How We Went From a Beat-Up Van to 200+ Franchises w/ Nick Friedman & Vince Ricci 📈 EP112

What this episode is about

Nick Friedman and Vince Ricci discuss the remarkable journey of building College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving from a beat-up van to a thriving company with over 200 franchises and an annual revenue of $300 million. They share insights on entrepreneurship, the importance of hard work, and the business strategies that have led to their success.

Key takeaways

• From cargo van to $300 million: sometimes humble beginnings are just the fuel for a grand vision.
• Franchising isn’t a shortcut; it’s a marathon. Think carefully before tying your brand to other entrepreneurs.
• In entrepreneurship, systems beat hustle: learning to 'work on the business' is your ticket to true scalability.
• The average entrepreneur juggles a dozen roles. If you're not exhausted, are you even trying?
• A lofty aspiration can turn a junk-hauling side gig into a nationwide brand—who knew trash could be so lucrative?

Who speaks in this episode?

• Nick Friedman (Guest) · 45 min speaking
• Vince Ricci (Host) · 30 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 10:00: College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving, Nick Fredman, The e- Myth Revisited, Young Presidents Organization
2. 20:00 – 30:00: Chick-fil-A
3. 40:00 – 50:00: Nick Fredman, Hubble Studio
4. 50:00 – 1:00:00: Hubble Studio, Cambia Kids, Apple Inc.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:10:00: Hubble Studio, Cambia Kids
6. 1:10:00 – 1:14:25: Hubble Studio

Notable quotes from "How We Went From a Beat-Up Van to 200+ Franchises w/ Nick Friedman & Vince Ricci 📈 EP112"

• Nick fredman give a quick one minute bio so we can get straight to the money awesome so I'm the founder of college hunks hauling junk and moving we've got over 200 franchises…

  about Nick Fredman · at 0:32

• By your own operations you've got to learn how to create systems and processes and so we read a book called The e- Myth Revisited by a guy named Michael Gerber looks you know…

  about The e- Myth Revisited · at 3:15

• Cuz there's a lot of Sizzle out there but you got the stake behind it for sure yeah so I invested in one called everb the assai bow chain I first invested there was 13…

  about Everb · at 6:57

• Podcast didn't exist back then social media was really kind of in its nent phase so you know we'd go to entrepreneurship conferences and Mastermind groups and just try to learn…

  about Young Presidents Organization · at 8:48

• Chick-fil-A and you got to have millions of dollars you have to work there for a year it's it's very fascinating but they go do 8 million a year on average if you own one and…

  about Chick-fil-A · at 21:23

• A lot of Integrity why I work so hard my legacy and my family why I can't to do what we do we created Hubble Studios over a decade ago kind of took off super fast with the…

  about Hubble Studio · at 46:38

• A reflection of our perception of what was hot at the time we were behind the scenes on every Apple commercial Nike commercial a ton of other every Vogue shoot you know some of…

  about Apple Inc. · at 51:47

• Was going with her to all these places and it just worked it was the best it was a bamboo blend it was just the best quality like I only want to put my kids in our stuff not…

  about Cambia Kids · at 53:21

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Nick Fredman — Person · Main guest · 2 mentions · first at 0:32
  Primary interview subject discussing how he built College Hunks via franchising, how he invests, and how the company approaches philanthropy.

Books & papers

• The e- Myth Revisited — Book · Primary recommendation · 1 mention · first at 3:19
  Key book referenced for its insights on franchising and business systems.

Companies & orgs

• College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at 0:36
  Primary company discussed, detailing its franchising model and growth journey.
  So we can get straight to the money awesome so I'm the founder of college hunks hauling junk and moving we've got over 200 franchises as you mentioned started from really…
• Hubble Studio — Company · Business focus · 7 mentions · first at 46:42
  Creative agency and production company discussed for its high-end branding and content production.
• Cambia Kids — Company · Product focus · 2 mentions · first at 52:41
  Kids clothing line discussed for its premium quality and brand integration.
• Chick-fil-A — Company · Case study · 3 mentions · first at 21:06
  Referenced as an example of a successful franchise model with strict brand standards.
• Everb — Company · Investment focus · 2 mentions
  Discussed as an investment example during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting strategic growth.
• Apple Inc. — Company · Referenced brand · 1 mention · first at 51:49
  Mentioned as a high-profile client of Hubble Studio, highlighting the studio's industry connections.
• Young Presidents Organization — Company · Referenced organization · 1 mention · first at 9:00
  Mentioned as a peer group for entrepreneurs to learn and network.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:05 ladies and gentlemen welcome to the money Mondays now as you guys know over 110 episodes have happened inside of the RV motor home but we're in Miami wanted to do something different there just through six events over the last 3 days and I wanted to bring people together that happen to be in town and our next guest actually flew into town which is really exciting cuz this guy has a $300 million a year company with over 200 franchises so for him to come out here and spend some time with us I'm very excited what I'm going to do is have Nick fredman give a quick one minute bio so we can get straight to the money awesome so I'm the founder of college hunks hauling junk and moving we've got over 200 franchises as you mentioned started from really humble beginnings a beat up cargo van that we borrowed when we were in college I describ it as a 20-year overnight success at the beginning we were doing all the work

0:49 answering the phone driving the truck hauling the junk people would call to complain about driving I'd be in the driver's seat answering the phone so uh it's been a fun Journey uh and we feel like we're just just getting started so as you guys know on these podcasts I cover Three core topics how to make money how to invest money how to give away to charity so we're going to go over these different topics over the next 32 to 38 minutes the reason we keep the podcast under 40 minutes is because the average workout is 45 minutes the average commute to work is 45 minutes so this podcast will be under 40 minutes for your listening pleasure we are trending as the number one entrepreneur podcast right now so we got to hit it while it's hot this podcast is going to come out this week so number one spot baby Nick got a lot to live up to we got to stay number one ready for this that's right ready when you were first building

1:33 up did you actually think you would become $2 200 franchises $300 million did you have a vision in your mind or you're just like I'm going to do a truck or two and see what happens so at the beginning it was like I didn't even know what an entrepreneur was it was actually my friend from high school his mom had a beat up cargo van she let us borrow it to stay out of trouble before our senior year of college and she looked us up and down she goes you guys could be like college hunks who haul junk and then that actually put the vision in my head as soon as she said that I was like that's catchy that's a pattern inter that's not what people associate with moving and Hauling it's you know more cleancut it's funny it's catchy so uh from that point on after we graduated college I knew I didn't want to have a regular job and we had very aspirational dreams really at the time we didn't want to be just two guys driving around a

2:16 truck all day so we envision you know imagine if we could land in another city and see our trucks driving around and now today it's you know people are texting me photos of the truck anytime they see I think I got a text from you as well and uh and so I think having that that lofty aspiration was was part of the foundation of what got us really excited at the beginning it got us motivated and uh we actually pursued franchising as a way to expand I think we had a little bit of a naive view of what that would mean we thought it might be an easier path there's no easy path in business uh and so um you know we had to become students of Entrepreneurship and and just you know grind it out so on the make money side franchising why does someone go franchise from college hunks versus just go buy a truck or two and go do it themselves with their own brand so I think anybody who starts a business they have to learn very quickly how to

2:59 to work on the business not just in the business and in our case you know like I said we were answering the phone hauling the junk people would call to complain about driving I'd be the one answering the phone in the driver's seat I think anybody who started a business can relate to doing every single thing from top to bottom but if you want to grow a business and not just be self-employed by your own operations you've got to learn how to create systems and processes and so we read a book called The e- Myth Revisited by a guy named Michael Gerber looks you know talks about people not failing Systems Failing and creating those systems and processes so you can scale and it talked about franchising and this franchise model and I think a lot of people maybe have a like we did a naive view of what franchising means really what it is it's a way to expand the brand without having to deploy your own Capital because we

3:40 didn't have Capital we didn't have a lot of human management Personnel that we could deploy but we did have this lofty vision of taking a brand and making it nationwide so in order to package up what we had made successful locally we went down the franchise path where every time somebody purchases a franchise we get a small injection of capital that we can reinvest into building out the infrastructure the support The Branding the marketing and everything else that goes along with the business model and so uh that's the path that we chose because again we we wanted to expand the brand quickly we wanted to give people an opportunity to own their own business and uh we didn't have the capital to do it so uh I think what people don't say about franchising though is you need at least I would say 30 40 50 franchisees uh for it to make sense because the royalty stream doesn't really aggregate until you've got a

