The Wise Exit

NICK HUBER - Episode 42 of the Cashing Out (M&A) podcast

00:00:00:17 - 00:00:16:09
Nick Huber
Distribution is the key. You can have a bag of gold bars and if you can't sell them, they're worthless. Period. You've got the best business in the world. And if you can't find that right buyer, that strategic buyer, that person, you cannot realize your exit goals.

00:00:16:16 - 00:00:44:18
Todd Sullivan
Welcome to the Cashing Out podcast, where our fellow founders share real stories and offer honest advice around selling their companies to some of the top acquirers in the world. My name is Todd Sullivan, CEO of Exitwise, where we help business owners create the exits they deserve. Today, my guest is Nick Huber, a serial entrepreneur who leverages his substantial social media audiences to drive incredible value for his businesses and for the entrepreneurs who he advises and invests in with.

00:00:44:18 - 00:01:12:08
Todd Sullivan
His partner, Nick built and sold his first storage service business right out of college, but decided to sell the business to focus on building a self-storage and real estate empire. Nick and I talk about how he used his first company to learn how to make money, how to delegate work, and how to uncover bigger opportunities. Nick also shares how every business owner should be building their audience through social media to leverage this often untapped distribution channel for their businesses.

00:01:12:18 - 00:01:41:06
Todd Sullivan
I hope you enjoy my conversation with Nick Huber. Nick, thank you for joining me. I am really excited to have you here because we're watching this amazing career unfold and you're leveraging social in a way that none of our founders have really ever done before. And when I get excited about is what I see that enabled this empire that you are building is the first business that you started and exited.

00:01:41:06 - 00:02:00:09
Todd Sullivan
And I might be wrong, right? But I would love to learn about how you built a business and sold it. And then how did the wheels start turning saying, Hey, I can I can do this all over again? So, you know, just so you know, Right. We had Mark Cuban booked for this time slot. And when you said you could do it, I bumped him immediately to have you on.

00:02:00:10 - 00:02:01:11
Todd Sullivan
So thank you for being here.

00:02:02:00 - 00:02:05:16
Nick Huber
Todd Thanks for having me. I'll try to live up to surpass Mark Cuban.

00:02:05:16 - 00:02:18:18
Todd Sullivan
So I think maybe if you could start your first business, you're entering a class right at Cornell and they're saying, Start a business. I was in a similar class in business school, but love to hear how that went for you.

00:02:19:05 - 00:02:47:11
Nick Huber
All these classes are the same. You walk into an entrepreneurship class, you sit down and the professor tells you, Hey, so we're all going to think of a business idea and we're going to spend the semester working on this business idea. And 20 kids in this class, maybe 25. Every single one of them has typical entrepreneurship, you know, dreams of big idea, raise money, app scalability, moat, all those things, all those boxes were checked.

00:02:48:03 - 00:03:08:23
Nick Huber
And then there was me and my business partner and I had a pickup and delivery storage company for college students, and the professor said, Well, what's your moat? And I said, We don't need a moat. The company that's out there doing this runs around with clipboards and they make $250,000 a year just in our town in revenue. I want to go compete with the markets.

00:03:08:23 - 00:03:28:04
Nick Huber
There Don't need to do much different. There's 20 companies out there for us to study. We can pick and choose which processes we like from each company and we can go and get started. Started that company was called Storage Squad, built it. And if you talk about the main takeaway from from doing all this stuff and what's enabled me, that was a hard business.

00:03:28:04 - 00:03:46:08
Nick Huber
I started with a hard business. I love it when I see operators start with hard businesses because it turned me into a good operator. Anybody can make money in a good business. To make money to make a profit in a hard business is not easy. We learned it, we did it, and it turned me into somebody who can lead people and hire and fire and delegate and manage.

00:03:46:08 - 00:04:05:08
Nick Huber
And and that's what every single business is. So over the course of five years, we built that business. At its peak, we had 4 to 6 full time employees, 150 part time employees. We did a little over 2 million in revenue, a couple hundred grand in profit, and kind of leveraged our way into real estate and now and now building a bigger business.

00:04:05:08 - 00:04:12:08
Nick Huber
But we sold that company for just a hair over seven figures in January of 2021.

00:04:13:16 - 00:04:34:05
Todd Sullivan
It's awesome. I love that you took a business where you knew the customer like you essentially you could have been the customer and they were all around you. You knew that the industry made money, right? So you could. Your startup costs are probably not significant and you knew demand was there, right? If you could do something just a little better.

