#309 - Nick Huber - Serial Entrepreneur - Making Your Father Proud & Building a HoldCo To Support His 11 Companies

Chris Powers: Every time I get on with you, I'm like, man, we have come so far in some ways. And then, we're getting started. 

Nick Huber: Yeah. You sent me a text that we're about to chop it up tomorrow.

I keep a running list of notes on my phone of questions I want to ask you and when we will talk next. I was born ready for this. 

Chris Powers: I knew you would do that and have more ready for me than I probably had to use. So I kept it trimmed to a few topics, but it would just, I don't know if we ever talked about this, but the way that we met was Adam Blake put us together on a text message four years ago.

And it's been one of my most incredible friendships over the last four years. It's just been every time we chat more, it just gets better and better. It's cool. 

Nick Huber: Yeah, man, I'm getting more out of it than you would know. So I think you're when I look back at my career, and I think I said this same thing last time I came on this podcast, but when I was doing my first real estate deals, I talked to Adam Blake first, and he said, you got to speak with Chris powers.

And you're the one who said, hold on Nick, and you shook me and said, no, you cannot build a real estate private equity company that can last without charging fees. And it's not that you were trying to get me to set more than what I was worth or rip anybody off. It's that to do this business, you understand that this is an expensive business to do, and there's going to be a downturn.

And this was in late 2020. And sure enough, in 2023, we haven't done a sizable deal in nine months, but I'm still paying all of my incredible talents, and we're not making a lot of profit, but we're like, we're in a perfect position to keep these great people.

Chris Powers: And you're not desperate here today.

Nick Huber: Yeah, that's right. 

Chris Powers: On that note, I'll say this broadly: I'm not picking anybody apart, but often, when people are challenging, sometimes my questions will be, how many employees do you currently have? And then my next question to them and challenging people is that you should charge any fees or anything worth paying people; how many people do you currently have?

And if you were to grow your company to up to 50 people, how would you get there? How would you do it? And many people have not believed that the people you tend to argue with the most on this topic haven't thought through that. And look, I had yet to think through it when I first started, either.

I had no idea how I'd get to 50. I used to be somebody that was like we can't charge fees. So shit, maybe I'm just going to have to find a deal that makes me 30 million bucks one day. And then I'll use all that money to grow the company if that doesn't work because you'll never do a 30 million deal if you don't have people.

Nick Huber: All right. Our friend, Eric Weather, said it well on Twitter yesterday. He said the amount of life-changing deals that one will come across in their real estate career, you can count on one hand. So you have two options. You have two options. You can hope and pray that those deals come, that you're well-positioned to capitalize, and that you can work like crazy for six months with your Podunk team to get these deals done.

Your second option is to find a way to build a company around doing average deals that can become great deals. Still, you gotta, look, the longer I'm in, and I'm new at this like people will listen to this, I go and mix a long-time accomplished real estate investor. But I'm just learning that it's time to do this.

Everybody makes real estate sounds so complex. You bought, you use cash flow from whatever. You buy significant assets in good locations and don't die. And if you hold onto those things and do nothing else, don't die. Amazing things happen in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. That's how all the wealthiest real estate families I've ever seen are.

They need to put more leverage on it or take more risk. They hold real estate for a long time. It's a good thing. 

Chris Powers: The worst news for people like me and others is that being active feels incredible. And the answer to most people's issues is, like, do nothing.

Like you said, don't die and hang on. That's the best strategy.

Nick Huber: Yeah, exactly. 

Chris Powers: All right, we're going to start with parenting. That was the hot topic that came up. We're not going to talk about real estate today, people. If you're, if that kills the episode for you, this is time to log off. We've talked about it enough. And there are way more important things to discuss.

An excellent place to start was when you started a business with your Dad. I lost my Dad 11 years ago, and I tweeted this the other day in anticipation; the only way I could think to honor my Dad besides how I acted and behaved was to name my company after him, where he grew up. Then that sounded like a company that sold rum called Rum Stick Capital.

And so I was like, all right, I got to pivot from that. I'll try and act on my best behavior and honor my Dad that way. But you got to start a company with your Dad, which I think is so freaking awesome. So, let's start there. How did it happen? And what's it been like to work with your father?

Nick Huber: Yeah. So, my Dad came from a very traumatic childhood. I didn't know he came from a traumatic childhood with physical and emotional abuse from a stepfather. I didn't know anything happened until I grew up and out of the house. But my Dad changed that trajectory because when abuse finds its way in, past trauma finds its way in, or instability finds its way in, it's common among generations.

It's an unfortunate part of life for kids from families with trauma and issues. I rarely get it together, but I wasn't wrong and quite the opposite. I was lifted, made confident, and given a lot of great things by my Dad, and looking back like that is the biggest blessing I've ever experienced.

The fact that I was not grown up in a shitty home with an abusive dad is pretty unbelievable, considering what he went through. But he flipped that script, and he changed the trajectory of future Huber's forever, and it's pretty freaking spectacular. 

Chris Powers: Did you all get along like good friends, or was he more of a dad to you?

A friend, but really like a dad. 

Nick Huber: Yeah, it was a respect, a fear, a trust, and a healthy level of all those things. A healthy level of he was enough of a disciplinarian that I sometimes feared him. He was enough of a good mentor, and I had great times with him many times.

But yeah, he did his job as a dad. He taught me how to suffer gracefully, and he went off; he got me started in my company. If people don't know, he set me down at the dinner table and showed me how profit and loss statements worked. He showed me a rental schedule for the truck and the lawnmower, and he got me a commercial contract on a property downtown so that I could start a lawn mowing company fast forward six months.

I hired a high school kid to drive me around when I was 13 years old, running a lawnmower, when most 13-year-olds are put in a bubble and protected from the outside world by their parents. It's absurd to think that I was running a 60-inch wide, zero-turn mower in downtown Tell City, Indiana, as a 13-year-old crossing four lanes of traffic to get from property to property and then 95-degree heat in the summer.

That's radical; what my Dad did is very extreme. Most parents would look at that and say, this guy's out of his mind, but that's how he set me off into the world, and when I go to college and think about, oh, hiring that first person for that moving company that I started, it wasn't that scary because I had to dig a 900-pound mower out of a ditch as a 14-year-old solved problems and strap a tow rack to my truck. And even though I didn't have my driver's license, I was pulling the car around and the lawn mower out of the ditch because you're just problem-solving in those businesses.

But my Dad, by trade, was a VP of construction for a very successful developer. He was never wealthy and got paid little money. Still, he was running a massive business from the site location to where we would build nursing homes, assisted living, and apartment complexes. Fast forward 30 years from that, my Dad made 85 10 million plus buildings with a team of eight or ten people in a small town, Tell City, Indiana.

He says, Nick, I'm tired of this construction is too stressful. The older man's about to retire. The company's vision is shifting gears. I can feel it changing. I need to come to work for you. And this was three years ago. And I said, Dad, I'm not ready. I don't have the money. I don't have the opportunity.

I can't afford you. I can't wait to hire you, but let me keep working. And eventually, my Dad, three months ago or six months ago. He called me and said, Nick, I quit my job today. And I said here we go. You're on the payroll starting today. And it was an incredible feeling. 

Chris Powers: Oh my God, I might have Goosebumps.

I'm going to get into that in a second. I want to go back a second, though. I have two questions. One, did you want to do this lawn mowing business? Or were you damn it, I don't want to do this. Or were you excited about it? Or was it a negative thing at first that became a positive?

What were your emotions when you said you would do this? 

Nick Huber: I was a 13-year-old, and I had no idea how the business worked; I had no idea what money was; all I knew was that it was 98 degrees outside, and there was trash in these yards and this, and I was sweating, and I just had the emotional stability of a 13-year-old; I cried within the first hour of the very first job because there was trash around the grass, there was trash, there, this is outside of a movie theater in a subway, so there's, and a McDonald's is right next door, there's a trash bag full of people's garbage sitting in the yard, I just mowed over it, man, and frickin spit out shit loads of trash in this yard, and I'm just mowing around damn, this is easy, this mower's fantastic, and I'v completed the half work, and my Dad shows up, and he's holy shit, Nick, you're making a huge mess, He starts to discipline me.

Then he sees the tears enough in my eyes, shifts into caring dad mode, and says, okay, we got to pick up all this trash. I spend the next two hours out there picking up this trash. And I'm like, Dad, I fucking quit. It isn't charming. What, why am I doing this? I'm 13. I'm crying. I'm sweaty and soaked, big old semi trucks are driving by, I'm in the middle of the city, and I'm like, what is happening?

