Episode 193 · 1 May 2025 · 55:56

The Sweaty Startup's guide to finding top talent, with Nick Huber

Featuring Nick Huber

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Opening: Why 70% of people are incompetent
interview#incompetence #workplace #performance
Who is Nick Huber and the Sweaty Startup philosophy
interview#nick-huber #sweaty-startup #entrepreneurship #winning
Firing quickly and recognizing A-players
interview#firing #a-players #hiring #management
Pushiness, decision makers vs. followers
interview#pushiness #decision-making #leadership
Offshoring and global talent insights
interview#offshoring #global-talent #outsourcing
Execution over ideas and avoiding Franken-cultures
interview#execution #ideas #company-culture
Choosing your competition and the pursuit of winning
interview#competition #winning #wealth
Managing A-players and scaling culture
interview#a-players #scaling #culture #management
Book takeaways and where to start
interview#book #takeaways #sweaty-startup #resources

Show notes

Why Boring Businesses Win — Nick Huber on Hiring, Offshoring & Building a 300-Person Empire

Guest: Nick Huber — entrepreneur, investor, founder of Sweaty Startup, and author of the brand-new Sweaty Startup book.

Nick Huber built his empire on what most entrepreneurs overlook: boring businesses that print cash. With over 325 employees across multiple companies, he's shaking up how we think about leadership, scale, and simplicity.

In this episode, Nick joins Al and Leanne to explain why storage units, cleaning companies, and pest control are more scalable (and profitable) than flashy tech startups. He shares his controversial views on global hiring, why he fires quickly and hires slowly, and how he structures teams to make decisions that actually drive results.

If you've ever wondered how to grow a business without burning out — or whether you should stop chasing the shiny stuff and focus on what actually works — this one's for you.

Top 3 Takeaways

Boring businesses win. Storage units, cleaning companies, and pest control are more scalable and profitable than flashy tech startups. Stop chasing the shiny stuff and focus on what actually works.
Fire quickly, hire slowly. Nick's leadership style is built on surrounding yourself with A-players — and having zero patience for people who are manipulative or toxic, no matter how talented they are.
Execution beats ideas every time. Ideas are cheap. The ability to execute is 1,000 times more important — and that's where most businesses fail.

Connect With Us

Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect

Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14

Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.

Full transcript

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Nick Huber70% of people in this world are totally incompetent. And the sooner you realize that as a business owner or a manager or a leader, the faster you can accelerate your career and your business. Another sad truth in this world is that a huge chunk of our population, they get ahead by either being immoral or abusing mentally or emotionally. I've had the blessing of having all these Twitter followers now for 5+ years, and I've started to hear their stories about how they made their money, what mistakes they've made. If you make decisions slowly, you are asking your top performers to leave. But if you tolerate and surround those A players with B players and C players and people who are low performing, your A players are going to be gone. Anywhere I go, I'm hunting. Whether it's a bartender at a bar, they're slinging drinks, they're moving quick, they're efficient. Same thing at enterprise car rental. When you just see the madness happening and this one guy or gal is like taking charge, you can find these folks and you can hire them and you can hunt them. I also love hiring teachers. Teachers are amazing because if you can lead 35-year-olds, you can sure as hell lead 35-year-olds.

Al ElliottWhat about this You've been termed toxic superstar. Why are you so obsessed with winning? Is there something that happened when you were perhaps a bit younger where you didn't get to win?

Nick HuberHold on, hold on, hold on. Stop. Anything worth doing in life is hard. All the things I'm most proud of were very hard to accomplish. But I think that's what makes the winning fun is the losing. I think the mistake that hiring managers make is they try to—

Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast Where behavioural science meets workplace culture. We are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist.

Al ElliottMy name is Al and I'm a business owner.

Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you create amazing workplace cultures.

Al ElliottToday we are joined by a genuine hero of mine, Nick Huber, Sweaty Startup guy, founder of Storage Squad, Bolt Storage, and also the majority investor in somewhere.com. Nick has managed to build multiple million-dollar businesses without a single revolutionary idea. Instead, he's focused on what he calls boring, sweaty businesses that actually make money. Now, as I've mentioned before, Nick's book is out this week, and I got a copy about a month ago. Genuinely become one of my favourite business books of the last 5 years. I highly recommend you go out and buy your copy today. We don't get any money for that.

Leanne ElliottWe should.

Al ElliottWe should. Nick, yes, give us some of your money.

Leanne ElliottUh, yeah, Nick, Nick won't mind that because he's straight talking too. He's as straight talking as he is successful. He cuts through all the entrepreneurial fairy tales and I'm gonna change the world narratives to actually talk about what works. And while everyone else is chasing the next unicorn startup, he's quietly built a $100 million self-storage empire, empire, and now employs over 300 people worldwide.

Al ElliottIn this episode, Nick shares some genuinely eye-opening insights about leadership and workplace culture. You are gonna learn why he believes that 70% of people are totally incompetent. His words, not mine. And how to spot the rare A-players who'll transform your business.

Leanne ElliottNick also breaks down why leaders who make decisions slowly drive away top talent and why surrounding your best people with underperformers is the fastest way to lose them.

Al ElliottOh, as a bonus, we dig into his controversial views on global hiring because Nick's company, somewhere.com, helps businesses hire overseas talent. And he doesn't hold back on why he thinks most American workers are entitled compared to global counterparts.

Leanne ElliottSo after this very short break, join us as we learn why boring businesses might actually be the smartest path to success and why most entrepreneurs are playing the wrong game entirely.

Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.

Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all. Every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.

Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. So I am joined here by genuinely someone I followed for a lot of years. I want to say back to Reddit days, but we'll get into that in a second. Can you tell us who you are, what you do, and what you might be famous for?

Nick HuberAl, thanks for having me. I'm an opportunist. I do boring things over and over again to impact the most amount of people and make some money along the way. And I'm famous, I guess, now because I have a book that launched this week. And the goal is to help other people make great decisions and get rich doing sweaty, normal, boring things. Book's called The Sweaty Startup.

