The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 632: Nick Huber - The Attributes of Winners, Becoming Great at Sales, Changing Your Mind, & The Fundamental Truths of Life (Sweaty Startup)

Episode Date: April 27, 2025

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire 1 person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Go to www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader Episode #632: Nick Huber is an entrepreneur who owns stakes in 11 companies, including a real estate private equity firm and several agencies. His portfolio of companies employs over 325 people living all over the world. Nick lives with his wife and 3 children in Athens, Georgia. He's the author of the book, The Sweaty Startup: How to get rich doing boring things. Notes: Sales is the foundation of Every Business. From Nick's mentor, Dan Cohen: "If you don't like sales, I suggest you give up now and go get a regular job. You're wasting your time." "Life as an entrepreneur is sales." To succeed in this world, you must have the cooperation of other people. The attributes of winners: Abundance mindset A sense of urgency Not afraid to stand up and call you out. The story of his VP of Finance, Kevin. He called Nick out on deals he tried to make while Kevin was on vacation. Make good decisions Aren't afraid to get their hands dirty and do the work The Four Fundamental Truths of Life 1. You can't do it alone. 2. You can't make people do anything. 3. Everyone in this world is selfish. 4. It isn't about you. So how do we use these four fundamental truths of life to get what we want? Sales. We sell ourselves and our ideas. We convince other people that their lives will be better if they trust us, work for us, buy from us, and more. Networking. Don't go to events telling others to help you. Become someone worth knowing. Do something of value that makes others want to come to you… The story about the guy wrangling carts on a cold night at the Walmart in Ithaca, New York Nick credits a lot of his success to his parents, Tim and Susan, for raising him around a dinner table of positivity and curiosity. They made him feel as if he could accomplish anything and taught him to see the world through a lens of opportunity. Change your mind: Nick has a note taped to his mirror in the bathroom that says, "Change your mind on something today." The most valuable trait of an entrepreneur: A sense of urgency. Most people walk slow, think slow, move slow, and make decisions slow. They lollygag around life. No energy. No excitement. Do uncomfortable things. Make the calls. Start a lawn care business if you're a kid. Decision making - You have to practice it. It's a muscle Decathlon at Cornell - Brutally hard. 10 events. You never do your best in all of them. You take L's. Have to respond and go to the next event. Struggle with grace. Ego - Need to balance belief with humility. There are two types of people in the world. Those who are humble. And those that are about to be humbled. "You're interviewing for your next job every single day." Hiring is like hunting. Always looking. Life/Career Advice: "Don't be a doctor or a lawyer. What game are you playing? What does winning look like? Most people aren't thoughtful enough about that."  

This episode is brought to you by the great people at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company that builds world-class teams for clients around the globe. If you need to build a new team with a strong culture and improved productivity, Insight Global's team of talent advisors can help find the people, bring them together, and deliver the work needed. Building a team can be tough, but building teams. with strong culture can be magic. Visit Insightglobal.com slash learning leader.

That's Insightglobal.com slash learning leader today to learn more. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Tech Talk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world. We'll receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how our book, The Score That Matters.

We'll help you become a more effective leader. Text Hawk to 666866. Now on to tonight's featured leader. Nick Huber is an entrepreneur who owns stakes in 11 companies, including a real estate private equity firm and several agencies. His portfolio of companies employees over 300. 125 people living all over the world. Nick lives in Athens, Georgia with his wife and three children. Also the author of a great new book called The Sweaty Startup, How to Get Rich, Doing Boring Things. During our conversation, we discussed the five attributes of winners, the importance of changing your mind.

Nick shares how he's created a place where the people who work for him can openly tell him he's wrong. Then we go deep on why most people get networking wrong, and Nick talks about how you should do it. Then we close with some useful life and career advice about being comfortable in your own skin. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Nick Huber. Nick, man, it's awesome to have you here on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Ryan, I love your work, man. I got to say, I'll start with when we got book together, I got more serious about your stuff.

and I signed up for Mindful Monday. And it's great, man. 668, 66, baby. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. I'm curious because whenever I see somebody was brought up by awesome parents,

I feel a kinship because my parents are still people I very much look up to and talk to a lot. Tim and Susan, you write in your acknowledgments, you thank them for raising me around a dinner table of positivity and curiosity. They made me feel as if I could accomplish anything and taught me to see the world through, a lens of opportunity. Can you share more about that upbringing and what Tim and Susan, your parents did for you with raising you with positivity and curiosity?

Yeah, my dad, my dad is like me. He's delusionally optimistic and highly energetic. Love it. And highly ambitious. So those three things I got from my dad. And, you know, I watched through, you know, high school sports, whatever it might be. I watched a lot of people, my, my, you know, peers, they were raised in households where they would get in the car after a basketball game and their parents would berate them and tear them down and say, hey, look, you'd miss this play. You, you know, you made a bad decision here or if it was after football, why didn't you get after the ball over here or gosh, why didn't you do this or that? I got in the car after every game and my dad told me that I was, that I did my best and I was

amazing. And look, man, you're the best guy on the court. Even if I wasn't, he would just try to build me up and give me that confidence. So when you combine a little bit of a, uh, you know, irrational optimism and confidence with, with a culture of like I said, like get after, try stuff, do things that are not like everybody else does. Then it's kind of a great combination to send your kid off to the world and succeed. You write a lot about marriage as well as being a dad. What have you taken from your parents that now you and the spot as being the parent know, your kids are young and so they're still not in high school or anything yet. But what have you taken from them that you're trying to instill in your kids?

My dad made me do uncomfortable things and he empowered me to make decisions. I didn't want to start that lawn care company when I was 12. I didn't want to pick up the phone and call to set up my own appointments because it's just uncomfortable as a kid. You know, I remember a very vividly remember an interaction in my kitchen where the family needed to order. We were going to order or call ahead to get a reservation at a restaurant. My dad says, Nick, you know, you're 13, call him.