4:27 critical mass number of franchise owners and as the franchise or our responsibility is to help our franchise owners be successful uh because if they're unsuccessful they're going to blame us and sometimes when they are successful they might resent us because they're paying fees and so it's almost kind of like the government you got to make sure you're providing the right goods and services that they can appreciate if they're investing in your concept for sure so to give you guys a breakdown on franchises they can range in fees of anywhere from 6 to 133% depending on the type of brand company service or product so if you have a restaurant chain if you have a dry cleaning chain or you want to go you know franchise like a Sentry 21 or an insurance company typically they want 6 to 13% of gross sales and 1 to 3% of what's called a marketing fee that helps go to the budget to do Nationwide or

5:11 worldwide marketing that'll help the franchisee which would be you in this example also it can range anywhere from0 to $150,000 on average typically around 50k is kind of like the normal deposit for a franchise now if you're going to get McDonald's that number is much bigger right it could be hundreds of thousands if not $1.5 million in some cases for really big name franchises what you want to think about when you're researching is what type of product brand service restaurant Trucking Company Etc do you believe in the brand has experience I don't recommend going to franchise someone that has two or three locations that happens often some someone opens up two three locations they're like we're going to start franchising rolling out they don't have those systems in place yet the reason you would want to franchise is someone has a really good brand and really good systems those are called Sops systems

5:57 and procedures and you need those things to happen otherwise I'd rather you wait until they have 5 10 15 20 30 locations where they really have experience that's right I mean you you hit it on the head I mean when we first started franchising our early franchisees were kind of the early adopters and we were still building the plane in Flight we didn't have it all figured out and so they were kind of taking a bigger risk and we actually had to give them a little bit better deal than we do now because we didn't have it figured out we didn't we were confident it was going to work but we didn't know and they didn't know it was going to work there's actually 3,000 different franchise opportunities out there across all the different Industries and sectors that you mentioned a lot of people think a McDonald's or a Burger King but you know there's not just restaurants there's retail there's service there's

6:37 Aesthetics There's real estate and uh if somebody's got a great successful business their own they could become a franchise or where they develop it but there's a lot of heavy lifting involved in that uh or if they're thinking about a business opportunity like you said they might invest but spending the time talking to the existing franchise owners to see would they do it again what would they do different are they making money cuz there's a lot of Sizzle out there but you got the stake behind it for sure yeah so I invested in one called everb the assai bow chain I first invested there was 13 locations I threw in 500k they went to 17 locations 21 locations 25 locations Bam Bam Bam scaling scaling me and my friends we raised at our Mastermind $5 million for the company boom 27 locations and then March happens 2020 oh no got all the restaurants in the country are closed down most of the world is closed down and what was cool

7:29 is the owner Jeff fer went and signed over 300 new leases why well because while everyone is retracting and no one signing leases he went out and negotiated 6 months of free rent 12 months of TI intendent improvements like 100k free build outs and now sold 400 franchise and done no I think there's 96 locations now it's awesome by fighting through the struggles fighting through the hard Parts like you guys did you're on your 20year anniversary talk us through like the Journey of like beginning middle and now being 20 years I kind of share the startup piece I will tell you when we started franchising was 2008 2009 time frame and if you wanted to pick a time to launch a home services franchise the the the start of the housing crash was probably not the right time but kind of to the example you just gave from your guys at the uh everb um I think it made us better entrepreneurs better business owners because when

8:22 times are good anybody can win when times are challenging it exercises the resilience muscle you got to get smart gritty you got to learn how to survive and uh it felt like we were pulling an anchor through the sand or running up a snowy hill whatever analogy you want to use so that was probably the biggest test for us where we were like is this thing really going to make it but at the time we were younger again we were just so passionate about trying to make this thing work that failure wasn't an option we became students of Entrepreneurship podcast didn't exist back then uh social media was really kind of in its nent phase so you know we'd go to entrepreneurship conferences and and Mastermind groups and just try to learn as much as we could from the franchise industry from peer groups like entrepreneurs organization or Young Presidents organization or you know some of the newer ones that have popped up

9:05 and uh and and we finally got cranking got things on track and of course nothing is linear because then covid hits and I think to myself wow you know we're going to lose everything that we spent our entire life building we got a nice little Co Snapback when people started moving again and and buying houses and there was a little bit of a postco boom and now we're kind of in a challenging time again with the high interest rates people aren't moving as much and so we have to expand the sandb I always say look if um if there's 3 months of no rain that's called a drought you're like okay we're going to just wait till it starts raining again but if it's you know three years of a drought you live in a desert now the environment's the climate's different so you know how are we going to survive and thrive in this environment not hope that something's going to come and it's going to rain again and so I think that's kind

9:48 of the mindset that we've got to have is understanding the environment that you're in what's going to suit the customer what's going to suit your team and how you can adapt as the uh as the environment changes as well so can you give us ballpark numbers like what does someone need to have when they're thinking about getting a franchise should they have like a 50 Grand Nest Egg saved up or 100 Grand or 200 grand should they be planning for more money than just to deposit to go get the franchise like what should they be thinking about when they're going to get a franchise yeah so there it's a wide range I mean you mentioned McDonald's you're going to need over a million dollars to be able to invest in you know our concept is is probably between 150 and 200,000 because you need trucks you need warehousing you need deposits on insurance and things like that uh but there's actually a lowcost

10:27 franchise I'm invested in called kiddo kinetics where a work from home Youth Sports enrichment franchise where you need less than $80,000 including the franchise fee to get up and going and there's even smaller ones I think you know vending franchises and printing franchises promotional product franchises where you need even less than that there's another company I'm involved with called franchise 123 it's a website uses AI where you can put in different criteria investment levels Industries and it'll help you sort of compare and contrast what what concepts are out there based on those different Investments levels generally speaking the amount of the investment is usually going to be somewhat congruent with the type of return that you might want to be able to get so a really low investment franchise may have limited upside unless you own multiple or unless you really blow it out of the water you become an

11:16 Empire Builder as we call them uh but if you've got a great amount of capital and you can buy you know kind of a blue chip franchise concept as long as you get the right location and the right team in place then you should be able to make your money back as well we always say you know franchising isn't a guarantee you're going to make money it's an opportunity uh to make money it's a Playbook right you know if you get the keys to a race car and you don't follow the instruction manual how or drive it you're going to crash into the wall or drive it very slowly and and not get anywhere with it right and so uh uh you know we we say it's really critical that you got the right systems but then also the right operator to be able to execute the Playbook very cool so someone is they're in okay I got it I've saved up some Capital I've been working at my core job for 4 years I got an extra 200k okay put aside I'm ready to get a

12:01 franchise how do I now decide from all you know 3,000 different options what's right for me how do I go down the rabbit hole and figure out what fits for me yeah I mean we I always say the uh fit family financial and fun so the fit is do I have a relevant experience or background that would allow me to have some sort of applicable skill set in this business model hair salons restaurants right like in our business you don't need moving experience but you need some sort of leadership Acumen or or ability to develop leaders because you're hiring guys to go out and provide a service to the community so you got to be willing to build leaders in doing that uh so do you have a skill set that you could apply to this business uh is your family behind you in this idea your spouse your you know friends your neighbors your parents do they believe in this concept that you're you know excited about uh can you make the return

12:48 on the investment that's the financial side and then the fun factor is or fulfillment factor is like you know life is short is this something you can see yourself getting up every day even if things are challenging to do and so I think talking to some mentors there's actually franchise Brokers that are kind of like real estate agents but for the franchise industry we work with a lot of them in our business where uh they'll do personality profiles and and background assessments to identify uh is this you know let me present a couple different concepts to you based on your background your interests what you said you're not interested in and help people kind of land on a decision of of the type of concept they might be interested in in owning and and running the other thing I'll mention you know a lot of times this word comes up in franchising called absentee ownership or semi absentee ownership and I will tell you it's it's

13:35 a buzzword it's somewhat cliche especially in the broker communities everybody wants passive income but it's it's not easy there there's in in my mind you know very very few business ventures are truly passive unless you have a significant amount of capital and somebody that's a CEO that's going to execute right that you you know it's it's ask who not how who's going to do it if I deploy this and so you know the franchisor is not going to do it for you so you got to have somebody that's going to run it who you can trust that you know is going to you know produce the business and can you make a return if you're paying him on top of that so I have this rule that I won't invest in any company or do any partnership or deal without a quarterback without someone running that business so people say oh you've got 43 Investments and all these companies are doing you're posting about mortgages and sports cards and