Al ElliottI think what's interesting about the book and about your way of doing things is that a lot of books are like, oh, you can start anything. Why don't we revolutionize? Why don't we create the next Facebook for dogs? Why don't we go and do this? And you've taken a very, very different contrary, contrarian approach to that. So talk us through what's your idea of starting a good business?

Nick HuberYou ask anybody on the street, what is an entrepreneur and who is an entrepreneur and what does it mean to you? They're gonna talk about Elon Musk. They're gonna talk about Mark Zuckerberg. They're gonna talk about Steve Jobs. They're gonna talk about Shark Tank and Product Hunt and Silicon Valley and raising money. But when I look around my town, at people who are wealthy, people who are doing what they want when they want, people who are flying private jets and own the big beach houses and are at the nice golf clubs. None of them raised capital. None of them started revolutionary new idea businesses. Almost all of them did boring things for years. So entrepreneurship to me is finding something that works and copying it and doing it and out-operating the other people in the field.

Al ElliottSo in your book, you start off back at college and how you started Storage Squad. Um, tell me, give me the timeline because I have in my head this idea of a subreddit called Sweaty Startup. Was that you? And if so, where did, where did that come in?

Nick HuberYeah, 2018, I started a podcast. I was on some, I was on some calls with my brother who runs a landscaping company and I was mentoring him and I'm like, you know what, I just need to, what if I start a podcast and I'm the kind of guy who just ships it. I move very fast. So I recorded a 5-minute episode and I posted it as the Sweaty Startup and it was all episodes of different business advice. That podcast still exists. But I had nowhere, nobody to listen. So how can I promote this? Reddit. I started my own subreddit. I started posting in Entrepreneur, the other subreddit. And man, they're brutally mean on Reddit. I'm glad I don't have to go back there anymore.

Al ElliottWell, they're brutally mean on Reddit, but also on Twitter, X, whatever we're calling it these days. You went through a period of being a little bit cheekier. Some of your posts were They got huge amounts of engagement, but they were a little bit sort of tongue-in-cheek, I'm guessing.

Nick HuberWhen I can write, you know, 400 characters on Twitter and somebody on the other side of the world sitting on their couch doing whatever they want gets angry, like literally angry, that is, that's hugely entertaining to me. So I can't help myself, unfortunately.

Al ElliottIf you're listening to this and you're not following Nick on Twitter, go. Although these days you seem to be a little bit less inflammatory, but I did enjoy that, that period of like 9 months where Everybody got angry at you. It was brilliant. Let's talk about your credentials. Um, I'm sure a lot of people will have heard of you, but if they haven't, then can you talk us through, uh, the businesses you've started, uh, from all the way from, from, um, Storage Squad all up to Somewhere or Support Shepherd, I think it used to be called.

Nick HuberYep. So I started, I started, uh, Storage Squad when I was in college. Brutally hard business. It was a pickup and delivery storage company, uh, for students. So when they move home, After university, come back. At our peak, we did over $2 million of revenue. We were in 12 states. We were at 25 major colleges, almost 300 part-time employees. So I learned how to operate a company in an incredibly hard business where everything happens at once. Many different cities, driving trucks, packing supplies, all of it. 2015, I started construction of a self-storage facility. Got it done in 2017 and realized very quickly that storage was the business to be in, not moving. That first deal went very well, built the building for all in. We were at about $2.9 million and we, it's worth $10 million today. We still own it. We bought out all of our partners. It's been life-changing money for my partner and I. We refinanced that building, bought a lot more, raised a lot of capital. We've raised $40 million. And bought $100 million worth of self-storage, 63 properties, 2 million square feet. We have about 50 people on our team managing those assets. I sold Storage Squad in 2000, January, early January 2021. A small exit, but we had no debt. It was about $1.7 million exit. Then started RE Cost Seg in 2022, became involved in somewhere.com, used to be called Support Shepherd. In 2021, became an investor in that business in 2022, and I bought the majority ownership stake in somewhere.com about a year ago on May 1st, 2024. And that's when I took a pretty big swing. I raised about $20 million and borrowed another almost $10 million to make that deal happen.

Al ElliottAre you pleased you did it?

Nick HuberYes, I'm pleased. It was a, it's been a stressful year. It's, it was a stressful deal to put together, but Um, it, it's growing, it's growing fast and it has unbelievable potential from here because worldwide talent is the future. Um, and I also love Somewhere because it can fuel all of my current businesses.

Al ElliottIs it different managing something like, uh, commercial real estate and then going off and how hands-on are you with Somewhere? Are you actually properly CEOing in there?

Nick HuberNo, there's a team. We have a full team, but I'm very involved. I'm an operator at heart. I'm in the trenches at Bolt Storage. I'm in the trenches at Somewhere. I'm in the trenches at another company that's growing really fast called RE Cost Seg. It's a construction or a real estate services tax firm. But yeah, I mean, look, I'm interviewing, I'm hiring, I'm in meetings, I'm telling people what to do. Right before we got onto record, I was meeting with my outbound sales team at Somewhere talking about changing up their script because they're not pitching our services the way I want them to. So I have a big team and our executive team is mostly in South Africa at somewhere.com, which is another mind-blowing thing that you can find COO talent level in South Africa, but I'm an operator at heart. So I get in the trenches often.

Al ElliottI'm going to come on to the actual idea of offshoring a little bit later on because I want to get like from the horse's mouth, whatever, how it actually works. Tell me about your leadership style when you, all the way from your first employee, was it your first employee, your brother? Was that when you started?

Nick HuberYeah. In my, in my, uh, lawn care business. Yep. Um, my style in general in leadership is to fire quickly. I, I don't put up with low performers. Um, I think the worst thing that you can do for high performers inside of your organization is surround them with low performers. Um, a mentor of mine, Chris Powers, told me when I was kind of complaining about an employee on one of our calls, he said, Nick, fire, fire him. Like, what are you doing? I was like, well, I can't fire him. It's our busy season. Then I gotta go pick up the pieces. We're working 80 hours a week right now. He'd be like, Nick, if you tolerate C players, your entire organization will become a C-level organization. And the fastest way to watch your A players walk away is to surround them with C players. So that hit me like a ton of bricks. And it really is my style is that find high performers, enable them, keep giving them more and more and more, let them grow and grow and grow. And, um, I wouldn't say get out of their way. I, I still ask the right questions and make sure each function of my business is working on the lowest hanging fruit. That's kind of my, my, uh, management style. Look at the sales team. Hey, what's the one most important thing on our sales team we can do to unlock and help us sell more? Let's do that right now. Then, you know, over in recruiting, what's the one thing that would help us recruit more and faster and have a better customer experience? Let's all focus on that until we get it done and move on to the next thing.

