Nick Huber: How to Make Millions from Content Without Selling Ads

What do you uh I'm I'm an investor of yours. So you're um I don't forget how much I invest, but You're like Well, I don't really invest in anything other than like van like total index funds and but you're like one of the few. I think you're one of three things that I did

Um It's going Great. I mean I I see the returns uh, but how much do you have in total sel self storage now? Like a hundred million dollars or something? I think last time I came on it was Fifteen properties or so and

twenty million dollars for the storage and We now have Sixty one properties. Uh one point eight million square feet of storage. Um we've acquired it for

A hundred and three million dollars. We've Raised. Forty one million dollars from people like you who invest in both storage. Yeah, it's been a whirlwind. The last two years have been crazy.

Did you say a hundred million dollars worth of Is that that's how much you paid for it. I I don't know how much it's worth. I don't either. I mean we could we could guess we could try to guess, but look the real estate market has no mark to market, right? Because like Elon Musk, he can see how many shares a Tesla he has and the value of those shares. I have no idea. I mean, I can make educated guesses, but We sold our portfolio today.

I don't know. Uh si yeah, six months ago we might be able to sell it for Hundred ninety million or so? Oh, that'd be awesome. We um I think the way I met you was

So uh it you're you know, it's kind of a creepy story. Years ago I dated this Polish girl. And I remember seeing your picture. on Twitter if you're f this is so weird. Your face reminded me of hers.

Ha ha ha. That is the best compliment. That's the best compliment I could get. Are you Polish? I'm German. Yeah, Huber. My my my mom is a Gettelfinger, so yeah, we're very German.

I remember seeing your picture and I was like oh my gosh, this guy looks Polish almost. And then I was driving cross country. And I did a Twitter live or something like that. I forget what I did. And you like commented and I just called you on air. Or no, I called you on your phone I just put it on speakerphone and we started talking and that and that's how we how we how we met, I think, right? Yeah, now now we know each other quite well. I think we've Punch each other in the face. We've

Uh guarded each other and fouled each other in basketball. We have uh hung out at a couple of conferences and And we talk. Several times a week. So I appreciate your friendship, man.

I appreciate you too. I I that he told me that he was uh the Catholic and I was like Yeah, but you're not like. You're not good. And then I looked up his times and I was like, Oh, he's better than I was. Uh and then that's why I liked you even more. What was your four hundred time? I think you ran forty seven.

Yeah. Open forty seven. There's you know, splits are crazy'cause your coach wants to tell you that you run really fast splits to pump you up, but he told me I ran a forty six seven one time split. I'd believe that. My so my fastest opens were only in the forty eight and forty nines and my splits were forty seven. So you're probably a second faster than I was. But um And did for those for the for the like you went hard on Twitter when we when like COVID started. So there's like we have this text message group. It's me, you, Sean Uh Austin Reeve, Nikita Beer, Sahel Bloom, Greg Eisenberg.

Uh I think that's everyone did I forget. You were a an addition that came on about Six months or a year after the group started. But you've added some good uh Great banter to it.

Ha. And like but the reason the group started was you guys all went hard on Twitter around the same time and you like thread each other's stuff. You're threadboys. And then I remember you started doing that, but did of that hundred million dollars that you've raised or eighty million dollars that you've raised, I forget how much. How much come from tw forty. You've raised forty. Yeah.

Ninety ninety six percent of it has come from Twitter. No way. Is that is that real? Yeah, my inst my entire real estate private equity company was built on the back of Twitter. Yes. I had

We bought and built our first self storage facility. We raised five hundred grand. My dad took a mortgage out on our house to do it. He didn't tell me that he did at the time because we were middle class and Um I went around to his friends basically and he helped me raise the money for that first deal. Everybody says you know. Uh you're not self made and that's my not self made stories that my dad was the first investor in my first storage building, but Um no, then we ran out of money and we had to buy our second, third, fourth, and fifth

properties with that with our own cash from our store from our stored company, our our moving company. But then You know, fast forward to Twitter, I'm tweeting about I'm tweeting about some of our properties. And

People are DMing me asking to get on our investor list and Fast forward to today we've raised. Forty million bucks from three hundred and twenty people and we have two thousand people on our distribution list and it's

Changed my entire life. What's uh Forty million divided by three hundred. What's the average check? Ben can help us out. Maybe I don't have a calculator on me, but Yeah, fifty grand people start. We have some investors up over a million bucks.

That's crazy. I wish I would have done a million dollars when when I saw like the checks out there, uh That deal that you're in sh is gonna be a really good deal. We've we refinanced it in a really crappy refi environment, but We're gonna build some climate control storage on that property and That was a deal that was really big and was uncomfortable, man. I mean we bought

A nine. Yeah, it was a big deal for us. That was our biggest deal so far. It was like hard for us to like Get the money together and and and raise the money for it. Um Nine million bucks and then we bought another

Small property after that, another, you know, portfolio after that, included all on the same one, our basis is about fifteen million. And I can I got my spreadsheet up here. Uh Do not even know what that means. What's basis mean? That's how much we're going for. Yeah. Total cost.

Total cost. Uh twenty percent of fifteen, right?'Cause you only put or twenty five percent down? Yeah, exactly right. So We we put about thirty percent down. We have Yeah.

twelve million in debt. Because we refined it refined out some cash. But now it's got a million dollars of net operating income and it's a Yeah. twenty twenty million dollar plus property, which is great.

That's crazy. Yeah, I remember seeing that check. Well, what do you want to talk about today? I wanna talk about all all types of stuff. Dude, you we have can you talk about the shepherd thing that you're doing? Yeah, so Um that company is a phenomenal company. And and I ca it kinda kick can kick off our uh discussion because my goal is the same.

Real estate's a little bit slow. The company's in a really good spot. I still spend a ton of time. saying thumbs up, thumbs down to deals and thinking strategy and working on it, but Um I have a lot of time and I also have thirty million impressions a month on Twitter and you know what that's like when you have a podcast like this and the distribution that you have.

Um But yeah, my my goal right now is to Is to build a portfolio of Ownership chunks and great. Small companies.

Yeah, sweaty startups. Um And Austin, our friend Austin Reeve who founded Morning Brew, he was supposed to come on today. And uh he had like a last minute board meeting. So Axel Springer, thanks a lot. The owner of Morning Bridge. Thanks, guys.

Uh. But anyway, I was like, Austin, what should we talk about? And uh you and me and Austin were a thing in uh a group chat and he was like, Let's talk about 'Cause he knows that I hate advertising. Um and I like make fun of him. I used to make fun of him as like an enemy. Now I make fun of him as a friend. And um

About how much fun of L you make fun of everybody, Sam. Not really. Do I? I don't know. It's good. It it it you just you just make jokes that are uh at people's expense and it's hilarious. Ha ha.

