Today's mindset shift: The sexier the industry, the dumber the competition.
Storage units. Metal boxes in gravel lots. No app. No algorithm. No pitch deck with hockey stick projections.
Nick Huber and his partner Dan Hagberg broke ground on their first self-storage facility in 2016, in Dryden, New York, ten minutes past Ithaca. Doors opened in 2017. Not because either of them dreamed of climate-controlled units as a kid. Because the math worked and nobody on Twitter was talking about it.
By Huber's own math: $2.4 million all-in. Half a million of their own cash, half a million from friends and family, a bank loan for the rest. Two years later the bank appraised it at $5 million. He says it's worth north of $8 million today. While tech founders burned runway chasing users, Huber collected rent checks from people storing their dead grandmother's furniture.
By 2023, Bolt Storage ran some sixty facilities across eleven states. About 1.9 million square feet of metal boxes, built partly with over $40 million raised from investors happy to fund gravel lots.
Storage wasn't even the start. He and Hagberg spent a decade hauling student boxes with a moving company first. Now he preaches what he calls "sweaty startups." Lawn care. Cleaning services. Moving companies. Industries where the barrier to entry is a truck and a willingness to answer the phone.
His competitors? Guys who hate marketing. Owners who haven't touched their website since 2008. Businesses running on paper invoices and gut feelings.
The tech world fights over the same 10,000 customers with the same Facebook ads and the same landing page templates. Huber competes against Larry who still advertises in the Yellow Pages.
The mindset shift:
Boring repels competition. Every founder chasing AI and crypto leaves another unsexy industry wide open. The less you can brag about at dinner parties, the more likely you are to win.
30-Second Action:
- List three industries you'd be embarrassed to tell friends about.
- Google "[industry] + for sale" or "[industry] + franchise."
- Note the profit margins.
Tomorrow: Day 96: The Passion Myth Debunked
Nobody's disrupting porta-potties. That's the opportunity.