Al ElliottOne of the things that I think you said in your book was that your company is only as strong as the people you hire. Now, you must have had some kind of, you just talked there about how you'd have A players, you don't tolerate C players, but has that always been the way that you've done things or something you've learned quite recently as you grew your companies?

Nick HuberIt's been an evolution. I would say who, this is going to sound bad and I'll say it though, because I think it will help people. I think 70% of people in this world are totally incompetent. And the sooner you realize that as a business owner or a manager or a leader, the faster you can accelerate your career and your business. So early in my life, I would, especially in labor jobs like moving, you hire anybody who will show up to work on time and is a warm body who's not under the influence of a drug. Like that's just the, that's the way And we can get into offshoring as well into this conversation, but that's how hard it is to find people to work in the United States. So early on in my career, I've put people in seats and if they were doing the job to an acceptable degree, I would tolerate it for a very long time. As I've progressed and seen the power of high performers, I've just gotten better. I think if there's one area of leadership and management that I've improved upon the most in the last 15 years, It's my ability to find actual A-players and get them to do really well inside my companies.

Al ElliottHow would you recognize an A-player?

Nick HuberSo the only way is to work with them, unfortunately. Um, I have, I've yet to find, look, you can give people assessments in interview processes. I love giving them a test and having them show me what they can do. That helps a lot. I can really see how their mind works. I can, I can eliminate a lot of the landmines and the poor performers. I can give them a typing assessment. I can give them a job to do to show me what they can do. 90% of the people won't even try because they don't work hard enough to actually do assessments during interview processes. You're left with the bottom 10 or the top 10. And then, um, you know, you go from there, but I have a, I have a saying in hiring that 10% of the people have a job they love. And they are not, you're not able to find them. Like even if you went after them and recruited them, they have a boss that loves them and they're perfectly happy. They're in career nirvana. Then there's the bottom half of the workforce, the 10% at the bottom who's actively looking. They're actively applying for jobs. They are unemployed, maybe they need work. Then there's that 80% in the middle. And that 80% in the middle is where you find almost all the talent. So it's through referrals. It's through hunting. It's through finding people who are doing the job that you want them to do and bringing them in. But how do you tell if they're an actual A player, an A performer, is you start to see how they, how their mind works. You start to ask them questions and they come to you as a business owner with a problem or a leader. You're a leader in an organization. They come to you with a problem. You have 2 options. Get out of my way. I'll solve it. Which is how 90% of people do it. It's the easy way in the near term. Or You're going to ask questions and you're going to figure out how their mind works and you're going to send them away with their problems so that they have to solve it. And when you do that, when you start to ask questions of the person, start to figure out how their mind works, you get 2 things. They get better at decision-making and they become a little bit more confident in their abilities to solve problems. And number 2, you get to look into their mind and see if they have what it takes and see if they're an actual A-player. But most business owners, And leaders and managers, a problem comes to them. They say, get out of my way. I'll solve it. That's not the best way to do it in the long run.

Al ElliottSo does an A player evolve or is someone always an A? They start an A player and they just stay as an A player.

Nick HuberOh yeah. I've seen, I've seen people make massive career improvements and learn new things and adapt very quickly. And they have a, like almost all the A players from a management perspective have a sense of what needs to be done. That's not explicit. They can, they can sense a problem. They can predict what is the lowest hanging fruit. They can just naturally think about what needs to be done. Very, very, very few people can actually do that.

Al ElliottWhat about this term toxic superstar where you end up having someone who is incredible, but they're an absolute asshole to be around? You ever come across that?

Nick HuberYeah, there's no, I definitely don't have any patience in my organizations for people who are manipulated. Like another, another sad truth in this world is that a huge chunk of our population is like, they get ahead by either being immoral or abusing mentally or emotionally other people. Like, that sounds bad. It sounds like, what are you talking about, Nick? No, it's true. You just better hope you're not married to one of these people or have to work for one of these people because it will ruin your life. Because a lot of people, they get their way in this world by manipulating and playing head games and talking down to and just treating people with irrational disrespect. And there's no place for that in an organization if you want to build a place where people want to work.

Al ElliottWhat I really like about your book is there's so many stories in there and I really love it. I hate a textbook storybook where they would say this has happened and this is what you should do. Have you got any stories around perhaps someone, you don't necessarily need to name them, but perhaps someone who you can think of who's like, yeah, they were one of my favorite people I worked with.

Nick HuberYeah, there's about, there's about 30 short stories in there for, with lessons. They're either my stories of hard lessons that I've learned in management, business, marketing, growth, whatever, or they're life or business lessons from my network because I've, I've had the blessing of having all these Twitter followers now for 5+ years. And that has put me in front of a lot of different people at conferences, on phone calls and emails. And I've started to hear their stories about how they made their money, what mistakes they've made. A very hard part about writing this book was sharing all those stories with the individuals and figuring out if they were okay with me sharing them and how I needed to massage a detail about where they went to college or what city they're in so that I could actually share it. Because some of them are very tough stories, like my buddy who was an attorney who chose that game to play. But one of my favorite all-time hires I found in a Walmart parking lot. So I was, I was in Ithaca, New York. It was early in my, I think it was like 2013, 2014 when I was growing my moving company. I was in the truck in the parking lot answering emails on my computer. My girlfriend, now wife, ran in to get some groceries. It was like 8:00 PM. I see out of the corner of my eye a flash across the screen and this Walmart employee in a vest is running through the parking lot. And I, it's like I saw a ghost because I'd never seen, ever seen a Walmart employee move quickly. Um, he runs around picking up a bunch of carts around. I watch him for 5 minutes. He's running around gathering a bunch of carts, sprinting with the carts, a whole line of them, pushing them back to the front entrance of Walmart. And a Walmart sack goes tumbleweeding across the parking lot. He bends down while pushing all the carts, picks up the Walmart sack and jams it in his back pocket. I'm like, okay, hold on. Something's unique about this person. So I, I shut my computer. I follow him in. I got a business card in my back pocket and I make sure our paths cross. And I say, hey man, like, what's the hurry? What are you doing? Just like sparking up conversation. He goes, oh, well, the varsity basketball game is getting out in half an hour and we got no carts. And my manager is not, is in the back and the cart guy didn't show up. And we're about to get, you know, 40, 50 people show up after this varsity basketball game. We got no carts. And I'm like, okay, this guy's different. He thinks different. He has a different view on work. Like he doesn't own this Walmart. He's making $12 an hour, but yet he cares and he's moving quickly and he's solving problems. I pull out my card and say, hey, um, if you know any friends who are, who like you, who are looking to work, I pay $20 an hour. I run a company called Storage Squad. We're a moving business. There's tips as well. You know, it's an, it's, it's a fun job. We're on the college campus, whatever. Well, that night he sends me an email. I interview him the next day and I hire him and he ends up working for me for 4 years, traveling from Washington, D.C. to Boston to Ithaca, running crews, leading people. One of the best hires that, that I've ever made.