And sometimes they're funny. And and I was like, Austin, what uh what do you want to talk about? And he's like, let's talk about non ways or non-advertising ways to monetize media followings. And You did it. So you did it. I don't know what your net worth would be or what like the the the value of your percentage of your thing would be, but you've done it to the tune of like a hundred million dollars of real estate. That's your non advertising way of monetizing your audience. Yeah, my you're also doing it in like a bunch of sorry, go ahead. Yeah, my equity in that is maybe

Yeah, ten to twenty million. Yeah. Yeah. And and so that and then like you operate this successful business, so it's not like it's just because of Twitter, you know, you make smart decisions beyond that. But you are also doing it a few different ways. I'm actually a customer of your other business, which is a Cossac business. I almost use Shepard, which I don't know if you are a part owner or if you're just an affiliate for

But you're doing it in a bunch of different ways. And I want to talk about the ways that you're monetizing in non ad ways of your audience. Yeah. So the Shepherd is the ideal story. I mean it was Late two thousand twenty. November, December.

I wanted to hire somebody in the Philippines. I met Marsh Haas, who owns Support Shepard, and I was his customer. I made a deposit for them to hire somebody and my goal was to get somebody on the phone in my self storage facility that could Yeah.

Press one. to make a payment, you're gonna go to this person and they're just gonna process the payments for us. Just some extra help doing very simple things. I gave them actually they built the job description. They got me three candidates ready to interview. I got on and interviewed them all in the course of an hour. And I was absolutely blown away and hired all three of the people.

I'm like this. What was the rate per hour? Five dollars an hour, eight hundred dollars a month. to get these people to come and work for my service company and they're all fast forward Yeah, they were they were incredible. Fast forward four hour uh you know, four months later I had

fifteen of these people working inside of my company and not only were they doing the simple stuff, but they were Answering sales calls? They were guiding the logistics. of a customer in a in one of my facilities looking for a specific unit. They were just able to

Do exactly what our American reps do. Except instead of paying sixty or seventy grand a year they pay. Okay. Yeah. Ten grand a year.

So it was a it was a game changer. Now we have Our whole finance department's in Columbia. Shepard has helped us find those folks in Columbia. Um, so the the business blew my mind and I went to Marshall in Two thousand twenty two or tw two thousand twenty one, May. Said, Hey, I wanna be an affiliate of this company. Like give me a cut of what I can bring in and I'll do some tweeting.

Um at that time they were doing about fifty grand a month. And revenue. Shepherd was. That's their net their that that's the net of the net of payouts to the the workers. No, that's like total revenue. Total revenue for Shepard.

As a company, as that business, the one that like does the headhunting and finds the employees for American companies. Um So they were doing you know. fifty placements a month or or less, and they were growing fast. It was a good company.

And I started tweeting and Pissing off the woke mob and recommending Support Shepard for like a fifteen percent cut of revenue that I've got. Say what those tweets were. They're hilarious. I I would say like I'm gonna weather this recession for one main reason. My my employees all work for five dollars an hour in the Philippines and they're absolutely incredible. And then

It made me look like a complete idiot. But The woke mob would just blow these threads up. Totally blow them up. We're talking to the tune of the Three to five million impressions.

And so that really accelerated the growth. Oh Shepard. They're getting a ton of business as it was. They started growing like crazy. Fast forward a year later, and Shepard had seven X. The size of that company had had grown by seven seven X.

And how long? One year? One year. And it wasn't just because of me. It wasn't just because of me. It's because they started offering folks in Columbia. They started doing a ton of work. And they and they had like fifty. But you're a part of the you're a part of the puzzle. A big part of the puzzle to help it grow.

So I went to Marshall and I was like, Marshall, this business is way too good. I'm not getting enough money. Like I want to own part of Support Shepherd and he's like No way. Right.

That's that's a that's ridiculous. You're just a you're just an influence. And I was like, Well man, I'm gonna go start Another company. That does exactly this. Or I could be Uh a partner of yours.

And he was like He's like okay, um you're right, like let's make a deal and we negotiated and I own fifteen percent of Shepherd. And you're fast forward to And what's the deal? Like you have to keep referring a certain amount of customers and do you still get your payout? Affiliate payout. No, the if the the failure payout was canceled, I got fifteen percent of profits.

And He just trusted me that I was gonna be motivated to continue to do what I do. And now once a month I just piss off the woke mob on Twitter, I send some newsletter ad you know, ads. And I Thank you. Kind of sit on the board and

Do a little bit of ops things and and recommend, but I mostly just drive those guys' nuts when it comes to that. Well well wait, I want I want I need you to read redeem yourself really quick because you're like you're like I'm pissing people off. But the reality is is that like What's the salary? Ten grand a year is what to them?

Yeah, these people Me and my Talking the other day and It's like yeah, I I bought a house, Nick. I it's it's incredible. I bought a house in the Philippines and I'm like, What are you talking about? And he's like, Yeah, this is my home. It's a three bedroom house that I bought.

And uh Me and Dan talk all the time that our that our employees in Colombia and the Philippines are are Just as wealthy as us. They have the same exact lifestyle as we do. Because yeah, they get on a bus. They commute two hours and they work for like

You know? Two dollars an hour. Over there with With not the best conditions and then they get to work for mayor other companies and it changes their lives. So The reality is that the woke mob has no idea what they're talking about. This is an incredible

opportunity for them and for us. Um And now a lot of People are You know, making that switch and getting

Employees over there. So all right, I I interrupted you because I wanted you to redeem yourself but what were you saying about uh So you fast forward a year now and uh another year of promoting and the business growing and I think fifty one percent of their their businesses repeat customers who want to come back for get to get more Um Yeah, help but

It's a multi seven figure. Profit. business a year. Um I make fifty grand a month.

Personally. from my fifteen percent ownership as Shepherd. God, that's so funny. W dude, you would not have wanted to go and start a competitor to them, would you? That would it sound hard. It sounds like a hard business to operate. It's really hard. They got a hundred and fifty employees. I was mostly bluffing. I mean, it's a super hard business to start. They have a ton of really good talent. And a ton of like.

Sales reps and like the way that they do business is really difficult. They gotta go and recruit and interview all these people. over there and vet them and grade their English and like Get all these people these employees put the put in front of these business owners. So yeah. Um

It was And Marshall a pretty good entrepreneur. I like Marshall a lot. I mean he's done like eight different companies and and a few of them have done really well. Very good entrepreneur. So yeah, that's hilarious. I can't believe you you work that out. I be I think that's a good deal. I've had So I've had a few people so I um there's this guy who did this guy, Diego Um what's his website? Is it like short Z, I think it's like

Like short clips. I'll have to find it. But anyway. He uh This dude DM'd me. Yeah.

Is he Cuban or he's not from America. I forget what he is. But he uh He DMs me and I get these DMs all the time. But they're like, I'm gonna make videos for you. You get those with like I'm gonna I'm like, dude, shut up. Three a day that people want to write my newsletter for me.

Yeah, I it's like stuff like that all the time. And mo nine out of ten of them, they're just like really bad. They're not good uh at what they do. And this guy just kept DMing me. And I was like Screw it. Fine. Screw it.

