# Personal Holding Companies: Build vs. Buy?

Channel: Greg Isenberg
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g6ErC0O9g0
Duration: 53 min
Language: English
Words: 10625
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/9g6ErC0O9g0

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[0:00] how I will think about buying businesses when will be the same way that I'm thinking about starting them which is turning my cost centers like looking at my profit and loss statement and looking at where I'm spending money and the interesting part is like if you look at the 10 businesses that I've started eight of them were businesses that I was spending money on it at bolt storage SEO link building Performance Marketing website development recruiting all these things things that I needed as a business owner and it turns out that if I need them as a business owner then a lot of the business owners who follow me

[0:28] on Twitter for the management advice and trust me because they listen to my words they read my newsletter they listen my podcast whatever it might be they'll need the same type of kind of things that I need sweaty startup Nick Huber the man who needs no introduction Greg what's up man you need no introduction because you are a staple of the internet you've upset enough people on the internet that the people that hate you hate you but the people that love you love you I think in order to get people to really be a fan you have to you have to take a stance on something right if you're just

[1:00] middle down the road everybody thinks you're decent and nobody really likes you that much it's kind of a tough I think that's a tough position to be in if you're gonna you gotta pick a side online I think right well you do have to pick a side if you want to say something worthwhile and interesting but you on the other hand seem like you're you know how to rile up the crowds is that fair to say I think the one of the most fascinating phenomenons to me is that a human being could be going about their day doing whatever they want they're living their life most of them are in

[1:32] America where you can literally do whatever you want to be doing you're either with people you chose to be around you're in a place that you chose to move into you're working a job that you took a job offer to do and you're gonna open up Twitter and you're going to see something that some stranger named Nick Huber put on the internet and you're gonna get upset by that upset to the point where you're gonna take time out of your day to just spew out a bunch of mean things or or tell your friends or talk about it or just have these negative thoughts floating around your

[1:58] head totally mind-blowing to me I didn't know that such a large percentage of people were that easily influenced by things that just don't matter at all and are not in their control well I think it's not it's not that it's Nick Huber saying it it's just that people have strongly held beliefs and then when you say something that's against that belief that really upsets people I think it covers it goes back to like human beings are tribal and it feels like a very much it feels like you're attacking them even though you're kind you're always like joking about it for example like they you know tell people about the deck tweet I made

[2:36] a tweet that said I found this stupid picture of a contractor who put a deck on half of a slide glass door on a second level so that literally half the slide glass door the window part of it was facing outside straight to the ground but on the other half there was a deck where one one 200 pound person would take up the whole deck I would get out there and nobody could stand there with me on that deck and I made a tweet that said hey just uh installed this at one of my rental properties the tenant moved out of course I raised the rent

[3:03] you know from from 900 to 1500 the tenant moved out of course but I was able to release it at the new higher price right away like this is the key to Value creation and and wealth building or something stupid and I and also just a lot of people hate landlords man they think that a lot of people think that how residential real estate should be and entitlement and not a for-profit business and you know so so that one really really took off and took off like how many people saw it uh the HOA one got 50 million people saw it this one got maybe 20 20 million people saw it so

[3:38] yeah we're talking we're talking I don't know a third of a third of the daily active users on Twitter probably saw that tweet at some point or the other crazy and what does that translate into dollars and business like why why do a tweet like that you know are you doing it for fun or are you actually like oh you know this actually this will get my name out there it'll translate into dollars so there is something to be said for the fact that the Tweet after if you add value if you teach somebody something it will be seen by more people because if you're scrolling down through

[4:13] Twitter and you avoid and you see a Nick Uber post but you just continue to scroll on Elon is a lot less likely to show you the next Nick Huber tweet for sure like hey you just saw one of these you didn't click on it so we're not going to show you but if you go through and you click on somebody's tweet you're going to see more of that person it happens all the time so even my true followers the people who are into business the people I'm after they'll click on the deck tweet just to read the replies because the replies are hilarious so the next tweet then if I

[4:40] add a lot of value or if I pitch something or something or the other it'll get it'll get seen by more people there's kind of an afterburn of Engagement but that's not truly why or how I end up doing I just have a weird sense of humor and I think it's funny to get people going but yeah there's no there's no like massive follower gain if anything I'll lose a couple followers on a day that that'll happen it's not a big of an engagement hack as people think it is and now unfortunately on Twitter you have a ton of people trying to do it and they kind of just maybe that's what I

[5:11] look like too but they kind of look like idiots when they don't do it right so we have a friend Julian Shapiro he tweets like once a quarter now I wonder why and well I think a big part of it is he feels you know I want to speak for him but you know you just yeah you understand what you think you can just say what you think he might be after yeah you know Julian really thinks about how do I like the reason why he got Twitter is because he he was like there's a bunch of really smart people on Twitter and I want those

[5:47] people to read my tweets [Music] yeah yeah it's the same reason why we all got on um and not even to read my tweets but also that I can go and reach out to these really smart people send them a DM and be like hey do you want to grab coffee or whatever it's a network accelerant Network accelerate now when you're creating tweets that upset a lot of people you might get blocked and some of those people that might block you are the people that you set out to um those are the people that you set out to attract initially so I think a Julian will use Twitter very differently today