And I'm like, what do you mean? So he made me pick up the phone dial and talk to the lady and make our reservation for our family of five to go sit at a local restaurant. And I remember just the crippling fear that I had to pick up the phone and call. Most kids do, by the way. And it's just a constant like, do uncomfortable things, Nick, do uncomfortable things until they're comfortable. And then also make decisions when they're low risk.

so that you start to practice and learn how to make decisions. I mean, a huge concept in my book is decision making, how to make good decisions. It's a muscle. You have to practice it. There's no amount of books you can read that are going to teach you how to make great decisions. So what my dad did when I was a kid and what I do to my kids is, you know, I let them practice making decisions instead of just putting them in a bubble where, you know, oh, I'm going to make sure my kid has, you know, no fear, you know, no pain, no uncomfort,

no struggle. Hey, look, like, let's make decisions when they're low risk so that when I'm behind the, wheel of a vehicle at 18 years old and I've had three beers, I know that, hey, that's a decision. I need to make a really good decision or very bad things can happen. I watched kids at Cornell, you know, show up and they were, they were in a bubble, meaning their parents made every decision for them, wrote their essays, got them to Cornell. And when they got to Cornell, they did not know how to live a functional life and make their own decisions. And it was a big problem. You mentioned Cornell where you went to school. You also were an all American athlete in track and

field. I also share that kinship with you from an athletics background. Mine happen to be football in college and a little bit after. And I've taken so much from coaches and teammates and being a part of a team and showing up early as you did today, like I was trained to do as a quarterback. What have you drawn from your experience as an all-American athlete to now post-athletic life? You're still in good shape. You're still working out. I know you're right about that too. But what have you, taken from that that has helped you as an operator as a leader? I did the decathlon. So it's 10 events. And the brutally hard thing about the decathlon is that you're never going to have 10 good

events. You know, first is the 100 meter dash. You might miss your PR. Second is long jump. You can really mess up long jump. You can lose, you know, 50 to 150 points in that event if you do poorly. And then you just go on through the day and you're doing things like pole vault, javelin, and high jump. And there's no way that they're all going to go well. So you really learn how to have. have just that mental toughness to take an L. I can take L's. I can take L's with grace, man. I can struggle with grace because that sport, any sport will humble you. You know it as a quarterback. You make one bad play. Are you going to get rattled? And is it going to ruin your whole game? Because a lot of people, they don't have the strong enough head to overcome a poor play.

And that just that makes it. So you cannot play quarterback at a high level. You can't. Same with Decafalon. So what I love about sports is that it just trains resilience because you fail over and over and over again. how is it with an event like doing 10 different things? So you have to be kind of a generalist, but also a specialist in a way, which I feel like, it's like business. Yeah,

I mean, there's not many, there's not many things that can prepare you for that. Because like, my thing was like get really good at reading a defense and owning a huddle and definitely responding from messing up and throwing a pick six. Like you're immediately right back on the field and you've got to have shoulders up ready to go.

you know how it goes. Decahathlon, though, is like, oh, my God, I've watched on the Olympics, and I think it's insane to see that these people do everything. And, yeah, certainly you mess up and have to bounce back. I can't even imagine, like, what your mindset is going in to those events to say, how do I get ready for each one individually and then bounce back if it doesn't go well, which it inevitably will at times. Yeah, there's the mental toughness of actually being able to execute the decafalon well. I never had a no height or no distance in any event, which I'm proud of. Meaning I always, I always cleared my opening height in pull vault. I always got a mark and long jump.

I always got to throw out there in discus, even though you can very easily get out of your rhythm. And, you know, the mechanics of throwing discus, if your rhythm is off, it's, it's very, very, very hard to do it well. But I did the decafalon because I wasn't a master at anything. And I think that's a lesson in business because you can try to be Elon Musk. You can try to be Mark Zuckerberg or you can say, hey, look, I'm not spectacular. I'm just an average Joe. How can I go out here and win against people who are better athletes than me? I can become a good learner.

I can be adaptable. I can have a strong head. And I could learn faster than a lot of the other guys, frankly. So I became competent. I did the 80-20 in each event so that I could go out there and do well. Also, you weren't just like sitting around training for sports. you're thinking about businesses and your opening and starting businesses. What was your mindset towards being an entrepreneur? I know you were even before college, but while you were a college

athlete. Yeah, I don't know how it worked out this way, but I was very serious about balance. I didn't want to have a one-dimensional college experience. I wanted to find a wife when I was in college. That was important to me. I wanted to explore the academics that Cornell had to offer while I was there. I wanted to socialize and learn how to be around my friends and go to the bars. And then I also want to start a company. So fast forward to, I've always been a guy who gets in a little over his head with things he takes on, but fast forward to finals week, my senior year, I am the weekend before, I'm in the blocks at the Ivy League championship, trying to win the hurdles and taking customer service calls for my storage business right before and right after the event.

and texting the woman who I was trying to get to fall in love with me. And when I got home, I went out to the barge that night because we won. You did all that. What a day. That's quite a day. It was a fun day. Yeah. But it's stressful.

Can you talk about the storage business a little bit more and why you chose that, how that got going, how intentional were you versus how you just kind of get out in the world and bump into people and those collisions can somehow create business? I'm curious to how you were able to. because I wasn't thinking about that at all in college, dude. Yeah, I didn't. You know? I didn't watch Shark Tank.

I didn't read the books about entrepreneurship. I didn't even take the entrepreneurship courses. I was just an excitable kid who was excited about the prospect of making a little bit of money. So in finals week, I was like, holy cow, I got this house. I can store some stuff in it. Next thing I know I'm running around town, picking up boxes. And a week later, I have a couple thousand dollars cash sitting on my bed. And I was excited about that.

So I think honestly, it's a blessing that I wasn't. into entrepreneurship and super obsessed with it. Or I would have been thinking I needed to go raise capital and start a tech business instead of just go out and get scrappy and make some money. It feels like, I'm sure you get these kind of calls and emails all the time where there's these like extensive business plans, which aren't entirely bad. And there's a lot of thinking happening and not as much doing. And this is a part of what you've written in your book too, is I feel like you're more.

of a let's go let's do it we're going to learn as we go as opposed to having like an elaborate planning phase that's going to take six months and then we'll eventually launch six months after that it's like let's launch let's go we'll figure it out as we go can you again talk more about your mindset of being a doer of getting started before you're ready and how that could be helpful not only and how it's been helpful for you but how it could be for other people It's a sense of urgency. In my book, I talk about the traits that you have to have to be successful in any area, whether it be corporate America, whether it be as a job that is entrepreneurial,

like wealth management, realtors, whatever, or small business. You have to have a sense of urgency. You have to. Let's do it. Let's move. Let's go. Let's find a way to get that first customer. Let's find the thing that needs to be done and do it.

