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My First Million

When everything works, you learn the wrong lessons

56 min episode · 2 min read
·
Nick Huber

Episode

56 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Career Growth, Productivity, Investing

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Portfolio concentration: Huber started eleven companies from 2016-2022 but shut down four and kept two treading water. The three successful companies now generate higher total cashflow than all eleven combined, demonstrating power law dynamics where focus beats diversification.
  • International executive hiring: Huber rebuilt leadership teams with six Americans among 160 employees at Somewhere, hiring COOs in South Africa, performance marketers in Colombia, and finance controllers internationally at 70% cost savings while maintaining or improving quality and work ethic.
  • Talent filtering system: To screen 60,000 monthly applicants, Somewhere filters by 35 words-per-minute typing speed (eliminates 85%), then requests one-minute video introductions (eliminates 80% more), leaving 30-40 qualified candidates from 1,000 initial applicants per job posting.
  • Single distribution channel focus: Successful companies identify one distribution channel that works and scale it relentlessly before exploring others. Huber's advisor prevented him from pursuing influencer marketing until Facebook ads reached $300,000 monthly, ultimately scaling to $1M monthly without needing alternatives.

What It Covers

Nick Huber shares lessons from acquiring Somewhere.com for $52M, including mistakes like losing 300 monthly leads from a name change, shutting down four of eleven portfolio companies, and rebuilding executive teams with international talent.

Key Questions Answered

  • Portfolio concentration: Huber started eleven companies from 2016-2022 but shut down four and kept two treading water. The three successful companies now generate higher total cashflow than all eleven combined, demonstrating power law dynamics where focus beats diversification.
  • International executive hiring: Huber rebuilt leadership teams with six Americans among 160 employees at Somewhere, hiring COOs in South Africa, performance marketers in Colombia, and finance controllers internationally at 70% cost savings while maintaining or improving quality and work ethic.
  • Talent filtering system: To screen 60,000 monthly applicants, Somewhere filters by 35 words-per-minute typing speed (eliminates 85%), then requests one-minute video introductions (eliminates 80% more), leaving 30-40 qualified candidates from 1,000 initial applicants per job posting.
  • Single distribution channel focus: Successful companies identify one distribution channel that works and scale it relentlessly before exploring others. Huber's advisor prevented him from pursuing influencer marketing until Facebook ads reached $300,000 monthly, ultimately scaling to $1M monthly without needing alternatives.

Notable Moment

Huber lost one-third of monthly leads overnight after rebranding from Support Shepherd to Somewhere.com for $400,000, believing the easier spelling would help growth, only to watch SEO rankings and brand recognition vanish immediately post-acquisition.

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Episode Transcript

Alright. Look. On YouTube, everybody talks about how they're crushing it. Every business podcast, every business influencer is talking about how great everything is going. But on today's podcast, my buddy Nick is coming on, and he's doing the opposite. He's talking about a bunch of the big mistakes he's made. He's eating humble pie publicly on the podcast today and talking about some of the things he's learned from it. So I want you to tune in to this episode. He's talking about how he made the biggest acquisition of his life when he bought somewhere.com, how he might have screwed up certain things, and how he's trying to recover from those. It's another side to Nick. If you know Nick, he's he's he's a popular guy online, but you don't always get to see the, the humble side. And so I think it's a great episode with Nick. Enjoy. Alright. What's up? We got Nick Huber here, friend of the pod. Nick, what's up, man? Sean, thanks for having me. Been a long time. Dude, you, you've wrote something. So we have every guest do a little prep doc of, like, hey. What do you what are some things on your mind, stories, ideas that you wanna share? And you wrote one that I think is very interesting to people who've been following Nick Hubert. So you built up this personality online of being confident, borderline cocky. You you know, you have strong opinions. You are not afraid to piss some people off. And you said this in the document. You said, I have been humbled off my cocky attitude in my thirties. Is this a do we have a heel turn? What's the a face turn, like, in wrestling where the bad guy becomes good? What's going on? Yeah, man. I think the last five years in business I mean, five years ago, you guys had me on the pod. I I felt like I knew everything, man. Like and I think it was that irrational confidence early in my career that I wouldn't trade for anything because I think it led to a lot of success and me me putting myself out there. But, yeah, man. Like, you just realize that business is hard. Business is really hard. So it's not the same as it was 2024, 2025, or not the same as 2022, 2023 for any entrepreneur I know. So give me an example of, how Nick what Nick was thinking then versus Nick thinking now because there's this great phrase, everyone's a genius in a bull market. I think part of what you're gonna talk about is, like, back in 2020, 2021, 2019, like, during that era, it felt like you could do no wrong. But, like, give me a Nick, back then, he was thinking x y z about himself or the world. And now what is Nick thinking? I thought business was easy. I thought building executive teams was easy. I thought …

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