Mastering the Art of Unsexy Entrepreneurship with Hold Co Owner Nick Huber, Founder of Bolt Storage & The Sweaty Startup

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:00]

If you are an entrepreneur and you are on Twitter, you have definitely heard of Nick Huber…

Nick Huber [00:00:05]

My tweets in the last year have been seen by almost a billion people. 900 million people, or, uh, 900 million impressions.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:11]

Yeah, he is quite famous.

Nick Huber [00:00:13]

I have 300,000 followers on Twitter who spend less than 5 seconds a week thinking about me. It's so easy for me as a business owner and as an influencer to think, oh, my god, everybody's thinking about Nick. Everybody's worried about Nick. Everybody's obsessed with me. When in reality, almost everybody could care less about me.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:31]

Wait, what? Three hundred thousand followers and he's saying they don't care?

Nick Huber [00:00:36]

It's easy for me to kind of become my own god and think that know, uh, just this master when it comes to x, y, and z, and everybody should follow me, and everybody should love me, and everybody cares what I think. And that's just not the truth. Most people could care less about Nick Huber, no matter how big I get.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:49]

He sounds like a rather humble guy, doesn't he?

Well, I can tell you for a fact that Nick is, indeed, VERY humble and down-to-earth...

Nick Huber [00:00:57]

I'm a stubborn person, and I have an ego. I'll just admit it.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:01:00]

Now, hold on a minute... Don't judge me -or HIM- just yet. Listen to the whole thing and you will immediately understand why I called him, not just humble, but also DOWN-TO-EARTH...

Nick Huber [00:01:11]

I've had nothing but people along the way tell me that if I'm going to build something great, I need to work 70 hours a week if I'm going to make a ton of money or play the game of business at the highest level. That's why I want to try to play this game at a really high level, and I want to make the money, and I want to influence the lives, and I want to build the team, and I want to have the quality of life, and I want to be healthy. I want to have a good marriage, I want to have good friendships, I want to have good hobbies, and I want to try to do that while playing the game at the highest level.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:01:41]

Yeah, if there is one thing I came away with after my hour-long conversation with Nick, it was this: He definitely has his head perfectly screwed on his shoulders...

Nick Huber [00:01:50]

I think I doing some basic math here. I have a chance if I make some core good decisions and do a good job investing and growing these companies. But I'm not egotistical enough to think that it's going to happen. And I'm definitely not going to sacrifice everything else and the people around me and leave, uh, a wake of destruction behind me as I try to do those things.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:02:07]

Nick Huber, Mr. Sweaty Startup himself, is on First Class Founders today and I CANNOT wait to get started!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:02:19]

The next generation of successful founders in this digital age of entrepreneurship will leverage their audience to launch, build, and scale their brands. First Class Founders explores this golden intersection of audience-building & company-building with proven strategies to grow both your audience, which is your distribution, and your brand, which is your product.

Because those who can master both will create a category of one.

Hi, my name is Yong-Soo Chung and I'm a serial entrepreneur who bootstrapped 3 successful businesses from $0 to $20 million over 8 years.

On this show, you'll learn timeless lessons from world-class content creators, startup founders, and CEOs. You'll also hear tactical tips & strategies from me.

Are you ready? Then, let’s begin!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:03:12]

On today's episode of First Class Founders, we are talking to Nick Huber, founder of the Sweaty Startup brand and the prodigy behind the wildly successful student self-storage venture - Storage Squad. These days, Nick runs a multi-million dollar storage business and has leveraged his massive audience on X to build several other businesses… in true First Class Founders fashion!

Nick and I spoke about the various aspects of entrepreneurship in which he candidly shared his thoughts on several topics, such as the importance of "unsexy" entrepreneurship, how he structures his holding companies’ day-to-day operations, the 2-problems framework with which he views all his businesses and his secret on how to grow big on Twitter

And, because I KNOW Nick often speaks openly about his net-worth, I also asked him whether he would break it down on THIS podcast. Guess what? He was incredibly chill about it!

So, yeah, premium members of this podcast can listen to a special segment in which Nick not only shares his exact net-worth but also breaks down exactly how that number is calculated. You'll also hear WHY he has absolutely no worries sharing such sensitive financial details about himself.

Spoiler alert, it's because:

Nick Huber [00:04:24]

I am not egotistical enough to think that anybody cares enough about me when I share money online.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:04:30]

And that's just ONE of the reasons why! You can listen to the whole thing in an exclusive segment of this episode -- available exclusively to the premium members of the First Class Founders community -- through a special ad-free version of the podcast feed. To become a premium member of First Class Founders, sign up at firstclassfounders.com/join - look for the link in the show notes!