He pulls me aside in the truck, puts a wet towel over my neck, and says, Okay, Nick, maybe I did get in a little over your head here. But he's you have to finish this summer. He's I promised my boss that you would be able to do this. I signed you up for this.

Either I'm mowing this grass, or you are. I, you have to finish. And I was like, okay. I'll spend the summer with you. He did a little charismatic pump-up talk, got me excited again, and got me back on the mower. That night, I went home and sent invoices for 180 worth of work. And it took me three, four hours to mow these lawns.

And this is all the while my friends have yet to start jobs at Subway. Three years later, for 6 and 25 cents an hour, two weeks later, a check shows up for 480 bucks. I'm 13 years old. And I was hooked from then on. I didn't complain. I didn't complain again. I wanted more jobs. I wanted to hire more people.

I realized that, Hey. I made 43 dollars an hour, and I'm 13 years old. Let's fucking go. 

Chris Powers: That might help answer this next question. What was money like in your household? Was it, you mentioned, your Dad's career, but was it, did you feel like it was scarce? How did they teach you about money?

Nick Huber: So I grew up on a 200-acre farm because my Dad's a maniac, and he bought a dilapidated peach orchard out of bankruptcy in 2001 cheap. He couldn't sign the mortgage, so his boss co-signed the loan and accepted part of the property. He repurchased part of the property and did a complete gut remodel. We moved out to Perry County, Indiana, and lived in an RV for six months while my Dad had to evict people, migrant workers who were squatting in the house; we had to gut the place. We found BBs in the wall inside the house, gutted the house, gutted the kitchen, and rebuilt it. He rebuilt it with his hands and free time while we lived in an RV for six months. So we got into a fantastic piece of property.

It's still in my household. I own that property now today. And we can tell that story too if you want, but my Dad didn't have a lot, but he was extremely resourceful. He always had, always was. So he made sure that I was going to the Bobby Knight basketball camp when I was 14, even though, 

When I went to Cornell, I was on financial aid at Cornell because they looked at my parent's tax returns and realized that I qualified for 75 percent off tuition. My mom's side, extreme frugality, depression era, to the point where there's a hierarchy, or there are patriarchs of that family that are worth millions of dollars but drive across the bridge to save 10 cents on gasoline, just excellent values.

That was one of the core competencies for me growing up. Yeah. I didn't go without, that's for sure. I had everything I needed and thought we were upper-class babies.

Chris Powers: And much of what you've just said, and this gets into parenting even more: you can say what you want, but kids are watching what you do.

It sounds like you watched your Dad build this house. You watched, you lived in an RV. You just watched hard work. You watched your mom's side of the family and how they think about money. So much of it, you just had the luxury of observing good values. 

Nick Huber: Yeah. I didn't realize that there was a different part of the world until I went to college in Ithaca in the Ivy League and saw kids from wealth, kids from New Jersey and Long Island. Both parents are attorneys, and they would want to go skiing and Greek Peak that weekend. They would go to North Face and spend 750 on Dad's MX to get a puffer coat, new shit.

And then they'd get home, put it in the moldy basement, and forget about it. That was what exploded in my mind. I had never thought that existed, but it exists today, and we all know about it. And then, when I started my company, it was, I was pinching pennies to the extreme. We were buying 1,500 cargo vans on Craigslist.

Driving to the South side of Chicago to buy a box truck for 2200 dollars, looking back, if I had a little capital and a sense of what's worth investing in, it would have been a lot easier in those early days, but I think it was a blessing, like how exceptional values that came up.

Chris Powers: Yeah. I got to TCU. It was a private university, and there were folks in El Paso with money, but nobody showed it. And so we get, we got on campus. I'll always remember driving in Range Rovers and Mercedes. And I just figured that parents are dropping their kids. And then you start seeing the kids leave the driver's seats.

And I had one of those moments: Oh my God, I'm not in Kansas anymore. Like I am, I've never seen this in my life. And for me, we can, we don't have to chat about it today, but that was another like spark or maybe, I don't know, chip on the shoulder, but something that kind of a new revelation of what's possible, I just had never thought that was something that people did. Was it good or bad? It was a new way of looking at the world I couldn't comprehend when I arrived. 

Nick Huber: I have a theory that it's a blessing. You need three things in entrepreneurial endeavors when you don't have to start a successful company.

It would help if you had operational chops. You need to know how to run a company. You need a network, and then you need a little bit of your cash to start a big company to do big things. And early on in an entrepreneurial and debt career, you have none of those. I was a college kid running around without resources, cash, network, or the ability to run companies.

I got excited about something minimal and stupid. And these kids that came from everything, these kids that came from the 4 million house. And yes, they had a Range Rover and Daddy's Amex; the small opportunities were necessary to take that next step. It wasn't exciting to them.

It did not energize them. I got off during my junior year, finals week, busy as hell; I got off my ass and ran around campus to pick up a bunch of boxes in my Cadillac Deville. And I thought that was worth it and fun, but I worked my ass off for ten days and ended up with three grand like they can go and swipe Dad's Amex and get that in a heartbeat.

So I got to find a way to instill some of these values in my kids, even though we're in a different position now because it's so important. 

Chris Powers: And we'll get there in just a second. All right, real quick. So you bought the peach farm from your father from the family or repurchased it into the family.

When did you do that? 

Nick Huber: My grandfather bought half of my Dad's farm to give the family a loan. And also because he wanted to build his retirement home there. He believed that house and 100 acres where we lived on a 200-acre farm surrounded by 380 acres of Hoosier National Forest.

It's a beautiful thing. Grandfather bought half of it and built a house on it. Things changed. Grandma died. He got older and didn't want the house anymore. And one day, he listed it for sale, which surprised everybody in the family. And my Dad's, Oh my God, this is not what I signed up for. We made deals back when we built this house.

There was chaos in the family when strangers were touring the house at the end of a mile-long gravel road. That's our 200-acre farm. Two places right next to each other, a hundred yards away, nothing separating them, and it was potentially going to earn to who knows who. I was lucky enough to be in a position to step in and buy that house, which was excellent, and the property.

Chris Powers: Man, that is one of the most incredible things, things like that, that you can do. I love it. 

Nick Huber: Everybody says money is not that important, and it's not; that has not been my experience. Having resources to help people who need help or to make things happen that need to happen is underrated in this world.

Having resources at your disposal can have an impact on charitable giving. You can have way more of an effect when helping people you love. And just security for not only you but your entire family. And I have yet to deal with a situation where somebody needs healthcare or critical stuff. So it's just, it's a blessing. It's fortunate. 

Chris Powers: I was going to say to piggyback off that. And something I think about often, and it's resonated over the last few years, is money magnifies your heart. The more money you have, the more you can see inside somebody's heart.

That's what you just said. If more money means more giving, more helping, more everything, it reflects what's inside. Suppose more money means more houses, cars, boats, and airplanes; that says something. Someone other than me will tell you which way you should go. What I think about all the time is money magnifies your heart.

Nick Huber: My mom, I found out two years ago that my mom was working as a school nurse for 16 an hour and stressed about it. She couldn't travel to see her grandkids. She was going in and dealing with sick kids all day, doing admin stuff, and changing diapers from preschool. It was like, it's K to 12, she was the school nurse, she got dealt all the crap.

And I told her not to return to work and put her on the payroll. It's been enriching, just like the most impactful thing I can do. And she sent me a text today: You got my oil change and maintenance on your credit card. I felt guilty, too. I just wanted to inform you that no one was hijacking your cards.

That stuff is like that. It matters, man, like it matters. Like people ask, like, why would you start a business? Why would you do all this uncomfortable stuff? Why would you take this risk? The number of people you can impact if you're not just going to make it all about you is phenomenal; It's so much fun.

Chris Powers: Man. I want to jump through the screen and hug you. That's awesome. All right. Dad enters the equation. I quit my job, Nick. Let's make it happen. So what? Did you guys already have an idea of what you all were going to do? Or are you like, let's figure something out? How did it come to be that you all would help people sell their businesses?

Nick Huber: Yeah, this was two or three months after my foot injury, when I was lying on the couch, and I was looking at my baby girl and decided that, Hey, this is a moment where I have a chance to build an empire. And I'm going to get after it. I'm going to work. I'm going to make this happen.

I'm going to take the chance. And I won't look back 50 years ago and say, Nick, you had 100,000 people on your email newsletter. You had 300,000 followers on Twitter. You had all these people who were running companies. You had all these people buying real estate, and you just pissed off the woke mob, went around and played golf, made your money, had fun, and just sat around and let that opportunity pass.

And I snapped in. Holy cow, I got to get off my ass and build something. It is a fantastic opportunity. So I started the web development company, the SEO company, the paper click marketing company, the property and capital insurance company, RE Cost Segwas growing, and I started to layer in businesses that I needed to build on the back of my mind thinking, Hey, if I can do these foundations of companies.