Let's think at the whole business. think about the big picture and think about, hey, what's the lowest-hanging fruit that we can go and attack and make our business better today right now? And how can I do it by lunch? If you have that mindset, you can be phenomenally powerful. What happens is that anxiety creeps in and that self-doubt. And it gets scary because you're like, holy cow, am I making the right decision? Am I doing the right thing? And that's why it just takes practice over years. And the thing about business is it's a momentum game, meaning you start when the stakes are low, just like the decision making that I was talking about with kids. You start when the

the stakes are low and you get better and better and better at making decisions and you get enough feedback that you can trust yourself and now I'm at a point in my career 12 years into entrepreneurship 15 years into entrepreneurship where I can trust myself I know what I know and I know I know what I don't know I'm going to have smart people around me who can tell me when I'm messing up but we're not afraid to have a meeting and make a decision and implement and make it happen by lunch was it your CFO or one of your finance guys, one of your partners, I remember reading, he went on vacation. And in like a five-day period, you had bought a couple businesses when he was gone. And I give you credit for this. I guess he called you after he got back and said, what are you doing? Like, this is stupid. Can you share more about that story and the importance of having people around you that are willing and able to tell you no?

It's such a powerful story and it's like it's that moment in my career that was a very pivotal moment, very pivotal moment. It was 2002, early 2022. The market was hot for storage still. Rates were low. My VP of Finance went on vacation for five days. And in that time, I approved three offers to go out, two of which were accepted to buy storage facilities. He gets back and he looked at the underwriting and he calls me. And I'm his boss. I'm the owner of the business. And he calls me, says, Nick, this is dumb. That was dumb. We're paying too much. We should not buy these buildings.

And I'm like, whoa. I mean, remember correctly, he said it in a respectful way, but in a team meeting. And then he called me after and he reiterated like, Nick, we can't buy these. We got to drop these contracts. And we're paying too much. Like it exposes the company too much risk. And long story short, I trusted him. I took the L in public.

I got on the next meeting. And I called those owners and said, hey, we got to withdraw these offers, which is, taboo in the real estate business because the brokers and everybody, they don't like that. I took the L and frankly, it saved us a lot of stress and a lot of headache because I know those deals now with rates higher, with softening in the storage market. It's been a tough three years in the real estate business as rates have risen. My VP of Finance having the courage to stand up and tell me no, it could have saved our company. Wow. How do you create the environment to where that person knows it's safe to do that.

There's a really, really important concept that I live by. It's actually on my mirror when I brush my teeth. There's a little piece of paper up high that I look at every morning when I wake up and it says, change your mind often. Change your mind often. When new information comes at you, change your mind. If you have the ability to not get stuck in your ways and not be, frankly, what do you call it, stubborn. If you can search for what is right versus being right as a leader, it can be phenomenally

powerful because you can take in new information and you can adjust your decision making. Very few people can do that. So I change my mind often and I move really fast. It frustrates my team because I get into meetings and I'm like, hey, why are we even talking about this? There's four other things that are easier to do that are more important that aren't as fun or sexy, but we need to do them. and we should do X, Y, and Z, let's make a plan, let's do this by lunch. And by the way, any of you disagree with me, send me a message on Slack right after this meeting. I want to hear why. Tell me why.

And I reward it. I praise Kevin Wickham is the one who saved us those deals. I praise him in my book. I praise him still to this day. And it frankly creates a lot of loyalty and a deeper bond when you go through the trenches with somebody like that. What do you think about ego? and having a because I think some of some healthy ego is necessary right to be ambitious to set goals to think big to get after it to have a bias for action be a doer right some of that you need

you got to have some ego we the world needs people with some egos but you also have to be able to have your VP of finance publicly tell you're wrong and him be right that's a balance how do you balance having a bit of an ego and also being humble enough and secure enough, frankly, and yourself to publicly admit that you were wrong? I look back at myself when I was, you know, I started that first company when I was 22 years old. I was wildly confident. I had a massive ego. I was an Ivy League champion. I had a school, I had three school records. I was on my way. I was actually an All-American, my junior year as well. like I thought that I could not lose.

And I look back at a lot of cringe moments among my friend's groups and like, Nick, God damn, you were an idiot. Life has humbled me. Business has humbled me since then. But without it, I would not be where I am. Period. So there's a balance between having that ego, having that confidence to take risks, to get after it, to try to lead people and to sell like leadership and delegation.

You have to have that charisma that people will trust and people want to. follow. You can't have it without an ego. But man, this business will also humble you and you'll realize that you don't know nearly as much as you think you know. Well, you've probably heard this, but there are only two types of people in the world. Humble people or those who are about to be humbled. And that's how it seems to go all the time. But I think to be humbled, though, it takes, again, a level of security in yourself, almost a comfort in your own skin that you've done the work. You know yourself. You're moving. You're going forward. And you also have messed up probably and lost. You've taken L's. But you've made sure to invest the time to understand why you took

an L to understand what you could learn from that loss and then how you can get better moving forward. And that's how I feel like you can balance having a healthy ego with also humility to progress and learn and improve. You are hitting the nail on the head. It is a power. powerful, powerful combination. If you have that ego and that drive on one hand and you have that humility and the ability to change your mind, you can accomplish unbelievable things. Because so many people, they only have the humility. They have the anxiety. They have the fear. They're not willing to do uncomfortable things. And then on the other end, you find the people who make their first million dollars and lose their first million dollars and repeat that for 30 years

because they can't be adaptable and they can't change their mind. But if you know what you can do, you know you're good at what you do, you have extreme confidence in what you do, but you also have the humility to take an L on meeting with your VP of finance, it's just life gets better and you can kind of, you know, you can accomplish great things. In your book, you write about the attributes of winners. We've talked about a few of them, one, a sense of urgency, good decision making, not afraid to stand up and call you out, which your VP of finance, Kevin did.

