Why I don’t believe you can learn entrepreneurship from a book (or this newsletter)

The hardest thing about entrepreneurship, real estate, or anything else worth doing:

You have to be able to look at incomplete information… Or a complicated problem without a clear-cut solution…

And make a good decision on which way to proceed.

There is nobody who can take you by the hand and lead you through a step by step guide to win. Everybody’s journey is different.

The 1,000 important decisions I made to win will look nothing like yours. This is why entrepreneurship is so hard to teach and I’m still not convinced it can be taught.

But there is one big skill that you need to have in order to win:

Resourcefulness.

The ability to find what you need and figure out solutions to problems where there are no perfect answers.

Life isn’t a textbook. You can’t turn three pages back and look up the answer every time. You can’t just ask a teacher.

When you are an entrepreneur there is nobody out there who can solve your exact problems except for YOU. And this is the opposite of what most people are used to doing.

School teaches you to comply and look up the answer & memorize it. Google gives us answers to any question we have in seconds.

Except what to do when a highly complex & nuanced problem in your business arises.

Or what to do when you get asked a hard question that you don’t know the answer to on a conference call with a customer, partner or investor.

So how do you become resourceful?

You practice it.

You explore and get out of your comfort zone as often as possible. You challenge yourself.

You read books not just to read them but to try to apply the frameworks to how you make decisions in your real life based on what you know to be true.

You mess up a lot. But if you use your head you can keep from sinking the ship. And live through them to fight another day. And you can get better. And adjust. And have an open mind. And learn.

And then you develop an intuition. A sixth sense.

And you can make quick decisions about complex problems with confidence.

And then you win.

A few more thoughts:

To win in real estate you need consistency more than you need intensity.

Intensity = Make 20 cold calls and underwrite 3 deals in a day

Consistency = Make 20 cold calls and underwrite 10 deals a month for 5 years

Intensity = bragging rights.

Consistency = long term wealth.

We spent $150k + on the front facade of a self storage facility.

It worked and we are getting way more customers than before. Businesses do this all the time without a second thought.

Why don’t people also invest in great websites?

I know many business owners who make millions a year with their websites but scoff at a serious investment in their sites… I get all of my websites built with Web Run.

I highly recommend you check them out if your website needs updated. They specialize in good looking and clear websites that convert visitors into customers.

(in addition to being a happy customer I’m also an investor in WebRun).

A business is nothing more than a group of people. If you can effectively manage those people, your business will grow and succeed.

If you can’t, you’ll fail. It is as simple as that.

Why most want to be wealthy:

  • Foreign cars
  • Private jets
  • Instagram photos

Why I want to be wealthy:

  • Create opportunity for my offspring
  • Impact my community
  • Own my time
  • Make my employees wealthy

There are 1000 ways to win with entrepreneurship. The sure way to lose:

Not getting started.

Take a shot. Any shot. Your future self will thank you.

Our acquisition team had conversations with over 2,000 owners and brokers in the past 12 months.

We fully underwrote 504 deals. We submitted offers on just over 100.

We bought 1 deal for 1.4 million.

It is hard out there!

Understanding what you can and can’t control is underrated.

Far too many people spend far too much time and energy thinking and worrying about things that they simply can’t control.

Many business owners don’t actually own a business.

They own a job. If they stop working, they stop getting paid. Every problem comes to them.

Every decision comes to them.

They are required to make every sale.

It’s an incredibly risky, stressful and (often times) low paying way to spend your time.

Delegation, hiring, and leadership is the only way out.

Onward and upward,

Nick Huber

P.S.

I get a few messages a day asking where I find VAs / employees in the Philippines and Latin America to hire.

I’ve hired 50 of them through Support Shepherd and it has been a total game changer.

$4-5 / hr for super competent and grateful team members. I highly recommend checking out Shepherd!

Don't know where to start?
About Me

I started the Sweaty Startup in December of 2018 because I believe the Shark Tank and Tech Crunch culture is ruining the real spirit of low-risk entrepreneurship.