# Firing quickly and recognizing A-players

- **Episode:** [193](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/193.md) (2025-05-01)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** firing, a-players, hiring, management
- **Time:** 5:49–17:28 (start 349s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/193?t=349](https://truthliesandwork.com/193?t=349)

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[5:49] Al Elliott: So 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?
[6:03] Nick Huber: Yeah, 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
[6:39] Al Elliott: Well, 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
[6:54] Nick Huber: When 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
[7:07] Al Elliott: If 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
[7:33] Nick Huber: Yep. 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
[9:20] Al Elliott: Are you pleased you did it?
[9:22] Nick Huber: Yes, 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
[9:40] Al Elliott: Is 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?
[9:49] Nick Huber: No, 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
[10:35] Al Elliott: I'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?
[10:52] Nick Huber: Yeah. 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
[12:17] Al Elliott: One 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?
[12:35] Nick Huber: It'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
[13:44] Al Elliott: How would you recognize an A-player?
[13:46] Nick Huber: So 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
[15:56] Al Elliott: So does an A player evolve or is someone always an A? They start an A player and they just stay as an A player
[16:04] Nick Huber: Oh 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
[16:31] Al Elliott: What 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?
[16:41] Nick Huber: Yeah, 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