Like just make clips for me. Send me ten of them. Like I just said something stupid or something like that, just to like get'em off my back. Any like Within before the night was over, he sent me like ten and they were pretty good. And uh I was like uh All right. Well

I don't wanna post these. I'm gonna make you post it for me. I'm gonna give you my Instagram password. Um, send me a picture of your A driver's license. Your social security card?

And he told me at one point he lived with his girlfriend, I go, Send me your girlfriend's driver's license too. And he sends me And he sends me a picture of all of them and I go, Great, I know a lot about you. I'm gonna I'm gonna, you know, we're gonna have an issue if you screw me. Here's my password to my Instagram. Make it work. And he does and he kills it. And I go from like a thousand followers to like ten thousand followers in a week and then like Up now to fifty thousand it kills much.

So get this. So I was like, All right, you're right, you're awesome, but here's the deal. You're gonna do this for me for free for a long time. And in exchange, I'm gonna tell all of my friends about you. And uh I'm eventually once you prove it to my friends, I'm gonna tweet out that I think you're great. Um and he said great. And so within

A month of him messaging me, we got him up to like twenty grand a month or something like that. I forget. Like a a really good wage. Um and he's like has this thriving business and then I tweet him out and we send tons of customers to him. And so I also do the same thing where I take a small percentage of the profits. And I'm loving this, but I would rather have the profits rather than equity in the business.

But really I think You mean like a cut a cut of revenue? You'd have a revenue rather have a revenue share than an equity slice? That's the mistake. Sahil Sahil sent me a text yesterday and said, Nick, what's your three biggest regrets in life? And

One of them. He asked you that question? What a weird question to ask. Why is he asking you that? Okay, go ahead. One of them was not going to Marshall A year earlier and getting equity instead of freaking a cut of profits. Or a kind of revenue. Yeah, uh

Yeah, I I just don't know if a clip agency is ever gonna sell. Yeah. I love agency. I love agency businesses. And I don't want to like give advice to people all the time. Do you know what I mean? I think it's different when you're with Marshall because Marshall is like a very proven entrepreneur who has a couple exits under his under his belt. But like

Sometimes when I'm talking about it, yeah, they don't need or want me to get involved in their operations. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, dude, I don't want to like uh I don't want to guide you. I just wanna send you customers and um I like I I sometimes I prefer transactional is what I mean. Um. So I love I love leaning in. I love leaning into the ops. Uh, my business an operational mastermind and Yeah.

Yeah, but I have three other companies that I'm working on launching right now. On a very same Very similar trajectory as well. Poor Shepard. By the way, Diego's company it's called Short.

It's like a a short clip. And then ZY dot co short Z dot co so short. And then Z Y dot co. Yeah, man, you should own you should own twenty five percent of his company. Mm.

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe maybe I will end up regretting that, but I'm I'm happy with the deal. But we uh And so uh what were the other two regrets? Oh. Um I don't know.

Let's go. I think it was Um, go ahead and get married a little earlier and have kids a little earlier, even though I did it when I was almost thirty. Um, and then you you aren't married until you're thirty or first kid? I got married when I was twenty seven and w I had my first kid at twenty nine. And I kinda if that was three years earlier, I would have been just as happy.

But in general, so many so many people I talk to say they wish they would had their kids earlier, by the way. And I'm shocked that people say that. Are you Are you excited to be a dad at some point? I know you and Sarah have started to talk about it. Are you what do you what do you think about how do you think that's gonna change your life? I'm pumped. I'm so pumped. I I think that

Um A I agree. I wish I would have done it earlier. Um, and I am so pumped. I think it's gonna be life changing. I think I was talking to Sarah about this last night. I was like So we've achieved a lot of like interesting things at a relatively young age, like professionally, like we're known in our field and like we have some respect amongst some peers.

Financially, like we've achieved some things. Um like And then we were like. Parents say, like, well, you're never ready. And I was thinking last night, I'm like, dude, I'm totally ready. Like, what else do I need to do? This is like it feels like the next step. So I'm incredibly Ready and I don't really care about this, but I actually think it's gonna turbocharge my career.

Um, I think that like it's gonna make you feel like amped up. Like before it was I was earning So I don't know why. I was earning I was trying to make money for ego egotistical reasons. And then after that, I was like, now I'm in the place where I make money because I do shit that's fun and because my fun hobbies often the outcome is income. I pick and choose different things. Now I think it's gonna feel like I want something for my children. I want to impress them. Um, I want to show them how to work hard.

I think that there's gonna be like a little bit of that and it's also gonna be like I don't wanna spend all of my time uh after like six PM working. And so I have to pick and choose my battles and I think that's gonna actually force focus and the outcome will be better financially. Am I wrong? I think you are right on the money with your two things. There's two more. Number one is that you are going to get so much more emotionally mature. When you have kids.

At least for me, I was Highs, lows, I would it it just it just puts stress in relative When you know you have a human. That you have to care for?

And the stress level of when that human is sick or when when they scream or when they cry or when they hurt themselves or when they suffer. That that puts it all in perspective. So you just get Like better at dealing with stress. The second thing is like I got more focused and I was able to get more work done when

I couldn't travel the world. I couldn't go play golf all the time. I couldn't just get on a plane and go be spontaneous and go spend two weeks in Europe. So instead I would spend really good quality time with my family in my house and then Pop to my computer to

tink tw you know, tinker inside of my business and make my business better. I don't know, does that make sense? Yeah, it t it totally makes sense. And I'm pump we have three kids now? Yeah, five. Five, three, and nine months.

Yeah, man. I'm I'm I'm pumped for it and I I think the out I don't care about this, but I think the outcome will be a better career because of children. That's that that's my prediction. I think you're right. I wanna talk about the cost egg business,'cause that thing that seems like it's going even better than um Sh support Shepherd. So

Uh I'm a customer. I used it. I got it for free, though. So but I I am a customer and I uh I'm going to be able to do it. We we have engineers who go in and they Break out the different

parts of a commercial property or an income property, a piece of real estate. And then they give you a schedule of which you can depreciate that. To the IRS. Meaning like normally it's what, twenty seven years? It's normally twenty seven years straight line depreciation. They take it so that oh the windows, those are only a five year life. You know, the landscaping outside that only has a five year life.

Then you got all these ground improvements that we're gonna make and all these other things that can be accelerated a little faster. So And then there's something called bonus depreciation. We're going way in the weeds. You don't need to know that. Basically our engineers come in the building, they draw a picture of the property, they split it out into different values, and they give you document that you can go to the IRS to get way more depreciation and save money. Year one. So I I haven't gotten my I haven't gotten my report yet though, but let's just m make believe on a million dollar property.