Go ahead and open that link in a tab, while I get this flight ready for take-off!

Nick Huber [00:04:56]

Hi. My name is Nick Huber. Let's get down to business.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:02]

Nick Huber's story is pretty well-known to almost every entrepreneur out there by now.

Back in 2011, while he was still a student at Cornell, he started Storage Squad with his friend Dan Hagberg. The premise was simple - offer students an easier way to move their stuff out of and back into universities.

Nick Huber [00:05:21]

I had no idea what I was doing. I was excitable, I had a lot of energy and I didn't overthink it. I didn't overthink it. I was excited and felt like building a little small sweaty startup.>

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:32]

Storage Squad was a simple solution to a simple problem. Or, what Nick frequently refers to as "an unsexy small business" because, in his opinion, the conversations around the notion of entrepreneurship are... somewhat unapproachable, to put it mildly.

Nick Huber [00:05:47]

If you follow it on social media, you read books about business titans, mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates. Um, you kind of fall down this path of new idea, world changing startups and that every business needs a moat, needs to be scalable, needs to raise, uh, venture capital. And there's nothing less approachable for a want-repreneur.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:06:15]

A want-repreneur, by the way, is someone who wants to be an entrepreneur.

According to Nick, you need 3 things to build a big business...

Nick Huber [00:06:25]

You need capital, you need a network, and you need, most importantly, you need operational chops. How to actually run a company, how to hire people, how to delegate.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:06:32]

Yup, those are the three fundamental requirements for starting a business -ANY business- access to capital, a strong network, and smart operational chops.

BUT, the thing is, when you start out as an entrepreneur, you neither know nor have any of these three things.

Nick Huber [00:06:48]

So going in with something really hard seems to be a fool's errand.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:06:52]

And yet, that's exactly what most want-repreneurs typically end up doing.

They go hard... They look for new ideas or world-changing startups...

Because that's how most conversations about entrepreneurship on the Internet tend to go...

Because most want-repreneurs look up to and surround themselves with other entrepreneurs and...

Nick Huber [00:07:10]

...and they kind of get disconnected from the real world pretty quickly. And it's pretty evident when you read the news, the social media pages, of our entrepreneur leaders, our thought leaders in the entrepreneurial space. Um, I don't think a lot of these folks, I don't think have been to Walmart in 20 years. And it shows, like, they don't they don't understand what the average American has a house they're trying to maintain, has a life that they're trying to get by. They're trying to put food on the table, and they're trying to do everything they can to get paid next Friday. That's what the average person is trying to

Yong-Soo Chung [00:07:42]

Thankfully, Nick had a very clear idea of what entrepreneurship - and more importantly, SUCCESS in entrepreneurship - was supposed to look like.

Khe Hy [00:07:50]

And my vision of wealth, my viewpoint of wealth, is being able to do what you want when you want instead of working a job, when you have to show up at a certain time and leave at a certain time and do what somebody else tells you to do all day long.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:08:01]

That's when Nick had a light-bulb moment. There were plenty of such people in his town of Leopold, Indiana. Successful, wealthy entrepreneurs who were able to do what they wanted instead of working a job and...

Nick Huber [00:08:10]

...none of them had New Idea Tech startups. None of them raised capital. Um, they were running small businesses. They had a distribution company or a, um, HVAC contractor, or a plumbing company, or a pest control company, or real estate company. And they just did boring stuff that nobody really gets excited about. And they hired people and they delegated, and they went into businesses where there was competition that existed, but they carved out a piece of the pie.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:08:38]

And, all these wealthy people in his town had one thing in common - they all had "unsexy small businesses"...

Nick Huber [00:08:44]

I think that a lot of people kind of get drawn down the New idea, sexy, raising capital type of entrepreneurship, when, in my opinion, it's a mistake. I think that a lot of people should be trying to start small, try to start an approachable way, start a low risk business where, um, people are already transacting in your city and your state. You can see where the customers are, you can study the businesses that are servicing those customers, and you can pick and choose who you want to compete with and where you want to try to make your mark.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:09:13]

And that is the first takeaway for today's episode!

LESSON NUMBER 1: Successful Entrepreneurship doesn't necessarily have to be world-changing - you can start a small, low-risk "unsexy small business" instead.