00:04:34:17 - 00:04:55:12
Todd Sullivan
I think the other thing I really liked when I was reading about that business is that you could do it on one campus, essentially get it right, and then bring it to other campuses, right. This model is I don't know if you use the word scalable, but you could transport it to other locations and then you're matching it up with the the storage facilities.

00:04:56:05 - 00:05:18:07
Todd Sullivan
It sounded like a very methodical way of building a business, building cash flow. And then you have the exit, which is awesome because it enables everything else. But can you tell me right, this is a legit exit and I read a little bit about it. Can you tell me that process, Were you approached to be purchased or did you say, Hey, we want to look for an acquirer and start marketing the business?

00:05:19:03 - 00:05:44:18
Nick Huber
We had a plan for what was next before any of this. That's a key factor here. We knew what we wanted to do. We were in this moving and storage company. Great business could put a couple hundred grand a year in each of our pockets as business partners, but then we built our first self-storage facility and 2000 now opened the doors in 2017, built a building for, you know, $2.0 in $2.4 million was our basis.

00:05:45:12 - 00:06:06:00
Nick Huber
And two years later, in 2019, it was worth five and a half million. We did a cash out refinance in seven figures at our bank account and we realized, okay, so wait a second. This was 10% of our focus. It was 10% of our stress. And it just made 90% of our net worth in one and one little fell swoop.

00:06:07:02 - 00:06:34:12
Nick Huber
And then you fast forward to 2021. We buy out our partners. We've refinanced it again, an $11.2 million valuation. We still own that one building. That's life changing money from one deal. And we realized really quickly that, hey, let's do more of that. Let's get away from the service business and let's do more of that. So 2019 or so when we made the decision, Hey, we need to sell this company or we need to shut it down, and it was looking like we were going to shut it down because it's a service company, it's a moving company.

00:06:34:23 - 00:06:54:14
Nick Huber
And my business partner pulled the cat out of the hat and found a perfect strategic buyer who now is thriving with the business. It's a great part of their brand, and I had transitioned out of the business for three years when we sold it, because I, I had started to focus on our real estate holdings and we bought a couple more properties in 2018 and 19, bought some more in 2020.

00:06:54:23 - 00:07:06:01
Nick Huber
And it got to the point where I needed my partner and his operational chops over at the real estate company. So it was kind of a clear vision of, Hey, we have this other opportunity, we got to sell this company.

00:07:06:15 - 00:07:29:11
Todd Sullivan
It's great because we find, you know, we're selling businesses quite a bit and the founders, we always worry about what their next act is going to be, because if you don't have that planned out, you're not going to be satisfied a year later. Right. If you're just kind of walking around figuring out, what do I do with this money, that is a recipe for disaster.

00:07:29:11 - 00:07:54:00
Todd Sullivan
And we have some amazing stories. We even had one founder who just didn't know what to do. He started going back to work and received a cease and desist from the buyer saying, You don't work here anymore. So getting this kind of people to be really happy with the exit is about like planning for the future. And yours is ideal where you're actually building a business within a business and that becomes the rocket ship that you want to join.

00:07:54:09 - 00:07:55:14
Todd Sullivan
That's really, really cool.

00:07:55:23 - 00:08:20:13
Nick Huber
Another really interesting thing about selling a business is that you'd be surprised at how many people when they have $20, $30-grand a month coming in from a business. They feel totally different than somebody who has four or $5 million sitting in a checking account. And often oftentimes the person without the cash flow, the person with the lump sum of money, feels more insecure financially.

00:08:21:04 - 00:08:38:14
Nick Huber
They feel like they're losing money on a monthly basis. They feel like, oh my God, now I need cash flow. There's the people with the cash flow that want the lump sum money. If you want the lump sum money that want the cash flow. Yeah. And when you sell a company, time of reckoning comes when, hey, that money hits your checking account.

00:08:38:14 - 00:08:40:00
Nick Huber
But those monthly distributions stop.

00:08:41:06 - 00:09:00:05
Todd Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of these business owners, right, they treat the business as their personal piggy bank. And I think there gets to be a point where they don't want to invest in the next thing. Looking for that next opportunity. And so when they go to sell the business, yeah, they're sitting on a bundle of cash and that insecurity seeps in.