Al ElliottI noticed there you said something to him in this story. You didn't say, if you're looking for a job, you said, if you know anyone, was that key?

Nick HuberIt's key. It's key because it takes the pressure off the conversation. Of course they think about themselves above any, anybody else. But I didn't want to directly solicit him for a job. It's a little bit awkward. It can be pushy almost. You just say, hey, I'm a business owner. I'm Nick. Maybe we had a 3-minute conversation where I was telling him a couple more things about me, planting, planting little seeds. But yeah, it's, I'm hunting anywhere I go. I'm hunting, whether it's a bartender at a bar, because 99% of the time you're at a bar and the bartender is focused on one person, won't even acknowledge you. They're slow. But sometimes you walk into a bar and there's a bartender that just has awareness and they look at you, they raise a finger. You know, they're coming, they're slinging drinks, they're moving quick, they're efficient. They're just nonverbally communicating with everybody at the bar, knowing that they're going to be served. Same thing at enterprise car rental. When you just see the madness happening and this one guy or gal is like taking charge, you can find these folks and you can hire them and you can hunt them. And in your town and sweaty startups, you got to just go and find these people. I also love hiring teachers. Teachers are amazing because if you can lead 35-year-olds, you can sure as hell lead 35-year-olds.

Leanne ElliottAfter this very short break, we'll be back with Nick and some of his more controversial ideas on leading people and building great cultures. Did you know that the UK's number one management podcast, that's us by the way, and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?

Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.

Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.

Nick HuberAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking.

Al ElliottAnd you're not going to say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—

Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil.

Nick HuberWe've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.

Al ElliottIt is.

Leanne ElliottIt's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?

Nick HuberIt can.

Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?

Nick HuberI am.

Al ElliottGo and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.

Leanne ElliottBut come back.

Al ElliottYeah, come back.

Nick HuberDefinitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this.

Al ElliottSo come back. I'll cut that out.

Nick HuberKeep that in.

Leanne ElliottWelcome back. Let's rejoin Nick and Al.

Al ElliottLet me ask you about this pushy thing, because there's a lot of stuff in your book about pushiness. I remember there's a story which I won't spoil it for anyone listening, but about you and your wife's, or your now wife's engagement ring. How are you managed to balance this idea of you not being pushy yourself, but also pushing people to be the best they can be?

Nick HuberWell, I think there's 2 types of people in your company. There's decision makers and there's people who follow the guidance and the rules that are signed out for them. And yes, they may have small decisions that they need to make on the job, whether they're doing customer service or billing or whatever. of that. And you teach them frameworks on how to make those decisions. But at any company, only a small few need to be the decision makers. The rest of the entire organization needs to be the executors that they're going to get, they're going to see the job and they're going to get it done. So when you, when I'm, when I'm talking about A players, I need people that can either follow directions, which is way easier to find an A player. Maybe that's even a B player. And then I need people who can lead and make decisions and run my company when I'm not there. An example of that is I was in a, and this isn't in the book because it happened very recently. I was in an all-hands meeting at my storage company and we're talking about operations and I'm starting to ask questions and they're like, oh yeah, by the way, the roof collapse in Erie, it's fully repaired. The roof is back on. You know, we have some interior work still to do for 3 of the tenants, but 2 of the tenants are now back operational business. And I'm like, hold on, wait a second. Everybody talking about a roof collapse? And they're like, oh yeah, Erie over Thanksgiving break had record snowfall. They had like 4 feet of snowfall in one day. It was a heavy, wet snow. Maybe it was 2 weeks, like 2 big snowstorms. And our retail store, the roof collapsed. Al, they didn't tell me about this. They're like, I was like, why didn't I know about this? And they're like, oh yeah, Nick, we know that. A, you would not have been able to help us. And B, you would've been kind of a pain in our ass if we told you about this. So we went ahead and made these decisions. We solved the problem. We got 3 bids from GCs. We worked with the insurance company and it all happened. And now, you know, so there's people that grow in your organization and you can trust to do things like that. Not everybody needs to be able to make those decisions and solve those problems. And that's not a true fair comparison because my business partner, was involved in that conversation, but, um, just kind of an example of when you, when you enable and empower people to make decisions, amazing things can happen.

Al ElliottSo from a personal point of view, how did you feel when they told you that they just deliberately did not involve you in that?

Nick HuberI, we have a good enough working relationship with the guy who told me that he's been with me. He was actually our main operations manager at Storage Squad. We hired him back in 2014. Um, I, there's enough trust there that I was smiling and kind of chuckling about it.

Al ElliottYou said that there's going to be a large percentage of people who are just there and they are just following directions and they're doing a great job. Does that mean then that they should stay where they are or do they still have the ability to move up to management perhaps? Is that going to ruin them? What's your thoughts on that?