[6:27] than he would a few years ago because he's like I'm only when I drop something on Twitter it is going to be fire like it is going to be super well researched it's going to be like nothing else out there it's going to be a unicorn you're gonna love it and he doesn't want to play those games algorithmic games whereas it feels like what you are playing a little bit of algorithmic games when you're tweeting I should I should absolutely be more disciplined on Twitter Absolutely I'll say that like there is not a method to this madness all the time I half the tweets are doing nothing to for Nick

[7:01] Huber brand there's nothing to gain by making a lot of these tweets that's for sure but like I don't understand how you can build a couple hundred thousand follower list and have that distribution and have the ability to get in those people's minds and only tweet or go weeks or months without tweeting that's just like um somebody somebody on social media recently like put the like the ignorance tax I talked about the ignorance tax and like if you make a million dollars a year there's a a four million dollar ignorance tax of you not knowing how to make five million dollars a year like that gap between what you earn now and

[7:33] your earning potential is the ignorance tax and I know that Julian's not a good example because he crushes it at career life entrepreneurship but I feel like there's always something that is worthy of free eyeballs all over the internet but like the people who block me I think that's that's also kind of there's an advantage there like I'm weeding out the people who don't get my sense of humor for one thing take it too personally politically totally disagree with me and people that I wouldn't maybe drive with over time anyway I'm kind of weeding those folks out so I don't mind I don't mind having a couple of true fans and a lot of

[8:08] people who just okay Nick's not for me and that's perfectly fine it's perfectly fine and the truth is even if you're not saying anything controversial like I don't consider my tweets to be controversial but people block me all the time so this morning A buddy of mine sent me a tweet and and so I go and click on the tweet and I see I can't see it that's the best and I and and I'm like who's this guy Tom and he because I can't see it I had to check it out in incognito mode he's like it's Tom Sweeney and I was like who's Tom Sweeney

[8:44] he goes he's the CEO of epic games it's like a 20 plus billion dollar company and all of a sudden I'm like why did Tom Sweeney block me on Twitter like what did I say such that Tom Sweeney a guy I've never met with a I've never met with him before B I've never replied or liked any of his tweets and and also he's you know epic games up until very recently was a client of late checkout as well so you know he probably doesn't know that but it's you know and it was a great experience so it's like don't go on Twitter unless you're you're you're

[9:20] prepared to have some of your Heroes block you it's yeah that's the part that hurts about Twitter like I can take I can take you know the Twitter handle at Mom's basement 42069 I can take them blocking me all day like they're just an anonymous account don't care I can I can take him talking hate sending the meanest meanest things I don't really care but often when you're out and you're in the arena You're Building you're tweeting whatever it is just being yourself you're going to have respected people in the community people that you know people who are building businesses people are doing amazing things and who

[9:54] also are respected by a lot of your peers you're going to have them jump on and say mean things or block you or do whatever that is when it hurts you're absolutely right if there's one thing I've learned about Twitter it's that the bigger you get the more unavoidable it is especially if you be yourself and you're not worried about what people think online you're gonna piss people off it's part of it and I could do a better job of not pissing off so many people absolutely probably will eventually just not waste time doing that but it's a have it's a habit I can't help it

[10:26] so I want to shift gears a little bit and talk more about the Nick Huber world so because it isn't just at sweaty startup on Twitter anymore there's a bunch of accounts that you're a part of and businesses that you've created on top of it I've talked a lot about recently about multi-preneurship which is this idea around you know how do you create a company that creates companies and that's something that you're doing and doing really well could you just talk a little bit about your world of Entrepreneurship yeah I think a pretty influential moment I guess we have to back up is you you send

[11:01] it you send a text to the group chat today that we've been interacting for three years and it kind of blew my mind that hey me and Greg Eisenberg met each other three years ago and we started hanging out with six other guys who are similarly driven similar you know similar growth strategies all supporting each other and you know that was kind of a pivotal moment where I began to really accelerate my growth on Twitter and then I woke up a year later and realized and you know a lot of this was at your you know poking and encouragement that we're sitting on a pretty tremendous opportunity here so I

[11:40] can play golf mess around focus on real estate tweet piss off the woke mob do whatever I want to do or I can get out there and work my butt off to capitalize on what could eventually be a fleeting opportunity one that's not around forever which is distribution like the ability to tweet and get in the first 10 minutes get inside of 10 000 people's heads and in the first three hours reach more people than can fit in the largest athletic stadiums in the world that is a competitive Advantage if you want to sell things or start companies or attract Talent or it's just the power of

[12:16] distribution is is unbelievable so I got serious about it and it was the you know the support Shepherd experience in 2021 where I took a very minority owner you know affiliate deal at first and then became a minority ownership stake of what grew to be a massive company 25 million dollar plus business now today and that opened my eyes to the power of this stuff it's real these aren't just the people that follow me are not just you know Anonymous accounts sitting in their parents basement playing video games these people are in the real world doing Real Deals building real businesses adding a lot of value