14:22 ever bus and blah blah blah blah sports cards has a CEO elevator mortgage has a CEO elevator funding has a CO my Live Events has a CEO Dan runs a bunch of group chats yeah I'm not out there trying to run every single company I'm involved in the group chats I'm giving my advice I'm there to give the sizzle to the Stak when they need it but ultimately every company I just mentioned can run without me yeah I'm going to help them it's my company I'm going to help it but ultimately I won't even do a deal like if Nick was like hey let's start a brand new vodka company all right who's going to be the CEO right oh we'll figure that later yeah I love Nick he's got a humongous company but I don't I don't want to run that and he doesn't want to run it we're busy that's right so there's not a CEO or a quarterback to run it I'm not in I think that's that man that's that's something I wish I had learned a lot earlier you

15:05 know I think entrepreneurs we all have a little bit of add I call it all damn day because you can't all damn day you can't turn it off right and and so you know you've mastered this notion of you know I'm going to tackle multiple businesses stuff that I'm excited about or want to be involved in or put money into but you know that you're not going to invest in it unless you have somebody you trust that is going to be able to execute that you can hold accountable and that's going to you know be a good Steward of whatever that Venture and idea is and like you said you're going to be a facilitator a consultant a Visionary uh with the team and and with the that particular Channel I think in my early stages I would chase a lot of shiny objects and shiny ideas because they sounded good they sounded exciting or maybe they sounded in my case might be easier than what I was doing and I never really mastered the notion of talent

15:51 acquisition and talent alignment with with partners that could go in and pursue that and I think uh you know learning early on if you are going to diversify do other businesses uh and it's something that you're taking you know your eye off the road of what you're already doing you you can only divide yourself so many times you know you can't ride multiple bicycles yourself you got to have somebody else that's going to ride that bicycle and report back how it's going or where he's going let me give you guys a real life example let's say Nick and I decide we're going to open up a chain of gyms called College Hunks and we're going to place them at all the colleges around the country and we put up a million dollars each and we're like okay let's do this and we open up four locations right 250k 500k per location got a little bit of operating Capital everything sounds good and we go out and crush it and do $4 million Revenue the

16:37 first year and the next year we do $12 million Revenue holy smokes we're are on Pace for something crazy do you know how much money that Nick probably lost by spending time and energy on this company doing 4 million and then 12 million his company's doing $300 million in sales and so you can factor that in for yourself if you got a business doing a million do $2 million $3 million revenue and you go spend time on the shiny object you're taking away money time staff energy and resources over here on the shiny object and not fixing the core thing that you could be scaling yeah there there's a compound effect of of focus we all know that you know whether it's you know specific Fitness goal you have or specific business or financial goal uh it's it's grooving those habits and I I have a saying that I'll bring up because my business partner and I will come up with ideas all the time if we're

17:22 out and about or having a drink or whatever and and I'll pause for a second I'll be like you know we can make tens of dollars doing that right you know there's a lot of great ideas but you know like what's the time worth what's the energy worth we've got a platform we've got a something that's compounding any energy and effort that I put outside of my $300 business is taken away from it becoming a billion dollar business at this point and so um yeah I I I couldn't agree more on on that notion of you know focus on what you think is going to make things happen and and double down and and let that thing compound over time I always say urgency of effort patience for results because a lot of times we get very impatient especially in this you know immediacy world of instant gratification you know we want to see something happen overnight and you know I think you hear about the unicorns to the glamorized

18:08 billion dollar you know brands that become unicorns overnight that's you know that's like getting drafted to the NFL or NBA or winning a lottery yes it can happen but the reality is most business successes are probably like mine and yours it just happened over Decades of time that uh you know took hard work people don't see behind the scenes how much losses went into the early days the investment that went into it and eventually come out the other side and everybody touts you in overnight success but they don't realize you know how long it took you to get there how much learning took place along the way absolutely all right so let's talk about the real life of the business what does it cost for someone a customer to come rent from college chunks like what's the cheap side and what's the full size like hey I'm moving a big house yeah so you know we we pride ourselves on being a a uh I would say

18:52 premium style experiential brand there's a book I read called The Purple Cow by Seth goat and he says if you're driving down the country road you see a bunch of brown cows you've seen it before you're not going to notice it if there's a purple cow in that field this was before social media that the book came out he says you're going to pull over it's remarkable you're going to tell your friends and Neighbors about it talk about the dinner table put it on social media and then it goes further to say we talked about this a second ago it needs the sizzle which is the brand image the name the colors but it also needs the stake meaning the service has to live up to whatever promises that you're making to the customers or the team members and so you know we're the only One-Stop solution for both moving and junk removal we say we help people move the it item they love get rid of the stuff they don't uh we leverage our trucks and

19:31 labor to deliver donations for folks you know install furniture and so forth and so pricing is hourly for the moving side of things uh call it a two-man move anywhere from 100 to 150 bucks an hour uh obviously if we add a third or fourth guy can increase from there uh junk removal is volume based how much space the items fill up in the truck so if we're cleaning out you know a whole garage that takes four to five pickup trucks worth is which about the size of our trucks it be like five six 700 bucks depending on the geography but that includes all the labor the disposal the loading fees and so you know the moving industry is Antiquated right I mean it's been we didn't invent moving uh it's probably been around since the wheel got invented and uh so we took a simple concept put a creative image on the external side of it a very Focus intentional on the inside of it and uh so we're not the cheapest you know

20:17 probably somebody could find a less expensive move on Craigslist or you know Facebook Marketplace or what have you but we we say look you know there's a lot of options to go buy coffee right you could go pay $ four or5 dollar for Starbucks or you could go pay 5075 cents at the gas station but it's a very different experience between the two uh they may even taste somewhat similar but the experience is very different so we you know we made hunks a brand uh promise it's an acronym honest uniformed nice knowledgeable service because with moving you're letting a complete stranger into your home they're handling your personal belongings uh even if they're getting rid of your junk these might think have things that you have emotional attaches to attachments to her grandma might be moving into assisted living and these are her lifetime belongings that are being hauled away to be donated so you need

20:59 somebody that's empathetic and mindful so that's what we're always consistently training our Frontline guys on is how we can be different how we can be the Starbucks or the Chick-fil-A or the Ritz of moving and junk removal so surprisingly Starbucks is not a franchise that's right that's a mind-blowing how big they would be if it was but they wouldn't it's a very fascinating business model um In-N-Out is not a franchise a lot of people think it is there's certain brands that are not in franchise and then you go to Chick-fil-A and you got to have millions of dollars you have to work there for a year it's it's very fascinating but they go do 8 million a year on average if you if you own one and then you have to own one before you get your second one it's like a very yeah they're very Discerning and disciplined as to who they'll align with because they want their brand to be upheld they want everybody in those

21:43 Chick-fil-A to say my pleasure instead of you're welcome and they want the experience to be different than your typical fast food experience a lot of people come to me when they have a successful small business to be like hey can you help me learn how to franchise my business the way you did and I'll actually spend maybe the first five six minutes talking them out of that saying you know listen to be a franchisor it does cost money up front it cost a lot of headache and injury you know trying to get those first 5 10 15 20 franchises off the ground and uh you know a lot of people don't make it to the other side where you've got 4050 to the point where the brand is recognized the royalty stream is sufficient so I sometimes encourage them like open two or three or four locations yourself get the model proven uh and and maybe you won't need a franchise or maybe you'll bring in some investor Capital to go and open more

22:28 yourself and and you don't have to have that extra layer of complexity so you know there's a reason In-N-Out or Starbucks maybe chose not to they didn't want that extra layer of liability or you know people dynamics that has to be dealt with and uh you know it's it's just really a Crossroads like an expansion strategy do you want to you know build these and own these yourself do you want to bring in investors to help you do it or do joint ventures like Outback Steakhouse believe it or not it's not a franchise they have a similar to Chick-fil-A a managing partner model so all their general managers of the restaurants uh have a percentage of equity of that restaurant but they didn't actually buy the franchise but they run that that like it's its own small business oh interesting 2006 I won something called the CEO poker championship and the guy that got second place was the head of Outback Steak

23:09 House oh wow there you go random I haven't heard haven't heard the name in so long but it was funny because just seven years before that I was applying to work at Outback steakhous as you know wow I was working at Ruby's Diner and I was hoping to get the job at Outback Steakhouses 17 years old and I end up starting my clothing company then you beat him in the World Series of Poker okay on the investing side so you're building your business it's 20089 you go the franchise model now you got 340 50 franchises now you start making some serious Revenue some serious money when you decide okay I'm going to invest into these other you mentioned three or four Brands you've invested into or maybe be advising for when you decide okay I've invested a lot of capital into my core business I can take some money and throw in 25K 100K a million whatever the numbers into something else yeah so early on when we were in the business of