If I can build a good business that can improve all my other companies, it will be like a superpower. And if I can get cash flow coming in from that, 500 grand, a million dollars a month, and it starts to stack up, and I start to meet all these operators that are phenomenal at what they do inside of my companies and get more and more confident in them.

I can buy businesses someday. Like I can own a, like my own private equity company. I'm seeing the power of what's happening at Support Shepherd. It's doubling every four months. It's doubling in size. It's 25 30 million worth from a good part of what I'm doing on promoting it on Twitter; I'm like, wow, I need to get after this.

And my Dad has something that nobody else has. He's charismatic and a good salesman, and he learns fast. And he has Huber as his last name. People trust him. He's an extension of me. People are excited to get on a call with him. So my first thought is, hey, special projects. Dad, you need to come on, and I have these people always contacting me by email.

Ever since, I went on my first million and told people about this plan of partnering with entrepreneurs and growing this holding company. Many remarkable people have called me, saying, Nick, I want to be a part of it. How do I come and work with you? I only have time to meet with some of these people, vet them, and see if they're legit.

So I was just like, Dad, why don't you start taking these meetings with these people? See if they're legit, Adam. Do your Rolodex, and we could take an equity stake here or there; if you think it's worth it, let's hire somebody you like. That was the original plan. I decided we could buy and sell some companies.

A business brokerage where we're buying and selling companies could become valuable, especially if it grows; not only can it make some cash flow, but we can see deals. We can get in with these owners. It can be a deal flow machine for me down the road. So, five years down the road.

And frankly, I could afford to pay my Dad ten grand a month to come on and work with me. So, we decided to start a brokerage. One of the first people I put him in touch with was a guy who worked at Blair in Chicago. He's on the partner track. He was making 600 grand a year—his name's Tom Dillon.

He came in and met with my Dad, and my Dad called me right after and said, Tom is probably the most confident person I've ever met. We got to hire him today. And I'm like, okay, hold on, Dad. I just put you on my payroll a month ago, and you want me to add somebody else. But this guy's a 10 XR as well.

And he's going to; he's the one in the back end, like with the finance knowledge, admin knowledge, and understanding of mergers and acquisitions, that's fuelling it. So yeah, the brokerage is about to go out with about 15 million worth of businesses to sell. We're going to make seven or 800 grand worth of commission.

If we get these deals in, the deal flow for new businesses is vital. So I'm excited about it. The brokerage will be a big profitable part of Nick Huber. 

Chris Powers: You said a lot. So your Dad comes on as special ops, special warfare project guy for Nick, but then you come in, and you're, and then you say, okay, we're going to start this business.

Tim Dillon or Tom Dillon comes in along the way, but I want to ensure that once you nailed the idea, what happened in the proceeding? Because of this, we're not talking years here. We're talking weeks, months between like concept to like we're open for. So when this transcends like you're starting some of these businesses and we're not going through all of them today, this is the one to talk about.

But from the day you and your Dad looked at each other and said, this is the business we're going to do. What did the next 90 days look like? 

Nick Huber: I move very fast. So, on the backend, I hired Simon Purdon, an ops tech systems guy. I hired Colin Campbell, an ex-Gary V guy who came in to run my content, and he has three people working for him now.

Simon has a VA and two people working for him. And I built a machine that can spin up companies very quickly. And I say company, LLC, bank account, Slack channel, website, CRM, the basics of what we need to get people in the door and put up a landing page and website online. 

Chris Powers: I'm going to stop you quick.

So you have a philosophy that if you can get those seven things up and go quickly, you have momentum already. That's your philosophy. 

Nick Huber: And I have a superpower in that. I can make one tweet or in one email, and I can generate 6, 7, 10, or 60 leads for one of these businesses. So I can go from concept. Hey, this is a business idea.

I want to pursue it. We have a web, we have a domain, so I always buy a premium domain. So I spend 10 hours on @dan.com and find a premium domain, whether it's  Ad Rhino, Bold, SEO, or web run some of these websites; I'm spending ten grand on the web address. Just boom, buy it. But yeah, I want to be in business too.

Let's see if customers resonate with this. I have a website built with an operator picked out. I have a CRM made. I have a Slack channel. I have a bank account. I have an LLC. And I am sending out an email to solicit customers to test the market two weeks later. That's how fast we can do this. 

Chris Powers: Okay. I'm going to play devil's advocate.

It's a great business. If I sell it, man, I want to hire Goldman. I'm going to hire somebody with a brand name. And maybe you're not going after the big companies, but I'm going to find the best business broker in the country that's been doing this for 30 years. Why am I going to, with my badass business, with all this cash flow, hire a start-up with a very well-known guy on the internet, but he's never sold a business before?

Nick Huber: That's a great question, Chris. And I get on these sales calls sometimes to try to close these deals, and I'll say, Hey, look, we've never sold a business before .@NickHuber.com is not an experienced brokerage. We haven't been around for a long time. We need to find out what your business is worth.

Yes, we can access all the tools to dive into all the transactions and determine their worth. We are going to outwork everybody. And we have distribution. We have distribution. Will you hire a mid-market private equity company to sell your 10 million company? Yes. They got more experience, or they're going to put a 27-year-old analyst on it, and they're going to send it out to their email list of people and put it on biz by sell.

Or do you want to list it with Nick Hubert and have him email 190,000 people on his email listserv? Three tweets about it get 400,000 impressions and find a buyer that way. Some people know me and trust my brand enough to try to sell their companies. And it's not going to be all of them.

It won't be, and look, this business will take years to develop. I'm already seeing it with RE Cost Seg. We launched and were very confident in cost seg, but it took a while to get the big clients. I have this friend who buys industrial real estate, and he believes a lot of it.

I texted him when we launched the cost segregation firm. I'm like, come use RE cost segregation. He's Nick, we got a contract with a big dog. Why would we use this company? Fast forward a year later, we've done a thousand cost seg. We have 20 people on the team. RE Cost Seg is an option for my friend who buys a lot of industrial real estate.

Chris Powers: Who's the asshole that told you that? 

Nick Huber: It's you. But look, it takes time for these businesses to develop. Yes, I can get the initial traction. Yes, I can get those who trust Nick Huber enough to come in and try my pay-per-click marketing company, my cost seg firm, my insurance agency, and my business brokerage.

But it's only for some, and we must immediately service everybody. We got to build the operations and hire the team. I looked at it as, Hey, Tom and Tim, we hired another guy named Juan Diego. Three people are on my brokerage team; if you guys can sell two businesses in the next year and bring in 250,000 in revenue.

That's a win. That's a win. We're breaking even, and the business will continue to churn. We will get better, and we'll be able to bring on more significant and more clients down the road. That's the vision. 

Chris Powers: The lead started coming in when you launched the website.

How did you guys get to a bar where, and maybe it wasn't like, again, you're just getting started? So you're looking for clients, but how did you know? Here are some businesses we will work with versus these probably aren't worth our time. 

Nick Huber: Yeah. So there's a business that we're going out with next week.

That's a property management company in central Indiana, a vacation rental property management company that does about 700 grand a year of seller discretionary earnings for the owner. It is a great little business, with almost 2 million in revenue. That's perfect. That's small. Our fee will be 75 grand to sell this company, which is worth our time.

And we're going to find a great buyer for that business. Then, we have a laundromat portfolio in central Ohio that we might be coming out. We hope we win this bid. It'll be about 13 to 15 million sale price. Pretty close. The guy who doesn't quite call the shots, but he likes Nick, and we've gotten him pitched to their team.

I can sell laundromat and real estate portfolio very well with my audience. So, it's a perfect fit, but it's tough. And look, the most fun part of working with my Dad. The most fun part is that he never understood what I was doing. Like we would talk about sports, we'd talk about hunting.

We'd talk about it. Some of the things that I was working on in golf. We love to play golf together, but my Dad needed to understand what I was doing on social media. Nick, why are you sharing stuff? What are you doing on this podcast? He never read my newsletter, and then boom, he's suddenly in it, like talking to real people on the other side of the world who want to work with me face-to-face on Zoom.

And he's calling me. And saying, Nick, holy shit, this is what you've built? Like, how are you meeting these people? Where is this coming from? It is unbelievable. So the first month was just, instead of jamming on, how's the golf game? And when are you going to come down and play golf? How are the grandbabies?

What about the dogs this year? Who's going to make the quarterback? Who's going to win the quarterback spot? It's, hey, Nick, I just talked to a guy. That lives in Peru has built a fantastic agency. He's insane, but he can't get us customers. He wants to partner with you to build out his agency. Let us do it.