[12:48] and I have a direct line into their mind and how can I capitalize on that how could you know it's it's build companies that I need and that these people need so just like you I mean I'm a huge fan of stuff that doesn't scale entrepreneurship everybody talks about scalability everybody talks about raising Capital about moats about you know world-changing ideas I think that if you have a competitive advantage in one area you can do regular things that other people do and make really good money and it can become life-changing money as you've seen with some of the agencies that you've built I think it's it's been really interesting to see our

[13:22] group of friends you me some of our other friends all kind of shift towards repeatable boring not that scalable businesses but that when you play the game at a at a big level and you know how to delegate you know how to Market you know how to sell and you have distribution you can attract Talent you can build teams just amazing things can happen I think you're you and me have been cheering each other on you know since the very beginning of like people are sleeping on agencies people are sleeping on these businesses that don't scale so you and I both are kind of seizing the opportunity yeah and you

[13:55] know we can say who's in the group so it's it's me you sahil bloom champori Sam par Nikita beer Austin and Austin Reef that's it right Julian was a part of the group and he left but it was amicable so it's interesting because a lot of that group is traditionally been like a venture-backed type mentality like I raise Venture Capital Sam raised money for his you know for the hustle uh Sean has raised Venture um Austin raised Venture you know uh saho was in a pea fund and it's interesting that we've all kind of just had a collective aha moment which was distribution matters to your point I

[14:47] love that like direct line into people's brains and just building trust as much as possible on these platforms and and then what's a non-ventor backable business at least a start that you can build you know people call boring businesses people call it not scalable but you know Shepherd is a great example of something that could scale right like that's a business that could be really big yeah it's not that we're not starting businesses that could be really big I think there's examples in all of our in everything that we are doing but from Sam to Austin to you to me to Sean all the businesses that we're going

[15:20] after there's examples of massive companies there's examples of companies that do you know 25 50 100 plus million dollars a year of Revenue so we're not talking we're not necessarily talking like a small one-man solopreneur Journey here we're talking about stuff that's already been done before like this stuff has all been done there's marketing agencies there's pay-per-click agencies there's you know design and you know creative Studio agencies like click checkout this stuff exists but if you do it well you're a good salesperson you're good at building teams magic happens and all of us kind of got that all it hit us all at the same time and we were kind of

[15:55] on a race to do boring make as much money as possible it's been really fun to watch everybody crush it I feel like the majority of people in this group chat now have have and now have like offshoring agencies yeah Austin's got one Sean it's uh yeah I mean there's there's great business models and there's poor business models and we can all tell the difference totally totally so it's yeah it's just been fascinating to see and yeah I wonder what do you think what do you think happens over the next three years for us for the folks in the group yeah because I think and the reason I ask is because

[16:33] I think I mean we were right over the last three years you know and if we're right over the next three years there's probably a lot of lessons that people can learn from from what your prediction might be I think the value of distribution will continue I think the opportunity in basic blocking and tackling businesses will continue I think we as a group will level up and we'll start buying companies we'll start investing in more companies we'll start advising more companies we'll each build kind of our own personalized holding company of like you're saying a multipreneur where we we can we can pull some really valuable levers in multiple

[17:09] companies at the same time and we can have partners that help us execute that help us run these things that allow us to live the life that we want to live while still creating content and doing what we love to do with our friends and family and whoever else but yeah it's it's a I think we're all gonna level up I I think everybody will level up from you know being happy about a you know obviously some of us are playing games at different levels what Nikita can do and and what Austin's doing at morning brew and what Sam's doing at Hampton like those are different levels than me

[17:39] starting a web development agency and being happy with 20 grand a month of cash flow but I think we'll all just continue to level up and I like to think that I'll cross the chasm and be able to take you know maybe buy a company for 5 10 20 million and take it to the next level I don't know how to do that but I want to learn how to do that that's kind of my next challenge I think some of your agencies are already growing really really fast and you'll be able to do spectacular things and I think um the Firepower coming out of that group is

[18:02] going to be pretty awesome because when you have people with a positive mindset and they love to see each other win it's just it's abnormal most of the time when people crush it they're surrounded by people who obviously proximity wise are not all crushing it so it's easy to be surrounded by crabs in a bucket who want to bring you down who don't necessarily want to see you win pretty rare to all of a sudden surround yourself with influences that want to see you win and want to encourage you and want to be a positive influence and um it's just been a pretty spectacular networking tool I mean without Twitter I

[18:32] never would have met you guys and it's definitely changed my life for the better so I want to talk about buying a business for a second so at the end of 2022 we bought a business and out of that business was incubated our fastest growing property right now which is uh boringmarketing.com which started off as an AI technology that we ended up spitting up to help Brands uh with SEO and now I'm hooked on this idea around what else could I buy because not only are you buying the assets but you're really buying a team of operators who have systems and processes um and you can just like on day one lean