23:56 course I started reading different books Robert kosaki cash flow quadrants was one that I read where he talks about going elevating from employee to self-employed to business owner to investor and so in my mind I was always kind of like that's the gradual elevation and and transition that I want to get to uh so once we had enough Capital once I had wasn't as active in the day-to- the day business I started thinking myself as an investor my very first successful Investments was real estate and I'm still a big believer in that as a asset class you know one of the quotes I've heard and and use regularly is don't wait to buy real estate buy real estate and weight and you know obviously you know if you look at it year by year it may fluctuate but at the end of the day it's an asset you can rent it out you can fix it up you could sell it you can live in it if you need to and so we did that early on we

24:40 own probably 20 $30 million worth of real estate at this time maybe more uh at this point but you know our commercial properties and our you know few uh residential rentals and so forth I'll say when I started investing in businesses I I I had some some skin knee decisions and I'll say the reason is because you know to Hammer everything looks like a nail to an entrepreneur everything looks like an amazing opportunity like we're very I would say optimistic uh By Nature because and that's what helps us be successful when we pursue our own Vision because we believe it's going to work even though others may not or even though it may be Against All Odds now when you're investing in other people you have to realize you're not just investing in the idea but you're investing in the person too uh and actually I don't think I mentioned this earlier we were on the very first episode of the very first

25:22 season of Shark Tank and awesome experience kind of maybe my first experience pitching to investors we didn't end up taking a deal by the way and quick side note we were we're pitching a sister company we were going to call it College foxes packing boxes yeah the the Sharks didn't think that was a great idea either but uh that's another story but um nevertheless I think what we what I did learn from that experience and what I've learned and talking to some of the sharks from the show since then is uh majority of the deals they do on television don't actually take place after they sto videotaping and the ones that do take place after they sto videotaping less than 20% of those actually have been successful or money makers I thought it was really fascinating and so um you know recognizing that early stage investing small business or Venture is very risky and you got to be willing to spread ships out across a lot of

26:13 different you know uh Ventures and also I think it's important to invest in stuff that you know uh stuff that you can influence or have a a pattern recognition of uh like I said I'm invested in some franchise Concepts I understand Youth Sports I understand the franchise model I I have become versed in real estate so I think those sorts of things have uh allowed me to have successful Investments if I'm just sort of taking a you know writing a check on a tip whether it be publicly traded or some private business that somebody told me about might do well it's like going to Vegas and rolling the dice you really don't have much influence on it so there's a famous theory that 90% of startups fail which is true the reason for it is they have lack of capital lack of experience lack of knowledge and so what I do is I focus on companies that are doing at least $2 million in Revenue up to 20 million the reason I like that

27:05 2 million to 20 million is they got past the hardest part going from Z to 1 million super hard major failure rate most people don't want to do it 1 million to 2 million is where you're like okay getting some operations I'm finally making some hires I'm getting a better lawyer a better accountant a better executive that 1 million 2 million is where you start to really kind of like you can hear like it's you're figuring it out we start to get to 3 million 5 million 7 million okay now we're we're getting our swing of things here yeah and so I raised 56 million the last three years all three to six million bucks at a time in a company is doing 2 to 20 million so elevator Syndicate our concept is find businesses that are already doing 5 million 12 million 8 million 15 million in that range and we pour gas in the fire MH there's amazing startups that are out there even with amazing Founders and we don't do it for a couple reasons

27:54 one is it typically takes 5 to seven years on average to have an or liquidity events and so if I come in on year two three or four I've shortened my time span as an investor the first couple years I can help too much from like scaling but at the first couple years I can't help too much because you're just getting their systems and operations and making your first relationships like conventions and trade shows like you're still figuring things out I'm going to help you way more if you're doing six million Revenue to get to 6 million going to 13 million not hard at all yeah 0 to 1 million super hard and so elevator Syndicate our concept is get guys like us right I've got 960 investors so guys like Nick hey you throw in 25K 100K 500k whatever the number is we'll all pitch in together but this company's already doing 9 million Revenue how can Nick help how can Dan help how can the other 32 investors how can we all pitch in and

28:45 help this business you might find Investments you can do with some friends co-investors that's why people ask who are the other investors because if Nick was already an investor in a company I'm more inclined to want to invest right because him and his Circle have experience they built a huge business so when people pitch you cuz they're going to pitch you people pitch you ask them some key questions where their revenue at what's their actual experience who else is involved who's on their Advisory Board who's an actual investor there's a big difference between Advisory Board an investor someone that cuts a check versus just puts their name on it there's a lot of differences just ask a lot of these questions before you make your investment because when you get it right you can have a 6X 12x 20x when you get it wrong which is going to happen you're only having a 1X loss that's why Nick mentioned you got to have multiple

29:30 Investments when you're taking a angel investment risk you can't just do one Angel investment you got to do three four 10 20 I've done 43 wow 43 sounds like a lot but it's been a decade yeah it's really only four or five a year if you think about it y because I'm seeing 200 deals and I'm picking four or five MH all right Nick so you're investing a lot back into the business right A lot of people don't realize someone goes and does 10 million Revenue they're probably broke right they're in Deb sounds good Revenue vanity revenue is Vanity yes profit is sanity cash flow is King and that's something I learned after a few years like we used to tout our our Revenue numbers and yeah even at the beginning of this talking about what we're doing in Topline it's you know it's exciting it you know sounds like a big impact but to your point especially in the early days you're plowing that money back in course and you're making

30:16 small bets and sometimes big bets along the way and not all of them will pay off so in this scenario there's very very very very very very very few companies that go off to do $300 million Revenue uh what point do you think about should I exit the business should I go acquire a bunch of other companies that are in the moving space should I do other anary companies should I become like a trucking company here or should I do a should I be a box manufacturer because you probably go through millions of boxes like what are the things should we do like the wrapping tape should you have a wrapping tape company like I could sit here and rattle off and I'm sure you guys have thought about all of them over 20 years like sometimes when you have a core business like what they're doing for the moving space sometimes you think about what are the vendors we use what do we spend money on if you're spending money going buying

31:03 tape and you go through freaking I can't even imagine how much tape you go through to tape up the boxes maybe we should do that yeah when you go through literally millions of boxes maybe we should have our own boxes and sell the boxes to our customers or to our franchisees talk us through that concept yeah so so the short answer is yes to all the above uh all of those thoughts that you just rattled off is the stuff that wakes me up in the middle of the night and I got the hamster wheel running we could do this we could do that we should do this we should do that um there's a Jim Collins quote I think where he said uh once companies hit levels of success they don't die of starvation they die of indigestion trying to do too much and uh so I think it's the idea is you know identifying that list and we charted out on uh how much money can you make on one axis and how much heavy lifting money resources

31:52 time distraction is going to be on the x-axis and if something is really really high earning potential doesn't take a lot of effort that's a no-brainer and I'll give you an example something we did was uh or we're doing now longdistance moving you know uh we just we've got the trucks we've got the labor we've got the network now with 200 locations uh we can start offering that and leveraging our network uh or we started an accounting service bookkeeping service for our franchise owners that works so well we're going to offer it to other franchise systems as well because we already got that set up we were doing something we were doing internally as an internal service it's a no-brainer for us to use Ai and offshore Bas to be able to offer it to to franchise systems to have clear transparent books and accounting um but then there's stuff that you know might be a little bit more far-reaching

32:39 uh truck manufacturing or Truck Sales like I don't know the first thing about sure Truck Sales aside from when we buy them and trying to negotiate a good rate and a good rebate uh so to your point having a quarterback if we were to go down that route we'd have to find somebody who understands truck Fleet Management that could be our quarterback or CEO of our Trucking division Vision uh that could help us Source inventory floor plan and sell and or lease them to their franchisees so that's something that we've thought about talked about it's on the The Vision road map but we haven't pursued it yet just cuz we've got kind of the lower hanging fruit in front of us so I think that's the way to approach you know when you've got these different opportunities that present themselves uh make some small bets and then if it's something that's going to take a heavy lift you got to have somebody that's going to do it uh or

33:22 it's going to distract you or your team from your core that's already working so as you go from 300 million to 340 to 400 to 500 is there a number in your head you're like okay this is my goal number or does the goal post always move uh also yes the goalpost always moves but um I I will say we took some chips off the table we did a minority private Equity transaction shortly after covid and the reason for that was you know Co was such a wakeup call for me I had 99% of my net worth in one asset which is our main business and I was like man if something a Black Swan event like this happens again it could wipe out everything I've worked for so let me drisk take some money out of the business bring in an Institutional partner that can help give us some uh infrastructure to help prepare us for the future exit and just quick side not the guys that we that invested with us um is uh these three self-made