One other one is in that list of five is having an abundance mindset. Again, this feels like this tracks a little bit back to your upbringing. But I quite frankly, and I want you to go deeper on abundance for a second, but I love hanging out and bumping shoulders with people that have an abundance mindset. They don't feel like they have to compete with everybody. Like there's enough out there. We're going to go get it. We're going to help one another.

We're going to add value. Can you go deeper on this attribute of winning? and the fact that the first one is they have an abundance mindset. I think there's two types of people. The first type and the less effective type wants to be the biggest fish in the small pond. They want to have the biggest house in the neighborhood. They want to have the nicest car at the country club. They're constantly comparing themselves to other people.

Then there's the other side who says, hey man, like, there's enough out there for everybody. and if I can live next to people and be around people and be in the same circles with people who are doing better than I am, that doesn't upset me. I don't get jealous of that. It rubs off on me and the opportunities flow. So what you don't understand about your friends making money and kicking ass is it doesn't make you look bad. It actually makes it more likely that you're going to make more money and kick more ass. A lot of people have this crabs in a bucket mentality where you look at crabs in a bucket. One of them tries to get out. The other one grabs it pulls it back down because and so none of them actually end up getting out of the bucket. There's a lot of communities and and friend groups and cultures. That's the mindset. Somebody winning is bad for me because there's only X amount of money. There's only X amount of opportunity. There's only X amount of success.

So if they have it, that's something that I don't have. I'm pissed when in reality there's enough money for everybody to get theirs. You just got out enough value to the world. Oh, absolutely. part part of that that flows, I think, with that is something that you learned early on from one of your mentors. Can you talk to me about your initial conversation with Dan Cohen, specifically when it relates to sales? This is another, you know, I took a piece of humble pie during this conversation.

I was a senior. I just had my first, you know, $3,000 successful storage season and I was on top of the world and I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I was into it. I was starting to read about entrepreneurship and study entrepreneurship. And I call my mentor Dan Cohen, who's now at Wake Forest running the entrepreneurship program there. He was at Cornell. He had sold a foundation repair business for, you know, almost eight figures, a couple years earlier. So a sweaty startup, not a tech startup. And he's like, let's get lunch. I was like, I want to pick your brain. I want to get lunch. So I get lunch with him. And we sit down at lunch. And he goes, hey, Nick, I got a question for you. First thing, we hadn't even ordered yet. He's like,

Do you like sales? What do you think of sales? Do you like it? And I knew by the way he said it that I needed to say I loved sales. But I was honest with him. I said, no, I don't like sales. It's uncomfortable. I don't want to have uncomfortable conversations. I don't like rejection. I'm a visionary. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm on the whiteboard thinking about ways to improve. I'm building processes. I'm, you know, execution. And I said all this, all these entrepreneurial buzzwords. And he looks at me and he goes, Nick, you need to go get a job. And I'm like, what? And he goes, if you don't like sales, you need to go get a job. Because not only is every single bit of entrepreneurship sales, life is sales. And if you don't like sales, you're not going to get things you want in life. From the wife you want to marry to the friends you want to hang out with, to getting your kids to do what you need them to do all the way to, okay, if we zoom in on entrepreneurship, as a beginning of a fresh entrepreneur,

you have to sell people to work for you because they're taking a risk. You have to sell people to sell to you because you don't have the credit or the money. I literally was calling box companies and warehouse companies selling them on me because I was a 23-year-old, snotty-nosed kid running around with no cash

trying to lease their 25,000 square foot warehouse in downtown Boston. I had to put my sales hat on and convince that owner to lease that warehouse to me. And then I had to sell my customer. Man, it was sales nonstop. So he told me that. He said, look, if you don't like sales, you're in trouble, A, but luckily, you can train yourself to love sales. So you need to

become a good salesman. Now, tell yourself you're a good salesperson and the way to do it to practice and get used to rejection. And so I've spent the last 15 years going from, you know, imagine that kid and is in the kitchen who's afraid to call the restaurant to set the reservation to having uncomfortable conversations all day because that's what you do as the leader of a business. And one of the things I read, too, is as he said, to succeed, you have to have the cooperation of other people. And part of that is that sales is an element of helping or earning the right or earning the ability for other people to want to cooperate with you. Can you go deeper on this idea of getting others to want to cooperate with you? Yeah, there's a theme throughout the sweaty startup book on leverage.

If I'm alone, if I'm alone, if I'm by myself, I can do 75 to 80 hours a week of work. There's a finite amount of work I can get done in 75 to 80 hours a week. But right now we're on this podcast and I am going to get done about 350 hours worth of work while you and I talk because there's 350 individuals working for me right now who are on the clock adding value to my business, my customers, my life while we're talking. So I can get done 350 hours, you know, a week of two weeks of work. No, shit, that's damn near a month and my math is all messed up. But you get what I'm saying. I can only get done so much. I can only get done so much. So without other people and without the leverage of having other people do things that you need

them to do, which you're selling. You're selling these people to do what you need them to do because nobody does anything they don't want to do. It's a fact of life. If they don't want to do it, they're not going to do it. You can't force them. Well, that leads to the four fundamental truths of life. Okay. I'm going to read the four and then have you go a little deeper. One, you can't do it alone. Two, you can't make people do anything. Three, everyone in this world is selfish. Four, it isn't about you. So how do we use these four fundamental truths of life to get what we want? Sales. We sell ourselves and our ideas. We convince other people that their lives will be better if they trust us, work for us, buy from us, and more. The four fundamental truths of life.

And I appreciate like this little framework is like, oh, yeah, he said it in a, a pretty tight, concise way. Can you go deeper on the four fundamental truths of life? This is the most important section in the book. People are selfish. You have to accept it. My wife is married to me because I can provide for her. I'm fun to be around. We can build a life together. We can adventure. We can build the life we want. She's selfish and that's why she's married to me. I'm married to her because I'm selfish because she has everything I need in a life partner. Okay. My business partner is my business partner because he's selfish because I add more value to his life than he gives me in cash to be his business partner. Period. Period. If I didn't add more value

to my business partner's life than what I take in cash from the companies that we own together, he would not feel good about our relationship. An employee is selfish. They want to work for your company because you provide more opportunity, more money, a better quality of life, more fun, whatever it might be. Everybody in life is selfish. As soon as you accept it as fact and change your worldview on that, flip your worldview away from,

hey, me, me, me, me, me, I'm walking around the world figuring out what other people can do for me. Change that because it's not true. Nobody cares about you. Nobody cares about you. And as soon as you change that and you walk around the world thinking,

hey, all of these people are selfish, every single person. How can I make their life better? And we set up a win-win situation. The great thing about life is that there's situations that can be win-win, meaning two people who are selfish can get together and they both get what they want. That's a business partnership. That's an employment relationship.