[19:13] into it so my question to you is you want to be buying more businesses how do you like what's your framework for thinking about what to buy how to buy it what price to buy it at and yeah as much details as you're willing to share buying a business is exciting to me because there is nothing harder than the first seven or eight months of a service business startup I I own Ari cost seg which is doing 150 Grand a month now and has reach escape velocity and it's going to be an amazing asset it's a life-changing business that you know Mitchell Baldridge myself Dan and

[19:52] Mitchell's wife Mel have started but still at the six month Mark the six month Mark we had a phone call where our operator is near tears we're selling we're selling 50 Grand a week of cost eggs and we can only deliver 10 grand a week of costs eggs we're having massive bottlenecks inside the organization of actually delivering we had overloaded the company with business I we were doing a good job promoting on Twitter and it was exploding but that was really really hard and really really stressful with sleepless nights for me as as a non-operating partner and hell for our operating partner which is Mitchell's wife Mel we

[20:29] got through it she's a badass the company's going well but the idea of buying a company that has got that part covered that is extremely intriguing to me so how I thought about how I will think about buying businesses when will be the same way that I'm thinking about starting them which is turning my my cost centers like looking at my profit and loss statement and looking at where I'm spending money and the interesting part is like if you look at the 10 businesses that I've started eight of them were businesses that I was spending money on it at bolt storage Property and Casualty Insurance debt

[21:01] brokerage property costs eggs SEO link building Performance Marketing website development recruiting all these things were things that I needed as a business owner and it turns out that if I need them as a business owner then a lot of the business owners who follow me on Twitter for the management advice and trust me because they listen to my words they read my newsletter they listen to my podcast whatever it might be they'll need the same type of kind of things that I need so it's just a it's a comfort thing and I also needed the personal cash flow like the personal cash flow is new to me like having

[21:35] liquidity having money in the bank is new a way to you know risk it all in my opinion was to buy a business that was too big and the turnaround fails and all of a sudden I'm personally guaranteed the people that I raise money from are pissed I've ruined a reputation so I'm just now getting to the point where my personal monthly cash flow is starting to stack up enough where I can make take some swings but I also I'm kind of thinking about my you know Nick Huber holding company as a as an accumulation of talent I'm trying to get talented operators in I'm trying

[22:02] to get to know them get to know their strengths get to know what they're good at how good are they building teams how good are they you know sales how good how good they are they at doing these things inside these companies and over the course of a year two years three years while we're collecting money while we're building the bankroll I'm building this Rolodex of operators that I can you know okay maybe web run didn't work but I know that will at web run is one of the best you know team Builders and on the agency side that I know so I'm gonna go with will I'm gonna buy a company

[22:29] maybe um you know bold SEO is thriving and we can pull out we can pull Reagan out of that business because you know we can replace them we can hire the systems are built and me and Reagan I can install Reagan in another company and buy a business that's kind of how I'm thinking about okay right now I'm laying the groundwork I'm laying the groundwork of businesses that all companies need every company needs a link building service every company needs paid ad support every company needs a really good website every company needs you know employees and a lot in Latin America in the Philippines and be able to recruit

[22:59] U.S Talent every company needs these things my companies that I buy in the future will need these things and I can use my Foundation of companies to accelerate you know the cash flow allows me to buy them the services allow me to accelerate them and I can own and hold them and either sell them or just continue to build my network of like my five-year goal is to build my Rolodex full of badass operators that I know and trust they've come in they've showed me what they can do and I think that's kind of the underrated part of me starting these companies yes I talked to Andrew

[23:29] Wilkinson on the phone a couple days ago and he's like Nick what are you doing man you're starting all these companies you got to just go buy them you're you're playing the game on hard mode and obviously that was just you know he he critiqued he he nuanced that with a lot of other things and he he supports it generally not trying to make it sound otherwise but he basically said you know your ability to go buy these companies gonna be dependent on who and how you can hire the operating the the the management teams so I think that you know me building this Foundation of

[23:55] companies will set me up to then feel comfortable moving and you know utilizing the team that I'm building now to kind of help accelerate it all I was actually sitting in this seat in 2020 when I spoke to Andrew Wilkinson when I was just starting late checkout and he gave me basically the same advice Greg I don't understand why you're starting so many companies why are you building so many products just go and buy them and my reaction to to Andrew was yeah but it's so much fun going zero to one and building from scratch like I love coming up with the name coming up with

[24:34] the brand do the positioning like the zero to one and while I'll I'll always love that he was right like it took me a few years to realize you know what like okay you know if going zero to one is Art going one to n is more science and playing only in zero to one is a bit of a mistake when you're you can there's no reason why you or I can't be doing both like we can we can still be incubating and buying it's a I just think it's just such a a Testament to the fact that business is about momentum like businesses and evolution it's it's a

[25:13] it's a process that you if you if you try to start on third base if you try to start by just buying a big company and turning it around when you've never operated a small company you've never started a company you've never built teams you've you don't have a ton of experience delegating it's really hard but I I'm looking forward to these new challenges and Andrew is absolutely right you and I are both seeing the light that you can buy companies and you can pull a couple levers and create millions of dollars out of thin air of equity value and cash flow that's that's exciting I think you and I are both

