Blog
Real stories and actionable frameworks from 20+ years of building, failing, and learning. Explore by topic or start with the latest.
Four questions to help start your side business
I use four anchors to validate your business idea before you build: your specific primary user, the one job they need done, the exact context they're in, and the single metric that proves it works.
Five bullship excuses you need to get over right now
Stop waiting for perfect. Ship something good enough now, fail fast to learn, make time by defining what success actually means to you, build with almost no money, and hunt ideas by noticing what…
What should you build next - Honest answers to Reddit business questions
Stop guessing what to build next. Listen to what your customers are actually doing with your product, balance that against your own intuition, then ship it.
Ideas are not businesses... BUT THEY CAN BE!
I spent 20 years learning what not to do. Now I'm helping people shortcut those mistakes and turn ideas into actual businesses. It's just as rewarding as building things myself.
Why "Doing Nothing" is actually the secret to success
Constant grinding gets you halfway. The other half is patience—building a real plan and letting it actually play out instead of constantly tweaking it.
More Productive. Less Engaged. Trouble for teams.
Activity is up, engagement is collapsing — that's the Output Paradox. AI makes the easy work easier so people switch off, and your dashboards hide it. Fix the incentives, or apathy wins.
Your Brain on ChatGPT Is Worse Than You Think
AI didn't ruin documents—bad incentives did. Organizations pressure people to produce faster, so they use AI to skip the thinking. We're losing the skill of actually sitting with information and…
Being humble is holding you back
An investor asked why I wouldn't call my company the best in the world. A wrestle with whether confidence comes before the work or after it, and whether going quiet is humility or agency you gave up.
Why 'We're At War' Means You're About to Get Screwed
When leaders call work a 'war,' they've usually run out of incentives and ideas. Why boardroom war talk is a lazy manipulation to make you work harder for less, and what to ask when you next hear it.
How to become more interesting and interested
While everyone uses AI to sound like the average, you stand out by smashing your random interests together. How curiosity, self-efficacy and high agency make you more interesting, and more successful.
Are you using ai to fix your toilet?
AI makes me more engaged with the world, not less. From fixing my shower to making sense of my health data, how I use it to feed curiosity and tinker, without letting the tool use me.
The News is killing your happiness... don't let it!
I quit the news and my anxiety dropped while the world carried on fine. Why doomscrolling breeds helplessness, what Wrexham taught me about local impact, and how to think global but act local.
192 posts
Want These Ideas as a Keynote?
The ideas on this blog come alive in Nic's virtual keynotes. Real stories, actionable frameworks, tailored to your team.