That what's a million divided by twenty seven is what? Yeah, you're gonna get twenty seven thousand is it much twenty seven thousand dollars a year. Yeah. Okay. In depreciation. Two point two percent, maybe something like that. And then on um With this it would be what, like

Two hundred grand in year one. Yeah, and on a self storage facility is anywhere from twenty to thirty percent year one depreciation. Um an industrial property might be ten to twenty percent, an R V park might be sixty, seventy percent. It just depends on how many ground how much ground improvements you've done, like work to the outside of the property. Landscaping, you know, windows.

Doors. Do I pay that tax back if I sell the property before twenty seven years? Um yeah, it's it's called recapture. So if you don't plan to hold the property for a while, then you need to keep some money'cause your basis drops, basically. Your taxable basis drops by the amount that you depreciate. So that gap is called recapture and you pay that at the recapture rate, stuff like that. So Yeah. And where is my team doing this?

Um we have My my friend Mitchell Baldridge, who you know, his wife Mel. Um, they are my partners, my business partner, Dan is minority owner as well. Um, I own forty five percent of RE Cossa egg. And

I mean Mitchell Mitchell had done Hundred plus of these. Before we started this company. And he'd never really thought about Hey uh

We can We can find some engineers and do this stuff really well. Um we've created a Twitter account. Ari Cossack. We

got really competitive pricing because instead of Me flying somebody to your property in Texas. We did a Face time, you face time with one of our guys and he walked around, took some screenshots. What was that like? My property manager did it and I was out there with her. And I think

She was on her phone. I w she was on her phone. And she said the guy sounded Italian. Are they in Italy or something? They're all over yeah. We have some people in Miami. Um

Yeah. Florida's pretty popular. Columbia, Philippines, we've hired Uh seven people. From support through support Shepherd for this company. Um it's which is another funny part about it. But yeah, we have twenty three

Twenty three employees. Uh, Mitchell's wife Mel, who spent eight years at KP M G or uh one of the big consulting firms. She was a management consultant. She's the CEO of the company. And

Yeah, we're nine months old and we did two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of revenue last month. Dude, that's crazy. And I remember like so uh Jen, my PM Uh sh took her like twenty or thirty minutes. And so my property's big. It's like twenty acres, but there's like a four thousand square foot house and then um Like a barn that has a gym. It's this is for an Airbnb I have.

And she like spent maybe twenty minutes walking around and he was like What's that thing? And they're like, Oh, that's like our water purifying system. And he's like, All right, cool. Let me see that. All right, cool. Uh show me all the windows. Yeah, they look at like okay, what can we depreciate faster? And they're like, Show me this, show me that. Yeah. Yeah, and he w and she was like, We have two garage doors here and he was like, Alright, cool, let me see that garage door. Uh I forget what else it was, but uh like she like She was just walking around and he like had a checklist, but then also he would see stuff and like ask, like, wait, let me see that uh water filtration system or like uh

You know, out this my property's out in the country, so we have like a a well or something, and I think she he was like, Let me see the well like I like he like wanted to see all this stuff. And I haven't gotten the report yet. I think we just get it did it like ten or seven days ago. Yeah. Um But yeah, that's the business. And there's one other

company in the space that's doing it that I almost went with. It was called uh Madison Spec is Yep. Is that yeah, exactly? They'll fly somebody out to your property and they'll charge you twice as much to do a cost egg because they gotta get somebody out there. So It's a win win scenario. When I read about this, I uh Mark Jenny. So we have this friend named Mark Jenny who we've talked about in pod. He's a badass. Yeah, he's badass. He has like I don't know, his portfolio is like mid eight figures of Air B and B. The Barstool guys rented one of his houses for Superbowl week.

Dude, I saw the so the Barstool guys is are in Arizona, I think, for yeah, and I saw like the Mini putt putt course in basketball. And I was like I bet this is Mark's and then you or someone else told us that it was Marks. And he uh I was he's inspired me to get into Airbnbs and I was like, Mark, what should I read? And he like sent me some book and he told and that's where I learned about accelerated depreciation and I started Googling how to how to do it.

And I only found a couple of firms doing it. So I thought this was gonna be like a niche business. I didn't think it was gonna be like a big business. What how big do you think this is gonna get? My prediction and again I I try not to make predictions because then I just set expectations and end up getting You know. Stress because of expectations and Stressing.

That stuff. But yeah, I think We'll do three to five million of revenue over the next twelve months. And I think it'll become a it'll become a over the next five years a Ten to fifteen million dollar a year revenue business. I don't

I mean, you don't have to set expectations, but I will. But I feel like that Is under shooting it. I think it could be potentially bigger. I don't know how big the market is, but I bet you there's just so many other services that you can begin to offer depending on how hard you want to work. Yeah, we're we're launching so that's r costeg.com. We're launching tax credithunter.com as well to do ERC credits and employee retention credits. Same partnership group, Mitchell Mitchell and Mel. Um, that's when you didn't if you didn't lay off employees during Covid and you own a small business, you can get

Um into employee retention tax credits back from the IRS. And you need Mitchell you need Mitchell on to really talk about that stuff. I can't Um guide. But basically if you didn't fire your employees when Covet hit. And you kept them on. The government is offering

Massive tax credits to your business. And Very few entrepreneurs know it. They expire in two thousand twenty five. And Yeah it's it's It's significant. We're talking

The the guys that we know who are running companies with hundred and fifty employees are looking at Hundred to a million dollars in tax credits. There's a company called Main Street. Make street.

I think Sean either invested or knows the guy who founded it named Doug, and they were an advertiser with the hustle. They're a good company, but what they did was How much money did they raise? I think they raised they did the exact same thing you're saying. They probably had like a tech play to it. I don't remember exactly, but they're still around. But I think they raised Like two or three hundred million dollars, like a I forget the exact number, but like a huge amount. And I think they just recently laid off a ton of people, not because the business stinks, but I think they just like raised a ton of money and hired a ton of people.

Um, but I do think that that's proof that this If I'm in your position. And I'm like Oh, well, you guys have just validated the idea and concept. We're not gonna raise money because we don't wanna screw up our cap table, but I bet we can do this because we already have a little bit of money, we already have an audience. Maybe we won't grow as fast, but we'll own the whole thing and do it our way. And I think it's a good thing.

The Ari Costac Twitter account. Which I I run and Mitchell runs. Uh It's got thirteen over thirteen thousand followers already.

No shit. What are you tweeting on there to to make people follow it? Um just All about Cost Seg, all about real estate investors, client client examples, anonymous client examples, but how much money we save clients. Um it blows people's mind when they realize that Real estate investors, you can make

I mean I'm an example of this, you can make two, three million dollars a year from operating companies. And if you're a real estate professional and you buy property each year. And you consec them and depreciate them. You can have zero.

Tax liability. Zero. Yeah, but becoming a real estate professional is a pain in the butt. I try to do it. I tried to do it and I I was like there's no way I can justify like basically to if I remember correctly, to become a real estate professional, you have to s uh I forget exactly.