That's any time you interact with other people. So if you can set up these win-win situations with other people, you can move mountains, basically. I think it's a superpower to understand the fact that nobody owes you anything. the world owes you absolutely nothing. You have to earn it every single day. You have to add more value to your customers, to your colleagues, to your employees every single day. If you ever think you're entitled or that I've earned this,

you're wrong. I feel like this is right in your ethos with sweaty startup and the way that you approach the world. Whatever I've done in the past, it doesn't matter, especially for my clients. Some people think like, well, you know, we've done some good work. So we should have the contract extended for years. no, we should have the contract extended for the next hour. And then I have to earn it that hour too.

Just like writing a book, you have to earn every turn of the page. Edit that thing down to make it as good as it can possibly be because it's all about adding value to people's lives. And I think if people show up every day thinking, how can I add maximum value to the people's lives around me, whether that's who you work with or your customers or whoever, I like your chances. I like your odds of good things happening if that is your mindset as opposed to saying, well, I deserve a lot more. I'm entitled to more because of how hard I work. As you said, nobody, literally not a single human on earth cares. And you are entitled to.

Yeah, go ahead. You're entitled to nothing. Like you have to earn it every second of every day. So there's some folks out there in school or in corporate America or in any club or business environment. And I'm about to give them some, frankly, some cold. hard truth about networking. I want to tell them how I feel about networking and I want to shift their mindset on networking. When I was in college, I went to networking events and I didn't realize this till later, but every single person at that networking event, they walked around with their

hand out saying, help me, help me, help me, help me, help me, help me, help me, help me, shaking hands, hey, how can you help me? Hey, hey, hey, hey, how can you help me? Oh, oh, by the way, can you help me? Can you help me? That's how 95% of people network. They walk into every single interaction, whether they're picking the brain of a mentor or they're talking to a career advisor or they're trying to get a new job or they're at a networking event with other business professionals, rotary, whatever club you're in. And they walk around thinking, how can these people help me? And as you can imagine, college networking events are damn near worthless because nobody could help anybody there. They don't have any skills yet. So you have a bunch of people walking around, shaking each other's hands, trying to help me, but nobody has any actual skills.

That's why these networking events are damn near worthless when you're in college. Should you still go to them? Yes. But you should change your mindset. And when it comes to networking, I have kind of a unfortunate truth. And the unfortunate truth about networking is that if you're not an expert at something, if you haven't done something, accomplished something, networking is going to be damn near impossible because everybody's selfish. My network exploded after I built a self-storage facility for $2.9 million and it became worth $6 million. Because people were like, oh, damn, Nick can help me.

If I talk to Nick about storage, he's my guy, he can help me, he can help me. So their selfish attitude drew them to me because I had something to add to the table. So that's why everybody wants to talk to and know successful business owners because they're good at something. They have things to add. They can make your life better. So step one, the very unfortunate thing, if there's a lot of people listening to this who maybe they don't have skills, maybe they didn't become a real estate expert, whatever it might be, before you go network and get really good at something. Go do the work.

Build a business. Build a career. Become a master at whatever it is you are doing, whether it's accountancy, you know, a brokerage, management, whatever it is. show everybody that you have something to add to the table and something amazing happens, your network explodes. But that's not the easy way.

So nobody wants to hear that. Well, I think shifting is like this happens virtually on LinkedIn. And I still feel this way. I'm like, oh, that person connected. They want to do something for me. It's like almost always they want something for themselves. And so then I'm thinking how,

it's weird. As I was reading your book, I actually, this made me make no sense. But I was like studying Gracie Abrams as, really big right now, especially of my teenage daughter's lives. And she has good music. But how did she become friends with Taylor Swift or have Taylor Swift want to have her open on the ERA's tour? Do you think she just called email Taylor and just told her how much she loved her and that she was a big fan and said, help me, help me, help me. No. She went out and wrote

for 10 years, amazing music that Taylor loved. And then Taylor called her and said, come open for me. Real Gracie was literally one of the biggest fan girls ever of Taylor Swift, but instead of just trying to beg to say, help me, help me. She went out and did the work and created some amazing music so good that it flipped it. And I think that's what your networking stuff. Maybe think of. Be a person worth someone else wanting to contact them. That's the greatest networking tool in the world. Do something of value that adds value to other people's lives.

and they will then want to be in your orbit instead of the other way around. I'm 100% with you with that. And I think that is whether you're building a career, you're building a company, you're building a team, do the work that makes others want to come to you. The tough part is that usually takes some time. It's hard. There's no guarantee. And that's why I think most people don't want to do it.

There's one shortcut. There's one unique way to add value to people. in a non-monetary way. If I'm a mentor, I'm an advisor, I have a ton of people reach out. I'm right here near a college that I'm pretty involved with, UGA. The kids reach out all the time.

They say, Nick, can I get lunch and talk about business? And I say yes, and I get lunch with them. And I tell them a ton of things to do. And none of them do it. So I get no value. It actually frustrates me. It takes value from my life meeting with those people. But I met with a girl named Caitlin Lutz

in George. I talk about her in my book. And she said, hey, I want to build a recruiting company. My dad is in the construction industry. He can't find workers. I think I can go find workers for him and simply charge a fee. It's a little agency. People already do it. I think I can simply just do that. I was like, okay, if you want to do that, here's what you do. You find a way to find those workers. You go out and you find them. You tell them that you can get him a job and you go ask your dad's head of if he would pay you $4,000 for every person who you bring in and work for, you know, a month. At the month anniversary, pay me five grand. She had the meeting and the guy said, I'd pay you 10 grand if you can find me a worker that can, because the construction industry in 2021 was insane. So she sends me an

email six months later that she's making 30 grand a month. I got a lot of joy from that. That made me happy. That added value to my life that she went out and did it. So there's one shortcut and that is actually do things and take action because then, people love mentoring you, they love helping you. So they will help you with no monetary gain if you take action and you actually do it. Problem is that's hard too. Take action and follow up. I remember I was talking to one of my best sales guys ever. I hired him at multiple companies. Heemason Harkey, former football player, whatever. I may have a little bit of a bias for that. But the reason I love Jameson is because he was one of the best in the world at being fearless of

cold calling and going after new customers. And he was so good at following up. And like years later, we're friends. We don't work together anymore. And I said, you know, if you just had to distill down what your like your superpower of what made you so good, regardless of what you're selling or where you're selling it or your territory, it didn't matter. He always killed it.

