Nic’s blog
I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.
Relationships are choices
One of the major roadblocks that people put in their way when starting a side hustle or business is their relationships.
“My partner doesn’t agree with this business.”
“My husband doesn’t want me to work on the weekends.”
“My father/mother/friends think I should forget this idea.”
One of the major roadblocks that people put in their way when starting a side hustle or business is their relationships.
“My partner doesn’t agree with this business.”
“My husband doesn’t want me to work on the weekends.”
“My father/mother/friends think I should forget this idea.”
Or one of the most popular excuses: “People will laugh at me if I fail.”
Let me get straight to the point: You are using these people as excuses for your own fears.
Your fears are driving you away from the life you want and the side hustle that could change everything. The people who drag you down are pulling you away from your success and you tolerate them. You tolerate them. You enable them. You allow them to belittle you and your ambitions because they happen to be your family, your friends or some random person that you told your idea to. That is batshit crazy.
You can choose different friends. You get to choose your family, especially if they’re assholes. Especially if they’re dragging you down to their level and beating you with experience.
You can choose to stop engaging with your family if they are bad for you. It’s OK to admit they are bad for you. All across the world, there are people who have siblings, parents, friends and extended family who hurt them, disappoint them or damage them. You don’t have to be a part of that.
I have had some difficult relationships in my life; an uncle who turned out to be a child molester and drug addict. Friends who I thought were close to me but never really cared about me. A business partner who betrayed my trust and sold a business behind my back.
These are meant to be relationships that uplift you and make you a better person. They didn’t for me and that’s actually OK.
It’s OK to walk away from relationships that are bad or even ones that are just not good enough.
At one point very early on in my entrepreneurial career, I was 19 years old and at university studying journalism. I started an online student publication with two friends. We slaved away building the site called StudentWire. It was a news aggregator for student news and after about 10 months of building this business, gaining traction and doing the hard work to get it live and get ten university campuses to provide us with weekly news stories I realised that my two business partners wanted the business to be a non-profit.
At university, there is always this undertone of saving the world and doing good and this message is often mixed up with anti-capitalism rhetoric that suggests that you cannot do good and make money. I believe you can do good and make money. We were at an impasse. We had fundamentally different ideals and there was really no way around it. I took the lead and decided that I believed the business could go all the way if we made if a for-profit entity. I stood my ground and took over the business from the two partners who were willing to give up their equity for their ideals.
That’s completely acceptable. That’s how things go. You sit down, you have a conversation and you decide if you stay together or move on. In truth, I don’t think our relationships were every the same but that’s also OK. I made a decision based on my world view and I stood by it. Not every partnership is going to work out. Not every friendship remains and not every person in your life is meant to be there forever.
You only have a finite amount of time each day, week, month, year to engage with other humans. You get to decide if you engage with humans that make you better or make you worse.
I choose to surround myself with friends who are the best people I know. They make me better, they support my side hustles, they push me every day to be a better version of myself and they hold me accountable.
Sure, sometimes we get smashed and have a party. Sometimes we talk about nothing and send each other random memes but these are people who I want to be more like and who will help me at the drop of hat and ask for nothing in return.
Everyone deserves this kind of person in their life. If you even have to second guess your relationships then it’s time to really analyse that relationship and decide if it’s more effort to stay in it than to get out. Is it better for you to be involved with these people or to walk away? Do they want the best for you and are they actively trying to help you get there?
Believe it or not, you get to choose. You get to decide who you spend time with. You are not obligated to see people just because they’ve always been around or you share some DNA.
To start a business, a side hustle, a new career or job you need the best people in your corner and if you don’t have them then your task becomes orders of magnitude more difficult.
Find the best people and get close to them.
Be the Most You That You Can Be
Today people think they can become famous by copying what other famous people do. The tricky part is how we’re experiencing fame. In the golden age of film and music, there were a handful of people around the world who were considered famous. Today there are literally tens of thousands of people who have bigger audiences than the stars of yesteryear.
The only way to make it out alive is to live as only you can live.
There is nothing new about wanting to be famous.
