It's been a while since I updated everyone on the status of my companies.
I shut down 4 of the companies I started between 2021 and 2023.
RecruitJet, WebRun, AdRhino, and Huber Method.
Too much headache, not enough profit. Business is hard.
What I have left (and headcount):
- Bolt Storage (55)
- Somewhere.com (166)
- R.E. Cost Seg (70)
- Bolt Builders (13)
- Titan Risk (3)
- Bold SEO (5)
- NickHuber.com (3)
Bolt Storage, Somewhere and R.E. Cost Seg all had record months of revenue in August.
Bolt Storage is fighting through a tough market.
CubeSmart, Public Storage and Extra Space Storage have posted 6 quarters in a row of profit declines for the first time ever. Move ins are down ~40% since 2022 peak and rates are down 50%+ in most markets in the USA.
We've improved digital marketing, sales (conversion rates up to 42% from 30% last year), revenue management, general operations. We refinanced all of our 2021-2023 debt with no cash-in and all but 1 of our deals is distributing capital.
Many of our properties are missing projections, however, and it is generally a very difficult time in the real estate business.
Despite the headwinds we are increasing revenue and occupancy, with August revenue up 9.39% over August 2024. Our portfolio-wide debt yield is north of 12%, so we are in a healthy position.
We are seeing a lot of deals right now and general buying appetite is way down across the industry. Seeing a lot of properties with massive revenue drops still for sale. It is a good time to buy and we will pick up some great properties in the coming years. But it is scary to buy a deal with 40% less revenue than 2023.
Somewhere is growing and is in a great position.
Revenue is up ~70% since I negotiated the deal to acquire the company and August was a record month of revenue.
Our Talent on Demand offering is growing and we have a solid book of recurring revenue now. Repeat business is accelerating and we are now up to over 6,000 candidates applying to work with our clients DAILY.
We went from doing 97% of our placements in the Philippines in 2023 to now 40% in South Africa, 40% Latin America, 10% Philippines and the rest a mix of Sri Lanka, Eastern Europe, Egypt and more.
When I acquired the business 97% of the team was in the Philippines. Now we have 73 employees of our 166 located in South Africa. 51 folks in the Philippines, 25 in Latam, 6 in the USA, and 11 in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India and the rest of the world.
Overall this is a massive shift into the South African market, where we are finding spectacular talent for our own team and our clients.
R.E. Cost Seg is the fastest growing company in the portfolio and surpassed $800,000 of revenue last month. Up 100%+ YoY.
We are also building our sales and executive teams in South Africa, recently hiring a Head of Sales and COO there along with 4 other members of our management team.
We recently put a cost seg on a commercial property I acquired out to bid and found out we were, on-average, 40% cheaper than the big name competitors. We plan to keep it this way and keep growing.
Every branch of the company is hiring full speed. The Big Beautiful Bill has been kind to us and Bonus Depreciation is here to stay.
Bolt Builders is growing fast as well.
It is a construction design / planning firm doing renderings, site plans and stamped plans for developers.
We have 2 Americans (including an architect) and 11 folks in Colombia including engineers, architects, draftsman and management.
Business is booming because we save developers a ton of money and turn stuff around fast which is rare in the business.
The company isn't cash-flow positive yet but we are close.
Titan Risk has been a slog because the insurance market has been a disaster over the last 3 years.
It is finally stabilizing and we are saving our clients a ton of money for better coverage in property and casualty, business risk, cyber and more.
The company is still losing about $10k per month and I've invested north of $400k into this one which is tough! But the head guy is really good and the company is still growing. I'm excited about it long term.
Bold SEO has stabilized around the $30-50,000 of monthly revenue mark and is healthy. Doing great work for clients. Home service businesses are our wheelhouse.
NickHuber dot com (brokerage) sold its first company two months ago. A 7 figure plumbing company in the southeast. It's now profitable and we have a lot of listings in our pipeline. I'm also excited about this one long term.
The pest control company I'm a minority partner in (BugShark) is growing really fast. We are pouring money into it to grow by hiring sales teams. It is profitable and getting to the point where there is some real value there.
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A few questions I got on X that I can answer here:
How do you lead all of these companies? How do you still have time for life?
I have a lot of great people at all of these companies. But I'm still VERY involved in the operations.
Over the last two years I've been deep in the trenches with operations, sales, finance, revenue operations, marketing and more. When I get it right I pass a lot of the day-to-day stuff over to my executives and management team.
I do have a very specific goal setting system and some very powerful variable compensation models to align goals. Make sure my best people make great money if the company is winning and have clear goals to work towards.
I'm hosting a free workshop on how to become a better CEO tomorrow at 2pm EST.
Register here to learn more about how I lead these companies, set goals, design compensation plans, develop talent and more.
Why did you shut down the 4 companies?
It is always a combination of things that make a specific business hard. One shut down because the operator came in full time to work at another one of my companies. Another shut down because we just couldn't quite get traction or great staff. Another the operator shifted focus to go after a new opportunity.
The X algo has defintiely shifted as well over the last two years. This has made it very hard to send business to my individual businesses. Limiting growth at several.
The bottom line is that even with a distribution advantage business isn't always easy. And some just aren't worth fighting!
When some of your companies are doing $500k+ in monthly revenue, it is hard to fight for a business that is causing stress but doing 5% of that.
Thats it!
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A few posts from this week:
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Thanks for reading.
Onward and upward,
Nick Huber
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