He's like, well, I just think you got to make the calls and then you got to follow up. And it's amazing how many people don't follow up. And in her case, she did the work and then followed up with you and told you, hey, Nick, I took some of your advice. I did this, this, this, and this. Here's a result of what has happened. And she followed up. And then you're juiced, right?

You're like, yes, let's go. That made me feel good about giving advice, about trying to help you because you're actually doing the work and you're following up. Those are the types of people you want to place bets on. Yeah. If Caitlin called me, I would answer the phone. Whereas if the other seven to 10 people for everyone, Caitlin, if they call or text me, I'm going to ignore it because I know that like,

It's going on deaf ears. It's a waste of my time. You've gotten really good at hiring, right? You talk about leverage, and I know you hire from all over the world. I'm curious for leaders that you're hiring operators, people who have to get after it. What are some of the must-have qualities in leaders that you're going to hire to work for you? There's something that's very, very rare, a rare attribute even among leaders. and that's the ability to get in a meeting, make a plan in your head,

and tell people what to do and how to execute the plan in a way that they want to do it. There's a lot of people, this is an epidemic in corporate America. There's people who just pass messages around. They're messengers. They know something needs solved,

so they're going to have a meeting about it and they're going to tell the underlings how to do it. And then those underlings are going to pass the message to somebody else. And before you know it, it's just going around and absolutely nothing happens because nobody actually knows how to tell people exactly what to do and make them follow up and actually do it. So it's so hard. It is so hard to hire and find people who can get in a meeting and tell people what to do. One in 30 managers that I hired today

are very good at that, even today. Really? That seems like that's the job. You would think. And yes, they can look, they can effectively manage and they can pass down directives from above and make sure it gets done. That's different. Being able to take charge and say, hey, this process is not right. We're going to fix it this way. And now everybody, I want you to do it a different way. And I want you to start right now. And here's how we're going to go forward. That is very, very rare. There is a story you write about that I want you to tell. It's a cold night. You're in Ithaca, New York, and you actually went to Walmart and you saw somebody outside working at Walmart. Can you tell me more about this guy?

Yeah, everybody thinks hiring is, you know, post an Indy job, post a LinkedIn job, and put ads behind it and interview a bunch of people. It's way simpler than that if you're running a small business. It's way simpler than that. You make a list of what you need as far as attributes of a person and you go find that person in your town in the wild where you can watch them do what they're doing. So I walk around life with business cards in my pocket to restaurants, to bars, to grocery stores, everywhere, because every now and then you see people that instantly they're different

and that you want them on your team. You find them at Chick-fil-A. A lot of them work at Chick-fil-A. They work at Enterprise Rental Car. They work wherever. And I learned this when I was in Ithaca. I was not yet engaged. So this is probably 2013.

My girlfriend, now my wife, ran in to get some groceries. I'm sitting in the parking lot. It's about 8 p.m. I'm sitting in the truck. It's cold. It's night. It got dark at 4.30. And I just see this guy in a Walmart vest run by the front of my car.

Run. And I'm like, did I just hallucinate? Is that a unicorn? I've never, ever seen a Walmart employee move fast, ever. Never. I've only seen a Walmart employee walk like this because they're getting paid by the hour. They don't want to be there. So this guy sprints by.

and I see him just like shoveling carts. He's 24, 25 years old, clean cut. Runs by starts shoveling carts, pushing him together. He gets probably 20 carts in a line, and he's pushing them full speed. I'm watching him in the parking lot work. He's collecting them all. He's pushing him full speed back towards the door. And then a Walmart bag rolls on like a tumbleweed through the icy, snowy, crappy parking lot.

He kind of bends down in stride and picks it up and jams it in his back pocket. and continues running towards the front of Walmart. I was shocked. My jaw is open. My mouth is open because I have never seen this. So I got to get to the bottom of it. I get out of the car. I put my jacket on.

And I kind of like act like a normal customer. But my goal is interact with this kid and figure out what's going on. I run. I run kind of like I'm going to make sure I pass with him. Hey, man, how's it going? Like, what are you up to? Like, why are you moving so fast? Maybe I said.

And he goes, oh, man. And yeah, there's a high school basketball game going on around the corner. And it's a varsity game. And it's going to get out in about 45 minutes. And we got no carts. And when that game gets out, there's going to be 40, 50 customers that come here to Walmart. And they're going to come in and they're not going to have carts. And that's bad.

And I'm like, what happened? Like, why don't they have carts? He's like, well, our cart guy didn't show up today. And my manager's in the back, solving other problems. So I got to do it. But he's like, this is not even my job. Like, I'm supposed to be working in wherever. And right then, I pull the card out of my pocket.

I know this kid's different. Pull the card out of my pocket. And I'm like, hey, man, like, by the way, I run a company here in town. It's a moving and storage company. Pretty fun. We work with the colleges. We do a little bit of travel. And we pay, maybe I said $20 an hour.

We pay $20 an hour. It's hard with inflation now. Maybe I said $15. I knew he was making like $12.50, right? I knew what he was making. And I knew what I needed to say that we paid. And I hand him a card. And I was like, dude, we pay $20 an hour.