[25:39] going to love that we're gonna love it you're already proving that you can do it I'm excited to challenge myself and try to do it but I'm not there yet I'm getting close getting more and more comfortable every day how do you think about what is the right size in terms of purchase price for the first deal I would buy a company now that has two or three hundred grand of op of ebitda I mean that's enough that's enough to you know hire some decent people to pull some levers you know they got a management team you know they have some people who can well they

[26:09] actually they don't have a management team at two or three hundred grand the owner is the manager but they have some people who can execute they have some client leads they have some people who can deliver what whatever the services they're delivering I think that's a beautiful place to start because it can be really low risk you can get a business really cheap and seller finance almost all of it and if it burnt crashes and burns then you hand the keys back and and walk away it gets tougher for the first one especially if you go out and need to you know take an SBA loan

[26:33] for hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars and and you got to raise money for the equity and it it's not rocket science and I think that people can do it absolutely can be done especially if you know how to delegate and build teams but it just seems riskier to me but it came down to hey do I want to buy a business that does two or three hundred grand a year or do I want to just do the work in six months and get my own business there and save the four six seven hundred thousand dollars I'd have to buy that company for well it's it's

[26:59] also the Assumption you're making there is that a hundred percent of your bets are gonna make it there but they're bets right like we incubate stuff all the time that fails so like we'll often put 250 Grand into something and try it and it fails and I'm much now one of the things I'm learning is like all these starts and stops that you're doing 250 Grand here 150 Grand here 100 Grand here 300 Grand here I I'm kind of seeing the light where I'm like actually I want to do less incubation like reduce that budget still do incubation but reduce that budget and take that budget

[27:36] to actually just buy something that's working mm-hmm I got a question for you Greg you know me really well now um yeah we are we are friends you we've been talking weekly almost daily for three years now you you've seen how I've evolved you're getting you you read my tweets you you follow along closely what could I be missing like what what do you if and and pretend we're not recording like be candid I I like constructive feedback I'm I'm uh I love it I Revel in it and I'm not easily offended like what do you think I'm doing wrong or what do you think I could

[28:13] do better or what what blind spots do you think that I could have or what do you think five years from now I'll look back and say damn I wish I knew that and I would have started doing that earlier now because I feel like you you are five years further ahead than me so or you just could spot some things that I could be missing so I think that you could be acquiring one to two companies per year and I think that if you you know in five years from now if you're acquiring one to two per year you have eight companies after five years I think two of them

[28:44] could be smashing successes way bigger than anything you've incubated I think that you're you're a finance guy at the core like you said seller financing assuming that everyone is listening to this understands what that means like you understand your way around the books so I think that because you understand distribution and the books and Deals like to me it makes like total sense that you should be buying companies I think that if I were you I would one thing I would do is I wouldn't buy a 200 300 000 ebitda business I would go and just say you know how much is it to cut you know to

[29:23] go to an MBA school cost I don't know 50 Grand a year so I'm gonna take a budget my MBA budget it's gonna be 50 grand and I'm gonna buy something for 50 Grand I'm going to do the negotiation myself I'm gonna I'm just gonna manage the whole process from A to Z and I'm going to put an operator on it and you do that like assuming this fifty thousand dollar investment goes to nothing but with just a way for you to test and hit the tires on this you know put it into uh your audience see if they like it and I would also probably not do a service based

[30:02] business because I would also want to test what are other types of businesses that my audience would like so I tweeted at you a couple days ago um I forget what you tweeted but I was basically like you should be Inky oh yeah you were tweeting about jobber and a few other SAS products and I always see you tweeting about these different SAS products and I'm kind of like well why don't you own one of these SAS products like you you talk about how you know you're building businesses for you but you're probably spending hundreds thousands of dollars a month on these SAS products that you could be owning

[30:39] and actually per like building for you and as you know the multiples on SAS businesses are a lot higher than the multiples on service businesses so if I were you the number one thing I'd be doing is buying a cheap SAS product giving it to my audience iterating from there and like writing my learnings after three or six months and then say okay I did it for 50k now let me try to buy something with 300 to 500 000 in ebitda that's good advice yeah I need I need some SAS products I need them I I know that I know it's on my roadmap I just

[31:18] need to take it more seriously I think you're right yeah and I said it because like we're constantly incubating SAS products and the the other thing that people don't talk about in sasoland that much is that like you can you can literally incubate a SAS product in 30 days you know I'm old enough to remember like you know five years ago when it cost you wanted any SAS product it was two million dollars it cost two million dollars to build a SAS product that was like pre-product Market fit that's just like a product and now it doesn't cost two million dollars anymore if I how much would it

[31:57] cost me to build a Google review aggregator because I need Google reviews on every single one of my companies and 63 self storage facility you know brick and mortar locations I need a way to Aggregate and automate getting Google reviews from customers and so does my entire audience so should I build that or should I find somebody who had tried to build it and couldn't get any customers and wants to sell it to me for you know under 100 Grand I mean I would start with finding out to see if that exists somewhere else one of the ways I typically do that is I go on product hunt

