Entrepreneurship changed my life for the better.
20 years ago I started my journey by getting behind a lawn mower to cut grass for clients in Tell City, Indiana.
I made around $40/hour while my friends worked at Subway for $7/hour when I was 15.
Over the last 20 years, I started a pickup and delivery student storage business with my best friend Dan. We scaled to dozens of colleges across multiple states handling 10s of thousands of boxes for our customers. We sold that business for a modest exit in 2021.
In 2016, Dan and I built our first self storage facility together from the ground up in Ithaca, New York. I went from dinner table to dinner table and met with over 100 potential investors to raise capital. We spent $2.7M to build that facility and today it's worth over $10M. That one deal completely changed my life.
That property was the beginning of Bolt Storage, my RE PE firm. Since then, we've grown it to 68 properties with over 2M sqft and $100M+ of real estate under management.
Then I started R.E. Cost Seg and became a partner of Somewhere.com at the end of 2022.
Both businesses are doing phenomenally well and have changed the trajectory of my life and my families lives. Not to mention the 400+ employees who now work for me all around the world.
Throughout my journey, I've had plenty of missteps, stressful situations, and I've made mistakes along the way. I started several other businesses that didn't work out where I invested my own time and money but I ultimately shut them down.
But the one thing that set me apart from the folks who never gave business a shot was I got started and I just kept going.
I put one foot in front of the other and built my life and businesses as new opportunities emerged.
When I was 20 years old, I could have never imagined that I'd own a real estate tax services business with 90+ employees. Or that I'd buy a company with a group of investors for $52M and grow it by 70% in the first year.
These things only happened because I started early, put in the reps, learned the skills of sales, hiring, firing, management, delegation, fundraising, ops, etc and I put myself in the arena. So if there's one message I can share with you for 2026 it's that the time to start is now.
Stop delaying. Stop making excuses. Just get started today. Success is a marathon not a sprint and it happens over time.
I think too many people make the mistake of planning and thinking about how they would run a massive company before they ever start.
They are dreaming about that multi-million dollar deal. The nice office. The new car. The big pay-day years down the road.
They drum up a sophisticated business plan and tell all of their friends how they're going to make bank. They write pages and pages of notes and have a full on roadmap of what they plan to do in years 2, 3 4, and 5.
I’m here to tell you that is all bullshit.
If you want to start, you need to start now!
If you're new to entrepreneurship, your job is to collect money. Period.
You can't wait around sitting and thinking about business plans, daydreaming theories for how you'll navigate challenges when you have zero dollars coming in the door.
So here’s your assignment for 2026:
Go out and figure out how to make $5,000 in January.
Collect a deposit. Sell a service. Get somebody to hand you cash or send it to your bank account. Convince them to give you their money in exchange for your work. Go get sweaty.
Here is a rule I live by when it comes to entrepreneurship:
Unless you are already wealthy, your first business needs to be making money right away.
Therefore, you have to ask for money immediately.
And if people refuse to give it to you, your idea sucks, and people don’t actually need what you’re offering or they don't trust you to deliver it. There are very few exceptions to this rule.
If you can’t get money, you aren’t solving a real problem, and you need to go back to the drawing board.
Start small. Start boring. Mow grass. Move something. Clean something. Make it a full speed race to make $5,000 in profit.
I created a list of 200+ business ideas where the competition is weak, the risk is low, and the odds are in your favor that can help you get there.
Things like:
Things where you can make money quickly (as in January next month!) without tons of time or skill.
That’s it. That’s how it all begins.
If you want to make money, you need to put yourself in the game.
You need to make 25 cold calls, go to door to door knocking, and send out some emails to get things started in January.
You need to SELL SOMETHING, collect payments, deliver the service and repeat.
Then you just have to put one foot in front of the other for five years and watch your income grow.
Once you have a few clients, then you start thinking about hiring and delegation. Not before.
If you want to start, then you need to START NOW.
Happy new year all!!
I hope 2026 is great for you and your family.
Respond to this email telling me what business you plan to start in 2026.
I'd love to hear from you.
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P.S. Want to estimate how much you could save in taxes by doing a cost seg study and taking bonus depreciation on your real estate property?
Try this calculator where you can enter your details and get a free estimate in 10 seconds.
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A few posts from this week:
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Onward and upward,
Nick Huber
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