Nick's unsexy small business was Storage Squad, which he sold for seven figures in 2021. And in the two years since selling that business, Nick has rapidly scaled his net-worth to twenty-five million dollars.

Wanna know how? Well, that's exactly what's coming up in a bit! Nick also explained how diversified into different businesses and shared details of how he structures his holding company.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:10:46]

And now, let's get back to the episode.

Before the break, we were talking about Nick's thoughts on "unsexy small businesses" and entrepreneurship in general. It was these same beliefs that formed a crucial component of his growth after Storage Squad.

After selling Storage Squad in 2021, Nick rapidly began building several other businesses. One of his earliest investments was a minority ownership stake in Shepherd.

Nick Huber [00:11:16]

It was started in 2020. I got involved in 2021 as an affiliate. I got a small equity percentage in 2022, or in a year later in 2022. And that business today is worth $25 million plus, and generates multiple seven figures, almost eight figures of annual, um, revenue.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:11:33]

And since Shepherd was a great way to source good talent for cheap, he decided to utilize it to hire talent and build solutions for other services he used, or was likely to use.

Nick Huber [00:25:25]

So I looked at, hey, what services do I use in all of my companies? And from a web perspective, it was, I need SEO, I need backlinks for all of my need, you know, pay per click marketing. I need, uh, Web development services. So, I built out those three companies, and then for my real estate company, I needed, uh, recruiting internally in the United States. Uh, so I started Recruitjet.

The way Nick summed this up was actually brilliant.

So I basically just went through my fundamental profit and loss statement on my business and tried to turn the cost centers, the areas where I was spending money, turn them into profit centers.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:12:25]

Nick took the areas where he was SPENDING money and converted them into ways to MAKE money, which I find quite ingenious for two reasons. One, even though it seems natural, it takes a humongous amount of time and effort to pull this off. And two, I don't know of anyone else who has managed to build so many different services in such a short time!

Well, actually, Jeff Bezos did something similar with Amazon, when I think about it. He turned the cost centers in his business to profit centers. And the best example of this is AWS - that is, Amazon Web Services. AWS was initially just a collection of APIs to provide infrastructure as a service internally to improve the speed of development. But then, in 2006, it was launched to developers and quickly became an integral component of the web. Today, AWS is estimated to have a 33% market share among all cloud-computing providers combined! That's massive!

Just like Jeff Bezos, Nick also realized that his audience was filled with potential customers who could benefit if he upleveled the cost-centers within his own business. So he opened up his products and services to allow other members from his audience to utilize them. This way, he was able to not only turn his cost center into a profit center within his own business, but also help his audience with pain-points that they themselves had in their business. A win-win for everyone.

Guess what? I'm also trying to do something similar for my businesses as well. While running UrbanEDC and SpottedByHumphrey, I realized that one of my biggest costs was fulfillment. So, I decided to launch GrowthJet, take on additional clients, and uplevel my fulfillment services from a cost-center into a profit center!

But, here's the thing.

To ensure that this upleveling happens smoothly, you also need complete buy-in from your audience.

Which is why Nick focuses so hard on building his personal brand on social media, specifically on Twitter-slash-X. Because then, he can leverage -and does leverage- his massive popularity & reach on social media as a successful entrepreneur and creator to attract experts in various fields...

Nick Huber [00:14:28]

...to help me operate these companies for an equity percentage and then layer in all these other services that I provide myself so that I can kind of run the same playbook and start these different companies.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:14:39]

And that, right there, is the secret to Nick's rapid growth as a serial entrepreneur - "bringing in experts to operate companies for an equity percentage."

Here's Nick explaining that in a little MORE detail.

Nick Huber [00:14:50]

I'm kind of like the founding person. I buy the domain. I find an operating partner who takes a minority equity stake anywhere from five to 35% equity in my business. And, um, then we run the same playbook. Ah, ah, my team at the holding company level will build the website, we'll build the customer relationship management software. Um, we'll set up the payroll, we'll get the fundamental framework of the company, set up the same for all these different businesses. And then it's up to my operator, who, um, is the direct report to me. The operator, the operating partner that I choose is a specialty in each industry. They directly report to me. And then I, um, bring in the customers and bring in the talent that we then hire and build and grow each business.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:15:31]

Over the past few years, Nick has polished and perfected this playbook. And one of the crucial components of this process was THIS important realization...