Nick HuberIt turns out, Al, that most people don't like People problems and everybody coming to them when they want to raise and every environment being a sales environment. If you're in management at a company, every single part of your job is sales. You're selling your team on doing their job. You're selling vendors on selling to you. You're selling customers on buying from you. You're selling nonstop. And in life too, like I have to sell my 7-year-old to get his shoes on for school every morning. But some people don't like that. A lot of people don't like that. And so Yes, I think there's something to be said for, yes, doing, working on new and more challenging projects, but not everybody's cut out for management because management is a stressful game.

Al ElliottLet's talk about Someway. So you have got hundreds of remote employees around the world. You just mentioned there South Africa, which I, I'd heard about South America. I'd heard about the Philippines. Didn't know South Africa was a, uh, was a big thing. What do you wish people knew about Recruiting people in a different country that they don't know.

Nick HuberSo I have an abundance mindset in every area of life. Al, you making money doesn't mean there's less money for me. My neighbor making money doesn't mean there's less money for me. The guys that I play golf with at the country club winning and doing really well in life does not mean that there's less opportunity for me. I think that there's plenty to go around and that there's plenty to do. And the only thing that happens when things get more efficient and cheaper is that quality of life goes up. People love complaining about offshoring. And what they don't tell you is that this iPhone, this iPhone was assembled by somebody making $2.75 an hour, but they all want to buy this iPhone for under $1,000. And if it was $2,000, they would complain. Same thing happens when they go to Walmart or they order, you know, things on the internet is that people have an insatiable desire for cheap goods because that improves their life. They can buy more things to make their life better the cheaper things are. So there's never been a problem of not enough work to do in America. When the lawnmower was invented 100 years ago, they said, oh man, this is going to kill a lot of jobs because everybody's running around with those, you know, body-powered choppers to mow lawns. No, it just made it so that less humans needed to spend time mowing lawns and they went on to do other things to make life better. Um, I feel the same way about offshoring, you know, low, medium, and even high-skilled jobs, frankly.

Al ElliottSo we've talked about how offshoring, and am I using, is offshoring, is that the right term? Is that what you refer to?

Nick HuberYeah, hiring somebody that's not within your country's borders.

Al ElliottSo we've talked about how it makes the person who's doing the hiring, makes their quality of life go up. But there is an argument that you're exploiting someone because you're paying them a 10th of what you'd pay them in, say, America. So what's your answer to that?

Nick HuberYeah, I think that's the main argument that I get from Americans on Twitter and on social media. But who's to say that a human in America is better or more entitled than a human in South Africa or a human in the Philippines? These folks are making— like, this was pretty early in my career. I actually didn't tell this story in my book and I don't tell it very often. We had hired maybe 10 or 15 Filipinos to work for my self-storage company, an average of about $800 a month. Market rate for a US-based customer service rep at that time was $35,000 to $40,000 a year. So we were looking at going from $20 an hour down to $4 an hour for labor, saved about 80%. And one of my reps got on the call. I won't say her name because she still works with us. She's like, Nick, I just want you to know that Like this job, I was like, fast forward to 3 months ago, I was getting on a bus in Manila and riding a packed bus for an hour and a half to get to a job where I earned $1.90 an hour. And now, um, my mom is sick. My sister went from, it's going to sound crazy to say this. My sister went from being a prostitute to being able to stay home and care for my mom in my house because of this job. So all the people who tell me that I'm, you know, they literally call me a slave owner for employing people in Africa and Asia and India and, you know, Europe and Latin America and South America. Um, I don't think they understand that these opportunities are massive opportunities for the people abroad. And with an abundance mindset, I really honestly do not believe it takes away opportunity from Americans or Brits.

Al ElliottIf you are employing someone, I'm guessing there's going to be slight nuances in how they work and the strengths perhaps they've got as a culture. Talk me through that.

Nick HuberHiring internationally is hard. But some regions have massive strengths. South Africa is a sales hub. You can find salespeople who are highly trained salespeople who have sold high-ticket items. They're closers. You can find sales managers. You can find CFOs. The finance is massive. There's a huge amount of South Africans who, it's called chartered accountants there, who get on an airplane and fly to New York City every year for 3 months to do audit and tax work for Big 4, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte. You can hire those people for $3,000 US a month, full-time. It's a game changer. So South Africa, I love for finance, for sales, also executive assistants, general assistants roles, customer service, of course. The Philippines is the original outsourcing destination. Like there's a massive culture there. There's skyscrapers in downtown Manila of call centers. People have been working remotely and for US-based companies for a really long time. Average typing speed is high there. Cost is low. It's one of the lowest cost places in the country to hire. The culture's very different from Western culture, and you don't get as much management, upper-level talent outta the Philippines. Latin America is an amazing technical hub, developers, and also creative graphic designers, audio engineers, construction hub in Latin America, meaning architects, civil engineers, Project managers, operations managers. And I love recently, I love hiring paralegals in Latin America because you can be a licensed attorney in Colombia and you're making like $1,200 a month. So every area's different. There's financial analysts who can work magic in Excel in Egypt, $750 a month, under $4.50 an hour for— in Cairo, Egypt is one of the most, you know, low cost of living major cities in the world. Sri Lanka is an amazing resource for legal assistance, general assistance, customer service, great English, hardworking, huge remote work environment. And then there's Portugal, Romania, Poland for tech, digital marketing, SEO, front-end, back-end development, iOS development. So at Somewhere, we're literally, we're exploring the entire globe to find the best talent of each type. So I'm learning a lot about this as I go.

Al ElliottIs there a different approach to work perhaps if you live in a country where it is more difficult to earn good money?

Nick HuberI think there is a lot of entitlement in America right now. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people who think that they're just entitled to the highest wages in the world. They're entitled to the highest standard of living in the world. But, you know, when it comes to working for it and adding value to society, sometimes that's not quite aligned to the expectations. When you hire somebody in Colombia and Brazil and Mexico and South Africa, they realize that working for a US-based company is a massive opportunity, not only for them, But for future generations, and it can change the trajectory of their entire life. So which one of those 2 people is going to come into a job with more energy and more to prove?