00:09:00:12 - 00:09:21:10
Todd Sullivan
I think I read somewhere where you kind of equate insecurity and fear to like lack of decision making or making decisions or not making decisions creates that insecurity. Yeah, Having that kind of cash flow coming in is a real comfort for some people. And then maybe some people want it sitting in the bank, but it's going to make them nervous if they don't see something coming in on a monthly basis.

00:09:21:17 - 00:09:45:07
Todd Sullivan
Yeah, I totally relate to that. All right. So your partner sounds like you really drove this exit and it sounds like you found the right strategic partner. Right. Because they wanted this this market segment right, that you were in, that you were developing and that had a lot of runway. I think one of the things when I read what jumped out at me was that you were basically selling the services business in the third or fourth inning.

00:09:45:07 - 00:10:03:23
Todd Sullivan
It had a it had a lot of growth. Right. If you were to stick to that business, you could have replicated that, continue to replicate it around the country. And for founders, it makes a lot of sense when you're thinking about selling a business that makes sure that you're selling something that has growing future cash flow because that's what buyers are really buying.

00:10:04:12 - 00:10:14:03
Todd Sullivan
All right. So you said, all right, I know where the gold is. We want to chase the gold. Everybody focus on it. Can you can you tell me about kind of that wild ride that you've been on?

00:10:15:00 - 00:10:34:09
Nick Huber
Yeah. So, 2017, we built that first building. It was a massive win. 2019, we bought a couple more buildings. 20, 20, a couple more, but we ran out of capital. And real estate is the most capital intensive business in the world. And without cash, you cannot grow, period. You can only grow so fast. And we were on that journey to buy a couple of properties a year.

00:10:34:09 - 00:10:59:14
Nick Huber
And yes, we would have been wealthy and yes, it would have been amazing, but it would have taken us 50 years to build a significant portfolio of 50 plus properties. Then I got on Twitter and started sharing what I do and how I think about business and how we make money and how we go about it. And you fast forward today, and I've got one of the key, you know, aspect of business is distribution.

00:10:59:14 - 00:11:19:03
Nick Huber
And I have that now and the distribution has brought capital, which is another key ingredient. So in my opinion, like every business needs operational chops. Somebody who knows how to run a company, it needs capital and it needs customers and distribution. And my social media journey somehow and somehow I was lucky enough to bring those things in.

00:11:20:00 - 00:11:42:03
Todd Sullivan
Yeah, I would love to dive into that, right? How intentional you were about building that audience, or was it just, I've read something else that you mentioned about a very impactful conversation that you had early on where somebody just gave you so much value, right? And you said, why do you charge for this? This is unbelievable. And the person was like, No, no.

00:11:42:03 - 00:12:01:14
Todd Sullivan
When you give and you give and you educate, you become that expert. And it feels like that's what you've done is saying, hey, I'm just going to share everything out there and people get a lot from it. And now you're building this audience that you can leverage. Was that the plan ahead of time, or am I? I'm probably missing the bulk of the strategy here.

00:12:02:04 - 00:12:26:08
Nick Huber
No, that's that's the exact playbook. I mean, my playbook is to give away so much value online that people a, trust me, you know, be want to do business with me and see you eventually want to become a customer of mine, whether it's one of my service businesses or as a limited partner, an investor in my real estate company, because I run a real estate private equity, you know, micro real estate, private equity firm and my customer is my investor, period.

00:12:26:08 - 00:12:45:06
Nick Huber
Like my tenant is number two, my investors number one. So that is exactly the plan. You know, I didn't start with that exact vision. Hey, this is exactly how it's all going to work. I got on and started being radically open with how we do business. I shared my profit and loss (P&L) statements. I shared how real estate works and how it's simple.

00:12:45:06 - 00:13:05:08
Nick Huber
I talked about it in a simple, digestible way because a lot of real estate investors, they'll use a lot of terms that make them sound smart. When real estate in reality is very simple. There's more dumb rich people in real estate than any other industry, but it's kind of a club, and it's an area where you don't just get an invite to get all of a sudden welcome them back to the community.

00:13:05:08 - 00:13:25:10
Nick Huber
They're kind of clicky, right? And they're going to use a lot of terms like debt yield and debt constant and ROI and in NOI and you know, LTV and they're going to scare you off with all these fancy terms. I said, you know what? How can we talk about real estate? And in a way that makes it what it is and it's numbers on the back of a napkin and if they if they add up, the deal is good.