Blah, blah, blah, blah. And the whole first month, I called my Dad down; we can't just take every opportunity. We have to slow down. But the central part was that all of a sudden, he understood. And he saw what I was building. And He was proud of me, man. He, like Nick said. I can't believe this like this will be your coming out year. You're going to build an empire.

It will be incredible, and as he told me, he was proud of me, And that fucking alone makes it all worth it to me. It's because he didn't know what I was doing.

Chris Powers: Repeat it. How much does it mean that your Dad is proud of you? 

Nick Huber: Over half the insecurities that people have in this world, don't trust themselves, not taking risks, not jumping on opportunities, comes from their, even their parents, disapproved of what they're doing.

And when I looked at my Dad growing up, all I wanted to be was my Dad, man. I saw my Dad, and I just wanted to fucking be him. 

Chris Powers: So awesome. 

Nick Huber: Yeah, when he comes in and tells me that I'm doing fantastic shit, that's what it's all about, man. I could care less what people on Twitter think of me, what my neighbors think of me, what my friends here in town think of me, when my Dad, who I've been idolizing my entire life, comes in, sees what I'm working on, and thinks it's cool, and thinks that I'm doing fantastic stuff.

That is why, man, that's why it's so awesome. 

Chris Powers: You got me going.

Nick Huber: And I think your Dad would; your Dad's looking down, impressed on what you're doing, Chris. My stuff's more public; I share way more of it, but your empire's growing relatively, quite a bit faster than mine, and, on the back end, your Dad's looking down very proud of what the powers are doing. 

Chris Powers: Man. I appreciate that. I'm going to read you this thing. My mom sent me this email, but this is an email my Dad sent me three days before he died, which is interesting. And it's a lot of peek of who he is. And I haven't shared it publicly, but I'll just read it to you.

I'll set the context. We were working with a banker, and there was a way to get a loan and the rate down a little bit more, and I needed help doing it. And there was a grey area that wasn't, and it wasn't legal. It wasn't illegal, but it was a, everybody does it, but. Look the other way. And he said on another more important matter, I know you're disappointed about the townhome financing and probably disappointed in me.

I'll say this, and then we'll drop it. I would do anything for you within my physical and fiscal capability to help you succeed. And I believe you know that. If I'd had enough advance notice to get you the 72,045 days in advance or whatever would have avoided that phony gift arrangement, I would gladly have done that, but I won't.

And to the extent I have any influence over you anymore, I won't allow you, I won't allow you to do something that is on its face illegal, unethical, immoral, or just wrong. And that is true whether we get away with it or not. In this case, I don't doubt that, as the bank president said, everybody does it.

And that we should not have caught. However, what does that say about us? Everybody does it because the world is full of people whose sense of right and wrong is shifting and situational. If they can get away with it, it's okay. You're better than that. And you have the influence upon and respect from others to make them better than that by observing your behavior.

This world needs more people like you. Lastly, what if God forbid that one in a million chance should come about and the federal regulators looking into the bank somehow question this loan? Would it have been worth the fine, the possible jail time, and the loss of my medical license or your real estate license because of a felony conviction to save the 1 percent in interest?

The answer is obvious. You did the right thing. And you can be proud of that love, Dad. That is being a dad. Dad, we could have gotten away with it. Everybody does it. The bankers said it was fine. But it wasn't right, and he wouldn't do it. And at the time, this was like 23, or I was 25 when he died. So this was 25-year-old Chris.

I was so upset with him at the moment. And my mom the other day sent me this and said, You remember this email? I don't. I just had it printed. It's up on my wall in a frame. And that will be with me for the rest of my life. But it goes back to being a dad. Man, you want to be like your Dad. Or if you have had a dad that you want to be like.

What a gift. And to the people who don't, my heart hurts even more for them. 

Nick Huber: He left a crucial lesson with you, man. He hurt you in the near term. It is so hard as a dad, too. It was hard on him. He pulled you in the near term. He hurt you soon to help you out in the long time.

And sometimes, as men, we don't know. Not to do that to ourselves and to have that is incredible.

Chris Powers: You've got two sons that you do a lot with that. What's the plan? Because I know and you and I both have talked about this. They won't get to live in an RV and watch you build a house.

Maybe they will, but that would just be you going out of your way to create an experience. That's not how life works. So what are the ways your kids will wake up and say I want to be like my Dad? 

Nick Huber: I think, look, my Dad, he didn't have it easy, but he had an easy example because he struggled.

My Dad was struggling and getting through to make a better life for me. That's what he was doing. He was like Moses talks about all the time. Wealth is a generational game. People come over from other countries. They work their whole lives for an hourly wage, Saturdays and Sundays included, so that the next generation can have a chance to go to a decent school and college and work a better job.

And then that whole generation works their entire lives and retires to send a kid off to the Ivy League or take a step up like my Dad's ground, and I have that. But now, here I am, and here you are. And my life has changed beyond my wildest dreams in the last five years.

And it's hard, man. It's hard. What will I do to show my kids that I'm struggling? Because life is hard for everybody. People say the more money you get, the easier life gets. And yes, that's true, but it doesn't stop the travel delays. It doesn't stem from the rain on an event when people are coming over.

It doesn't stop the sicknesses. It doesn't prevent the hangovers. It doesn't stop the struggles with all these things that tempt us as men. It contains no other tough shit that people don't see in life. If you raise your kids with everything and don't get them used to struggling, then when life hits them in the face, no matter how rich they are, no matter what job daddy gets them when they get out of college and life smacks them in the beginning, whether trying to stay healthy and fit. They can't, or they're struggling with alcohol, or they're trying to make it through a challenging relationship, or whatever, any number of things that make life so hard, they're going to crumble, they're going to crush unless they have some practice.

So, the only correlation, I think about this so much. It's probably occupied. I love that you tweeted and said, Hey, what should Nick and I talk about? And almost everybody wants to talk about life, how to be happy, and how to raise good kids because that's all I'm thinking about.

I've talked to a lot of rich people, talk to a lot of rich people who made terrific kids. And I've asked them like, what did your Dad do differently? And they all have varying levels of answers, but the one thing, the one main thing, the thing I'm going to do is to make sure that my kids get practice making decisions when the stakes are low.

I'm not just going to put them in a bubble and make every decision for them through high school and college like so many well-to-do parents do. And number two, when they create, inevitably make bad decisions, and they got to struggle a little bit, just like your Dad kicked you in the ass, and my Dad has kicked me in the ass so many different times, I'm going to make them deal with the consequences.

I'm not going to bail them out. I'm not; if they get a DUI on the way home from a football game, I won't call my buddy, a judge I'm playing golf with, and get them out of it. I'm going to make them. Deal with that if they drop their iPhone, shatter the screen, and go a month without an iPhone until they save money to get a new iPhone.

They're going to live with the consequences. I think you just got to teach these kids how to struggle with grace because life is a struggle, and too many parents have all the means, they have all the resources, and it's natural as a parent, especially as a mother, to want to protect your kid from struggle and suffering.

Who wants to watch their kid suffer? Watching your kid cry, be upset, and deal with pain is challenging. But you've got to make them get comfortable in those uncomfortable situations, and you've got to make them get used to struggling. I will ensure my kids are awkward and do things they don't want to do that will make them better and grow.

When they're 18, they go off to college. They know how to make decent decisions, and they've gotten practice making decisions. I went to this college with so many kids who had zero approach to making decisions, and life is one big decision. You're making hundreds of them daily, and they all impact you.

So if you don't know how to do it, you're screwed. 

Chris Powers: I love that. Is there anything you and your wife disagree on in parenting, or are you all aligned? Is there anywhere where she's Nick? Go easy on them, or are all of you speaking the same language?

Nick Huber: We are both wired differently. Naturally, my wife's job is to love on these kids and make sure that they're safe and provide for them and have everything they need and be emotional and look; I get moving with these kids, too. 

I'm loving on him. I'm kissing him. I'm telling him I care about him. I'm telling him I'm proud of him every single night. I sit him in bed and tell him everything I love about him right before they fall asleep, and they make me do it every night. And if I'm not there, I have to call and talk to him when they're in bed and say, Daddy, what do you love about me?

And I got to tell him those things. So I'm a softie, too, but my wife understands it's my role. We have different parts, and my position as the Dad is to be feared when you need to be stressed, to have the proper discipline, and to make sure these kids know that they can't do everything they want to do all the time at this age.

My kids are six and four. So, as they get older, it gets more challenging, and I'm talking to many people who are well-to-do and have kids that they can't get to, they're struggling with. And I'm afraid of that. I don't know how I would react in those situations. How do you feel?