Nick Huber [00:15:40]

I mean every business has one of two problems. It either needs more customers or it needs more employees and the ability to service more customers. Needs one of those things all the time to grow.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:15:46]

What a brilliant bit of insight! Let's make this the second lesson for today's episode!

LESSON NUMBER 2: Every business needs one of two things at any given point in time - it needs more customers or it needs more employees.

Nick Huber [00:15:59]

Um, if I have a really good operator in place that knows how to hire, that knows how to get the systems built, then it's just me pinging them every week and saying, hey, do you need some more customers? How's it going? Do you need some marketing? What do you need? Um, other times it'll be a month without communication. And other times it'll be a pretty busy time frame where we're onboarding, we're hiring, we're moving and shaking, and we're chatting in slack, uh, throughout every single day.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:16:23]

Did you notice something unique about Nick's method there? If you didn't, let me play it again for you...

Nick Huber [00:16:28]

Um, if I have a really good operator in place that knows how to hire, that knows how to get the systems built, then it's just me pinging them every week and saying, hey, do you need some more customers?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:16:33]

Delegation.

Nick relies heavily on his operators to get things done in all the businesses and startups he chooses to invest in. He practices the philosophy of -what he calls- "extreme delegation", that is, trusting his operators to find their own way and run the business.

Nick Huber [00:16:47]

My CEO, operator at my storage company, I haven't spoken to in person in, ah, a month. Um, we're on the same page. I know that he's doing his job really well. I can log in, I can track everything inside of all my companies, so there's not a problem. I'm going to delegate to the extreme where I'm going to trust these folks to run these companies well.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:17:06]

But that doesn't mean he isn't available to them for help and guidance.

Nick Huber [00:17:11]

Most people, when somebody comes to them with a problem, where their employees comes to them with a problem, they're going to say, get out of my way, let me solve this problem. I am the exact opposite of that. If you come to me with a problem, I'm going to respond with a bunch of questions and I'm going to send you back out the door with your problem and a clear framework to solve that problem. And if you can't do it, obviously I'll step in and solve the problem and figure out a way to get you to where you're not solving those problems anymore. But I'm trying to choose people who are competent enough to solve the problems and I'm empowering them to solve them. And I delegate to an extreme, period.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:17:42]

Of course, the trust in his operators isn't absolute either.

Nick Huber [00:17:46]

I'm a trust but verify guy. I mean, I'm going to give folks the chance to prove me wrong or right in a low risk way. I'm never going to find somebody, partner with them off the street and give them the password to a bank account with, um, uh, $2 million in it. I mean, we're going to start a company and we're going to put 50 grand in an account. And when it starts to run low, I'll put more in. But I can watch where the money goes. I can see where it goes. I can log into any of the emails at any time. So it's a trust but verify. And as I get more and more comfortable with somebody, there's, um, more trust. There's more, uh, delegation to higher level tasks that are more risky.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:18:20]

...and to secure his investments even more tightly, Nick employs parachute clauses in all his agreements with the operators.

Nick Huber [00:18:28]

The parachute clause means, hey, at any point, Nick can pull the eject button and get out. The first year every deal that I make, uh, has a parachute clause where I can get anybody out of my company for any reason. I'm not going to do that because if it's a mutually beneficial relationship and somebody's making me money and I'm making them money, we're going to keep working together. But if the red flags start to appear, I'm an over communicator. So I'm not going to sell a relationship with me that's unsustainable. I'm not going to get people to agree to relationships that are unsustainable. But I'm also going to have a way for me to get out and for me to get operators out.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:19:03]

Not only does this kind of partnership foster great trust between him and his operators, it also helps reduce the potential risk of an operator deciding to split and go off on their own.

Nick Huber [00:19:12]

It's a pretty great partnership and I think most of my partners feel like they're very fairly incentivized in the long term in equity and in cash flow to build the company together.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:19:23]

And when Nick says they are fairly incentivized, he really, REALLY means it!

Nick Huber [00:19:27]

Yeah, every deal is different. So support shepherd. I only own 15. I own 15% of then we brought in another partner, Shaan Puri, and now I own 13.75% of that company, or maybe twelve and a half percent, um, re cost SEG. I own 45%. And kind of just different, differing variables. But the ones that I've started recently, the recruiting firm, um, in the United States recruiting firm and, uh, the Performance Marketing Agency. Yeah, it's, ah, a minority equity stake for the operating partner. A lot of times there's a revenue share as well. Revenue share aspect. Sometimes there's a literal salary to the person who is my operator. It, um, all depends on the risk appetite and the prospects of the business of how we come to a deal. But it's generally an equity share.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:20:12]

Yeah, no, that's a really good point. And Zoom too, right?