34:10 billionaires that are actually the largest shareholders of Tik Tock here in the US these three dudes up in Philadelphia I think their net worth went from 5 billion to 50 billion as a result of their Tik Tock investment um but anyway so whatever they're invested in college hunks is a rounding air for them uh so they're not too worried about how quickly we exit um so which is a nice partner to have from a minority standpoint because they're not pushing us for for an exit anytime you know it's our timeline not theirs uh but I do think at some point we'll we'll look to recapitalize the business um you know as as I approach I'm in my early 40s now if I could get to 50 and and have another meaningful transaction to be able to be more of an investor and facilitator uh for for other businesses I think that would be exciting also and so I think that's that's all part of the journey but um you know this brand Still Remains

34:56 kind of a part of my identity and I think a lot of times you know as as entrepreneurs especially in the early days for me I was approaching business from a point of scarcity like if I could just get to a million in Revenue if I could just get to 10 million in Revenue if I could just get to 100 million in Revenue if I could just get to a million in profit you know we'd be good and every time we hit those Milestones is like you said the goalpost moves and uh and I feel like I'm just chasing this something that's always Out Of Reach so I've had to reframe and and and re align my mind from a paradigm standpoint because as you get more successful you get surrounded by more successful people and everybody's got a bigger boat somebody's always got a bigger plane and uh it always makes you feel like you got to get to that person's level and I think unless you're Bezos or Elon uh you know it's it's going to be hard to not

35:38 be always looking up at who's ahead of you uh so we we think of things from a a point of abundance and say okay look how far we've come to where we are that doesn't mean we're going to stop and get off the ride we want to keep pushing and growing and I think what excites me and gets me excited and passionate as opposed to feeling like I'm missing out on something is uh this notion of potential maximiz ization or optimization like how can I maximize my potential as a leader as an entrepreneur as a father husband business owner all of those categories that I'm you know I guess you could label me as but also how can I maximize the potential of this brand this platform what it can do in the communities that it Services what it can do for the franchise owners who invest in it how much it can allow them to provide for their families how much it can you know employ into our uh into our overall you know employee Community

36:23 as well and so that's the stuff that keeps me excited and and going uh no matter how far reaching the goal post keeps extending from a number standpoint cuz once we hit a billion in Revenue I'm going to want to hit two billion or three billion and and so that never stops but taking it from a point of abundance and not feeling like I'm missing out or or lacking uh that makes the journey that much more exciting I think so let's picture this it's your 50th birthday1 billion dollar gets wired in for the big acquisition for 80% of your company you get to keep 20% because they want to give what's called golden handcuffs they want to keep you on they need you for the next couple years what do you do the next day after one billion dollar shows up on the Monday morning what do you do on Tuesday oh man um I you know I guess I would pinch myself first and then I'd probably look at my bank account about 25 times just

37:12 to make sure it was real and uh uh I think shut my phone off and just take a moment to like breathe and soak it in and spend time with the family the wife the kids uh fire up the Jet and go around the world for a couple months and I think think that'll be allow me to just sort of reflect have that little mini sabatical moment and I think I would get bored out of that very quickly and say what am I coming back to do and and how can I be more impactful on this next goor round I've never met an entrepreneur who has officially retired uh they may not be grinding it out day-to-day like they did at the beginning uh but they're still involved in something because you know the moment you start you stop growing you're dying and in all effects and so you know I've met 80 90 year old guys that are still grinding I met a guy one of my neighbors he's got a big horse farm now and I was like oh that's an interesting hobby he

38:00 got very mad at me I said that's an interesting hobby he goes no it's a business it's not a hobby I was like oh got you my apologies because I'm thinking this guy's in his you know almost 90 years old and he's got all these horses that he's breeding and selling but it's he's running it just like a business and he's you know just as fired up about it as he was the publicly traded company that he grew as well yeah my my Ranch is not a business that's right 140,000 a month of feeding animals they're very hungry that's right well there's nonprofit benefits as well out there that you know you can get involved in and no margin no Mission so if you didn't have a successful business you couldn't do things like that uh they weren't businesses that were you know nonprofit or community-driven initiatives as well all right last two questions on the charity side so make money invest money give away to charity

38:44 why do you think corporations when you start to get hundreds of employees or thousands of employees Etc why should they have some type of philanthropic component to them not just the money part but why should they have some type of philanthropic initiative within the company well you know you know there there's a quote we always say you know don't chase the money Chase the Dream or the purpose or the impact Chase something that's broader than just making money because money is a powerful tool it's a facilitator it can create your lifestyle but it can also create impact for the people that you care about whether it's a community your family or your employees and so having some sort of purpose-driven impact uh is critical but without margin there's no Mission like I just said so you've got to have a profitable business you can't you don't want to donate yourself out of business I tell our early franchises

39:25 that a lot like don't just start giving free moving or free junk removal cuz people are asking you cuz you've got trucks like You' got to build a business first and then you can create a give back program uh and and the reason is that to answer your question because people are passionate about making an impact people care that they mattered and that they made a difference and if you're getting up every day and your pure motivation is making money you may be disappointed several days out of the year because not every day is easy not every day did you make the money you hope to make personally or professionally and so for us we do have we have a two for one giving campaign obviously borrowed it from the Tom shoes concept we said well instead of one for one let's give two for one we donate two meals for every completed job that we've completed and uh we started that a few years ago we've donated over 5 million

40:07 meals to us hunger wow uh we also during covid saw the reports of the domestic violence that was happening and people being stuck with their sort of abusers and we offered free moves for survivors of domestic violence we' done over 150 free moves for survivors of domestic violence and so and it doesn't have to be something Financial or or or prono like that uh through our junk removal we've Partnerships with nonprofits where we donate over 70% of the items we hul to Goodwill Salvation Army habitat just to be able to try to keep the stuff out of the landfill and give it into a you know a reuse uh cycle as well so uh it it it motivates inspires your employees you're going to want they're going to want to be something part of something bigger uh than themselves bigger than the business and and I think that's why you know social initiatives and and giving is is so is that much more critical so the last question is one

40:53 question that I ask on most every single episode and I've never gotten the same answer ones all right so let's go to the 50th birthday concept you get the1 billion but you got 20% so then later you get another couple billion dollars and all of a sudden many many years from now you finally pass away and you've got billions of dollars you've accumulated over your this long career what percentage do you leave to those children when you pass away o great question um well hopefully my parents or my hopefully my children are adults by the time I pass away and so I've been able to at least Steward and observe their uh ability to be high functioning members of society uh not you know degenerates or whatever other you know bad paths in some cases you you fear your kids could go down um given that they're assuming that they're high impact uh High performing members of society I I don't think I would be uh

41:47 afraid to bestow them my my uh you know my estate to invest and to impact and to give you know how they would see 100% let them right let yeah I mean obviously maybe not 100% I would you know allocate a significant amount to charitable causes that I'm passionate about or charitable trust that would have a trustee to help you know disseminate over time but uh but yeah I think um I I I think the uh you know the ability for for your kids to to carry things forward is important the Mike Tyson quote recently I loved he was getting interviewed by like a 13-year-old girl he just goes off the rails he goes uh Legacy is another word for ego and I thought that was interesting cuz you know a lot of people talk about wanting to make you know leave a legacy and you know when he said that it actually made me think a little bit like you know is it really am I trying to leave a legacy that just so people remember me or am I

42:36 trying to leave a legacy of actually you know making an impact and helping empowering others so as I think about what that future looks like stuff that I'm passionate about entrepreneurship building leaders lifting up empowering communities that maybe don't have the the opportunities that that that we all had whether it's through mentorship or uh you know investment then uh I think those would be the the channels that I would deploy money to and then you know hopefully my kids are good stewards and would want to start businesses or or make a difference as well with with whatever there is left for them and of course there's the Bill Perkins concept you know spend it all before you die and I don't know if I subscribe to that totally but I I get the point of you know you're not going to be here and you don't want people to you know mismanage it while you're gone so why not be the steward of it while you're here yeah