[32:31] and product hunt has like I see a fail failed product so 99 of the products that are on product times have failed and you might find something you know from 2015 or 2017 that actually looked really good it's basically a dormant business uh operator might have just lost interest in it or you know a lot of people lose interest in these businesses because they're just not seeing traction so if you can come to them and be like hey I'm your attraction guy you're the product person like help help me revive this I'll give you fifty thousand dollars to do it and I'm gonna give you upside

[33:10] I think it's compelling that's a good idea I'll be on product hunt the rest of the day I also think that you could you know you could part you can also partner with other people right like you can partner with a firm like ours where like we've done deals where we'll just take upside and sometimes a little bit cash a little upside and partner with people um you know we've partnered with uh you know Mr Beast has night media and they've built some some products um and we've partnered and took equity in some of those so I also think there's groups like ours like for people listening to this that

[33:49] like are interested but might not you know want to put out a lot of money like there's like cold call different agencies and partners and even if on their website it says they're not they don't do this stuff like you never know it's the same thing with hiring a potential employee right someone might have a job but if you DM them or you send them a message who knows you might catch them on a day where they're having a bad day and they really like what you're doing and all of a sudden you're able to convince them to come join your team yeah I like it I like it the world

[34:20] is swimming with opportunity that's for sure it's almost like you can't you can't keep your head above water it's coming so fast sometimes do you ever feel like you're doing too many projects at the same time because every time I start a project the analogy I use is it cuts my brain in another section so if you think about it as like a pizza it's just like you're cutting you know you're cutting it in another slice and another slice and another slice and another slice and it's a bit of mental overload so sometimes you know I look at what you're doing and I'm like whoa this

[34:56] guy's like working on a lot of projects um is that just me or how do you feel about it yeah I I'm over delegator to the extreme meaning I'm not going to interact with any of the customers I'm not going to have an email address from for the company I'm not gonna have a job in the company or I'm pissed off and that's a blessing and a curse it's a curse because you know it's 80 as good as it would be if I were doing it myself like I could do it myself better but it's a blessing because I can take more shots and I can

[35:28] invest in an operator who I know is awesome I mean an example is my Property and Casualty Insurance company which could be the biggest of all my businesses in 10 years I have my my the CEO of that company is is my business partner Dan Hagberg who I went to college with and founded the storage company with and owns half my real estate portfolio and I know he's a killer I have not been on one meeting I have not done anything at all for that company except ask him on the fourth hole of a golf course oh hey by the way how's how's Titan risk going other

[35:59] companies are different like not ever not all operators are as Compton as Dan but in a way like they're they're impressing me like these people that own these that are running these companies they're impressing me like I don't I don't need to talk to the guy who runs my recruiting company but once a month and he we've done seventy six thousand dollars of Revenue and in the first three months and recruiting cycle is like long a recruiting sales cycles Long so I don't know I think I will pull the plug on some but none of them right now are like damn this is the one I probably

[36:27] am going to need to pull the plug on yeah it's it's not I I I like it I like being able to check in I like looking at the new leads and all the companies I like it's kind of Addicting to kind of look at the the trajectory and the tough part but yeah then they're stressful then they're stressful parts of course it's like one of these companies did some work for my company and it didn't go well and and Dan's like hey Nick I need to give you some feedback uh this this was shitty like we're gonna fire your company here if they don't get their

[36:53] stuff together I'm like oh damn it that's stressful so yeah it's not all without it's not all without its stress that's for sure but I still spend 10 hours a week on the golf course and 10 hours a week working on my personal brand and I hang on my family a lot you know so I feel like I have a decent balance but I'm definitely I'm definitely working hard right now that's for sure I like the rule of I don't have an email address because it's it it creates this distance between you and and the business and it's basically and I think Andrew does this really well

[37:27] Andrew Wilkinson which I think he got from Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett which is it's all about the operator and we respect and support the operator and we're here to help but we're not really here to be in the day-to-day like if you're if we're if I'm here in the day-to-day then there's an issue with the operating team yeah and I think I'll maybe I'll pull the plug and shut down a company maybe I'll fire an operator and have to bring in another one if I still think the company's a good a fundamentally good business the operator is just not doing a good job that's all still to be

[37:59] determined but yeah like these people that I'm embedding on are going to be the ones that make or break this stuff and I think they like that they like the fact that they control the company they control their Destiny they ping me with any more customers um and it's kind of like like you said taking taking small bets and some of them will some of them will turn into big things and they're varying level of Investments too like the Property and Casualty Insurance is a cash a money suck right now I'm I'm personally investing 30 grand a month into that one the business brokerage is another 30

[38:29] grand a month and I'm just I'm investing because I believe in those companies but just a longer sales cycle and permitting and requirements and you know getting paid on a deal closing when you start a business brokerage you know best case scenario is six to nine months after you start the business so definitely varying levels of personal investment can you talk more about the flywheels that you're creating for these individual businesses because I'd imagine you don't want to be in a situation where these businesses are reliant on you for leads and customers and I've noticed you have big Twitter accounts for your for Shepard or for Titan risk or for bold

