it would have been so easy for me to say, damn, five years, I ain't doing that. So I guess I'm just really blessed that I didn't think too big and didn't get caught up in the entrepreneur, you know, circus.
- [78:20]
A
Yeah, that's good man. What about like in the present? What's something you've done recently? It could be a habit, an action, a routine, a trip, something that's made your life a little better.
- [78:30]
C
I've gotten very serious about longevity. I still, I have a balanced approach. I'm not Brian Johnson. I still, yeah, have a glass of, I still have a glass of wine with my wife and I still, you know, do some things that aren't ideal but like little small tweaks to like knowing where all my hormones are and knowing what I can do to like increase decrease cardiovascular risk. Like as a man, Cardiovascular risk is 10 times cancer. Like 10 times more people die of heart attack and heart related issues than cancer. So if you're not if you haven't done a heart scan to, like, look in your heart. Brandon, are you almost 40?
- [79:07]
A
Yeah, I'll be 40 in a few months.
- [79:09]
C
Yeah. So have you had an image? Like, do you know what the arteries going in and out of your heart look like?
- [79:15]
A
I don't know.
- [79:16]
C
So. So this stuff happens to skinny people. It happens on. Based on genetics, it happens to fit people. Like, you can have a messed up valve, you can have a unique heart, and all of a sudden, when you're 55, you need a new valve or a bypass or a double bypass. So, like, really tracking the lipid panels and paying attention to the heart is really important to me.
- [79:36]
A
So my dad. My dad just had a triple bypass heart surgery through, like a week ago. Not even a week ago.
- [79:42]
C
That's really, you know, back.
- [79:44]
A
Yeah, it's my family, apparently, prayers for.
- [79:46]
C
You, but yes, it is absolutely in your family. And if you want to get serious about it, I have some resources for you. But I would love that. I did an executive health retreat, learned a lot. And then I've got fluoride out of my water and toothpaste. I've gotten, you know, plastics. I've gotten pretty serious about doing the 80. Like, like, look, took 80, 20 for all this. I'm not Brian Johnson, but there's some very, very simple things you can do to not ingest billions of plastic particles. Like put your kids in. Put your kids in cotton underwear. Get wool underwear for yourself if you sweat a lot. Cotton underwear if you don't. Like, don't use plastic and never get it hot. Don't use tea bags, because tea bags have billions of particles of. Of plastic. There's just like, very simple things that they don't tell you to do. And then I've gotten.
- [80:28]
A
I ran out of coffee today. I ran out of, like, all my. Just my actual coffee. And all I had left was my old Keurig. And I was, like, doing it. I'm like, I'm just drinking microplastics here. Oh.
- [80:36]
B
Like, just sometimes I'll run out of filters and I'll just use paper towel as a filter. I don't know if that work. That's given me.
- [80:45]
C
It works.
- [80:45]
B
I don't know.
- [80:46]
C
I'm sure.
- [80:46]
A
I'm sure that's not plastic.
- [80:47]
C
Yeah, it should be paper, but yeah, a lot of papers have plastic. And then there's. I think health in general is going to change a ton in the next five years. I have controversial views on vaccines and stuff like that, but, like, I'm very happy to be on the cutting edge of it. And I wish I would have done it a couple years earlier when my kids were even younger, but I'm feeling good. Yeah.
- [81:06]
B
What is. I'm so interested on this because I've been like, what is the first step? Is it just to go get your blood work done or like, what's. What's the first step for somebody that's like, hey, I want to start exploring this a little bit more.
- [81:17]
C
Yeah. You go on something like function health. I did Longevity Health Clinic was like a full on executive retreat in Colorado. You can basically just get your full panel that your PCP will fight with you and not do a lipid. A full liquid biopsy to tell if you have cancer is a thousand bucks. Your PCP will fight you to the death to get you to not do that because they think that for some reason it might cause a scare if you know you have cancer. Yep, it's a thousand bucks. Like, me and my wife do that every year. My parents do that every year. Her parents do that every year. Like, that's part of what I do now for people around me. But yeah, get. Get your full lipid panel with APOB so you can know where your heart is. Know where your test do you guys. Of course you guys know where your testosterone and estrogen and, you know, vitamin D and cortisol are and stuff like that. Track it every six months and stuff.