00:13:25:13 - 00:13:35:11
Nick Huber
And if they don't add up, the deal is not good. Let's stop overcomplicating this. And I was just radically open about how we did what we did and made money and built trust.

00:13:36:00 - 00:13:54:16
Todd Sullivan
That's great. We started Exitwise. It was in a very kind of similar vein in that we were just trying to help founders. My partner and I, you know, he built a company with 1000 employees, right? Enormous. And I had multiple kind of smaller successes. And we were just thinking about how do we give back? And so naturally that is like, just be the teacher, right?

00:13:54:16 - 00:14:14:18
Todd Sullivan
Just share what you've learned over time. Mistakes, wins, whatever it is. And then that kind of gradually went to, okay, well, there's potentially a service behind this and there's a better way to do this. That's what our name Exitwise. The wise part is just get wise about M&A and that's why we do these podcasts, right? Try to share something.

00:14:14:23 - 00:14:33:14
Todd Sullivan
And I think some really unique things come out of, you know, from every guest and yours. That first sale, it was almost to me like, Hey, we got to get rid of this thing because there's so much opportunity in front of us. But you wouldn't have seen that opportunity if you didn't build a real business that was making money in the first place.

00:14:34:02 - 00:14:59:20
Todd Sullivan
So getting out is really was a decision to take advantage of some really big opportunities in the future, which you're doing now. Can we can we jump into this idea? Right. You're in a lot of different businesses now investing, building, real estate and beyond. But there seems to be this common core of the social media following that you have earned and created over time.

00:15:00:04 - 00:15:18:07
Todd Sullivan
And now you're getting into this little bit of the business brokerage. And I'm wondering how powerful this kind of this leverage that you have in social media is going to be for our fellow founders that are looking to exit, because you were really going to be able to get that word out, you know, when the time is right, maybe.

00:15:18:07 - 00:15:22:05
Todd Sullivan
Can you talk a little bit about leveraging social as it relates to M&A?

00:15:22:17 - 00:15:44:07
Nick Huber
Yeah. So distribution is the key. You could have a bag of gold bars and if you can't sell them, they're worthless, period. You have the best business in the world. And if you can't find that right buyer, that strategic buyer, that person, you cannot realize your exit goals. So I have 30 to 60 million impressions a month on Twitter.

00:15:44:20 - 00:16:08:08
Nick Huber
I have 108,000 people who are interested in small business and entrepreneurship on my email newsletter, I have 5,000 people a week who listen to my voice on a podcast. So I mean, most brokers, most brokers who sell, you know, 1 to $15 million businesses, they they're going to have their list of 3,000 stale people who are no longer really in the market for a business.

00:16:08:21 - 00:16:36:17
Nick Huber
And they're going to have BizBuySell, and they're going to use some of these other platforms to get the distribution out. And they're going to make a CIM (Confidential Information Memorandum) and they're going to post it and they're going to try their best to sell the company. We've kind of looked at and said, Hey, what if in real time we tweet about a business that's for sale and thousands of people see it, you know, 50, 100,000 people see these tweets, We do an email newsletter deep dive on how business works that we're taking to market.

00:16:36:17 - 00:16:52:16
Nick Huber
We do an interview with the founder on a podcast. So if the sellers can get to know the founder and what the risks are in the business, you know what the struggles are, what the opportunity is and play the numbers game on a whole new level to maximize price for a seller. And we haven't taken one out yet.

00:16:52:19 - 00:17:13:00
Nick Huber
We're really close. We've only been operational for three months. We've, you know, getting the admin and the, you know, licensing button down. But, but we're going to bring out three businesses to market all between, you know, $800,000. And the top end here will be about $15 million. It's a big laundromat with a real estate play out West.

00:17:13:11 - 00:17:20:11
Nick Huber
And yeah, we're going to go out and find great buyers for these companies. I'm I'm really bullish on on the leveraging social to sell businesses.

00:17:21:07 - 00:17:45:00
Todd Sullivan
You know what? We definitely have to talk and figure out how we could work together because we're really selling businesses above $15 million, $15 million up to, you know, really $250 million. We have outliers, we have a $600 million in market. But this our strategy is a little bit different in that when we work with those founders, it's about finding the best investment banker in the world that has very tight relationships.

00:17:45:07 - 00:18:08:21
Todd Sullivan
So it's about going to 15 that are asking for this exact thing and then creating competition within that group. But I could see bringing in something like you have to that process and figuring out how to maintain some confidentiality and creating even more competition right? I don't know what that really looks like, but I think you are absolutely on to something.