Nick Huber [00:20:18]

We parted ways with one of the partners, but it was kind of just expectations were this and it was going a little differently and it made sense for both parties to split. But no, I haven't had an issue where I had to come in and run one of these companies yet. If it came to that, I would probably shut down the company, because I'm not going to run any of these companies myself.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:20:42]

You gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, I guess...

All in all, judging by the way Nick has described the whole thing, the entire journey of building a holding company is definitely a bit of a roller coaster ride. And I can attest to that because I have been doing the same thing myself for the past several years.

I, too, have a holding company with 3 different businesses that I manage. And I’ll be the first to tell you that it isn’t an easy walk-in-the-park.

And the number one question I get asked is how I manage to run 3 businesses all at once. Well, it’s quite simple, really. I delegate, just like Nick does. I have a General Manager for each of the 3 businesses who handle the day-to-day activities of running each business itself.

The biggest difference between what Nick does and what I do is that his ownership stake in these companies is smaller, while I own 100% of all 3 businesses. But, this also means that I am way more involved operationally than Nick is. To be honest, I was incredibly impressed with Nick’s approach to extreme delegation.

By the way, have you spotted the connection between what Nick is doing here and the MAPS framework I outlined back in episode 41? If you haven't heard that episode yet, queue it up in your podcast player next but the gist of the episode is this... There are four key components that you need to build in every business as an entrepreneur - Mindset, Audience, Product, and Scaling.

You build your mindset first, then build your audience, then use the audience to build and launch your product and your business, and finally you build systems to grow and scale your business. This has essentially been the playbook I've used to launch and grow all my businesses - the First Class Founders' playbook, if you will. I recommend this playbook to all founders and entrepreneurs everywhere.

And, if you notice, according to this playbook, building your audience happens before building your product and services. That's because I genuinely believe that you should build your products and services based on your audience's needs and desires.

And that's EXACTLY what Nick is doing here. He's mastered the art of building the right products and services that his audience wants! Nick Huber, in so many ways IS a great personification of the First Class Founders' playbook.

Or, dare I say, he IS very much a First-Class Founder!

Nick Huber [00:23:39]

my working hours are split probably half on personal brand building, um, and then the other half on working directly with these operators to help grow these companies.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:23:49]

...as well as personnel management!

Nick Huber [00:23:50]

I only communicate with my operator. And my job is to give my operator what he or she needs to continue to grow the company.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:23:58]

That doesn't mean Nick is all about work and no play, by the way!

Nick Huber [00:24:01]

Friday. I have it blocked. I play golf, um, two nights, two afternoons a week, I play golf. I hang around my kids a lot.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:24:07]:

Also, since Nick is pretty open about his net-worth and often speaks about it publicly on Twitter-slash-X, I asked him to share it on this podcast, and (pause) not only was he incredibly chill about it, he even went into great detail and laid out some pretty impressive numbers!

Nick Huber [00:24:22]

Yeah, so we bought about $100 million worth of storage. I put about $2 million of my own money in. So I own about 2% of the actual base model storage, but then I own a pretty big chunk of the upside. On average, I own about 23, 24% of the upside. So if this $100 million worth of storage becomes $200 million of storage...

Yong-Soo Chung [00:24:38]

Spoiler Alert, it is about 25 million dollars. And if you want to know the exact calculation Nick did to arrive at that specific number, you'll need to sign up for the premium membership of First Class Founders.

Because ALL this valuable information -AND much more- can be heard in extensive detail in a special segment of the episode available exclusively to premium members of First Class Founders in the ad-free version of the podcast feed.

Additionally, the First Class Founders membership also comes with a ton of other perks. For instance, members of First Class Founders also get early access to podcast episodes, bonus episodes - including the entire raw, unedited interview - the ability to Ask Me Anything, and much more!

So, head on over to firstclassfounders.com/join - I'll put the link in the show notes!



Nick Huber [00:25:38]

We're doing some of these experiments, like I told you, the one we did with how to keep your job during a recession. I am thinking about, um, maybe using this kind of downturn to write a book. So kind of exploring that path of agents and publishers and so on.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:25:48]

All of Nick's businesses are based on one simple founding principle.

Nick Huber [00:25:52]

I learned in 2021 that having a significant reach on social media can build pretty drastic positive influences on a business. Not only can it find customers, but it can find talent. It can recruit talent for you, and you can learn a lot about business on the Internet.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:26:10]

And it is this philosophy that motivates him to create and share content regularly -and quite extensively- on Twitter.