You have to be the person who spends the most time in the business. Yeah, there's You you need a good CPA to really like Log your time and create a a rock solid case. And then you also have to I think a certain I think a the majority of your income has to come from real estate, if I remember correctly, or you can't I is there something where like you the maj or where is it like you're outside

Your all your revenue streams can't add up to be more than your uh than your Uh real estate income. Is it something like that? I thought that there was something where like you can't make too much money. Well Maybe I'm wrong, but I remember the seven hundred hours thing, I was like, There's no way I can qualify. I think you can get some advan I think you can get some I don't wanna talk out of my ass here. I don't remember exactly, but I think if you do three hundred and sixty hours you can you can get some uh Uh and short term rentals short term rentals, there's a loophole in it right now. We're doing a ton of cost things on people who have short term rentals because

They don't have to be a real estate professional. They just have to spend more time on that rental property than anybody else. And there's some threads that Mitchell Baldrich has. And if you search it, if you search short term rental on the Ari Costa account, you can read the thread. But yeah, it's uh there's a loophole around. Uh Short term rentals.

Well that's sick, dude. I think that Potentially those businesses can be bigger than like your storage thing. But that's just 'Cause that's what I know is like internet businesses, but I think that actually could be pretty massive, right? I think I I am very bullish on what could happen. I'm excited. Yeah. And then the I'm also buying a I'm buying and rebranding a

Property and casualty insurance company. What the hell is they? They provide property insurance. Like if you have a a commercial piece of property, a self storage facility or a multifamily unit. You need to get

property insurance on it in case there's a Tornado or a fire or somebody slips and falls outside. Yeah, I mean I have it at my Airbnb. I think I think it's expensive. I'm pretty sure I pay five or six thousand a year. Does that sound right? Yeah, that sounds right. We pay over four hundred thousand or over three hundred fifty thousand dollars annually to ensure our self storage portfolio.

But it's also a pain to work with these insurance companies. Like the brokerages operate like it's nineteen fifty. You have to put it. Yeah, but I can't even like law I don't have like a login. I think I just have like a PDF that like they sent me. And then they sent me more questions that said, like, hey, did you ever fix this handrail or something like that? And uh anyway, like it's pretty an antiquated. It's my business partner, we were working with a top ten firm in the country, brokerage firm. Top ten.

This is one of the biggest companies. And my business partner, Dan, had to go into that business. And build a system for them to quickly get us quotes on properties. And to bind our coverage. We can't pay online. Things move slow as hell. Nobody responds to us.

So yeah, we're buying an insurance company in Kansas City. We're rebranding it as Titan Risk. Um Titanrisk.com is the shout out. Um and we're gonna Spin up a property and casualty insurance company. On the back of again the

The the following. Uh your website's down, so you gotta is it Titanrisk dot dot com. You said. All right, yeah, and it'll be up soon. It'll be up. It'll be up by tomorrow, hopefully. All right, good. I I I don't know. I think this episode might go live tomorrow, so you gotta get it up by then on Thursday. What uh what did you pay for that?

Um, the guy was doing He he We found a guy who had a really good contract base with carriers.'Cause that's the key. Like Everybody goes the same carriers, but you have to have contracts with those really good carriers. Um we found a guy in Kansas City who had that.

And He was million, million and a half of revenue inside of a shop. He's the producer. He has four back office. We're gonna hire folks through Shepard.

And some Americans as well. Um Account admins and we're gonna lean on his shop at the beginning and Kind of spin up a a secondary brand. So

So if if I come on if I come on in six months I'd give you I'd be able to share a ton because this is in its infancy, but I'm more excited about this business than I am about Um Ari Costa again. And uh type.

Tax tax credit honey. Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software's the best. HubSpot. Grow better.

I wanna ask you about the Fourth one, but for the first three, did you put up any capital for any of them? Yeah, we funded a checking account. Um Or already costs like we put fifty grand in there and then the

Two months later. You know, we were making distributions. That's nothing. Right. Mm-hmm.

Dude, that's crazy to me. The great thing about hiring an employee, even if you hire a a really good engineer for a hundred thousand dollars You're only paying them. Eighty three hundred dollars a month. Do you have engineers for these companies? Yeah, you need we have civil engineers inside of Ari Costa, so yeah it's it's

This is this stuff's not easy right? Mel Baldridge is a badass. Like she's managing twenty three people. We're doing a ton of volume of sales. doing all these CAD drawings, breaking down these properties. Um Marshall's team is really badass. Like none of these companies Are easy by any means. Who's building the system, so like and and not civil engineers, but I mean like

Uh web. Yeah, we're using air table as a CRM. Um We have A lot of out of the pocket tech, but yeah, we're getting some web work done as well and starting a

A web A a web landing page for a development company as well called web run dot com, but That's with another guy that's gonna be spun up in the next month. So yeah, I mean It's getting it's getting fun.

I wanna ask you about this last one and then uh I wanna ask you more questions about all this stuff. I'm gonna write my questions down because I don't wanna interrupt you. What's this pest thing? Oh, the pest control business? Um I have a I have an L P a good friend of mine who owns six Branches of a pest control company. And

He needs the he needs capital to go buy additional properties. And he's got some capital, but not You know, five or ten million dollars. And I said properties I'm it. Additional companies to latch on to is

But Um I might do a deal with him where I sit on the board and I advise operationally, I help Them higher. um overseas talent through support shepherd. And implement them inside the company.

And then Uh Raise the money from my real estate investors. to buy the business. But that's in its infancy as well. I need more time to to really talk on that.

So Um About Between two and six months ago Sean and I on this pod talked about a few things. I told him

I was like basically like On Instagram you have like Rihanna and the Kardashians, and then there's like thousands and thousands of more. But those two those the f the Kardashians and Rihanna are like two prominent examples of people who have built hundreds of millions or billions of dollars worth of uh net worth via Instagram. On YouTube we have

Mr Beast, he's like the common He's the one everyone talks about. Um And then you know, there's way more uh of people who have built like there's the lady who started Ipsy, I think it's called the makeup brand. There's there's tons of'em. On Facebook you could say that like BuzzFeed and like uh

Um a bunch of other people like you know, built multi billion dollar businesses on the backs of Facebook. Now There hasn't really been one who's done it on Twitter. The r and Snapchat same thing. We can think of a few more examples. The reason Twitter maybe it hasn't worked is because I think people haven't taken it seriously. And also there's only like three hundred and fifty million people on it, as opposed to Instagram. There's like what billions.

But I think that's changing. And what we haven't seen yet is someone who has built like the the equivalent of the Kardashians uh on Twitter. Except instead of selling makeup, I think they're gonna be selling B to B or professional. whatever that is considered, you know, uh B to B services or Uh something where it's like a higher end person, not a young woman buying like twelve dollar makeup.