00:18:08:21 - 00:18:41:02
Todd Sullivan
The M&A industry is so stodgy and it's really run by these industry agnostic investment banks in the lower middle market. And you're right, distribution is really key. Personal relationships with buyers, really key to driving success and purchase price. I'm excited. We we've really talk about this because I think we can help many, many more people you know, comes to mind right. We have a long list of the companies that we're helping today, but one of them has a social media following and it's an e-commerce brand.

00:18:41:02 - 00:19:04:04
Todd Sullivan
They'll sell $60 million in that range and they can literally go run, sell somebody else's product and call it approved by their brand and send it out into their kind of their their social networks and just print money. And it's just an amazing formula because they develop so much trust with a very specific audience and they're just sharing who they are.

00:19:04:13 - 00:19:23:17
Todd Sullivan
And that trust is, is so key. And we've seen we see other ones like that, but those guys are really unusual, kind of really, really rooting for them. You know, I saw that you have young kids, right? And I have a she just turned six. She just turned four and a one year old son. So I think really close.

00:19:23:17 - 00:19:25:23
Todd Sullivan
Right. But you have, what, two boys and a girl.

00:19:26:11 - 00:19:32:09
Nick Huber
I have mine in three weeks will have just turned six, just turned four. And a one year old girl. So.

00:19:33:02 - 00:19:35:03
Todd Sullivan
Oh, my gosh. When does the one year old turn to?

00:19:35:19 - 00:19:36:16
Nick Huber
April 13th.

00:19:37:09 - 00:19:58:00
Todd Sullivan
Okay, so my son will be helped. My son will turn two in October, so a little. But we're in the same boat, right? I'm curious. I used when I was living out in Silicon Valley, and I just hated this idea that I was a little bit older than everyone. And and investors are looking for that young kid that's going to eat ramen and not do anything but run these businesses.

00:19:58:00 - 00:20:16:01
Todd Sullivan
And I was I was I was just kind of jealous of that. Like, why am I because I'm older, right? And now having kids, how you really have to focus your time, right, when you're building a business and be incredibly efficient because like, you know why are we doing this right? The kids, are it spending the time with them?

00:20:16:01 - 00:20:36:07
Todd Sullivan
I don't know how you think about this, but I think about I want to have the entrepreneurial class when they're in high school where the kids come over and they get to just try a business and fail and have people come in and just really try to teach operational. Yes. Just teach entrepreneurship in any form as early as possible.

00:20:36:20 - 00:20:43:09
Todd Sullivan
How do you think about like your kids and what they see dad doing today and maybe over the next ten years?

00:20:44:04 - 00:21:09:16
Nick Huber
It's different. I mean, I think they get the conversations around the dinner table with me and their mom and my friends, but they just see me go into a room in the house and work on a computer. Whereas the old days of entrepreneurship, either the dad was gone, he was just working all the time, or they could go to work with their dad and see and feel the office and people and what he was doing.

00:21:10:04 - 00:21:29:17
Nick Huber
But all of my businesses are remote. I have 200 plus employees in the ecosystem now and nobody comes to a central office. So I don't know. I think they're going to struggle to see it until they're a little older. So right now, when they're, you know, three and five, they don't know because they just see me go to work on a computer.

00:21:30:01 - 00:21:54:14
Nick Huber
But I do think that the entrepreneurial, the entrepreneurial mindset and how it works and how you can, you know, collaborate and partner with other people to create something bigger than what one person could have created themselves and what a company is and how a group of people can can work together and how delegation works. Those are things that are not innate in most families.

00:21:55:01 - 00:22:12:07
Nick Huber
They're not taught in public schools. And it really took me a long time even running a company to fully understand the power of it. And if you can get that through kid's head when they're young, I mean, it's an unstoppable advantage, in my opinion. Unstoppable.

00:22:12:20 - 00:22:31:14
Todd Sullivan
Yeah. My kids, we have the kids same age and they call me a wheeler and dealer, Right? And so they're like, Dad, did you wheel today or did you deal today? That's that's pretty much all they're getting. But we also work from home. We're in like a separate building. And I have partners that are leaving and that's like, Oh, that's Uncle Brian, that's Uncle Dom, that's Uncle Matt.