If you know anybody, if you have any friends like you, I'd love to talk to him because we're hiring and we got a lot going on right now. Four hours later, I get an email. The next day we have an interview. That night, I get him an offer. He quits Walmart two weeks later. It comes to work for me. And he does four seasons with us. He travels to Boston. He travels to Washington, D.C. ends up running a branch. And he's one of the best hires we've ever made. That's powerful. It's powerful. I just saw that he didn't think. There was nothing. There was nothing. at in his job description that said make sure all the carts are at front of the store when the basketball game lets out. He just cared. He had that sense of urgency. He had that drive to go a little bit above and beyond. And sometimes that's all you need in a lot of jobs. My first sales VP at LexisNexis, Rex Caswell told me, you are interviewing for your next job every single day. You don't know who's watching. You don't know what the job's going to be. This guy didn't realize that. But he was interviewing for his next job that night. And did he get lucky that you were there? Yes. But he made

his own luck because of how he chose to behave, how he chose to be a winner, have a winner's mindset, how he chose to take ownership, which is, God, I love that so much. Like, this guy doesn't own Walmart. He's getting paid 12 bucks an hour. But he acts like he owns the place. Like how, and that has had to be just like, it's so attractive to want those people to, you want to work with those people like right you immediately ran up to the guy so i give credit to both you guys one because he was interviewing for his next job didn't even realize it and you for being a professional noticer of things of people of winners and they're in the ownership mindset of a person who's wrangling carts on a cold night at walmart i think hiring is a lot like hunting literally

it's just hunting i'm sitting there and i'm observing i'm a lion i'm a lion in the safari sitting on a rock just relaxing. But when the gazelle is in the field, you go kill the gazelle. When I'm at a bar and I see and I'm sitting there and I'm frustrated because the bartender hasn't made eye contact with me, they know I'm here, they're over in the corner,

chit chatting with a regular. That's 99% of bartenders today. But every now and then, you have somebody who just has a full awareness of everybody at the bar. They have that awareness where they make eye contact with you, they gave you a little, finger. You know they're going to come your direction. They're passing. They're like, hey,

what do you want? They're putting it in the thing. They're slinging drinks. And they are keeping four times as many people at that bar happy. They have it. They have the it factor. An unfortunate truth about life and business is that 75% of people in this world are totally incompetent. Your job as a business owner is somebody who's hiring is to spot those people and get them out of your organization. So Chris Powers, a really good friend of mine, mentor of mine who has done phenomenally well in real estate. He has a podcast called The Fort. I was complaining to him about one of my employees. This is a couple years ago. I was on the phone venting. Man, he's made these mistakes. I've been trying to work with him. And he goes, Nick,

you know what you need to do? And I'm like, what? And he goes, you got to fire him. You need to call. You need to get off the phone with me and you need to fire this person. I'm like, Chris, I can't afford to fire him. He's like, we're busy. It's our busy season. He's working 60 hours a week. I can't afford. He goes, Nick, fire him. Fire him today. You'll feel better tomorrow. He said, look, the general competence of your entire organization will fall to the level of competence that you tolerate. If you tolerate C players, in five years, you will have a C-level organization

and your company will be failing. And there's nothing that A players hate worse than interacting with C players. So your A players, you can either, you have two options, Nick. He's like, you have two options. You can fire the poor performers or you can watch your top performers walk away.

And that stuck with me, and I live by that. So firing people, it's uncomfortable, it's hard, but I do it swiftly because my A players and my organization deserves it. The idea of a sweaty startup, right? That is your handle on Twitter, where I first found you years ago, the title of your book. What is it about that attracts you to sweaty startups? It's so easy to get captivated by,

the idea of new, big, world-changing ideas. It's sexy. It's fun. The stories of the underdog against all odds making the football team at Notre Dame or doing whatever, starting a billion dollar company from their dorm room at Harvard, those stories are captivating. You want to believe that Russell Crow came in as the heir to the king and fought his way up. against all odds, against lions and against ships and Gladiator to become the king again. You want to believe that. You want to believe it. But it's not practical. It's not practical. I'm not Elon Musk. I'm not Mark Zuckerberg. I'm not a Stanford computer scientist. My dad didn't belong to the top 10 country clubs in America and have a trust fund for me.

It's just not, it's not practical. So these entrepreneurs, all these people who are interested in starting a business, they think, man, I'm going to read more books about Elon Musk and Steve Jobs and I'm going to read zero to one and I'm going to study Paul Graham and I'm going to change the world. I'm going to turn business models on their head and they do it for six months. They fail and they get a job. All the wealthiest people I know, all the most successful people I know, the people who have the nicest houses in my town, have the private airplane in Athens, have the big ass beach house in. Just they have what everybody wants. You actually go look at them and talk to them and see what they do. A, they're normal people. And B, they all started sweaty startups.

They all own businesses that are not revolutionary. They're not flipping business models on their head. They didn't raise venture capital. They just did things. They did common things uncommonly well. So I am trying to, with my book, with my podcasts, with my Twitter profile, I'm trying to stand on top of a mountain and yell. what people don't want to hear about entrepreneurship, and that is,

forget the goddamn underdog stories. You're a gambler. You're a poker player. You only have so many chips. Chips is your time. It's your time, and you only have so many. Are you going to put all those chips on a roulette table where you have one in, I don't even know how to play roulette?

How many odds, how many numbers are you. Maybe 35, I don't know. I'm not sure. One in 35. Or are you going to play a. game where most people who stick with it win. Real estate. Self storage. 80% of the people who try to do storage for five years and they're reasonably competent and they work hard and they make decent decisions get wealthy. 80 fucking percent. Why would you not play those games?

So like a big concept in my book started out with it is choose your number. Like what is winning to you. Is it a billion-dollar business? If that's your goal and you have wealthy parents and you don't have overhead and you can go five years without a job, do it. Go to Silicon Valley, raise venture capital, start a job or you're spectacular. If you are world-class of something, go do something spectacular. I'm glad people like Elon Musk exist. But if you're a normal person, go start a business where most of the people who do that thing win, choose the game you want to play. Do you want to play basketball? Let's say $30,000 a month was my number. That's what I needed to send my kids to a good school, to play golf, to travel, to do what I needed to do, to go to a restaurant

without worrying about the price. $30,000 is available to the winner. I have two roads. I can go to Silicon Valley or I can go the sweaty startup route. Let's frame this differently. I can play a basketball game. The winner of the basketball game gets $30,000 a month for the rest of their life. Do I want to play against LeBron James or do I want to play against a fifth grade girl? I'm playing basketball against the fifth grade girl any day. Based on your Twitter activities, have created some people who love you as well as some who probably hate you and it feels intentional you troll at times i think it's very funny i try not to take life too seriously i want to take my work serious and work hard but i feel like you are very good at it i just like to hear overall