What do you think about this stuff a lot, too? What's your plan? And I also feel different about my little girl than my boys. 

Chris Powers: Yeah, I continue to evolve. So one thing is, and by no means am I perfect here. In fact, and if you've listened to some podcasts, this is an area that I've had to improve on, and we'll continue.

One thing is modeling with my wife, a fantastic relationship. Just doing that is good parenting. And so, the relationship I have with my wife is significant. And is it perfect? No, but is it something that I find? I realized somebody said the other day that you want to know the quality of a man. Look at the rate of his relationship with his wife.

They said something even crazier that stuck with me. They said you can tell the heartbeat of a house when a wife or a mother walks around the corner. He said if I'm a guest in somebody's home and I'm sitting there, and I watch the wife walk around the corner, and she's stressed and frazzled and has dark eyes, and you can tell she's frantic, that means a lot about the husband.

But on the flip side, when a woman walks around the corner, she's light-hearted and light on her feet and bubbly, and that also tells me a lot about a husband, and I knew what they meant there. And so that's one thing. The second, and you, you tweeted on this the other day, and I've changed my mind.

You said it, and I've just been reading about it as financial circumstances have changed and the ease of some things have changed in my life. Initially, I was almost avoiding it and creating a false sense of reality, like judging our life as if we had nothing, even though we had stuff, and thinking, how can I create situations, almost create this false narrative for my kids?

That they don't live in a world like this that they live in, and the thing I've just really resonated with is it's not about creating a false world. It's about teaching them how to deal with the circumstances they will have to deal with. And trust me, we can all sit here and say.

Money has some benefits, but it could be better. It creates as much pressure and stress as it creates good. And that's why it's rare to see wealthy people with great families and great kids and it all put together. In most cases, it all unravels as things get bigger.

And if you can do it all, that's special. And so I teach my kids to deal with what they have, and I am still determining what that will be. But also never let them know that this is all yours; you're entitled to all this if anything, they might be able to be a steward of it one day, but they're certainly not; they weren't born on third base.

They were born on third base. I hope it's because they can say I had a mother and a parent who loved me and loved each other, but not that they promised me from a young age that I would have it all. And to your point of creating times where they will have to deal with shit.

I'll fight that, especially with two daughters and now my son's only one. I don't know yet. Your sons are older, but I don't want my daughters to suffer for anything. They're wit; again, that's just a little girl thing—their daddy's precious little girls. But I also see many of you, the trauma that creates people who have never suffered later in life.

Then they get in the real world, and they're just, it's not even their fault. They don't know how to exist. So those are some things that come to mind. 

Nick Huber: I have a little girl, and I feel different about her than my little boy. Again, I don't want to watch her suffer.

I don't want to watch her cry. I want to help in every single way possible. But my biggest fear is that my daughter will become what I call a bum magnet as she gets older. And these bum magnets are women who are just highly insecure, and they let men mistreat them. I want to show my daughter how a woman should be treated by looking at how I treat her mom.

I want her mom to be very secure, safe, loved, protected, and able to exude and live how she wants to live because she knows I'm not going anywhere and can trust me. And if I raise my daughter with a very secure mother, I convince my daughter how she deserves to be treated by a man.

I hope she has the courage, and it's the hardest thing to do. I hope she dares to leave that guy who will treat her like shit. Leave that guy who will cheat on her and emotionally bully or abuse and bring her down, tear her down, and try to make her insecure.

I have this theory that 30, 40 percent of men, their whole M. O., their whole business is making their wives, girlfriends, and significant others as small as possible so they have the most control. And it's so sad, and I would not want that. For my little girl, above all else, it's tough.

I want to raise her to do whatever she wants to do. And if my daughter enjoys the business bug, boy, will I develop that? But the odds are, she won't just by genetics and how and who she is. I want her to pick a good leader of the family if that's not going to be her role, and it might be her role.

She might be the leader, too. If there are two leaders, it doesn't work. It's just like how high-powered relationships are tough on some of my friends and in my experience. But yeah, it's I'm just going to treat her mom. I want her to watch how a woman deserves to manage and how I'm not just going to call the shots.

I'm not going to disrespect her. It won't be; I'm a dictator in our house, and what I say goes. And that's when my wife and I are such a fantastic team because she is good at reading people. She's good at looking at four or five factors of a decision and helping me make it.

She's competent and organized in dealing with our physical world. It's double the job I have looking at a computer and trying to raise invisible numbers in a bank account somewhere. It's like having a competent partner is highly underrated. I didn't know how intelligent and such a badass my wife was until we started dealing with shit; kids are complex, and my wife's a rock.

Chris Powers: My wife is a badass, too, and you did what you just said. 

Nick Huber: You better not clip up what I said either because I'll get canceled on Twitter for misogyny. 

Chris Powers: Yeah. For caring about your wife. No, my wife is a badass. And when I look back, my life is so much better because of her support and what she can care for.

And I don't care what anybody says; the job that you and I have is immensely easier than raising kids. I don't always say that in my weakest moments, but I get left with the kids for three or four days. And oh my gosh, I am like a pool of water. I can't keep it going. I'll tell you a quick story, on-topic, off-topic.

You talk about the fear and the love for kids. My wife called me the other day and said, " Hey, I can't find Connor. That's our middle daughter. I last saw her about 30 minutes ago. I've been downstairs feeding our one-year-old, and I'm like, she's probably hiding. I will make it a long story short because we only have a little time.

An hour and 30 minutes later, cops are everywhere; families are in the neighborhood, and we've searched every inch of the house. My optimism ran dry at about 45 minutes, and you talk about a fear you've never felt before until you think you're missing a child. 

Nick Huber: And your neighbors have pools; you're in a neighborhood where everybody's got a collection.

Chris Powers: Pools, alleys, we're looking, and to be honest with you, just the way it's all oriented and my daughter, she's four years old, but she can get around as I, she can swim. I wasn't thinking that she had fallen some. Someone might have picked her up and. I watched too much Dateline or something of that nature, but you go 45 minutes in, and I'm Mr.Positive. And then, all of a sudden, you've searched the block twice. Nobody's found her. Nobody's called. No neighbors have called. And then it starts sinking in that we have a whole other issue. When I get home, we're about to call Amber Alert. We're about to reach the Fort Worth media and publicize this.

We have cops everywhere. Families everywhere are already in the streets looking. And all of a sudden, a cop upstairs, who had still kept searching the house, which I told them was useless, goes, We found your daughter. And my first instinct was, that's probably not good either, that we found her at the house because we'd been screaming her name for an hour and a half.

And that little booger.

Nick Huber: She fell asleep. She fell asleep somewhere.

Chris Powers: She crawled underneath our bed, where we keep suitcases under our bed when we're not using them. That's where we store them. She had crawled in between two of them, to where when you got down and looked under the bed, you couldn't see her, you just saw the suitcases.

On both sides, she had fallen asleep. And she sleeps like me. She can sleep through a hurricane. And, if you're ever with me, if you're listening to this, and you're ever with me, and something terrible happening, and I'm asleep, I'm sorry, but I'm probably not going to be able to help you, because I don't wake up for anything.

The same thing happened with her; the cops flashed a flashlight under there and saw her little foot hanging out the back, and that's how we knew she was still at the house. But it goes back to kids like the feeling I had last Tuesday was the worst feeling I've ever had: my child is not here.

And again, it just reminds you how, like, what's important. 

Nick Huber: Yeah, you hear stories, heart-breaking stories, and look. Money, success, fame, none of that protects us from fear that we all have of losing a loved one, and God forbid a kid, Jesus. One more thing about my Dad, and I want to say one more thing that I forgot.

Another thing that's so rewarding about this is that my Dad found his forte. And when a man finds his thing, and when he finds something that he's good at and sees potential in, he sees the ability to grow a big ass business like my Dad didn't have the internet. It's like he was phenomenal at what he did.

He's exceptionally talented. He didn't happen to become an influencer at 29 years old like I did. And just get the world of opportunity thrown at him, but the guy's a killer, and he's on there doing these deals and talking to these people. He's making things happen. And I can see it, and he can see it.

He can see building a brokerage doing 10 million a year of revenue with five or ten reps. And he's traveling around playing golf with people. He can see it. He can feel it. And he's having a freaking blast. And it's just, that's part of the fun too. If this thing goes, if this business pops, I don't know if it will, but if it goes, he will have built it.

I am not helping him. I am ignoring his calls. I'm saying, Dad figured out, do what you want. And if he builds it, he will say, I freaking constructed that. What man doesn't want to do that crap when he quits a job he's been working at for 30 years. 