00:22:32:00 - 00:22:58:17
Todd Sullivan
So they see that I'm working with other people, but then we have hundreds of investment bankers. How many attorneys tax accountants all over the world that they don't see? I think you brought up something really interesting of how, you know, entrepreneurship or how running a business is groups of people. And from what I've learned from your videos and tweets and all the content is that you're really looking for, that kind of in the EOS model would be the integrator.

00:22:58:17 - 00:23:18:18
Todd Sullivan
You're like the visionary, and then you're bringing in these highly competent operators, right? And then you want to build businesses where hiring is not necessarily a challenge. You can plug people in to do certain roles because you've created the program, right, that people can follow. Can you talk to me more about that? Because I think you even said it right.

00:23:18:18 - 00:23:23:16
Todd Sullivan
It takes time to understand how do you start to grow with people?

00:23:24:07 - 00:23:44:19
Nick Huber
Yeah, the the first five years of my career, I spent my time telling people to get out of my way so that I could do it. An employee would come to me with a problem and I'd say, Get out of my way. I can do this better. So I'm going to I'm going to just do it as you advance, as you learn, as you get become a better delegator, you kind of move further and further the other way.

00:23:44:19 - 00:24:05:00
Nick Huber
And I'm at the extreme now where if I have a job to do in my company, I'm not okay with that. And that's going to change very, very quickly. If there's a task or something that is repetitive, that will come back up, that needs to be done. I am not going to be the one to do it. And I think that's a mindset shift.

00:24:05:00 - 00:24:23:18
Nick Huber
It takes a really, really long time to get comfortable with. There's a problem, there's something that needs done, and instead of thinking, okay, how am I going to do this? How am I going to get this done? It's who can I get to do this and how can I make sure that they do it? Well, that's a shift that takes forever to really involve it and integrate it into your life and into yourself as a business owner.

00:24:23:18 - 00:24:49:06
Nick Huber
So, yeah, I'm a I combine people now. I bring people in and get them together and give them the tools to succeed. But if I have a job in my business, that's a problem. And I can't focus on growth and I can't focus on new opportunities. So I got to delegate everything to the extreme. And part of that's being okay with imperfect like an employee is never going to do a job the same quality as me.

00:24:49:06 - 00:25:05:11
Nick Huber
A business owner could do a job. So you got to kind of accept and that changes. Now I have employees that are much better at their job than I would have been at that given job. But early on, when you're making those first couple of hires, like when you're when you're flexing this muscle for the very first time in your business, you're giving up tasks that you're good at.

00:25:05:18 - 00:25:25:08
Nick Huber
You're giving up tasks that you could do better than them, and you have to accept 80% efficiency, you have to accept 20% loss. You have to accept some lost money. You have to accept some lost customers. You have to accept imperfect code, whatever it might be. But you have to realize that, hey, the only way I'm going to be I'll work more than 100 hours a week is if somebody else is working on these hours for me.

00:25:25:19 - 00:25:30:13
Nick Huber
So it is impossible for me to really leverage and scale and grow this business if I'm doing everything.

00:25:31:14 - 00:25:52:04
Todd Sullivan
It's an amazing realization for every business owner when you go through that, because it's really a matter of trust, right? When you're handing it that job to somebody else and then you get to see the actual benefit of you being free and thinking about the future of the business, doing the innovation side. And when that starts to click, you're right.

00:25:52:04 - 00:26:10:08
Todd Sullivan
Like it doesn't have to be perfect on the other end. It's just freed you up to be in the seat that you really belong in. And then it's not really at work at that point, right? You're thinking about how do I build something new? How do I add to this in a very creative way. Yeah, that's awesome advice.

00:26:10:17 - 00:26:42:15
Todd Sullivan
You know, our podcasts are typically right around Exit. So what is your advice when you go to sell a business? And I want to be respectful of your time. I feel like you could talk about tons of different ways of building businesses and real estate and specifically you're like certainly an expert for sure. And then the social side to me is it's a little bit more of a mystery and I think very few people it's like the 1% have really, really figured that out and continue to lean into it and leverage it really well.

00:26:42:23 - 00:26:58:10
Todd Sullivan
Is there any advice that you would give to business owners who are starting their business but not don't necessarily have that social leverage do you recommend going out and trying to create it and how you create it or is it, Nope, stay in your lane. You're really not going to rise to the top.