And um We haven't seen that yet. And then Shaw was like, Yeah, and then we have like the guy mafia. So you've have people like The strip mall. It's like these anonymous accounts. Like the strip mall guy who I know who he is. I'm friends with him. And he is a large business. And uh I don't know what it what has come from Twitter, but he has a large business. And then there's like five or six other guys. There's like the used car salesperson guy, and he's like potentially gonna build a large business. And like it's very Predictable watch guys is selling shitloads of watches on Twitter. Yeah, I almost bought a a Rolex from him. He like had these date just that I wanted.

No one has done this to the extent of like hundreds of millions. I guess you kind of almost have already, but no one has done this to the extent that I think possible. You might be one of the first ex or at least one of the people that I know closely who might be one of these early people to build a multi hundred million or even a billion dollar fortune. Mostly because of your audience on Twitter. Do you think that's that's uh Uh accurate. I think these companies are so in

So in their infancy and it's really easy to get to two hundred and fifty grand of revenue, but ask guys like Andrew Wilkinson how hard it is to go from two hundred fifty thousand dollars a month to you know, two hundred fifteen million dollars a year in revenue. Like those types of jumps is on another level, right? I don't know if I have what it takes to do things like that. Um You're saying you don't think you you you you have what it takes? How can you how did you say that?

I'm gonna try. Hell yeah, I'm gonna try. But I mean, how much harder can it be than what you're doing now, but you give it ten or fifteen years to mature? I don't know. I think what Austin Reef does at Morning Brew, like managing these bigger companies is just a different skill set. It's different. But you're not doing it. But I'd have to to become a billionaire, wouldn't I? I don't know because dude, it's kinda like you're like the Ryan Reynolds of Twitter a little bit. You know what I mean? Like he's got Mint Mobile. He has the soccer team that he partakes in. He's got uh

I don't the the alcohol drink that he has. Uh, I think he has a few more. I I mean, that guy's not operating those companies. Connor McGregor's not operating the whiskey thing. But like and I can't operate frankly, I can't operate my companies either. I'm focused on my real estate and everything else. Yeah. And so but my point being is If you're just if you have ten to twenty or thirty percent of a handful of things

One of them could hit. There's this guy named Felix Dennis. Have you ever read uh this awesome book called How to Get Rich? I I love that book. Yeah. I love that book. I recommend that book to everyone. It's horribly titled, but it's the best book I've ever read out of book. You should have equity in that book, Sam. Dude, I uh whenever we mention in the pod will notice the next day it goes up the charts like a ton. And uh well he he's dead now, but he he built like a publishing empire that was like it made him much a a lot of money, but the bulk of his wealth was he owned ten or twenty percent of this thing called microwarehouse, which went public for multi billions. And he made many, many hundreds of millions from it. And he had the same thing where he was like, Look, I own the magazines that I'm gonna promote you guys in there for free. And I'm also gonna be like an advisor, but I'm gonna be considered a co founder and this was my idea and I hired you guys. But he didn't manage the company. He met with the

with the other founders a lot and he gave it his uh opinion, but he wasn't like running the day to day thing. I don't see why you you couldn't do that with a few more things. I think the You know The power of Blowing up a brand is one thing.

The power of spotting and reading and hiring and delegating to really good operators. It's something is another thing as well that's underrated and something that I'm think that I'm good at. Finding people who Really think about business the right way.

And To build these companies, I can't operate them. I'm an investor, I'm an advisor, and I and I pump their stuff on Twitter and I'm a customer. And I you know, help, but You gotta find somebody who really is really good at running a company.

And that's where I wish I I made a joke on Twitter that offended a couple of my good friends. A couple of days ago that said like I need to do more angel investing so that I can Invest in these companies.

I can see how these founders think about business and how they make decisions and how they write their updates and how They Fight through. And I can

get a look into their brain and and I can spot the killers, right? I can find those those guys that are just really good. at business and then I can pull them aside when they give up. I made a A a statement like the hell the you know, when they want to leave the hellscape that is venture capital. That's not true. Um there was It was uh

It was just Not Cool for me to say that about my buddies who add so much value to the world in in that space. But anyway, you're joking. I was I was half joking, half being serious because I want to pull these people away and and Basically found and start and buy.

businesses that I think that they could come in and run. Great businesses that are ran like crap. And just accelerate their growth and make them better. Dude, Austin Reef. is an amazing operator.

And um I remember when I first met him I was probably twenty eight or twenty nine or thirty and he's younger than me. He's Four years younger than me. And I was like, You're the first person you're one of the very few people who's like my peer

But younger than me who I'm I'm a little intimidated by it. I'm like you you I'm I I remember telling'em I was like, dude, I'm a lot better than you at a few things. You are so much better than me at a few other things. And I wish I would have been the other way there. Listening to the way that he thinks about business problems. And the way that he talks through them. And the way that he

paint a story in in a clear and concise way when you're asking him about his business is That's what I'm talking about. Like that's the 10Xer. Austin is the 10 Xer, he's a hundred Xer. He's on another level. But like when you're around a lot of these people and you talk to them, you start asking questions and hearing the way they think about business. You can do it too. Like you can just tell. You can tell when somebody's different, when somebody's really got it.

Dude, he's the best. But I would also say like Andrew Wilkinson's a great friend of mine. I don't know what his empire's worth, but in the five hundred to a billion range, depending on public markets. He uh When I talk to him

I don't feel like I'm like Andrew, I don't feel you're out of my league. You've just been doing it for longer and you were really creative and you were the first person you were You were bolder and smarter than than me to like believe that this could actually become a thing and you did the thing and then you did it for years and years and you didn't give up and you never bowed down and you always did it your way. But in terms of like Your vision and my vision.

You know, my vision now that I see you could do it, I'm like I don't think you're Ball I think we're in the same ballpark of like intellect. Um, and so that's why when I see him, I'm like, dude, you're inspiring to me because I kind of feel like we're almost the same, although the results are not the same. And I find that to be very inspirational. And that's kind of the same for you. Maybe like you could look at a guy like him and be like, Oh man, this guy's Andrew is my idol. Yeah. I mean, that man understands leverage.

And delegation. Unlike anybody that I've ever met. Right. He can find somebody, he can He can his his brain is so good at analyzing the pros and the cons of making a bet. He he does business like a poker player, right? When the odds are in his favor, he's gonna go big. And he's just proven that he can make those bets better than anybody else. He'd find those excellent operators.

And I think he's a undercover killer too. I mean I I know that he comes off really humble, but The dude is a killer too. He's a killer and anyone who's that successful is not not a killer. Uh you're right. He and he and he does a good job because he like is a I always tease him. I'm like, dude, you always dress so nice when you have slick back hair. Like you like have this like

designer like uh look to you, but like You're like Quit acting like you're like uh not a killer,'cause you definitely are. He's got why What do you what do you do with your money? Do you what do you invest in?

Um, well real estate I'm not that liquid, right? I haven't sold a company. I haven't sold any properties. So I personally guarantee, you know fifty million dollars plus of debt.