Chris Powers: If you're watching this on YouTube or it'll be in the show links, but it's called, you have what it takes, what every father needs to know.

And the skinny of it, it's only 50 pages. If you're looking at it, you can see it's a thin little book. Every man and every little boy, and it never goes away; they want to know that they have what it takes. And every little girl that becomes a woman wants to know they're seen and beautiful.

Those are what drive. Our instincts, our biological instincts. Do men have what it takes, and are women seen? And are they beautiful? And it's what you just said; even your Dad today is building it. Now it's a game: do I have what it takes to get this done? And that is what drives the underlying current of most males on this planet.

And the answer is, yeah, we all have what it takes. And the world today is designed so that it often makes you feel like you don't. Social media has been the gasoline on humanity to make a lot of men in this world feel like they don't have what it takes. Especially women who feel like they're not beautiful enough or people don't see them; I mean, all you see and I think about my girls getting on social media one day and just what women deal with.

And man, it's just a lot. There's a lot to unpack there. 

Nick Huber: The world's hard. That's the bottom line. The world is freaking hard. It's hard on men. What I see is that's also really sad, Chris, and I want your thoughts on this. I see men who come from successful, very successful fathers or parents or mothers and people who have Built that big business, and maybe they're taking it over, and somehow they don't feel happy.

They don't have happiness, even though they're amazing, doubling and tripling the company's size and doing amazing things in their own right. And they're building, they have a chip on their shoulder because, and rightly so, a lot of the jealous crabs in a bucket, these people who want to see people lose, we'll make these remarks like, Oh, they're just doing it because daddy built it.

And all these things are so cruel to a man, and they twist the knife in and twist it. I hope that my kids don't feel that and they can be proud and that they can take over and not have that chip where they got to work 70 hours a week and stay in the office, who knows how long and not; I don't know how to think about that and how to feel about it.

Chris Powers: Yeah. I can speak from experience as someone who puts business and work above everything in my life, everyone and everybody and everything, for an extended period. If you're going to work 70 hours a week, it's in the context of, is that your, is that the God of your life? Or is that just something you love doing?

But you can maintain other areas of your life how you would want. And for me, it became evident when most of the most important things that I would have said were important or I would have rated them a one or a zero. My business was a ten, and I had to start rethinking it. And I can only speak for myself.

Some people can work 70 hours a week and still maintain an eight nine or ten and other categories. I knew I couldn't, and it wasn't sustainable. And that was a gut check. 

Nick Huber: Yeah, it's not easy to balance. And I think. Another thing about success is that as you get more of it, and as you get more people around you, and as you get this flywheel of people starting to look up to you, and things going well, your business is rocking. You have wealth, and you have opportunity, and you have all this stuff. God forbid you also have 300,000 people who follow you on Twitter, the comments coming in, and the people sending you excellent things in DMs all day; it's dangerous because you wake up one day. You're, and you, this will sound not good when I say this. You wake up, and just for a split second one day, you start to look at yourself in the mirror as your own God.

That doesn't sound very pleasant, and it's not how I feel, but it's almost like you have all these people around you. They're all, yes, men. They all want to be a part of it. They all want a piece of you. You're kicking ass at everything, and things are going your way. It's dangerous. Like that, success can be hazardous.

You can start to look at yourself as your own God. You start to mistreat people around you. You begin to lose your humility. You start to change as a human being, and I'm fighting it. But I can't, and I would lie to you if I didn't say I'm starting to buy it. And it's scary. It's creepy about what can happen.

That could be more comfortable. I'm embarrassed to say that, but I don't know. It's a natural thought.

Chris Powers: Many people deal with it, which I've dealt with. Anybody in the world wants to put you in that role. But they also want to see it all come crumbling down and not to take it back to the Bible, but you can build your life on quicksand, or you can build it on the rock and quicksand is status is money is the DMS that shit goes away tomorrow.

What will be left if all of it goes away? And I don't have the answer. But it is a constant surrender, and remember humility and even more so in your position, and it will get worse. And the beauty of it all is you can model what that could look like.

Or you could fall into the trap that many insecure men fall into and become just the next guy with a power struggle, an insecure power struggle. And if we tie it back to parenting and being a husband, it will show up there, too. It doesn't just show up online; it shows up everywhere.

Nick Huber: Yeah, there's to be some reason why all the most successful men in the world are rough that they're, I'm not in their homes, but it's, they're not staying married. They're not spending time with their kids. 

Chris Powers: This isn't political, but look at the people who run countries and high-powered politicians.

And we've gotten so used to letting these people that no, that's so obvious and on both sides of the aisle and countries all over. The men that, and maybe some women, I don't know, but it's men that run a lot of this stuff are on the most extensive power trip you've ever seen. 

Nick Huber: It's hard not to.

Chris Powers: Somewhere along the way, they started looking in the mirror and believing their bullshit.

Nick Huber: For me, the problem with my path as a social media influencer, I know that to get to that next level, Of Grant Cardone, Tai Lopez, Tony Robbins, these people who like there are influencers and then there are influencers, there's C and D list influencers.

I'm a C and D list influencer right now. I'm famous in our little community on Twitter, but going to that next level is one way to do it. And you have to yell down people's throats how awesome you are and how much money you make, and you have to take pictures of yourself at your excellent real estate and on your private planes.

And I know that I have to do those things to get big. I know that I will have to do some of that stuff, and I have to tell people how much money I make, which I do. And then people start to come, and they begin to want a piece of you, and everybody in the whole world is selfish like-newsflash, everybody in the entire world is selfish.

I'm selfish, and other people are greedy. Luckily, two selfish people can work together and have a prosperous and mutually beneficial relationship. Men and women, married couples are both selfish. We're doing it for ourselves. Business is no different. I'm interacting with every single person because I'm selfish, but when I'm tweeting and when I'm writing online, I have people coming all over the place.

Hey, I want Nick. I want to be a part of what you're building. I want to come to work for you. I must also understand they don't like me because I'm Nick, and they want to help me. They are selfish as well. So, if this all goes away, I will stand alone with the core relationships I build, the people I care about, and those who care about me.

So, staying focused on the close-to-home stuff makes it easy to get distracted away from. 

Chris Powers: I will continue to challenge you because I don't think I'll be the first one to say that might be the playbook you've seen, and you're just going to become like all the rest of them, a famous guy that hates himself.

Those people aren't happy. Those people are not satisfied. You already know you're not going to be comfortable doing it. That's a playbook that somebody said, but you don't have to do it. Whether you believe in him or not, the most famous human being of all time might be Jesus Christ. I did the absolute opposite of everything you just said.

And there's a reason why, in this day and age, whether you believe in him or not, he still exists and might be the most famous name there ever was and did everything opposite. And we're at a point in the world that has gone far. We're all experiencing that now; the opportunity to be the guy who did it differently is more significant than ever there.

When it's darkest out, a little light shines the brightest, and I challenge you with your platform and everything you've given; you have a choice to make. And I would tell you, if there's even a sense that your daughter will wake up one day and get on the internet and be like, what the fuck is my Dad doing?

I would gut-check it because you will live in a mental prison for the rest of your life in regret. 

Nick Huber: That's tricky to hear, but you're right. I'm at a crossroads, to be honest; I know a part of me is battling with it, and I have this duty to get it.

Chris Powers: And I say that because I love you.

Nick Huber: I know you do. 

Chris Powers: And I support you. I want you to win. 

Nick Huber: I love you too. True friends are the ones that are not afraid, that are not afraid to give you the stuff that you don't want to hear. I feel like I'm at a crossroads. Like I can keep doing what I'm doing and stay in my community of people online.

Or I can get this message out. I can become a New York Times bestseller. I can move over to Instagram, go even more significant, chase people like Cody Sanchez and Alex Hormozi, and play that game I just told you about playing and try to grow this personal brand because part of me says.

I will do it correctly, and I'm reaching as many people as possible with this message of sweaty start-ups and simplifying the stuff. 

Chris Powers: The irony is what I think of when I think of you as someone who has helped the ordinary person; that is, you're not trying to help the next tech entrepreneur to be a billionaire.

We've just talked about humility. The part in the market is what we just talked about. People crave the most: sincerity, humility, forgiveness, and the basic things. And look, you can build the brand in other ways, but I wonder if I said that everybody you know wants to be like Grant Cardone. Do they align with the shit you care about at the dinner table?

You would probably be like, no, your message. In the sweaty start-up world, just a sweaty start-up is humility. That's like another way of saying, humble yourself and do something you don't have to be the king of the world for. You've already laid that foundation. And when I think of you as you've, as somebody that's cared about helping other people succeed, and you've gone after the forgotten market.