00:26:58:23 - 00:27:20:16
Nick Huber
The key to building distribution on the internet and having that distribution be able to positively impact your business and your career, being able to translate. So there's a lot of people with distribution that have no idea how to translate it to money because they have no idea. And there's a lot of entrepreneurs who have a very clear vision of how they would convert traffic and distribution to money, but they don't know how to get the distribution.

00:27:21:13 - 00:27:51:12
Nick Huber
My advice is always the same. It's clear and concise written language that is the key to all this writing sales copy. Being able to write in a way that's engaging, being able to have somebody’s attention on Twitter for a third of a second while they're scrolling up and down and they're going to read four or five words of the first words in your sentence, being able to capture attention and think and make smart people think about something.

00:27:52:02 - 00:28:09:02
Nick Huber
If that's all I'm trying to do on the Internet is make smart people think about something, you know? And the way to do that is to practice. So if you're not putting your thoughts out there, if you're not writing, if you're not practicing sales copy and people's like sales copy. Nick, what are you talking about at Twitter? It's free.

00:28:09:03 - 00:28:48:13
Nick Huber
Like, no, I'm selling myself and my ideas all the time. All the time. Everything I write is sales copy, all of it, and it translates. I'll also say that it translates extremely well to managing a company and growing a company. So writing on the Internet, writing a blog, writing a newsletter, tweeting all those things translate perfectly to managing employees, giving them things that they need to be working on, getting your thoughts to other people in a way that they can understand it, simplifying it, you know, like being able to say things in 15 seconds that most people take a minute and a half to say is a superpower because they're going to understand it better.

00:28:48:13 - 00:29:05:17
Nick Huber
They're going to it's going to translate better to processes, you know, leading and guiding other people. So if you're a CEO, if you're an executive, if you're running a company, if you're founding a company, if you want to sell a company, there's no better skill that you can hone, that you can work on honing in the background and than sales copy.

00:29:06:02 - 00:29:16:06
Nick Huber
So like tweet into Oblivion, I don't care. You will still get advantages because it will build a skill that will positively impact your entire career.

00:29:17:11 - 00:29:41:15
Todd Sullivan
That’s amazing advice. I will tie it back to kind of M&A at the end where founders who are really polished and and by the way, take in the risks that you're talking about, like you're making mistakes, you're honing your message, you're getting concise. When it comes to M&A and talking with buyers. Right. The attention spans are pretty low and they're really looking at kind of the financial metrics of every deal the buyers are.

00:29:41:23 - 00:30:06:00
Todd Sullivan
But when you introduce your real understanding, the competitive advantage that you've created in a very and a concise, not overly salesy way, those are the founders that find themselves in kind of elevated M&A situations. So yeah, that's amazing advice. You got to practice this and throwing things at are over time and we're educating our founders and we're seeing that feedback come back.

00:30:06:05 - 00:30:24:19
Todd Sullivan
And I would say one of the things that that we see is that when an acronym gets thrown out there, right, or some complicated concept, we really like you in real estate, try to say, Hey, hey, you don't have to have this, you know, degree and series seven to sell your company. This is actually what it means and this is how you should leverage it.

00:30:25:12 - 00:30:48:16
Todd Sullivan
We love doing it right, because I don't know whether we're sophisticated enough to actually understand all the complicated stuff. We have to dumb it down to make ourselves successful. Look, this has been awesome. I really appreciate it. I am really rooting for the brokerage network that you're building now. It's just it can help so many founders, right? Find that liquidity event and then get up to bat again.

00:30:48:16 - 00:31:06:07
Todd Sullivan
Right. Is not kind of go off into the sunset on a vacation. It is this is a journey. And I think if you can get that right, you're just going to enable this new class of entrepreneurs, which I think these younger generations, they're thinking, I'm going to do this three or four times in my life, so I'm really rooting for you.

00:31:06:07 - 00:31:11:22
Todd Sullivan
If we can be helpful in any way, I would love to. Nick, thank you so much for being here and sharing your words of wisdom.

00:31:12:10 - 00:31:18:20
Nick Huber
Todd Thanks for having me. I'm a huge supporter of your mission and I think our circles overlap in a major way. So I appreciate you having me on.

00:31:20:13 - 00:31:42:17
Todd Sullivan
Thanks again for listening to the Cashing Out podcast. For more Founder exits stories, please subscribe to the Cashing Out podcast on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And please remember exercise dot com and the Cashing Out podcast are for entertainment purposes only. This should not be relied upon as the basis for investment decisions.