And I only have three point six million dollars liquid, so I'd be foolish to start spending that on houses, cars, and boats, right? So Um I keep a lot of cash, about a million in cash. I keep Another mi another Two and a half million and

public equities that I can Create capital. Are you trading? Are you trading? I buy buy stocks and hold them for a long time. I'm way too dumb to try to guess what's gonna happen inside of my own. But you didn't used to be that way. Um I bought some dumb

We talk about our friend Austin Reef. I bought some dumb stocks. That I then sold. six months later for a big loss. Absolutely. But I'm not trying to Day trading time. Markets.

Austin told us all that that Zilla was like the bye. I didn't buy it, but I it it was a fair argument. Oh, we bought it at 150 bucks. It went up to two hundred and I was getting text from Austin that the w that you know, let's let's go. This is incredible. Now it's thirty bucks or something. Um But no, I I mean Google and Facebook and Microsoft and Apple

Uh The best companies in the world all got fifty percent. cheaper. So I bought a lot of those and I'm gonna hold them for five years and I'm sure that I'll do fine. What's motivating you right now? I just think it's fun. I mean the building the building is really fun.

Is that what you I mean, I want to talk about you now too, Sam,'cause you're Your earnouts over here. How many years post exit? Are you four years out? No, dude too. Two? Two years. Okay. Never mind.

Um Yeah, I mean you build something, you sell something, you have that event. And then when it's over, you're like Well shit, I kinda l I love I love building, I love tinkering, I love Entrepreneurship and business.

I needed So I gave myself one year. To I basically wrote the rules where I was like, I'm gonna read anything that interests me, whether that's so I read a lot of fiction and I read I don't read business books anymore. Um, and then I also said I'm just gonna s search. I'm just gonna search. So I'm just gonna plot and search and just Whatever

Interests me, I'm just gonna pursue it. You know, I was like I was like I'm just gonna a dog on a walk following my nose and I'm not gonna like feel guilty about that. And I noticed that after about six months I was ready to roll again. I scru made some mistake I made some irreversible decisions at my company, like some culture decisions. Basically when I started the company I was twenty five, and then when I about sold it, I was about thirty and like I was a different person. And I'm more solid on who I am now. So I would have different values when I start my next things. But anyway, I made some mistakes. So I basically kinda had to sell the company or In order to like get out. And so I was pumped about it.

But at the same time I was like, I wish I was wealth I wish I was w I wasn't wealthy when I started a business. I had nothing. I was like, I wish I was wealthy so I didn't have to sell this to get liquidity. because I would have liked to have owned it forever, but I was very, very, very happy. To get that time to relax and to seek. And then after about six months, I was like, dude, I need action.

I need to gamble. I felt I remember watching a James Bond movie. And I'm like, should I become a cop? Like I need to go out and like get into trouble. Like I need to experience like It's the real certainty, I think. It's like it's the it's making a decision where you don't know what the answer's gonna be.

And then waiting and seeing what happens. That is just incredibly addict about entrepreneurship. And doesn't dude. I just like like being a shithead with my friends. I love our group chat, like when it gets spicy. I like think about it all the time. Like it's so funny and I'm like, I gotta go do something now to one up the the guys here. And that's how I feel. So like my my best The bet time I have

that I love the best when it comes to work is what I'm with like my partner Joe or someone like that, and we're like We can't pull this off, can we? Ah fuck, let's go try it. Like that, that adrenaline, that's like my version of like James Bond. When I'm watching him like having like a card chase, I'm like, dude, let's this is our this is our nerdy version of a card chase. I need that thrill. And it just so happens that the outcome typically is money.

And so that's what I'm motivated by is like the thrill. Um, I don't give a shit about legacy. When people talk about legacy, I'm like, I don't give a shit, dude. I'm gonna I'm like Imagine the feeling that you had When you before you were born, that's what I think I'm gonna have when I'm dead. Why do I care what people think about me? You know, I wanna like leave something to my children'cause I love them. But like I don't give a fu about what everyone else thinks. I don't care about legacy. I just want to have fun and like have excitement in the moment. And that's uh what I'm motivated by.

Yeah, making these Making these business deals and these business decisions and these and these Calculated bets, we'll call them like And all these things I'm working on they're just calculated bets.

And when you When you put the money in, you just never know. What's gonna happen? You never know what's gonna happen when you try to sell it, when you start to get customers, when you start to solve problems. And it's It's

Addicting, for sure. By the way, we'll we can keep this on, but producer Ben We have to bleep out the name of what he just said. I haven't denounced that yet. But can we talk about it? Can we Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can w we can't say what it is, but we can we can we can mention I have a thing that I'm gonna be announcing in a month. I'm gonna I might be one month. Nick just said the name of it.

We gotta bleep that out. I'll be announcing it in one month. I've been doing it low key for two reasons. One I wanted to prove that I can do it without my audience. Um, and two, I wanted to make sure that it worked and was life changing. It's a wonderful product before I'm I like get like an influx.

But I'm gonna announce that in a month. Um What else we wanna talk about? Anything else? I mean I mean, I've been thinking a little bit about like

What holds people back? And anxiety and the decision making that Like anxiety. No, I just mean like the uncertainty, like the the fear of failure. Like it it it's it's in everybody. Not not that

I guess anxiety is a is a bad term. More like insecurity. Right. I have insecurity. And the

And it holds me back from making Big decision. And the problem with it is is the more insecure you are, the less decisions you make and Decision making is like Something that you have to practice to get really good at.

You don't make sure decisions with a lot on the line, you have to You're never going to get better at it. Ever going to get better at it. So then You have un unmade decisions and that equals stress. Cause stress is

A decision that hasn't yet been made. And then it just cycles and snowballs. So people who are They have insecurity, they have anxiety around making decisions. Then they get stressed out because they have these decisions.

And it's just a big compounding snowball of Oh. Like it just holds people back from kicking so much ass. Like every high performer that I know They

Make a ton of decisions. They make some of them wrong. They lose some money. Like there's downside, of course. But they just make them and make them and make them and they make them quick. And they get better at it and better at it and better at it. And that's when the leverage kicks in and they can just build and grow and build and grow. My parents when I was a younger kid I would like

sell CDs or like sell use stuff on eBay. And I w I remember making mistakes and they're like, Oh, that's all right. You can't get a hit unless you're in the game. And uh I they're like uh you're swinging your miss, but you know, you gotta you gotta swing to get the hit and you can't get hit unless you're in the game. I remember hearing that and that like changed my life. And so now whenever I screw up, I'm like uh, whatever, like, you know, a three hundred batting average in baseball is great.