43:17 well like what you framed it as basically if your kids are high impact and they're know what they're doing then you let them run you know run the world that's right right compared to oh I'm just going to leave my kid $30 million or $100 million $2 million and there don't have the experience or the knowhow that could put them actually in a predicament a lot of people think that when they hear you know somebody very wealthy not leaving a lot of money to their kids or a small amount of money to their kids uh they think that it's rude or why would you do that but we've had answers from 0% to 100% yeah and they have very passionate reasons why I'll say my answer today will be 50% I'll split the difference on that one I like that it's a good number all right guys um if you can uh if you could tell everyone where can they find you on social where can they find College Hunks on social if they're considering a

44:04 franchise how can they research things like that yeah so uh my personal social is Nick fredman the number one and uh so Nick fredman one and our our business social is colg hunks uh you can visit collegehunks.com you can visit Nick Freedman docomo or hauling services on connecting with me just for you know business advice or otherwise and uh you know I'm here for it all right guys you're listening to the money Mondays it's Mission critical to have conversations with your friends family and followers about money we grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money I think that's ridiculous we have to have discussions about accounting and finances and taxes and what do you do if someone borrows money from you how do I sign a contract should I get a loan Should I refinance should I lease a car or buy a car there's so many questions that we have and we think that it's rude to talk about it it's crazy not to talk

44:51 about it you have to have discussions because that will lead to so many things in your life life where you don't pay the dummy tax or you have a very big problem later because you didn't do your taxes or you didn't save up money for your thing where you didn't understand that the this lease is very very expensive or this contract is done this way because you didn't ask your family your friends about it have discussions do your research check us out on money mondays.com and we'll see you guys next Monday ladies and gentlemen welcome to the money Mondays as as you guys know this podcast takes place inside of an RV motor home but we're in Miami and since I have someone from Los Angeles in Miami I want to do a special edition episode we're just throwing six events over the last three days the Whirlwind is complete and so I wanted to grab Vince Richie before he flies back I wanted to knock out a podcast with him and so

45:45 Vince has created hubo Studio he's done over 5,000 photo shoots there it's nearly 6,000 ft with multiple buildings he created a balance a brand that we're going to get talking about shortly just created a whole part parip With the Wind doing branding and marketing with them and he's the founder of Trina's kids Foundation I've been helping him along this journey for last 11 years we raised hundreds and hundreds of thousands of toys almost 200,000 toys just last year in December doing 11 cities in 17 days like Psychopaths flying around the country together to go make sure we give the toys out in person all over the country now I'm addicted to it so I'm going to be flying around to toy drives I don't know for how many more years but feels like we're been doing it for decades so without further Ado I'm going to have Vince Richie give a quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money so my name is Vince Richie

46:30 from the Bronx New York I'm an Italian American and I always like to preface that with kind of really diving deep into my culture and that's what gives me a lot of Integrity why I work so hard uh my legacy and my family why I can't to do what we do um we created Hubble Studios over a decade ago kind of took off super fast with the level of people we were working with because we were dead smack in the middle of Los Angeles Vogue Disney all these other commercials Apple s coming to us and then we decided to make couble agency which was then the full-time production company that stepped in to produce whatever they needed from A to Z we could either do just a or we could do all the way A to Z then under that we became kind of a venture Studio that started to find deals that we liked and invested into the deals or provided the service in exchange for equity and we all know a lot of those deals they're really you're

47:21 going for a grand slam you know you're really hoping just like any other Venture now our it's our entire business is a mix of all of them but our main business is producing content is producing high-end valued content we are branding company we help make sure that this brand is congruent this content the assets that we' building are congruent and you believe what we make is real and that's ultimately what we do so you have everything from cania kids clothing brands to cannabis Brands casinos that you're working with throwing events toy drives there's a lot of moving Parts how do you manage this whole Whirlwind of things you guys are up to too I think a good work life balance You Know Jack Welsh talks about there's no work life balance as work life decisions you know and because so much of my of my business is Loosely coupled in the creative agency side where we're making decisions we're being creative we're letting it

48:15 speak to me like you know paying attention to what Billboards draw your attention to what other asset Choice what's trending right now that has to fill my creative void and then when the canab side or just the operation side of business is very tightly coupled it's centralized to me as a CEO I get to make very strategic decisions those decisions happen between 7:00 a.m. and 10: a.m. then I take like a little in between where I'm working on both and then anything after 3 p.m. is the super creative decisions is when I've been W from the day and able to deal with it I go home I see my daughter my two daughters and it gets me creative and then by the time 7:00 p.m. rolls around they go to sleep then I could really open up my creative juices so it's able to really use the whole day because I'm use different parts in my brain so on balance side there's thousands thousands of cannabis and CBD related companies

49:06 out there yours is Ultra Premium high quality look and feel how do you stand out from this ocean this big sea of different brands uh really maintaining quality going after a boutique customer we have this certain Niche because balance we were kind of ahead of the game in 2018 when we created our logos out branding it was very cartoony and compliance stopped people from being able to Brand like that because it felt like it was going after kids we were super premium super makeup looking because I came from the beauty industry of shooting so much Beauty content then I knew that our product really had to back that up so I really Dove back deep into operations the last few years of maintaining one going after really high-end Bist and high-end plan health specialist people then letting them know this is how we structure our company this is organizational sh this is how we work and we're chasing one thing to be

50:01 the Yankees we're chasing one thing to be the best of the best we're not growing just a grow Mass Market ahead a smaller midsection price point we want to have the best of the best now are there people better of course there's a bunch of small grows at a super Boutique that are selling you know it's like selling $330,000 handbags there's other companies doing it not just Birkin Welles and we kind of find that niche of being like not the top top top top guy because they just like such a small Market but right there where we're like A+ in quality and you really can't tell the difference you know I mean but it's the top top top so on the creative agency side you have someone like the Wind Casino this is the literally the most premium brand in the casino space in history and you have such a long Legacy there it looks great it feels great it smells great everything about the wi is already a highle brand why

50:53 does something that has such a highle brand then spend the money and choose you guys to go out there and make them even better I think because we we were already working with them in the beginning shooting a ton of stuff from marshmallow shooting a ton of stuff for their artist and then they got exposed to us as a company and then they got exposed to a little bit of the Legacy brand of Hubble you know Hubble started making clothes in 2015 just to distinguish who we were as staff one day somebody um on set asked to borrow a shirt we gave them a shirt they wore another photo shoot somewhere else this one wore it that one wore it you know I don't know if every single every single highend celebrity you could imagine of the top top tier was wearing it almost to where I couldn't believe it it was happening and then they were like oh now we have to make clothing brand I was like let's keep it small because it

51:43 still keeps the culture of the studio of what we create here and the clothing was a reflection of our perception of what was hot at the time we we were behind the scenes on every Apple commercial Nike commercial um a ton of other every Vogue shoot you know some of the highest end Vogue shoots that are like the most controversial ones in the last 10 years were shot at Hubble studio and we were behind the scenes on how it happened how we made that production so then when we made things it was just super in line what was trending so then people seeing that and the win there's some people in the creative team at the win that knew about it and then they came to us and said hey we want to create the same thing for the win when has a legacy brand it's amazing they have all these celebrities that stay there all the people but nobody knows about it nobody's like dying to wear this exclusive win hat now imagine

52:30 there was only certain hats that from the wind that you could only get a certain way if you were gifted and you want it people would be they'd be craving it they'd be dying over it and that's what we're trying to create but also un fashion you have a kids line with cambia kids why do you create a kids line when you've got highend fashion cannabis Hubble Studio you got all these things why now have a kids division so the truth be told uh when me and my wife got together she came over to Hubble grow in the ranks now she's the director of Hubble Studio she runs the agency she had created the kids line when she was in college at that oh interesting she cut and made the patterns on my floor in my apartment in New York City when we first started dating made a mess everywhere literally and she's seamstress she made all patterns herself did it she understands the brand top to bottom exactly what

53:17 Blends are in there I learned it because you know when we first started dating I was going with her to all these places and it just it just worked it was the best it was a bamboo blend it was just the best quality like I only want to put my kids in our stuff not because it's ours because it really feels the best and looks the best it looks so swaggy then with Hubble she was able to work with you know Kardashians this one that one and have all these people in this stuff there was a quarterback that won the Super Bowl he had his kids on the field with him I'm not going to say who it is and he was holding his kid and they were in a cambia set at the Super Bowl and it's like it's the way that culture just touches so many many different people on such a high level so in between all these things you also 11 years ago create Trina as kids Foundation can you walk us through when you're already so busy with all these