[39:09] SEO so can you talk more about how you're thinking about that yeah and right now I'm doing a lot of the work like I'll be honest I I'm doing a lot of the tweeting I'm controlling a lot of the accounts I'm I'm I'm doing a lot of the marketing myself but I hired a badass copywriter from teamgaryvee that started three months ago and he's working his way up getting more and more trust every single day I think he's a keeper and he's going to be with me a long time and he's going to become a very wealthy man and have a pretty important job at my holding

[39:37] company also have a systems operator guy who's you know working with me to empower all the operators and all the companies he doesn't work for any one business he is his job is a similar to mine if give the operators exactly what they need to win and then get the hell out of the way I have uh another copywriter that started last week and I have a video editor and another podcast video editor so the team at the holding company level is kind of the goal of there is to build a machine that can take more of the content creation off my plate more repurposing content that I wrote

[40:13] reposting content that I already wrote clipping these videos that we're making right now clipping it into you know stuff for Twitter linked you know link LinkedIn uh Instagram so on but yeah it's a it's it turns out that a lot of these companies are the same like a lot of these all these companies need a deal account to pay their employees they need to get in with Shepard to hire some people they need to get in with recruit jet to hire you know the middle management folks they need to get in uh Gusto they need an air table they need a slack Channel they need email systems

[40:46] all set up and finalized they need a good website with forms and and you know we need to collect our you know organize our sales funnel the same way so every subsequent company that we start is a really a quicker process to get started like I'm going to find a premium domain I'm going to buy a premium domain for 10 grand or less and three days later there's going to be a site that we can we can collect customers in and that during that time I'm working a deal with an operator as soon as we get it signed we're going out you know and hiring the

[41:12] first bit of talent and a month after we have the idea to start a business a month later we have five people on the team and we're we're you know pursuing sales with clients like we can we can do it really really fast now we're getting better at it so and then there's there's the interconnectivity of them working together like them becoming custom customers of each other and referring business all around and sharing referral fees like a client comes to web run and they need link Building Services then they send them over to bold SEO and they get a 15 Revenue share and bold SEO finds a customer customer that needs a

[41:44] lot of web work and they send them to web run maybe they need paid ads and they go to ad Rhino it's just it's a it's a it's a big you know flywheel of just tools for businesses and my businesses too which is pretty awesome what about email email newsletters as a form of you know nurturing leads you know you have a really big newsletter that I subscribe to I love it um you send weekly emails and in the emails you know you you highlight some of your companies are you thinking about having individual newsletters for your companies and is that a big part of the

[42:21] strategy no we we've thought about it I've had operators bring it up that they want to start writing a newsletter and I just can't see the value of building a whole nother audience and being responsible for a whole other newsletter when I can you know get yesterday's or Monday's email I highlighted bold SEO in the top of email we got 24 leads 24 leads our sales team our sales guys booked up for the whole week like his whole week schedule he's got six calls a day now so yeah it's it's my newsletter is the core strategy like Twitter's awesome the individual Twitter accounts are awesome we can you know reach our

[42:57] customers pretty well on Twitter but email is where I can really really Drive value I don't do any outside advertising online newsletter I don't let anybody pay for spots on my newsletter I take up all my own space really inside of these companies now and it's so far it's working pretty well some some services are harder to sell than others but some of them just a lot of business owners need which is which is a blessing your newsletter is on convertkit yep love convertkit you and yeah right so right now I'm thinking I'm thinking about switching from sub stack to convertkit can you sell me on why I should on move

[43:34] from sub stack to convertkit uh convertkit is really good link tracking I can change the links after I send emails out um I can you know stack sequences on so I know that if somebody clicks on The Bold SEO link I can then drip them three more emails over the next week about SEO Services because I know they're a pretty warm lead even though they didn't fill out the form on Bold seo.com so yeah it's it's just the customizability if you're if you're gonna start promoting and selling on your newsletter it's really good for that I don't even utilize it fully but then there's the Creator network of like everybody being

[44:10] able to recommend each other that you know the quality of the emails aside and I know that you know three out of four might be a total joke you were you were bringing up some stuff this week about how like it could it could be getting just a lot of confusion among people not even knowing that signing up for my email list but that's still been I've still noticed like a uptick in like the the sales which are important to me and at two or three bucks a an email it's it's worth that so yeah it's it's all convertkit just does a good job but beehive sub stack they're all they're

[44:41] all doing similar stuff now too so yeah the Beehive we use beehive for you probably need a robot which are our AI newsletter and it's really amazing for for just like you want to get a message out there and you want to push it out in a really beautiful way and I love at the end of each beehive newsletter you can say like do you like it did you not like it and there's almost like a comment section so you really really get to understand like you unders you get to understand how valuable the email was to someone and that's my favorite part about beehive but if you're actually trying to sell

[45:16] stuff convertkit with the automations I.E like what you're saying you click this therefore I'm going to put you in this drip fomo sequence of you know teaching people about SEO for example before they buy it right there's so many people who might click on your SEO link or your re Cossack link and just not be ready to buy uh so they're in this phase and it's like how do you nurture them and build trust during that that time so that uh you know maybe after the five email sequence they're they're ready to make the jump and what's the what's the lead magnet what's the lead magnet set up so the