The market wants to tell everybody how to be a billionaire, and you're not; I'm not saying, even if you take it to money, your message has been this humility message in some way. 

Nick Huber: When I said Grant Cardone and Tai Lopez, I didn't mean the same values those guys exhibit.

I mean that the level like Tim Ferris and James Clear and these folks influencing many more people at scale, Ryan Holiday. 

Chris Powers: Okay, boom. Tim Ferris, James Clear, and Ryan Holiday go more in that direction. Those guys have built something they can be proud of; when you said Ty Lopez and Grant, okay, if we're just talking about size, I get that, but damn, man.

And I'm not here to judge if anything, and I have no; I'm you've never seen me tweet about Grant Cardone or say anything. You said it when you discussed it as taking a picture before a plane. That's not Nick Huber. That's not Nick; that's what some digital marketing strategist will tell you to get clicks, and you will be rotting in your heart.

What's Tim Huber going to say? 

Nick Huber: Yeah, I made a mistake when I said, Grant Cardone and Ty Lopez. 

Chris Powers: I know what you meant; I know what you meant.

Nick Huber: I mean, try to grow this thing to reach more people, and try to grow this personal brand to where that I am fighting against, okay, yes, there are the people who idolize Chamath and these tech moguls who have built these giant companies and have all this influence.

And then there's the guy who will stick up for the little man, and Cody's doing a lot of it, which is excellent. And it's, it's an important message. How big do I try to go with this personal brand?

Chris Powers: And I think the more trust you build with, you can do, you can make a smaller quote unquote, like following, if you're looking at followers online, but building those followers for the right reasons, I think is worth more than the 10 million followers that are just following to like.

You know better than anybody that you've mastered the game. And it's part of the journey. Like you're going to get tempted minute by minute, hour by hour as time moves on. And man, you have such a fantastic opportunity. And to be clear, you're already on that track.

I don't think you're off building a brand that dads would want to go home and tell their kids, like how we started the whole thing. That's who you want to be when you grow up. 

Nick Huber: Beautiful advice. What do I still need to include as part of this? What could I be getting wrong here?

And you just answered it in the last 10 minutes. 

Chris Powers: I think you just got to think about your kids. One day, they'll be able to get on the internet and read, and they'll see everything you've ever put out there and some things you'll be able to say: I was young, I was dumb.

I'm learning. It is how it went. But kids are going to; that's the world we live in today. Like eventually, like when we grew up, you didn't know what your Dad did as a teenager or in his twenties. Like he told you, maybe you see some photos, but there's no proof.

What's going to be interesting is we're getting to this generation now where you can see your parents online, and you're like, Holy cow, I thought this person was amazing. And then I started reading their stuff and realized they're as dumb as I am. 

Nick Huber: That is so true, man. Look, I'm already looking back at posts I made a year and a half ago, and I'm embarrassed.

I'm already moving away from the dumbass posts that don't move my brand forward and get a bunch of eyeballs. But yeah, it's a tricky balance. It's a tough balance. People want to trust the source to the extent that the authority has proven they're who they are.

And so many of these gurus and these moguls, they don't open the books. They need to show people what they're doing. They need to share the ins and outs of their deals, how they're making money, where they're losing money, and where things go wrong. And so I want to flip the script there at least, where at least when somebody doesn't like me on the internet, that's great.

But you can't tell, you can't say I'm not just putting myself out there, I am putting myself out there learning the shitload; if I didn't put myself out there, I wouldn't be able to get this advice from you right now. It's a beautiful thing. 

Chris Powers: Man, and then I'll say this, and I've said it on, I think, the greatest, one of the greatest gifts that you have that I've noticed is your willingness for, like, raw feedback and then what you do with it and you don't take it personally, and you're just biased towards action. I've never met somebody I've taught that, like the next day, was doing it better than I did. You take things seriously, and then you're willing to pivot. You don't live on one road; my life has set. Cause this is who I am, and I won't change it. And you model that well. You've said some controversial things, and we can laugh about them. I've always said, if Nick, that's not Nick. It's a strategy.

Five years from now, your strategy will look different than it does today. But to which much has been given, and you have a real opportunity to be a difference maker and not just follow the path. You can blaze your trail, and my job as your friend is to try at least be somebody trying to push you in the right direction cause I need that leadership, too.

Nick Huber: Yeah, I try to surround myself with people, like a short list of people that can tell me that I'm messing something up. And I'm going to listen because they're right. 

Chris Powers: I know a lot of the people in your life. We know who we chat with offline, and you surround yourself with people I admire and respect.

And that says a lot about you. And so again, keep those little kiddos. Keep that little girl in mind as you strategize before you press click on the following strategy or the next. Am I going to take them? It is like what my daughter will see this one day. 

Nick Huber: Yep. I like it. And my daughter's friends and school and everything else.

So yeah. It'll be a mess. 

Chris Powers: There's already some they're going to see. Damn it. I'm in that boat. That's why I thought about hiring this company. You can hire them to clean up. 

Nick Huber: That's wise. That's wise. 

Chris Powers: We have 10 minutes left. I was going to ask you something.

It is like totally pivoting the conversation unless you want to rally on to where we're at right now. 

Nick Huber: No, I'm, go ahead. Let's change it. 

Chris Powers: You built like a holding company and created a corporate environment that you alluded to at the beginning can spin things up.

And when I looked at the original, like four or five hires, it's a lot of content operations. It's different from your typical hold co, where you have financial analysts, financial wizards, and accountants. What do you think about the home base, like the top of the flywheel, and how have you built that out?

Nick Huber: So yeah, the, if I were buying companies. I would need a different team if I were taking bank debt or a real estate private equity approach to small business. Period, like I would need a chief revenue officer in a CFO and all these other things, I'm putting 50 grand in a bank account, and that's my venture capital money.

Like I'm an angel investor in my stuff. So we have an idea; boom, I put 50 grand in a brand new bank account on an online bank. It's there the next day. I can use it. I can buy the domain. I can spend up to hosting and another thing people need to understand. I've only been at this for seven months, and it's chaos.

It's chaos. Everybody thinks, Oh, Nick's got it figured out. Nick is Michael Gridley. Nick is going to make billions of dollars. No, my team is stressed. Like I'm talking to my operators a lot. I'm working more than I like to work. And I want to tell people that I work and have more fun than I've ever had because it makes you feel alive when you're in the trenches building and growing, and you're starting to make bets and see leads coming that.

I tweeted about my brother's lawn care company because he was the first guinea pig for bold SEO. We got in, and we built links. We build connections for SEO. SEO works where Google if you got links to your website, a bunch of links to your website, makes you rank higher. I bought and sourced 20 links for my brother's lawn care company over two and a half months.

And he went from fourth or fifth on the Google map back to first, and his phone started ringing off the hook. And I'm like, holy cow. I called him up. He's, yeah, I got too many leads, like I need to make two hires. I'm quoting two jobs right now. What happened? He goes, I have no idea, Nick. My phone just started ringing.

I'm like that I bought you like, I paid bold SEO. I spent out of my pocket, aggressive SEO. And you're going to pay me back. Of course, I bought SEO services from one of my companies. And he goes, oh my gosh, keep doing it. Thanks. And so I tweeted about that. I was like, bold SEO is a new SEO company where they source links.

My brother was a client, and his business exploded. He moved to the front of Google. One hundred forty leads came in over the next 24 hours. Our sales guy got 81 calls booked, and that company now has 80 grand a month of monthly recurring revenue, and it's three months old. You don't think that company's in chaos right now?

Chris Powers: Everybody's stressed out, chaos from two. 

Nick Huber: Yeah. Every company has one of two problems. You need customers. You need more customers. Or it would help if you had employees and processes because you need more employees and operations. I'm in a blessed situation with business, where I have a competitive advantage at everything I do.

I can hire talent through Shepherd. I can use my other business services to spin things up. My team is good. And I have the power to flip on a faucet of customers instantly. So I tweeted about Andrew's company, and bold seo.com had a hundred-plus leads and 80 calls. And it's been chaos ever since. It's been the most fun ever.

Cause we're booking business. Our sales guys are working around the clock. He's about to make a hundred grand this month because he's crushing it. And we're like, this is fun.

Chris Powers: That's freaking okay. But who are your five hires? You have five or six people. You have a video. 

Nick Huber: Yeah. So I have a head of content.

He has two video editors and a copywriter who work directly for him. One for my shorts, one for my YouTube and podcasts. He also works on all these webinars we're doing for RECost Seg to drive business and revenue. And then, so that's my personal branding team, too. They work on my branding as well.

Then, on the other side, I have ops, which is just Simon right now. He's a freaking badass, and he's hiring my bookkeeper. He's recruiting five positions right now. We're building the team very quickly at some of these companies. 