54:06 different businesses why create this Foundation why not just donate to other people's Charities so some wanted to create a foundation that we were making a direct impact um from the Bronx New York I came from a very low-income area I was affected by alcoholism drug abuse uh not myself I was never addicted to anything but the impact it makes on you for me and surrounded by you and all these kids in these areas whether it's East LA you know certain areas in San Diego certain areas obviously in Miami everywhere every single city deals with the same thing are impacted by drug abuse whether they know it or don't know it so I wanted to affect those kids I wanted to show them that people care especially you know you bring in so many different groups of people different minorities different races together and you bring all these high-end people that work with the studio and then you bring the whole

54:52 inner city youth to come in and everybody you know they deal with each other they and it's the little piece of your heart when you're extending yourself to them ultimately I really did build it because of our first meeting me and you and I didn't believe that it could ever be as big as it was until I met you and then you came in and helped me do the whole thing so why are you crazy enough to go to 10 11 cities now for the toy because I have a crazy part in the dam that then does it and convinces me even though I'm in the back end yelling at Roger like this is never going to work it's not going to work the production is not going to work you're the one who yo you the the the the real you know it's almost like the American dream sometimes I say this guy D he's e he's either naive and doesn't know what's really going to happen or he really does believe it and somehow we pull it off we filled stadiums we filled

55:38 Arenas we filled thousands of toys track the trails going all over and I'm I'm dying in the background because I'm an operations guy I'm like it's never going to work it's like don't worry about it you're like the events's tomorrow it's in an arena it's at the Miami Heat arena we don't have a random show yet yeah nothing like what times everybody showed up you're like oh who knows like oh my God but then a thousand kids show up yeah literally we had way more we had way more volunteers that we even needed thousands of kids showed up it was amazing it was great it was a great experience because you're so ambitious and then you know couple that together with some ability to do operations very fast on the spot and it works so besides the toy drives which we've done for 11 years now people you can check it out at Trina's kidss Foundation Trina's kids .org for the toy drives you have that part but also inside of your own

56:31 building at Hubble Studio you've got report card day back to school day Thanksgiving food drive like walk through having inviting over 400 to a th000 families multiple times a year literally inside of your place of work you know we I come from an events background also I worked at a catering hall when I was younger it it's just it's just thrown like any other event you know you have to be extremely hospitable everybody comes in do like care about every single person that walks through the door they get the same exact experience they get greeted with a smile they greeted with love whatever they need we handle and because these people know that I'm welcoming them in and now it's been so long they kind of already know they're not skeptical of us they come with such a warm heart so it's gotten a lot easier as the time has went on and it it brings the community together when I invite our clients down

57:20 I invite other producers other celebrities other people down and I see them walk through the door and they listen to me and you get on stage speak or about to do or about extending your heart and then they do it and they give back it it really brings that Community together and now that this client is not just a client they're a friend they believe in what we're doing and that builds the culture of what we do so how do you get the the streets involved you know like you're getting the people to come show up you're getting the word out the police are there to help protect they're also there to help donate and you know be literally serving food the local vendors are coming there's a lot of moving Parts how do you get so many different people involved to support you in your mission I'm going to say a line and tell me what movie it's from get on the phone and start dialing yeah get on the phone and start dialing I'm calling

58:06 I'm calling I'm calling constantly calling local police department I just funded their their race to Vegas literally two days ago I'm just constantly involved in the community because I care about the community because I'm a part of this community they've embraced me and I've came and built my business there so I just I I call them I constantly call everybody hey you coming you coming you coming when you coming let's have it coming oh bring more people oh can I bring this person yeah of course you got more kids 50 more kids okay of course all right 60 over the limit sure why not bring them are we got know more toys all right we'll find more toys we'll figure it out because I love the growth I love the game and me and you do such a great job of doing that together we just kind of want to build build build and make more of an impact all right we'll take off our charity hats and put on the Hubble

58:50 Studio why build you know 10,000 feet then 20,000 feet then 30,000 and a fourth building it's 50 or 60,000 ft I can't even count anymore there's so many buildings across the street and over here and over there like why keep building and expanding Hubble Studio because you know I I felt like well one we're in downtown a district right next to the right next to the warehouse area it's growing it's multiplying exponentially every single big clothing brand is down there everybody's located down there I I move and shake with all the best people down there have we had time to take over new buildings I had to take it because if I didn't if I didn't take the opportunity I would have missed the opportunity you know and the building you know the business was growing because we only could have so many stages you know if you filled three stages tomorrow and Nike calls you up and says oh I need 10 days but I'm you

59:40 know literally packed in the middle I just can't do the job but as we grew more stages we had more opportunity to help more people and it's you know when you're producing on one stage one thing you know three times a week it's cool when you're producing on four stages five live stages digital room this every single day it's so much more fun it's if for somebody who's creative like me and my team we get to execute so many different things every day it's like you get home and you don't have this buildup anxiety because you fully let off all your creative juices and I work with my wife so it's not like a normal relationship where you go home and you say oh what' you do today if my wife had dad asked me what I did today like you knew what I did I was with you all day we spoke all day you know I mean but I love that so I come home and we have this transparent relationship and that's the way our entire Team Works we have

1:00:32 radical transparency at work so what's the goal for Hubble studio is this a business that you build up to exit one day or this is a business that you just keep integrating adding becoming a venture studio and keep doing all your own divisions I think that um we had an opportunity a few years ago with somebody big to acquire portion in company I decided not to do it uh we spoke about that why I decided not to do it was because I still feel like I have so much control over the company and how we could pivot we're very agile and we can go into what we want and I didn't want any other business's reputation to affect the culture of what we do now if Nike bought us for instance as a creative agency Adidas will never shoot with us again Adidas shoots with us none of these other shoe brands will shoot with us represent probably won't shoot with us and represent is a huge emerging company that is is killing the fitness

1:01:23 space with their live activations and their content great nothing bad to say about them but they'll never shoot with me if Nike bought us you know so we really have to be open to everybody and I love being that person for this community I'm such a fan of the Arts I'm such a fan of fashion that being who we are for them I couldn't ask for a better job and I love it I have no plan on exiting anytime soon so if someone has a brand a product a service and they're thinking about booking a studio for a photo shoot but they don't really understand why they're able to charge 400 bucks for the hour 1,000 bucks for the hour 10,000 or 20,000 bucks for the day can you explain the behind the scenes how there's lighting equipment staff experience people that are actually running the show why it's so expensive sometimes so when you're creating these high-end assets as opposed to just user generated assets so

1:02:11 just something simple you got to keep every single detail in mind one it has to be formatted to every single aspect that you're going to be able to Market it you know I mean whether it's phone digitally whatever way you got light Cruise digital Cruise post production Crews inous crew then you got 60 people on set you have to feed all these people you have to handle that then you have to create this environment that everybody feels Super Creative that's a whole different experience and when you're creating like that and your photographer alone is a celebrity within themselves because they should be you're housing this magical moment then create this thing that will live in time when Billy Isa shot in lingerie she literally has only shot like that one time that was there it was a whole moment it was weeks in advance of planning to make her comfortable to make the team comfortable make everything happen to they had the

1:03:07 highest end production possible but it was it was a moment that will live in history you know and we were a part of that so to create that moment costs money it's a luxury tax and you guaranteed to get exactly what you want you get married at the Bevy Hills Hotel because you get exactly what you want you're going to pay but they're going to do everything for you and you're going to get exactly what you want that's what it's like coming Hub Studios we give you exactly what you want so if someone is trying to figure out I want to hire an agency how do they decide between this agency that agency versus like a premium one like yours you know it's really there there's a lot of great people out there doing great stuff I don't knock any of these other agencies you you go with someone who understands branding you know I wouldn't say that we should digitally Market your stuff I would push them toward were a

1:03:56 handful of other people that were on the panel yesterday but we build Brands because I understand what's real cuz I'm paying attention to what's real in any given time I know what companies are doing well what companies aren't doing well what's hot why someone's wearing the mey shirt or Rivington shirt I think that Mir is great we he was one of our first clients 10 years ago I think we did our first few photo shoots with him for free because I believed in him now we do everything for him and he's got more Global sales than St lauron is because we're paying attention to who's good so I'm able to put you in line with what's going to work and I'm going to give you advice as a company and say I truly believe this going to work you may like that you may like that you know canary yellow shirt but not many other people are going to like it so let's not make you packaging that color you know what I mean and making it congruent with