So I'm like, that's all I need. Like that in business is fine. In fact, in business you actually need less. If you try a hundred times and one thing works, it makes up for all the ninety nine things. Um that's what I always tell people, I'm like Dude, you gotta s you gotta you can't get hit unless you're in the game. I've been asking high performers this because now I have a five year old. I'm thinking about what I can do for my kids to help them Just get better at making decisions and get

You know, more A more solid foundation. A more solid foundation in the event of insecurity. Did your parents just like Let you struggle a little bit. Like that's something that I found is vr very common among

entrepreneurs and successful people. Because so many parents nowadays they really mess up because they like shelter their kids from all decision making. They like make the decisions for the kids. They like They they keep them from getting in any pain at all. They're gonna keep them from having to deal with the uncomfort of pain. They're gonna put them in a bubble. And

I look back on my parents and my My parents would like They would make me make the little decisions when I was a kid so that I got better at making the decisions and then when they they were bigger I wasn't overwhelmed with Fear and insecurity. I was always skateboarding and rollerblading and going to skate parks and I remember I had a unicycle I would and I would try to write it downstairs and they were like

I was crazy. I was like do all this crazy stuff. I remember when I was in fourth grade, I could ride a unicycle and juggle and I would do all this crack like skateboarding shit. And they would be like Uh hey, let's go to the skate park. Uh but

the only rules they had was you have to wear a helmet. They go as long as you wear helmet, we don't care. And so I was in and out of the hospital, broken broken broken fingers, uh stitches on my eye, broke my arm, broke my collarbone. I've had a lot of broken bones. And they were I always say my parents They once I uh left school, I wasn't financially uh like they didn't they've never like helped me with the business or anything, but they supported me uh up until then. And So I had that, but

They were emotionally supportive. So I remember when I left school and moved out to San Francisco and told them I was gonna join this thing called Airbnb. They were like This sounds like a multi level marketing thing. Like is this like you're just and I was like, No, guys, like it's like I think it's legit. Like at the time I was like two or three hundred people work there, it's legit. And they're like, You're gonna leave

School to go do this? And I was like Yeah, it's legit. And and they were like, Well, that sounds horrible, but uh You know, we'll see you Saturday. We'll come down there and help you move out. And so like they did things like that that were like very emotionally supportive. And so and that was like huge. And so a lot of my friends who don't take risks. Oftentimes their parents were quite neurotic.

And they instead of saying, um Why uh Instead of saying like of course this can work, they would default to saying, like, well this will never work because of this, this, and this, or like you can't go study abroad, like Mexico's dangerous. Haven't you seen that there's like shootings or uh You know, like people get sick when they uh do this and that, like I remember like that was usually the default versus like

Screw it. We'll we'll we'll handle it when we get there. Yeah, putting your kids in a bubble and now that I have a five year old, like it sucks to watch him struggle. And I and I have a bunch of employees and it sucks to watch I don't know, there's there's a lot of similarities between like

Let your kid get hurt though. Like let's say your kid's riding a bike and he's wearing a helmet and you're like Dude, he's one hundred percent about to knock his teeth out. Um, if he's about to hurt himself bad and I'm gonna go to the emergency room, obviously I'm gonna run and try to catch him, but if he he's on over on the other side of the cul de sack and he hits a curb and he fall down and he starts screaming. I'm not gonna sprint. over there and pick him up and coddle him.

Does that make sense? Like I'm gonna I'm gonna let him I'm gonna let him figure that crap out. But I just think it bleeds over into Everything. Like if you if an employee walks into your office And they they have a problem and you just say, Get out of my way, I'm gonna solve that problem. Then that enables that enables them to it A, it doesn't let them learn how to solve problems on their own, and B it in it enables them to

bring you more and more problems and just be completely And able to Like Get shit done without you as a boss. Um

Do you uh Ben just texted me and he wanted he wanted me to ask you, You you you have all three boys, right? I have A five year old boy. Three year old boy. Two uh

All right. Ten month old girl. Are you gonna raise her the same way? I would imagine, yes, right? Oh yeah. I don't know. I don't know if I will.

Yeah, you got it. If I have a daughter, I mean this is my I'm hypothetical, you're living it, but I think I would Definitely you gotta do it the same way, right? Oh yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna raise strong, secure. daughter for sure. Like A I'm gonna show her that I'm gonna treat her mother with a ton of respect and that her mother should never take shit from me just because

I'm a man, right? That's the that's something like you cripple Women. In the long run, if you like Enable. Lead them to be insecure.

I'm gonna try to raise like a really strong, confident Secure. girl who can yeah, knows how to struggle with grace, absolutely. So when she falls down on her bike, I'm not gonna run over there either, I guess. Well good dude. I'm happy you came on. I like talking to you. Um

By the way. We do this thing on on on our YouTube channel. I'm gonna do it now. I was supposed to do it earlier on. We talk about the gentlemen's agreement. Have you heard me say this? I have not. Damn you're catching me up totally blind. So we we've been growing our YouTube subscribers uh Uh, I think last month we grew by twenty thousand.

And the pitch was this, which I stole it from this guy named Jesse on fire, so I'm I'm not gonna act like I came up with it. But it was uh we guilted people a little bit. We said hey, hold on and Hold on. I forgot they did it, go hold on. Unlike everything else on YouTube, our content is not for free. We actually work for you. And the way that you pay us back, it's kinda like when you go up and buy a uh you go up to seven eleven and you see like a jar for the mu muscle dystrophy and you take a piece of candy you leave a quarter, or you leave a dollar. That's what this YouTube channel is, except

Instead of the dollar. All you gotta do is click like and subscribe on on our little channel and we work for you. And so our content's not free. You have to subscribe if you watch more than one video and it's called the Gentleman's Agreement because we're not there. It's a handshake. So anyway, that is the gentlemen's agreement, so you h do have to subscribe to our channel. But dude, that pitch

Changed everything. Immediately we started close seeing close to a thousand people a day clicking subscribe. So it's w it's working. So you gotta have like a unique way of asking for it and it and it's worked. And so now we have all types of people coming up to us. I had a I was riding my I was on a walk yesterday and a guy drove by and goes, Hey, I honored the gentleman's agreement. I swear to God, in Austin. I had two people last week uh say that to me. So anyway, that's our gentleman's agreement. So if you're listening if you've ever listened to more than one episode. This is the gentleman's agreement. It's an honor system. You have to do it and we can't check this on you, but please do it. Everyone's doing it, apparently, if we're growing Almost a thousand a day, but Nick.

I appreciate you. You're um You uh what's the c um what's the promo uh it's uh so support shepherds, the s shepherd thing. For Shepherd.com. Sweaty Startup.com, BoltStorage.com. Support Shepherd.com.

Auricosteck.com. Taxcredithunter.com. Webron.com. Titanrisk.com. And sweaty startup on Twitter. Twitter. No, and I I mean I really appreciate this. I mean you bring me on here

I hope your audience got something from this because the value that this will add to me Is Is Phenomenal man. You've always been incredibly supportive. I remember I was

Trying to launch a little community around real estate and you got on a call when you're busy as hell and I wasn't that big of a deal. And you helped me set that whole thing up. I mean The generosity. Uh Sam is Friggin awes.

Well I appreciate that. And now uh Maybe one day I'm gonna ask to be an affiliate of your affiliate or something like that. So anything you need. Anything you need, man. Let me know. All right, I appreciate you. Thank you very much. That's the that's the pod.

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