Al ElliottLet's talk about one of the other things I saw in your book, which is execution is 1,000 times more important than your idea. Now, I'd love to go down the rabbit hole of actually business ideas, but this podcast is more about how you actually sort of implement ideas around work culture. So if someone's hitting a growth phase, what do they normally end up messing up when it comes to their people?

Nick HuberIf you're interested in The business ideas that I like that are not sexy, innovative. I have a resource that folks can download. It's sweatystartup.com/ideas. There's 200+ small, boring business ideas that are low risk to start. I think the mistake that hiring managers, leaders, and companies make is they try to, they love new ideas. They're addicted to innovation within their business. When in reality, it's more often than not, my job as leader of several of these companies more often than not is just to settle people down and get them focused on the most simple thing that's going to be proven to work, whether we're copying what a competitor is doing, or we are just going in and tweaking something in a very small way, or changing the way we do our sales pitch, or changing the ad that we're writing. Whereas a lot of people on my team come to me and say, Nick, we have to do this totally new, different thing. Where we go do psychometric testing, for example, on our people. And we're going to implement all of this crazy stuff. And I'm like, hold on, hold on, hold on, stop. Take a step back. Let's accomplish our near-term goals first. And let's do what's proven to work. Let's look at our competitors to analyze our competitors. Let's figure out what they're doing and what, what's working for them. And let's iterate on that and improve that and implement it into our business. So I love slow, Well, quick but simple iteration.

Al ElliottYou talk about Franken-businesses, I think, in your book. I'm going to coin a new phrase, Franken-culture, where you go out and collect ideas from other cultures. You've said the word boring probably more often than I think anyone I've ever interviewed. And your whole idea is you build boring, reliable businesses. How are you avoiding that whole idea of an exciting idea that makes you go, oh, we could change the world? Does that ever appeal to you?

Nick HuberI look at it as what's fun and what's not fun. The idea of doing something innovative and world-changing is very, very fun. That idea has that allure. But in reality, what's fun is winning, making more money this month than you made last month, growing your team, selling new customers, making even more money, making changes, watching them happen, iterating, and then—

Leanne ElliottYeah.

Nick HuberOh wait, now we're winning even more. Winning is fun. Losing sucks. So in my opinion, I don't care what I'm doing. I'm industry agnostic. I don't care how sweaty it is, how boring it is, how fun it is, how exciting it is. I don't care what I want. I want to be like a cup of water at the top of a mountain. You empty a cup of water. It's going to find the, it's going to find the quickest route down the path of least resistance. That's me as an entrepreneur. My job is not in business. There's no extra points. It's not an Olympic gymnastics routine or a David Goggins workout. There's no extra points for doing something really, really hard. So why wouldn't I pick the best opportunity? That's the easiest. That's the simplest that allows me to win because winning is really fun. So I think a lot of people get caught up on those ideas when they should focus on, hey, let's figure out what the lowest You know, lowest barrier to entry way to win here is, let's do that. My editor actually tried to get me to remove this from my book, but I said, when you go after an opportunity, choose your competition wisely. Do you want to play basketball against LeBron James or do you want to play basketball against a 5th grade girl? The winning, the winner gets money every single month from a cash-flowing business. You want to go to Silicon Valley and compete against the Stanford grads, or do you want to compete against the plumber down the street with this fax machine on their desk? The choice is yours. To me, it's losing really isn't fun. Like getting no pro— getting no momentum, getting no customers, having no money. That's not fun. So it, you know, building an organization and growing and watching the company grow. I mean, look, there's, I have over 300 employees across my, um, you know, portfolio of companies and they all have a better life than they did before I was around. That's really, really rewarding and fun. So are any of my businesses earth-shattering, groundbreaking? No, actually, actually all of my businesses are doing exactly what at least 10 to 20 other competitors are doing, but I've made a really good life because I can execute and I can lead and I can manage and I can sell all those things that people forget about.

Al ElliottYou are now a long way from not having any money. So as your wealth starts to increase and it will increase, it'll pick up speed now, won't it? With all of your investments, do you think there will be a time where you'll start being a bit more risky and say, do you know what? I am going to throw $10 million at this idea.

Nick HuberThat's when it's time to change the world. You want to change the world? You want to do a tech startup? You want to go try to do something nobody's ever done before? Get rich first. You either need to be rich or you need to have very wealthy parents and not be afraid to live in their basement. That's when it's time to go try to change the world. But man, a tech startup, a world-changing business trying to compete with Elon Musk, doing these things when you have no network, no money, and no operational chops, like you've never ran a business before. Forget it. Forget it. You're, you're playing basketball against LeBron James, having never picked up a basketball before.

Al ElliottThe entire theme through the book is choosing your competition to the point where you have an exercise where you, on a Saturday night, you rang lawn care companies. I think it was. To see who'd pick up. Why are you so obsessed with winning? Is there something that happened when you were perhaps a bit younger where you didn't get to win?

Nick HuberNo, I, the funny thing is, is that I've always, well, I've, look, I've struggled with everything. Anything worth doing in life is hard, whether it be sports or business or dating or having kids. And all of the most, all of the things I'm most proud of were very hard to accomplish. But I think that's what makes the winning fun is the losing. I would never lose just to lose. I would never play a game where the deck is stacked against me, but inevitably you're going to have losses and you're going to have mistakes and you're going to have hard times. I tell a ton of those stories in the book about just how hard this can be. But I think that's what makes the winning, that's what makes building a profitable company so fun because it is so hard. So yeah, it's not, You gotta be competitive for sure to wanna be an entrepreneur. What people don't understand about entrepreneurship and leadership is that it's directly applicable to working at a company. And I spend a lot of time with high-performing employees, almost my entire network. There's just not that many entrepreneurs in the world. So a lot of my friends in town, a lot of my network is very high-performing employees. They do their job very well. I talk to them about what frustrates them at work. Or why they leave jobs. And there's, there's themes, there's themes. And this is what not to do if you're trying to lead and manage a team. Number 1, if you make decisions slowly, you are asking your top performers to leave. And number 2 is if you tolerate and surround those A players with B players and C players and people who are low performing, Your A-players are going to be gone. So an A-player, if they come to you and say, hey, look, there's a, there's a better way for me to do my job. I have this idea, that idea, and the other idea. We can all agree that this is the better way to do the job. And you as a leader, if you talk a big game and do nothing, that is the recipe to have an extremely frustrated team. And a team that will eventually walk away. And if it's a big office politics game where there's one really high performer and there's 3 other low performers on the team, and they've come to you as a manager and says, hey, look, this person's not doing their job. Hey, look, they messed up again. Hey, look, this is making me work Saturday nights because I'm picking up the slack for this other person. And you refuse to let that person go because either it's too big of a company or there's a bureaucracy. I know in some, in America, we have a very open economy for letting people go who are not doing their jobs well. Other places in the world, the UK included, is very hard to let somebody go. So at major corporations, there could be people who are low performers and make it 40 years. There's nothing worse for high performers. So as a leader, that's just something to be aware of. If you tolerate those C players, your entire organization will become a C player organization, and you're going to watch your A players walk away.

