#127 with Nick Huber - Building a $10m Self-Storage Business and the Opportunities in "Sweaty Startups"

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
All right, everyone, we have a quick ad for HubSpot, but I want to let you know, I actually use HubSpot and I use their sales tool, which is what this ad is for. HubSpot sales platform, it makes it just easier to sell stuff, to do it faster, to look at your pipeline, to see what sales are gonna happen. Just prospect to cold outreach and get more customers faster and easier. Plus, it's easy to learn and free to start. So you guys can check it out, hubspot.com/sales.

**Shaan Puri** (0:24)
Shaa.
Okay, sweet. What's up, everybody? We're here with special guest, Nick Huber. You are known as, what is it? Sweaty startup on Twitter?

**Nick Huber** (0:56)
It is. I appreciate you guys' work. Thanks for having me.

**Shaan Puri** (0:58)
Why is that your Twitter handle?

**Nick Huber** (1:01)
Because I'm all about a different type of entrepreneurship, I guess. Talked to Sam a little bit about it, but I think you can gain a lot by looking up from your computer screen, and if you get out and work a little bit with your hands and see people's eyes and interact with the world around you, there's a pretty big opportunity. And I'm living proof of that, and a lot of people that I know are on similar journeys. So that's kind of what I pitch, because not many people talk about that. A lot of people talk about the cool ideas out in San Francisco, but not very many people talk about moving boxes up spiral staircases, and that's how I started when I was 22

**Shaan Puri** (1:32)
Okay, you're coming out hot already with the like, you pansies who are just typing away at your computer, go do some real work.

**Nick Huber** (1:42)
No, I do talk down upon that kind of entrepreneurship, but mainly it's because those folks are a lot smarter than I am. So I understand that this is not for everybody, and there's a hundred ways to win. I mean, that's the beautiful thing about entrepreneurship. There's thousands of ways to do this stuff.

**Shaan Puri** (1:55)
So tell people in short words, what do you do? And then we'll ask a bunch of questions.

**Nick Huber** (2:01)
So I'm in the self-storage business right now. We buy mom and pop self-storage facilities and operate them.
If we rewind a little bit, that all started because in 2011, when I was 22, we started a pick up and delivery student storage company while we were undergrads in Ithaca, New York. Basically when the students went home for the summer, we would drive around and pick up their stuff.
Started out in our cars and then in vans. And when they went home, we'd store it. And over the summer, we'd put it in a warehouse and then deliver it back to them wherever they moved next year. So basically out of state and international students relied on us to help them move between semesters. And our career kind of went from there.

**Sam Parr** (2:41)
But now you have a miniature, one day large empire.
Can you give people the size now? Can you brag about yourself so we look more legit?

**Nick Huber** (2:52)
Yeah, I'm still pretty small. I mean, we have about $10 million for the self storage. We have a little over a thousand units, over a hundred thousand square feet, but actually 250,000 square feet, eight facilities in about six different states.

**Shaan Puri** (3:07)
How much money do you make?
I don't know anything about self storage. I don't know if I should be impressed by all those numbers you just said. I don't know what square foot is means.

**Sam Parr** (3:17)
You asked the wrong question, Shaan. You have to ask like the cap rate or something. I mean, you gotta ask it differently.

**Shaan Puri** (3:24)
Well, I guess give me a sense. Like, is this something where, there's three stages I'll talk about, right? Like you bought yourself a job. So it's like, instead of getting a job, I have a business that ends up paying me maybe 100, 200K a year of profits at the end of the year, but I get to like run my own show. I don't have to have a boss and wear a tie to work.
And then there's like the next stage where it's like, well, I've built up either assets or profits that have made me a millionaire, single digit multimillionaire. And then you have like the 10 million plus range where it's like, oh, I've actually built sort of a mini empire here. Which of those buckets has your self storage startup taking you to? And was it one step at a time or did you jump straight to one of those?