because i've been following your twitter for i don't know how many years and i always get a good laugh especially on the super bowl or you use the same tweet multiple super bowls or whatever i just want to hear your mentality on how you approach social media, especially Twitter. Yeah, I think I'm, first of all, I'm naturally kind of a goof. I'm a pick. I like to rile people up. I think it's hilarious that a grown human being can be sitting in their house on their family with their couch and get upset at me on the other side of the world for,

you know, 240 characters that I wrote on a Twitter. It's mind blowing that they can get all upset and worked up. I don't understand that level of maturity. So I'm going to pick on those people. I'm going to purposely do that because I think. it's funny. I'm sick that way. But the other half of it's, you're going to mix the

the Pappy with Diet Coke, right? Like those tweets win every time. Like they're just so good. Well, yeah, I have a gift for pissing people on the internet, I guess. But, but in reality, like, you can't be loved by everybody in this world. And I think a lot of people, a lot of people really try to be loved by everybody. And what happens is nobody feels absolutely zero people feel

connection or passion about what you, what you're up to when you're worried about what people think. Did that take you some time to get there to be okay with the fact that you know you're going to create some like legitimate haters because you're going to not only you're you troll a little bit with the booze and Diet Coke or the Super Bowl post about like I'm I made 80 cold calls while you guys sat on the couch and watch guys play football, which is still still wins every time to see the response. But you also have other ones where you're willing to kind of stand up for something.

Like you really push people to get married. You really push people to have kids. things I pretty much agree with you on everything. And you have some that say, well, who are you to tell me what to do or are that? So it feels like you've gained a level of comfort in your own skin to be willing to stand up for things you believe in, even if they may be controversial. Yeah, I've changed my mind on a lot of political and controversial things over the last five years. So I'm proud of that. But I also have some pretty strong views on parenting and basically conservative values. I'm liberal in a ton of ways. I think everybody should do exactly what they want to do. I love being in a little music. craft beer town here in Athens. I love weird people, but I also love conservative values when it comes to business and raising a family. So I don't think I'm radical in any way. But yeah, a lot of my views fire people up. I think it fires people up because they know that there's a lot of truth to it in one way. Yeah. One more, Nick, let's say you're meeting with, and I know you used to

judge these entrepreneurship competitions, but let's say you're meeting with a recent college grad who wants to leave a positive dent in the world. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to them? Yeah, don't be a doctor or a lawyer because I don't think they have a good life. If you want to be 50 years old, divorced, addicted to alcohol and overweight, but rich, and you want to drive a range rover, then be a doctor or a lawyer. If you want to be happy and successful, just be very, my point there is just be very thoughtful about what games you play. look down the hall, look down the hall at who's winning the game you're about to play. What does winning look like?

If you're going to go down the med school route, what does winning look like? Who are the top performing best doctors and what does their life look like on a day-to-day basis? Same thing for corporate America. If you get a job at JP Morgan, if you get a job at Deloitte, if you're lucky enough to get a job at McKinsey or Bain, look down the hall. What are the people in your shoes doing 20 years from now who did well and won that game? What does winning look like? Not enough people are thoughtful enough about, hey, what are the odds I'm going to win? And what does it look like to win?

So that's a really powerful way to frame like decision making if you're about to start a job in corporate America or you're about to start a business. So good. The book's called The Sweaty Startup, How to Get Rich, Doing, Boring Things. I really appreciate you sending me a copy. It's an extension of your Twitter profile, but even better in the fact that it's, It's super practical, thoughtful. And to me, that's what I think. It's about doing things.

And it helps you take some ideas and most importantly put them in action. So I appreciate your work, man. And this is really good. I encourage people to buy the book, to read the book. It's really well done. Nick, I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Ryan, thanks a lot for having me, man. And look, yeah, the book is, you know, came out this week.

It's been something I've been working on for really 10 years, working hard on actually turning it into an organized, structured book for the last year and a half, really. But yeah, it's actionable. It's no bullshit. And you're not going to agree with all of it. But if you read it, you're going to take something away. So I think we'll maybe get you an Amazon link or something for the notes. But, man, yeah, really, really appreciate you having me come on and talk about it.

And I hope the message resonated with folks. Definitely, definitely. Appreciate it, man. Thank you. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. if you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com. Let me know what you learn from this great conversation with Nick Huber.

A few takeaways from my notes. The attributes of winners. They have an abundance mindset, a sense of urgency. They make good decisions, and they are not afraid to stand up and call you out. Like the story Nick shared, this VP of Finance, Kevin, after Nick had made some decisions while Kevin was out on vacation. turned out to be poor decisions. And Nick has created a culture and environment where it is safe to publicly tell him he has messed up.

And because Kevin did that and because Nick has created an environment for that to happen, it helped save their business. We all should be striving to create a place where people can let us know when we're wrong. And then the four fundamental truths of life. One, you can't do it alone. Two, you can't make people do anything. Three, everyone in this world is selfish. Four, it isn't about you.

So how do we use these four fundamental truths of life to get what we want? Sales. We sell ourselves and our ideas. We convince other people that their lives will be better if they trust us, work for us, buy from us, and more. Sales is a fundamental element of life. It's a part of every single thing you do. Whether you want to admit it or not, it is. absolutely worth it to get good at the profession of selling and then networking don't go to

events telling others to help you don't look for handouts instead become someone worth knowing do something of value that makes others want to come to you that's hard it takes time like the Gracie Abrams Taylor Swift story I told Gracie sat in a room by herself for many years before she caught the attention of her idol, right? The story about the guy wrangling carts on a cold night at Walmart, like my mentor Rex Caswell has told me for many years and told me right when I got my first job at LexisNexis, you are interviewing for your next job every single day. You've got to earn it, act like it.

You're entitled to nothing. And I love that story of Nick hiring the guy after seeing how hard he worked. wrangling carts and the fact that he had an ownership mentality. So good. Once again, I'm going to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Nick Huber. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do to that. And you also go to Apple Podcast and Spotify and you subscribe to the show.

It's so big. And you're rated, hopefully five stars. And then you write a thoughtful review by doing all of that. You give me the opportunity. to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk you soon.

Can we?