- [82:03]
A
I mean, I take the blood test. I got a health guy and I couldn't.
- [82:07]
C
Good.
- [82:07]
A
Like, I don't read it very well. So, like, I. I just tell. I'm like, he's like. He tells me what to do and what supplements to take, and I generally.
- [82:13]
C
Do it, but I have apo E7 or 4, which is like dementia dementias in my family. And it actually, like, this thing that I have, like, makes me 20 times more likely to get Alzheimer's. Oh, wow. So I'm on a very unique, you know, supplement range to, you know, get myself the right omegas and fish oils and precursors and stuff for that. But there's a lot to it.
- [82:39]
B
This is gonna sound so stupid, but sometimes I, like, I would love to do that, but I also would get so much anxiety knowing that I might have dementia when I'm 80 years old. I know that, like, you're taking steps to prevent that.
- [82:53]
C
Yeah, I thought that too. But, like, walking around knowing that I don't have cancer right now and walking around knowing that I'm doing everything I could be doing, like, just gives me an unbelievable Peace of mind, frankly. So that's what the PCP will tell you. Like, we don't want you to give you all these tests because if I had it, I wouldn't even want to know. And I'm like, that is. That is the. That is not the mindset of a builder and an entrepreneur. That's for sure. Yeah, yeah.
- [83:16]
A
Oh, it's all good. All right.
- [83:19]
B
I gotta get my blood test done again.
- [83:21]
A
Let's go do it together. Actually, one of my buddies in the 50, and we're joking, we might make a whole 50 event out of this. The 50 is like a high level mastermind. I run.
- [83:28]
B
Dude, an executive.
- [83:30]
A
Yeah. Like, for the whole.
- [83:31]
B
That would be sick.
- [83:32]
A
One of the guys just went to. I think it was. It wasn't Ukraine, but it might have been Poland or one of those places. It was, like, across the world, but it was like. It was like a thousand bucks for, like three days. And they do everything. I mean, blood and this. An MRI and this, like, this whole thing.
- [83:45]
C
Yep.
- [83:45]
B
Up.
- [83:45]
A
Yeah.
- [83:46]
C
Yeah, I got all. I got my whole body imaged. I got stem cells. I got. Yeah, obviously. Obviously all the blood work. But look, man, just like, getting my testosterone where it needs to be. I don't take testosterone either. With supplements and stuff like that. Getting my testosterone up and my estrogen down. Like, I was more stressed than ever the last year. Worked out less ate shittier. And I did a second. What's that thing you lay on and it figures out your full body composition?
- [84:10]
B
Yeah, DEXA scan.
- [84:12]
C
DEXA scan. I gained 5 pounds of muscle and lost 2 pounds of fat in one year.
- [84:17]
A
Wow, that's awesome.
- [84:21]
B
Incredible. All right, last question for you. So hopefully, especially with everything you're doing, you live to be 120 years old, but. But at some point, you're inevitably going to die and. And they're gonna have your funeral.
- [84:36]
C
Your.
- [84:36]
B
Your kids are gonna be there, your grandkids, your. Your friends, and they're gonna be talking about Nick and this life that he lived and the legacy that he's leaving behind. And what would you want people to be saying at that?
- [84:51]
C
I. Man, that's a deep one. I think the. Something I'm really proud of is I've had some very difficult conversations and very unfortunate situations with people who I've hired and worked with. Friends, family, and something. I'm like the one of the guys who stood up with me in my wedding. A couple weeks after my wedding, I had to let him go for my company, and he cried in my arms because he didn't know how he was going to feed his family, like that, that kind of stuff. Like, you know, like, as a businessman, like, things happen that are very, very, very difficult. One thing I'm really proud of is that there isn't very many people out there. There isn't anybody that I can think of that would walk away and say, Nick treated me unfairly in those situations. Nick. Nick screwed me. So I would like to say, like, somebody to say at my funeral that I just did it the right way, that I treated people the right way, and that, yes, I. Yes, I optimized value for myself and yes, I did well for myself, but, like, other people were better off because they knew me or met me or went along for the journey. I know that streak might not continue forever, but I'm. I'm pretty proud. Pretty proud of that.
- [86:00]
A
Cool, man. Well, let's start to wrap things up first. Did you think of a third book? Was your subconscious working on your book?