Chris Powers: And you pay for all those people with the revenue you bring in from the companies you own in the hold co.

Nick Huber: Yep. And I'm also spending a lot of money to grow my email list and on this content. So yeah, my monthly burn is a hundred grand a month on my holding company. I'm paying for a lot of email referrals at two each. I'm spending 50 grand a month for email referrals. Say you have a newsletter, Chris, and you say, Hey, one click right here, sign up for Nick's newsletter.

It tracks it. And I pay you 2 per subscriber. So, I'm buying 25,000 email subs a month related to business. They're coming from other content creators that are around business. Now that I was all overhead. So I'm bringing in 150 to 250 grand a month. I'm sending out a hundred grand a month.

Plus, I'm funding checking accounts with 50 grand each as we start about to start a sales company with a chair by Lancaster. It's just I'm having a freaking blast, man. Everybody thinks, Oh, Nick's building these companies, we'll see what happens. Five of these companies will be 50 million businesses in the next ten years.

I'm seeing it happen. Like I know enough to know. When a company is three months old and gets 150 leads in one day, I know how that resonates with people and how powerful it is. So it's going to be freaking fun, man. It's going to be, and it's going to, it's going to be fun. I'm having a blast.

Chris Powers: All right. We do a couple of these yearly, so we can skip checking in on the next time. But if, and I don't even, you always tend to think out if in 10 years things have gone right, what does it all look like? 

Nick Huber: Five years will take for this round of businesses to mature.

It is foundational like I have a team of agencies and companies that can accelerate other businesses. I want all of these companies doing five to 10 million of revenue, all of them, at least doing one to 2 million of you, but all 10 of these businesses will not likely fail.

Honestly, the most complex recruit jet, it's a tricky recruiting business right now. We did a 46,000 placement on Friday of last week with one operator and one thing. So they're all just limping along, not without their stress, obviously, but yeah, five years from now, millions a month coming into the whole go in profit, at least the brokerages spending, seeing deals.

And I am putting my capital, a lot of my money, into self-storage and additional ownership stakes in small businesses. And I'm using my distribution, which five years from now will be; who knows if we'll be Tim Ferris, Ryan Holiday, James Clear level, definitely not Grant Cardone. How extensive will the reach be?

Because I know that's the flywheel. The flywheel going around is, Hey, Nick building these businesses funnels the money back into his brand and his books, the books funnel into the businesses, and it keeps going around. It keeps going around. So, with more customers in the ecosystem, more people are part of these companies.

Andrew Wilkinson at a tiny, good friend of mine. Everybody forgets that little company valued at 800 million plus publicly traded right now that Andrew owns with a partner and several investors now cause he went public; everybody forgets that the cornerstone of that company, over half of its value, is an agency that Andrew started 11 years ago.

A design agency called Metal Lab. People forget that he started it 11 years ago, and everybody thinks they will buy great businesses like Aero Press. And they do; they're purchasing notable companies and growing them. He started a metal lab, which is his portfolio's powerhouse.

That's my plan as well. I want some of these companies to rise to the top three years from now. I'll have operators in all these businesses. They will have made a bunch of hires. And the beautiful thing is we're making hires at all these companies and seeing what these employees have—seeing who's got it.

We have a guy named Andres who works at our storage company. The kid is extremely talented. We got him in at 1,500 a month. He was a Twitter hire. He lives in Columbia. He will run one of my companies someday like he is that talented. I aim to build a Rolodex of people who know how to do that and whom I can trust to run companies.

So then I can have them delegate themselves out of a job-hire CEO in one of these businesses. And then Andres is free, Simon's, or Colin's. And I can buy a business, install that management team, and take it from 50 to a hundred million dollars and either sell it, hold it, whatever. That's my goal.

That's the vision. So, the brokerage and special projects with my Dad sit on top. My holding company and management team that gives the fuel and the marketing to all these other companies sit below that. Then we have all the individual entities I want to become healthy, mature businesses over time.

And it will take time. 

Chris Powers: I get it. At the same time, I'm a student. Now I'm a student. It makes me get what you're doing. I know it's not easy—the Nick Huber sweaty start-up competitive advantage. I don't think people who haven't been on this side of things can fully appreciate what it does.

It is a modern way of doing business, and it is gasoline. I only need to find a company to start with you today. I'm leaving. I will go on this. No, like I got to create something with you. 

Nick Huber: You want to come in on Titan Risk, the property and catalytic insurance company. That will be a hundred-million-dollar business ten years from now. 

I think Titan Risk, the property, and catalytic insurance we have. A great operator, and my business partner, Dan, is the CEO, and the insurance industry sucks. And we are moving away from the traditional producer that plays golf and sends your renewals in and has you raise the rate to more of a consulting model where we are busting our butt to explore all markets at all times.

And just become a better brokerage. It's different from the business model and needs to lock, and our business is taking some time. I'm investing heavily in that business right now. It has done almost nothing in revenue, and I'm spending 20 grand a month on payroll. It's a monster. And as it builds and as it grows, it's going to be a perfect business.

Chris Powers: I'll think about that one with you. I've got some ideas. We'll talk offline. The following recording will be, Hey, this is what we decided to do together. 

Nick Huber: It's fun. It's fun. But yeah, it's work. It's stressful, and it's not fun. And you're firing people. You're having uncomfortable conversations with people.

You notice it's complicated. 

Chris Powers: Thanks for spilling your guts today. It was our best. It is by far our best one. 

Nick Huber: Thanks for having me, Chris. Look, you've been a massive positive influence on my life, and you met me when you met me, and I don't, as I said earlier, that everybody's selfish. Everybody wants something, and hopefully, I'm adding value to you now where it was worth it. Still, you are taking time out of your day to make money hand over fist in your real estate company to talk to Nick and tell him how to structure deals and mess with me when I had three self-storage facilities and had no idea what I was doing.

What made you want to pick up the phone and advise me? What, cause you, you get hit up all the time for advice, and people want to mentor you, and I did the same thing like, Hey, Chris, can I hear your thoughts, and you came in and provided enough value to change the entire trajectory of my life.

And people think all these other companies are exciting. My real estate portfolio is where 80 percent of my net worth is and will always be. We didn't talk about real estate on this thing, but real estate is our long-term vision. And you built, you helped me make that. Why'd you do that?

Chris Powers: Returning to my Dad's email, you want to be the person you hope there's more of in there. You came as a warm intro from Adam Blake, who had whom I wouldn't be here today without Adam. And Adam validated you need to talk to Nick. You can't underestimate how decisive a warm lead is.

Or I am being top of mind. And I think about it all the time, like even with the podcast, I look at it as I have a warm lead almost into everybody now. And a piece of friendly information is compelling. And then the third was just like, you could tell from talking to you quickly like this. Okay. It is somebody that'll be fine.

It isn't just Hey, here's 30 minutes. And this person's never going to move the ball forward. And so it was seeing talent, Adam, validating you. And then. I don't know. That's why I do the podcast. People are like, why do you do this podcast? You don't need to do a podcast. And the answer is, who are you to say I need to do it or not?

I love doing it. Much of it is a way to give back so that I can manage my time and still feel like I'm contributing back to society, which is a core value of mine. That's what I care about doing. 

Nick Huber: The fact that you have going on, what you have going on, you have this platform, you have this podcast. 

It's sharing knowledge in so many different areas, making people better all over the place, and also taking the time to mentor people. You don't even tell people how successful and how much of a badass you are. I tell people offline, and they're like, what? Chris Powers, the guy who tweets about industrial real estate, he's doing that big of stuff.

It's inspiring, man. You're a role model; I am thankful you are part of my life. Yeah, man. I love you, brother. It's fucking awesome. 

Chris Powers: I love you too. I'm thankful that you're part of my life. And like I started, we're just getting started. We have an opportunity.

Nick Huber: I have a lot of fear that something's going to mess this up, and I'm going to have cancer or something because, man, I'm having way too much fun. Like you, we're both; I'm 34, you're 38, 37? 

Chris Powers: 36.

Nick Huber:36 years old. Like. Where are we going to be over 55? 

Chris Powers: Our kids are going to get to know each other.

Our wives are going to get to know each other. We will be helping a lot of people when we're 55. I'll tell you that much. 

Nick Huber: That's the goal, man. I want to have, I want to be a positive influence on as many people as possible. And I want my kids to want to hang out with me when they leave the house.

Those are my two goals. 

Chris Powers: Yeah, I think you're going to do it. And I and iron sharpen iron. We'll keep keeping on pushing each other. 

Nick Huber: Thanks, brother. Talk soon.