Al ElliottYou said something there that A-players come to you and say, look, there's a better way to do my job. I think my worry would be if I say, oh, cool. Okay. Give it a go. And it completely goes wrong. Do you have to have some kind of judgment around that? Or do you just generally say, go on, give it a go?

Nick HuberWell, they're generally asking for a way that you can make their life easier. So generally it's your job, but many times I'll say, no, look, I disagree. We don't need to be focused on adding X, Y, and Z complexity to our business. We need to do this, that, and the other better. And there's lower hanging fruit. I have a lot of big idea people that work for me and I'm constantly reining them in and saying, hold on, let's focus. Hold on, let's focus. There's a difference between that and them saying, damn it, I'm putting this stuff in Microsoft Excel for 4 hours a day. Get me an executive assistant in the Philippines for $4 an hour to do this. I make, I'm, I'm one of the highest paid people at the company and I'm doing this work over and over and over again. And it's making my life suck. And the boss says, oh yeah, I hear you. We'll think about getting you somebody else to help you with this. And then nothing happens. But I also think like from the employee side, like from the employee side, there are things that you can do as well, which is before you take a job is just understand, is it a big conglomerate that there is no way they're going to change anything about the way they do business? A lot of people, a lot of employees walk into these situations. And they work for one of the largest companies in America. They go to New York City and work for JP Morgan. And they get in on the, on the, on the floor in, you know, the 57th floor on 51st Street in New York City. And they say, hey, there's a better way to do this, guys. And the boss says, honey, we've been making over a billion dollars a quarter for 50 years. I don't need your ideas around here. So if you're an idea person who wants to move up quickly through an organization, don't go to the big bureaucracy. Don't go to the place where you can hide without doing anything and you can last 40 years. And the person with the most tenure who shows up early to meetings and does the best at office politics gets the most weight, you know, increase in salary. Work for a company where the owner is aggressive. It's a small team. The company's growing and you can, you can do really, really well there. But another big part of it is just a Look down the hall at somebody who's winning the game you're about to play. A massive mistake people make is they pick the wrong game, the wrong career altogether. Like a lot of people, a ton of people want to be doctors and lawyers. This is a very confrontational or, you know, not widely accepted view that I have is that I don't know very many 45-year-old doctors and lawyers who Aren't obese, overworked, divorced, depressed, or addicted to substances, but very rich. So look down the hall, look where you're headed. Look, if like, if I play this game and I'm about to win this game and I'm very good at it, what happens to me? Very few people who pick a career actually spend the time thinking about, you know, what does it look like if I win? I had a friend who Was a super high performer, super high performer in college athletics. Went, got a damn near perfect score on the LSAT, which is the pre-attorney test to get into law school in America. Went to Columbia Law, which is one of the best law schools in America. Got a, got a clerkship with the best judge, studied and worked all the time, and then got a job at the most prestigious litigation firm In the country, in Washington, D.C., William O'Connell got a job there. 3 years into the job, he is kicking ass, making $1 million a year, working 90 hours a week. He had found a way to get married after some, you know, relationship issues because of how much he was working. And his wife got pregnant and he was going to deliver a baby in October. This was This was July. He went to see his boss and his, and his, one of the partners at the firm said, hey, we're putting you on this case in New York City because it's a litigation firm. Like they're, they're arguing in court and they're in hotel rooms. We're putting you on this case with one of our biggest clients in New York City. Um, you're going to, you're about to go to New York City for 4 to 6 months. And he goes, hey, I can't take this. You got to put somebody else on this because I'm going to miss the birth of my baby. My first baby is coming in October. This court case starts for September 1st. I can't do it. Like, find a different one. And the partner told him, hey, uh, it's not how this works. Like, any attorney in, any attorney in this country would kill to be in your position. You're getting paid $1 million a year. If you make partner in 3 years, you're gonna be making $5 million a year for the rest of your life and on up. Like, this is what we do. He's like, tough love. This is what we do. And so here's, here's my friend had won the game, was the best of the best, went to the best law school, got the best score, got the best clerkship, got the best job. He won the game that he was playing. And he finds himself looking at a guy across from a partner who was overweight, divorced, alcoholic, but had a big-ass beach house in the Outer Banks. He's like, is this the guy I want to be? And he told that partner to fuck off, raised a giant fit in the office. It was a very, very sad deal. Very, very sad deal. He walked away. Um, and it's a, it's a heartbreaking story about how if you pick the wrong game to play, even if you win, is it really, really what you want?

Al ElliottI'd like to know, you've grown from 2 people to now over 300 people across, across multiple different companies. If you were to go back again, at what point would you start thinking about creating a good workplace? Is it important in the first 20, 30 people?

Nick HuberYeah, you got to treat people with respect. You got to be direct. You got to be a good communicator. You got to understand that relationships are really complicated. And if you are stubborn, if you're straightforward and other people have issues and, or you have a temper, Like tempers ruin careers. It's really sad. If you have some of those early on issues, then you're not going to be able to grow past a couple people. Nobody's going to want to work for you, but actually structuring a company and setting clear expectations and have people who manage people is a whole new skill. And it's not always easy, I'll say. So I still have a lot to learn about that. I'm learning fast and I think I'm getting good at it. But yeah, once you get over 30 people, It gets hard.

