Building Wealth with Speed, Humility, and Ugly Businesses

In this episode of The Industrial Real Estate Show, I had the honor of interviewing Nick Huber about his new book and his entrepreneurial philosophy. We discuss why speed matters more than over-preparation early in a career, the danger of chasing status over real opportunity, and how decision-making and sales are critical muscles to build for long-term success.

Nick shares personal stories about starting small businesses, embracing "unsexy" but profitable industries like self-storage, and learning the hard lessons that entrepreneurship is about solving other people's problems, not pursuing passion projects. We also dive into how Nick approaches realistic selling, managing expectations, and why humility and long-term thinking are key in both real estate and business. The conversation finishes with a discussion on the challenges of writing a book, maintaining momentum through setbacks, and Nick’s belief that financial success must be balanced with family, health, and broader life priorities.

About Nick:

Nick Huber is an entrepreneur and real estate investor who resides in Athens, Georgia with his wife and three children. He started his first business, Storage Squad in 2011 and grew it to 25 major college towns before he sold the business in 2021 for $1.7M. While running the service business, Nick built his first self storage facility in Ithaca NY from the ground up for $2.4M. That facility is worth over $10M+ today.

After Storage Squad, Nick started a real estate private equity and self storage operations firm called Bolt Storage. With his business partner Dan Hagberg, Bolt Storage now owns 2M square feet of self storage across 68 locations in 11 states. There is no mark to market in real-estate but the portfolio is worth well over $100M dollars today.

More recently, Nick acquired a controlling stake with a group of investors in Somewhere.com for $52 million dollars in May of 2024. Somewhere has helped over 3500 businesses hire more than 6000 remote workers for 80% less than US equivalents. The business has 200 employees located worldwide across 9 countries including the US, Latin America, South Africa, the Philippines and more.

In 2022, Nick started RE Cost Seg with Mitchell and Melanie Baldridge. RE Cost Seg provides real estate cost segregation services to real estate owners and investors. They have completed cost seg studies on over 4500 properties since inception. The business does around $700K/month in revenue and has 55 employees. Nick is a co-founder, investor and partner in several other companies. This includes Bold SEO, an SEO agency. AdRhino, a paid ads marketing agency. Webrun, a web development company Titan Risk, a business and property insurance company. The Huber Method, a sales and executive coaching business. Spidexx, a pest control business started by Coleman Spaulding. Nick is a minority investor and partner in this company. A business and real estate brokerage which Nick started with his dad Tim.

In total, Nick’s businesses do more than $30 million in annual revenue and employ over 325 people. Alongside his portfolio of businesses, Nick is a content creator and has more than 780,000 followers across channels. Nick’s content has received more than 2 billion views online across platforms in the last few years.

Nick enjoys golf, hunting, mountain biking, history, fishing, travel, sports, and spending time outside with his friends and family.

Nick's companies / websites:

www.sweatystartup.com www.nickhuber.com www.sweatystartupbook.com www.somewhere.com www.boltstorage.com www.recostseg.com www.adrhino.com www.spidexx.com www.boldseo.com www.webrun.com www.titanrisk.com www.recruitjet.com www.hubermethod.com

Connect with Nick:

www.x.com/sweatystartup
www.instagram.com/sweatystartup
www.linkedin.com/in/sweatystartup
youtube.com/sweatystartup
www.tiktok.com/sweatystartup
www.threads.net/@sweatystartup.com podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-nick-huber-show/… podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sweaty-startup/i…

Link to buy the book on Amazon: amzn.to/4bLazjW
Link to buy the book in the UK: bit.ly/422njPW

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