[45:57] most valuable part for me I haven't even really utilized like my marketing team we have a plan to really utilize these sequences to like you're saying nurture these leads I don't do it well yet what's the like lead magnets are like the best way that I can get high value people on my newsletter like hey yes here's a PDF here's a PDF it's free all you gotta do is give me your email here's some awesome copy on Twitter why you should click the link and why you should get it I wish I could share my screen and just show you like all my I can track all my pages all my lead

[46:27] magnets I can see how many people visited the page how many people signed up through that lead magnet it tagged them so I know which of my subscribers came from like a really high value real estate like somebody who signs up through like hey here's the here's the 20 aspects of closing a real estate deal I know that the 450 people who signed up through that lead magnet like they're in the real estate game they're valuable those followers are worth 20 bucks a pop or more but I know that the people who clicked on like oh here's a list to 200 plus business ideas I know that they're

[46:55] all entrepreneurs and that's fine too but I have all that like separated inside of convertkit and I can post these I can post these lead magnets on a schedule over and over and over again and I can track I can track how many people are signing up on each one which ones are hitting how they're hitting the different copy changes and stuff like that so what's your question or is that the yeah the sub stack the sub stack have like magnitude ability where you can like no not even close like not even close sub stack is the fastest way to get up and running if you wanna create a

[47:29] newsletter so when I'm doing anything and like if I'm trying to post on Tick Tock if I'm trying to and they don't post on Tick Tock if I'm trying to post on Instagram and I don't post on Instagram if I'm trying to buy a business and I'm not and I've never bought a business I always ask myself what is the path of least resistance so that I can see if I like this thing so I chose substack you know three four years ago because it was so easy to do it got set up in 30 seconds now after you know I think it's important for people to in whatever it

[48:08] is they're doing to quarterly or yearly ask themselves like what is change between now and then and for me personally what has changed is I now have 70 plus thousand subscribers and I'm also selling some of my services within my email newsletter and my open rate has is starting to really go up and my clip through it click-through rate is going up so I'm starting to really build trust with people and subseac just doesn't give me the tools I need you know convertkit is really interesting because it feels almost like like the tagline for convertkit should be take email seriously like if if if convertkit hired they check out our design and

[48:52] branding agency we would probably do something around that and we would try to own the category of oh yeah you're about to share your screen okay here we go go for it okay so these are my new signups per day um where they're coming from Creator network is is the vast majority but you know bio links and five ways to get better at sales these are different these are all different landing pages that I have like three ways to force appreciation on a real estate asset those 26 subscribers very high value 20 tools to start a new business with the 20 tools like the tech stack I use to

[49:27] start my company that's just a free pdf that people get you know 2 200 people I posted this one time on Twitter 2000 people saw and I added a thousand subscribers that I know are business operators like that's that's phenomenally value valuable businesses that I love um you know these are super you know this one right here businesses that I love on Twitter I posted this on Twitter maybe four times it's like hey I spent five years building a list of 200 plus business ideas here's how um you know download this list of 200 plus business ideas and it's just a PDF with a list of all these different

[50:00] businesses twenty thousand people have visited that landing page 8 000 subscribers have signed up for my newsletter through that one lead magnet which is uh just pretty awesome and I can build I can build out this full list of lead magnets this is this is dope like this is taking email seriously yeah and so and yeah and then you got the actual broadcast where you build out the build out the content I got the drafts in here that aren't sent out yet but you know yeah these links can trigger these links can trigger sequences and you can set set up all that up here to where like if somebody

[50:35] clicks this link it tags that subscriber and sends them follow-up emails at certain different times so it's pretty good yeah yeah I mean my dream to be honest is a mix of beehives design and like polls with convertkits serious automations like that's my wonder when I wonder yeah it was amazing to watch convertkit just take over drip like drip used to be the one like three years ago drip was the only one people used and it's just been a slow move to convertkit but I wonder when Nathan is going to add you know the the design forward front end to convert it it would be easy to do

[51:10] those polls and I mean I hit him up I hit him up the other day and I was like dude high or late checkout we'll crush it for you so maybe soon I'll tell them to hire I'll text him right now it's time to higher late check out I gotta run but dude thank you for letting me and everyone take a peek inside your multi-preneur brain uh I think I think the world of you and you're doing incredible stuff and I can't wait to see what you build over the next three years and buy I appreciate it man you're uh you're a pretty serious influence in my life and

[51:48] I look up to you a lot and I I appreciate the the fact that you want to see me win man and I I want to see you win and I know you're I know you're crushing it so appreciate you having me on and thanks for everything also I'm driving from Montreal to Miami which is a long drive but maybe I'll I'll stop uh in your your uh neck of the woods on my way let's do it man in Athens what's what's up play some let's play some golf and mess around all right man I'll catch you later where could people sign up to your newsletter

[52:18] yeah I mean the newsletter is how you get to know Nick Huber I mean I I write a 1500 word email every week about management delegation hiring recruiting building companies real estate so yeah go to sweatystartup.com and get on my newsletter love it later thanks Greg

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