1:04:44 what's happening and picking us as a company believing in us as a team that's why you're going to go with us so the packaging designed for cambia Kids hubo Studio your agency all the balanced all the things the different products you have is very very very high quality why do you think it's important for someone to consider to go with an expert to actually make their brand rather than just do it on AI or trat gbt or hire some someone off of Fiverr for 100 bucks why should someone consider going with the high-end version of their brand product or logo I'll give you a perfect instance ask me what the best coffee is in New York City what's the best coffee in York City nin Street Coffee you want to know why because I bought a t-shirt from them 10 years ago and I like the quality so much that I've worn that t-shirt the Craigs out for dinner multiple times I've wore it out and it just says night Street Coffee on it but

1:05:34 the placement the logo everything was great and then I was watching billions and they talked about nitri coffee then I was reading unreasonable hospitality and talked about one of the best espresso polls in New York City it was Ninth Street coffee if I never bought that shirt when I watched on the TV show read in the book it would have been irrelevant to me I wouldn't have remembered but because I had something that I picked up every day wore it it makes it more sticky it makes it where now I believe in this brand I've reached for that I've want it I've bought into the culture it's part of who I am now it's weaving into the fabric of me right now in my life and what I like to wear that's branding how you make somebody feel when you're making things for someone to wear especially or packaging for them to pick up like nothing feels good as opening that brand new iPhone box when you peel the little thing and

1:06:22 then you pull it off it you know you have a brand new phone but the packaging is the experience you're selling someone in that experience and they feel better about themselves and happier because they got it that's why you pay for that and that's why you pick highend for that so you read a lot of books on business a lot of times people think that they're either too good for books or too good for masterminds or too good for events or too good for courses or too good to keep learning why is it important you to keep learning and why should people consider spending more time investing into their minds because it's like if I'm going to scale the Alps there's so many people have done it perform me they know the exact routes to take let me go through it it's always going to be different there's going to be different weather you may not be able to take that route it's always going to be a little

1:07:06 different but they've made their way through they can give you advice that's why I talk about Loosely coupled or tightly coupled businesses is because I read it because I read a lot of these management ideology Books A lot of these CEO books and and they've built behemoths of companies and they've went through a lot of the same problems that me and you both go through and building these companies and it gives us the confidence to know that someone else has did it and they're Paving the way for us I have more mentors that I've never even met that don't even know that I look up to you know Michael litz talked about when he built his agency he was so behind the scenes of the movie industry that he seen what was coming out before it did and it made me even more convinced that I had to build up agency because I was on set every day for the best of the best stuff I was behind the scenes if I never read Michael vit's

1:07:55 book I would never know I would never I would never have seen that Vision you know I mean and you read all these books and you do these things if you don't think that you need to and your arrogance or uberus is going to just say that you just know exactly how to do it good luck you may be the exception that gets through but most likely the person who studied and learned is going to do better than you I'm going to give you guys a real life example let's say I want to start a clothing line and Vince wants to start a clothing line but Vince hires Damon John and Damon John is done almost $4 billion in clothing sales Vince has experience with clothing I don't if they go out and decide which manufacture to use Vince and Damon are going to be texting manufacturer hey Robert can you do this clothing for me uh Hey Tech pack designer can you design this Tech pack for me what I'm going to be doing what is a manufacturer in Los

1:08:46 Angeles oh sorry sorry who is a manufacturer in Los Angeles wait what is a tech pack designer oh here's a bunch of websites hello Tech pack designer I'm going to be paying the dummy tax because when I call them or I email them they're going to charge me full price or more when Vince and Dam and John call them they're going to get discounts and free things for free and friendships and favors because Damon's been doing it for decades Vince has been doing it for a decade they have the experience and so while I'm trying to figure out how to start a clothing line and I'm like I should I order small medium large XL double XL triple XL quadruple XL how many should I order should I order 3,000 samples or 1,000 samples oh wait I only need 40 samples like I'm going to be paying the dummy tax you know how I know when I was 18 years old I paid the dummy tax I paid $336,000 for 12 sweaters when I was 18 years old I paid

1:09:34 $36,000 for 12 Setters and a leather jacket manufacturer charged me $21,000 for 12 jackets why I was 18 years old so they saw me coming from all away I had just done a million in sales I was about to I was on Pace to do 9 million sales and so we had some money and I was a kid and I went to these manufacturers bride eyed and bushy tailed and they just overcharged me and I paid the dummy tax and then later it led me to my real manufacturer Christopher Wix I'm still friends with today and he was The Guiding Light to help me with every little detail to save me 10 cents on things every little reason why the plastic should be this way why the box is this way why is the hanger this way literally the by the way quick side note if you sell to Walmart and your hanger is facing left instead of right they'll charge you 2 cents per unit so if you ship them 120,000 units they just send you an actual bill to pay them back 30

1:10:24 grand because you're hanging the wrong way so every little detail you learn in this example where Damon and Vince for example are having the experience is why books are important it's why masterminds are important it's why video courses and YouTube there's so much information for free that you can consume to help you not pay the dummy tax all right Vin go good well also real quick if you're utilizing your time if you're an entrepreneur what's the best use of my time right are you either going to drive and listen to music or you're gonna drive and listen to an audio book or you going to drive and listen to a mastermind that you're watching or something like that Your Entertainment your new entertainment should be watching MMS and learning why not it's the best I I drive 35 minutes to work and 35 minutes back I listen to audio books I don't listen music anymore I only listen music if I want to go out I

1:11:06 want to get into a good mood if I'm going to work I want to get thrilled about being at work I Want Be Inspired excited oh that's a good idea I'm going to apply that today this is great use your time wisely because we only have a few years doing this you know ultimately with a 40-year run within just doing business how could I use every single day and the last question is related to charity why do you think it's important for people to have a you know charity philanthropic part of their company their brand or with their employees why is it important for the culture to have some type of Charity component because you got to feel like it given back because it's the right thing to do I don't care what Bible you read you know if it's the Torah the Quran the Bible it all talks about giving back you have to give back it's it's part of your soul you know it just makes you feel more fulfilled we are so

1:11:54 stressed out the month of December right yeah it's l going nuts we had three-hour meeting argu in Vegas about about the Miami Heat arena what's going to happen it's so stressful the morning of the day of we don't have enough toys this happen but the minute it ends and we walked out and we went sat down in Carbone right so many smiling faces so many kids so many things and everybody came together for one cause if you build that that's building a culture and that's what changes people's lives and when you do that together with your team they want to be a part of it they feel good my holidays you know I've buried both my parents there is no going home to the Bronx that that that part of my life is gone but the new part of my life is me and you and my kids and your daughter going and our wives going out and doing these together and our kids are going to grow up knowing the holidays are not about what we get it's about what we

1:12:45 give back and how we give back and there Smiles that we share with everybody and we share that with our employees and our business it breathes life into it and and it makes it fun it really does so where can people find you this is going to be a lot of different companies where can they find you your companies the charity just give us the quick breakdown my Instagram is Vince Richie R ICI my last name Tris kids is Tris kids Hubble studio is at Hubble studio and balance is at balance Los Angeles you can pretty much get from navigate from one to the other from there super easy all right guys really really important to have discussions with your friends family and followers about money we all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money I think that's ridiculous you have to have discussions about accounting taxes loans what happens if I don't pay this what happens if I borrow money from my friend

1:13:36 and I don't get a contract should I split the rents should I split the bills it's real life bills are your real life medical bills Insurance these are all part of your daily life so you have to have discussions with people around you from your past present and your future about money things so that you can be ahead of the curve and you don't pay those dummy taxes every single year you've seen us for the last two years now not having sponsors not having logos not reading you long commercials so I want to give you direct information we have a 93% listen through rate and right now this week alone we are rated the number one entrepreneur podcast and we are trending as number one so we need your help like comment subscribe share check out Vince Ross social media and we'll see you guys next Monday on the money mondays.com

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "How We Went From a Beat-Up Van to 200+ Franchises w/ Nick Friedman & Vince Ricci 📈 EP112"?

Nick Friedman (Guest), Vince Ricci (Host).

What is "How We Went From a Beat-Up Van to 200+ Franchises w/ Nick Friedman & Vince Ricci 📈 EP112" about?

Nick Friedman and Vince Ricci discuss the remarkable journey of building College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving from a beat-up van to a thriving company with over 200 franchises and an annual revenue of $300 million. They share insights on entrepreneurship, the importance of hard work, and the business strategies that have led to their success.

What is mentioned in this The Money Mondays Podcast episode?

9 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Nick Fredman, College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving, Hubble Studio, Cambia Kids, The e- Myth Revisited, Chick-fil-A. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "How We Went From a Beat-Up Van to 200+ Franchises w/ Nick Friedman & Vince Ricci 📈 EP112"?

The episode runs 1 h 14 min; the transcript is about 16,773 words in 95 timestamped sections.

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