- [86:06]
C
I just, I just read the Five Types of Wealth by Sahel Bloom.
- [86:11]
A
He's coming on the podcast soon.
- [86:13]
C
Oh, man, it's. It's amazing. Like, it just puts things in perspective. It's a business book, it's a leadership book. But it's also like, you guys are going to love him because he has spent so much time thinking about what makes a rewarding life and what's important and how much time you have left with people who matter to you. So that's cool. Yeah, it puts things in perspective.
- [86:30]
A
I'm like, halfway through it right now. It's super good. So very cool. All right, man, let's wrap it up. What are you excited about? What's coming up in your life? I know one of the things, you got a book coming out, but what are you excited about? Tell us about it.
- [86:39]
C
Trying to convince my wife to have a fourth baby. So if she's listening, Michelle, let's do it. No, I'm so excited for what's ahead. I have a lot of amazing irons in the fire. I have businesses that I think have a ton of potential. I know there's going to be challenges ahead, but I'd say the thing I'm most excited about is my 7 year old is, like, doing really fun stuff now. He can ride a. He can ride a mountain bike. He can hike with me. He can, he can. He can do things, which is really fun when you got a five year old, but they just can't quite hang to go do stuff. Yeah. So the adventures with my son is what I'm Most excited about.
- [87:15]
B
That's incredible. I did a full on workout with Riley the other day, which she's way better at working out than I am, but it was so. Because she's seven. She's seven years old too. And it was so much fun that like we did an entire workout together. Obviously she did different weights and whatnot, but it was, it was.
- [87:33]
C
It's just my little.
- [87:34]
B
As the kids get old, that's what I love about kids. There's so much fun in every single stage.
- [87:37]
A
It gets better and better.
- [87:39]
C
I thought I was happy being a boy dad, but man, the little girl, her and I have a special bond. We have a special amazing bond. Like the little boys, there's just this discipline that has to hang over and I'm their leader and you know, I love on them all the time and we're spending a ton of time together, but there's always that, that like, oh, I gotta make these guys good men. The little girl, she's just sweet, she's patient, she has an attention span. It's something I'm not used to.
- [88:02]
B
Yeah, it's.
- [88:04]
A
That's awesome.
- [88:04]
B
Amazing.
- [88:06]
C
Perfect.
- [88:06]
B
Where, where can people find you at, Nick?
- [88:09]
C
So I think the, the best thing that they could do is if they want to download that 200 plus business idea list, there's actually about 500 books on it. You can go to sweatystartup.com ideas that'll put you on my newsletter. I'll send you management advice, business advice, but yeah, man, by the book, buy the sweaty startup. It's kind of a culmination of how I think one should grow a business, get wealthy in the right way.
- [88:30]
B
And you can pre order that right now. It comes out April 29th.
- [88:33]
C
Thursday, April 29th. Yeah, we'll get you on Amazon link to put in the show notes. But yeah, I really appreciate it.
- [88:39]
A
Cool, man. Sweaty startup. How to get rich doing boring things.
- [88:43]
C
Dude, I'm.
- [88:43]
A
I'm excited for you. It's very cool. All right, all gotta get out of here. Thank you, Nick. You're amazing. Look forward to chatting in the future and good luck on the book launch. And that, my friends, is the show. Thank you for tuning in. And hey, before you go, if you enjoyed this episode or if you just enjoy the show in general, please consider leaving us a rating and review. Wherever you listen to podcasts, we really do value your feedback and we read the comments, we make future decisions about topics and guests and everything else. Plus it helps us reach more people. And the more reviews we get, the more people hear it and watch the show and share it, and it's. It's awesome. Last but not least, please head over to social media. Consider befriending me, following me, subscribing to all that stuff at Better Life and my personal page at beardybrandon, especially over on Instagram, YouTube, and really everywhere else. So thank you again for listening. I'm honored that you would bring me along on your journey toward building wealth through real estate investing without losing your soul. Now, this show is about living in a better life, but if you want my opinion on what it takes to live the best life ever, just go to abetterlife.com bestlife to hear some of my views on life and spirituality.
- [89:47]
B
I think you'll like it.
- [89:48]
A
Abetterlife.com BestLife with that said, thanks for listening to the show. We'll see you next week.