Nick Huber Profile picture
Sep 28, 2020 11 tweets 3 min read Read on X
How to get rich without getting lucky:

Find a way to make $100 an hour doing something simple IN YOUR TOWN.

Do it until you have $10k+ in the bank and you’re too busy to sell new customers.

Hire employee for $25 / hr to do what you do so you can sell new customers.

Repeat.
Be willing to work and sweat and even maybe scrub toilets for 3-6 months.

Look at the market unemotionally. It’s not about you and what you love doing.

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Look at competition as a sign there is money to be made.
Compete with folks who run their business like its 1985 with secretaries, yellow pages, and cash.

Wrap in technology. Never take cash. Outsource accounting and get software for all other admin.

Turn quotes in 10 mins or less without site visits.

Book in 30 secs or less.
Stop blaming the labor market for your inability to hire good people. Market to them just as you would market to customers.

Stop looking for unicorns who will treat your business like you do. They don’t exist.

Build a business that can thrive with perfectly normal people.
Simplify their job and understand the golden rule:

If you ask them to be competent at more than 5 things they’ll be incompetent at all of them.

Employees want clear, simple direction so they can succeed. Autonomy is overrated and makes for good unicorn books.
Keep spending your time selling.

That means hiring ahead of revenue sometimes.

Do the things that are important but not urgent. Every week analyze the fires that distracted you from selling.

Make it a priority to prevent all of them next week with better systems.
Do the marketing that doesn’t scale.

Everybody yells at digital marketing to spend more on AdWords. Dont.

Hire an outside sales rep on commission. Cold call 500 people per quarter who could potentially refer you biz.

Get a marketing intern to put out bandit signs.
Follow up with your past customers. They are golden opportunities for referrals and more work rarely tapped by service companies.

Send hand written thank you notes 4 wks after service.

Get reviews on Google May Biz. With photos.

Spend $500-1000/mo with a good SEO shop.
When you run out of new work in your town step back and take a look.

Make the decision to hire a a manager to replace yourself and do whatever the hell you want with your life or go to another town and do it all again.

What are your goals?
Or use your cash and experience to shift into bigger and bigger opportunities.

For me it was moving boxes->student storage->self storage. For you it might be cleaning toilets-> managing Airbnb’s -> owning short term rentals. Whatever.
Need a place to start? Check out this list:

sweatystartup.com/businesses-I-l…

Want a list of tools and a step by step?

sweatystartup.com/essential-tools

Need to figure out if there is room for you to compete? Check out this process:

sweatystartup.com/the-best-way-t…

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More from @sweatystartup

Sep 15
5 counterintuitive things about running a company:
#1:

If you love doing the work itself you’ll be disappointed.

Running any company at a high level has nothing to do with the actual service your company provides.

It involves hiring, delegation, recruiting, sales and performance management.

And solving problems all day.
#2:

Forget your passion.

Go after opportunity. Don’t do what you love.

Be logical, not selfish.
Read 6 tweets
Aug 9
A friend of mine makes about $500k a year and controls his own schedule.

3 kids. Travels a lot. Has hobbies. Works 30-40 hrs a week.

Here is the career path:
Limped through college with below average grades.

Starbucks barista for 2 years making $12 an hour.

Got married at 24.

Took a job for $30k a year as an assistant at a bank.
Transferred to the mortgage branch of the bank, got a $5k raise to $35k. Spent 8 months there.

Got a chance to become a loan officer at another bank in town. Took the job with virtually no base pay, all commission.

Worked his ass off, became a good salesperson.
Read 6 tweets
Jul 8
There is always a bottleneck in every single business.

Here are the stages:
1. First it is customers.

If you already have the ability to provide the service yourself, you just need a customer or two to get the ball rolling.

As soon as you get those first few customers, you have a business and you are off to the races.
2. Employees.

Next, once you have enough customers coming in the door where you can no longer do the work by yourself, you need employees who can provide the service on your behalf.

At this stage, customers pay you, and your employees execute while you oversee them.

As the owner, you still do most or all of the admin work yourself.
Read 9 tweets
Jun 18
How to figure out if your business idea is any good in 5 minutes or less:
My friend in Athens told me recently that he wanted to start a house painting business.

We were sitting on my back deck drinking a Keystone light on Saturday at about 4pm.

He asked me what I thought.

I went to work.
I typed "House Painting" into Google Maps on my phone.

10 results popped up nearby.

I hit "call" on the first one.

A guy answered on the second ring. He was nice.

He told me he could come to my house anytime on Sunday or Monday to give me a quote.
Read 6 tweets
Jun 7
10 important things I've learned about hiring:
#1: A unicorn isn't just going to walk in the door.

If you're looking for someone who cares about your business as much as you do, you'll never find them because they don't exist.

To succeed you have to build a business with systems where normal folks can thrive.
#2: If you're the bottleneck, you'll never grow (and you'll be miserable)

Most business owners deal with every problem. If there is a decision to be made, it always starts and stops with them.

But the most successful owners have taught their employees how to make better decisions and they empower them to do it on their own.
Read 11 tweets
Jun 4
How to get rich without getting lucky:
Find a way to make $100/hour doing something simple IN YOUR TOWN.

Do it until you have $10K+ in the bank & you’re too busy to sell new customers.

Hire employees for $20/hr to do what you do so you can sell new customers.
Look at the market unemotionally.

It’s not about you and what you love doing.

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel.

Look at competition as a sign that there is money to be made here.
Read 13 tweets

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