Al ElliottWhen someone finishes the book, they've put it down, they've just finished it. What do you really genuinely hope they've learned?

Nick HuberI hope they are better equipped to pick what game to play, meaning finding an opportunity. The whole first section of the book is about picking the opportunity. I hope they have understood what skills are important. Whether it be hiring, management, decision-making, delegation, sales, and picked up a lot along the way on how to do those things better because I tell a lot of very tactical things on how to improve those. And then the whole last section of the book is about people because you can't do this alone. So it's about how to treat people, how to make decisions with people, how to train people to be extensions of you, how to delegate tasks, how to delegate decisions. And then the last chapter I kind of had fun with and gave people a lot of very practical life advice that they might not get, but kind of Things that I wish when I was 20 or 25, I would've read and kind of how to think about kids, how to think about career, how to think about what spouse you pick, how to think about, you know, how you design your life and your health, your fitness, you know, because in reality, you know, money and business is a part of it, but we also have families and we have our bodies and we have our physical environments that doesn't matter how good we are at business. Some of those other areas can really ruin your life if you don't have you know, enough energy put there in the right way. So I want people to read that book and kind of feel like they're entertained, but also well-equipped to go make some more money.

Al ElliottIs there a part, we've got this link, sweatystartup.com/ideas. Is that a good place for people to start?

Nick HuberYeah, go download that list of business ideas. And then there's some other resources. That's the best place. Go to sweatystartup.com/ideas. That'll also put you on my newsletter and you can get my thoughts every week on You know, management, on opportunities, on marketing, and kind of how I think about business and life.

Al ElliottThank you so much, Nick. It's been a genuine pleasure and a career highlight for me. Thank you so much for your time.

Nick HuberI love your stuff. Thanks for having me on.

Leanne ElliottThat was Nick Huber, author of The Sweaty Startup and founder of not one, not two, but multiple million-dollar businesses.

Al ElliottIt's really refreshing to hear someone cut through all this startup nonsense. Nick focuses on what actually works, which is boring, Reliable businesses that make money from day one.

Leanne ElliottWhat we're saying is boring is the new sexy.

Al ElliottWe are exactly saying that. We are.

Leanne ElliottMy stock is going up then. Um, I personally, I really enjoyed, um, Nick's interview and his approach to, to team building. He is very clear, he's very direct, and he is focused on hiring people who solve the problems and make the decisions. Look, I might not entirely agree with everything in his approach as a psychologist, And that's just the case with most fast-moving entrepreneurs and businesses. It's just the way it is. You can't always do things, you know, by the book. So it's nothing against Nick and his ways, but what I do think he's tapping into is something that a lot of leaders overcomplicate. He's not spending time on these personality tests or frameworks, which, let's be honest, can be absolutely useful in the right hands, but they're not often in the right hands, and they're not magic. Um, they don't predict performance all that well in terms of the different psychological assessment methods we can, we can use. And if they are misused, then they can actually be more confusing and more harmful. If you don't know what you're measuring or why, it's not a good place to start. So what Nick's really getting at is just really good job design. So understanding what the role actually involves and then finding people who can do that well. And that's the bit I completely, completely agree with. And I think as well, his point about, um, high performers leaving when they're surrounded by low performance. Yeah, this is absolutely right. It's backed by research as well. There's a recent study that showed that nearly 70% of people said that working with low performers dragged down team morale, and 44% said it made them more likely to leave. Um, so yeah, it's brilliant advice from Nick there.

Al ElliottIf you want to learn more about Nick's approach, go and grab a copy of his book, The Sweaty Startup, or check out sweatystartup.com/ideas for his list of 200 low-risk business ideas. And some leadership ideas in there too. And if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review. It makes our day. As Leanne said on Tuesday, it makes our day when we see a notification of a new review coming through. So make us happy.

Leanne ElliottYeah, it really would make us happy. Um, what would also make us happy—

Al ElliottIt sounded really sad then, like—

Leanne ElliottWell, because it's a lonely life, Al, podcasting.

Al ElliottIt is.

Leanne ElliottYou don't always know in the moment how people respond and like it.

Al ElliottNo, we need to play some sad music. Okay, I was gonna say, are we back next week?

Leanne ElliottYeah, no, we would, and we hope you're back next week too. We'll be back next Tuesday with our regular This Week in Work, which includes our news roundup, our hot take, and our surgery. Um, but we're actually recording this tomorrow because we're on holiday next week. As I might have mentioned, um, last week, I may be a bit harsh when I said I won't think about you at all. I probably will because it's inevitable, isn't it? How could I not? You're my people. Um, but we're always telling you lovely listeners to make sure that you try and set these boundaries between work and life that you try and, if not a balance, some kind of healthy integration. So we're doing the same and having an entire week off. So there'll be no LinkedIn, there'll be no guest interviews, there'll be no recording. There will just be sunshine and tapas.

Al ElliottSpain, as I'm sure you've guessed, that's where we're going. Northern Spain. Gonna go eat and drink away around an area we've not spent that much time in. We have been up to northern Spain over a period of like 2 months, but, uh, we're gonna go properly in depth with Spain. We're gonna get inside you.

Nick HuberThat's a bit creepy.

Leanne ElliottYes, we are, in a non-creepy way. Um, the good news is though—

Al ElliottI might be a bit creepy.

Leanne ElliottYou're very creepy. The good news is though that nothing will change for you. You won't even notice that we're gone. Um, you'll still have the regular Tuesday edition. Um, we'll also be bringing you a full interview that we did recently with the CEO of Mind, Dr. Sarah Hughes. Um, the full unedited, unfiltered version. And I have to say, this interview really did stay with me. Sarah is incredible, and she spoke so honestly um, and powerfully about the reality of mental health and mental illness in the UK. Um, some things to expect: she talked about the serious gaps in how we support people with complex mental illness, and it was that call to action that actually inspired our episodes on psychopathy and on schizophrenia. Sarah also talks about the social and economic cost of getting it wrong and why we can't just drop in a well-being program and hope for the best. Um, so just so you know, as I said, there is content in this interview that's never been heard before. There are some heavy themes in there, so you, you have been, you have been warned.