Nick Huber [00:26:17]

I'm a prolific content creator. Every week I have enough tweets to write three newsletters, but I only get to send out one. So I'll write one newsletter, I'll write it and I'll spend 45 minutes, and I got 1500 words. I can just spit out writing really fast. Now, just how a news anchor who's been doing it for 20 years can get on the TV in front of millions of people and with very little prompting, deliver in really high pressure situations.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:26:47]

But he also understands very well that simply writing a kickass newsletter is not enough - something that most creators fail to understand, by the way.

Nick Huber [00:26:54]

I think so many people who write on the internet and are brilliant people, they kind of come to social media with this ego that thinks, oh, I don't need to tell people what I've done. My ideas, my writing, my style, it can all speak for itself. And that's just a very arrogant way to think about the internet. It's a very arrogant way. People don't have time to fully give your writing or your ideas the credit it deserves to make you a, uh, worthy follow. People are very selfish, like somebody's scrolling Twitter with a very selfish mentality. What can this person do for me? Why should I listen to this person? Where's the credibility? And they're going to spend a second and a half, and they're going to scroll right past, scroll right past. What can you do for me?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:27:31]

That, in my opinion, is an important lesson for all creators

LESSON NUMBER 3: Don't arrogantly assume your content will automatically make an impression.

Nick also regularly recycles his content on Twitter and often reposts good content that he has written in the past...

Nick Huber [00:27:47]

Because Twitter, it's a very small window of time. People spend all this energy to write a good Twitter post, and then 24 hours later, it's gone. It's off the face of the earth. Nobody's ever going to find it. It's not indexed in the search engine. Well, so why would you not repost that in three months? Because Twitter is a big, dynamic place where not all my followers log in that very moment when I tweet something. So you got to kind of keep pounding the drum over and over again to get a message across.>


Yong-Soo Chung [00:28:11]

At this point, I was curious to know if Nick had figured out the secret to gathering a large following on Twitter. So I asked Nick about it outright and the answer he gave was... a bit of an uncomfortable truth.

Nick Huber [00:28:22]

So, the moral of the story? If you want to get a BIG following on social media, first become incredibly successful!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:28:52]

And that's Nick's advice for how to build a huge social media following - become successful first and then tell people how you did it.

But, if that wasn't the advice you wanted to hear as a first-time entrepreneur and founder, don't worry! Nick gave some incredible and immediately actionable advice that you can start implementing right away! In fact, you might want to take serious notes for the next two minutes because this advice is worth millions.

You could even say it is worth TWENTY-FIVE million!

Ready? Here's Nick...


Nick Huber [00:45:57]

Keep it simple. Don't set massive goals. Don't try to change the world. Don't get on social media and constantly listen to people with tens of millions of dollars who are super successful. There's something really dangerous about getting advice from successful people. Successful people are in totally different phase of life than you are. They think about risk. Totally different. They're in wealth preservation mode, not wealth accumulation mode. So getting advice from only. People who have done it and they're successful already, they're going to underestimate the amount of risk they took early on and they're going to scare the hell out of you and they're going to convince you to not do a lot of things that you should probably do. Even myself. If I were advising myself right now on that very first real estate deal that made me, uh, multiple seven figures, personally, I would advise myself not to do that deal. What does that tell you? It tells you I'm in a different phase. I'm worried about holding onto the cash that I have. I'm not a 25 year old anymore with nothing to lose. So as a first time founder, keep it really simple. Business is not complicated. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. Do something that other people are already doing. Do it just a little bit better. And be really careful about getting advice from only super successful people.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:30:25]

 This single monologue from Nick contained about FOUR different bits of advice! Did you spot them all?

ADVICE NUMBER 1: Don't try to change the world - look to build an "unsexy small business" instead.

ADVICE NUMBER 2: Be careful of advice from successful people - they are in wealth-preservation mode, not wealth-creation mode.

ADVICE NUMBER 3: Successful people underestimate the risk they took early on and will even discourage you from taking the same risk.

ADVICE NUMBER 4: Keep it really simple - do what others are doing but do it just a BIT better!

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Nick Huber [00:31:22]

I spend probably 3 hours every Monday writing a 1500 word email on management, on delegation, on wealth building, on real estate, on building businesses, how I think about that and you can sign up for that at sweatystartup.com.