Eighty years ago you would see James Dean on the big screen and idolise him, want to be him and wish you were as cool as him. But you didn’t look like him and you weren’t as talented as him and you didn’t imagine you could be as famous as him by just copying what he did.
Today, that’s exactly how people believe they can become famous; by copying what other famous people do. The tricky part is how we’re experiencing fame. In the golden age of film and music, there were a handful of people around the world who were considered famous. Today there are literally tens of thousands of people who have bigger audiences than the stars of yesteryear.
Think I’m kidding? Here are just a few to get you thinking:
David Dobrik — 16.1m YouTube followers
Charlie D’amelio — 60m+ TikTok followers and 1.8bn likes (she’s 15 years old)
Casey Neistate — 11.9m YouTube followers through his daily vlogging
Lilly Singh — 14.9m YouTube followers
KSI — 19m YouTube followers
MKBHD — 11m Instagram followers
Liza Koshy—18m Instagram followers.
Jasmine Brown - 2.4m Youtube followers
These are regular people.
There really isn’t anything too unique about them yet these people each have an audience larger than the size of New York. Give that some thought.
We believe that media outlets influence our lives, they do, of coufse but not nearly as much as the famous people on social media these days.
I have been using TikTok recently and it’s been a trip, let me tell you. It’s filled with young people being themselves and getting famous for it. Never before have we seen a platform that can turn a simple 15 or 60-second video into a career of fame and fortune so quickly. You can post something unique and interesting and reach 1 million likes in a day. It’s insane. I posted a video of my one hand washing a tap and it received over 30 000 views in a week. My hand washed a tap for fuck sakes.
The people succeeding on these platforms (InstaFaceTokTube), the ones who are really leading the way, are being themselves. They are being the most version of themselves that they can be.
Everyone else is following or copying them.
Everyone else is following and copying because social media lets us believe that we are just like Charlie with her 60m followers. She’s just a kid who likes dancing. Young people see her and think to themselves “Hey, I’m a kid, I like dancing, I can do that.” And then get all pissy that they aren’t famous after a single upload.
There are copycats, of course. And there are people who can dance better than Charlie or put on makeup better than so and so or kick a ball better than blah blah blah. Sure, but if it isn’t your thing then it isn’t the most version of you and you’re fucked.
Acting like something is not the same as being that thing.
Faking a passion for dancing isn’t going to make you a famous dancer. Faking an obsession for cooking wont make you a famous chef.
Let’s take a look at Finlidrappermusic’s account. This guy is a drummer and all-rounder musician. He’s incredibly gifted and likes to play songs using glasses of water that are filled up to make different sounds. He could’ve just set up his drumkit and played drums and then posted to TikTok, but he didn’t. He chose to be the most version of himself that he could be. He didn’t look to anyone else, he just did the thing that he was doing and people loved it.
There are examples of this all over the world and throughout time. Yes copycats exit and yes they can make a lot of money doing what they do (copy) and do it well. But the ultimate question lies in front of them: Are they happy?
Probably not. Acting all day on social media and in life is hard work and tiring work and frustrating work.
Being yourself is not hard work. It’s hard work to get yourself out there and help people discover you. It’s hard work to become the best and refine your skills but it isn’t anywhere as difficult as being a worse version of someone else.
And here’s the thing, the people that I respect and admire the most in the world are not the ones with the most money or the biggest business or the fanciest houses. The people that I respect are the ones who know who they are and live accordingly every single day.
Advice from 30 year old me to 20 year old me
11 things that I wish I knew when I was 20.
This article was originally published in 2014 and has been read by over a million people across the world!
11 things that I wish I knew when I was 20.
I recently turned 30. For some very odd reason, I’ve not warmed to the idea of it just yet. However, as I began to evaluate my 20s I realised how many mistakes I’ve made and things I’ve learned in a decade of life.
I took some time to write myself some advice.
1) Travel
You have very little responsibility so go and travel. When you get to 30, you’re going to want to travel slightly differently, spend a little more, do slightly more expensive things, eat at slightly better restaurants. So work for a year and save enough money to experience the world on the cheap.
How do you know what you want to do if you don’t know what’s out there to do?
Don’t just travel to the obvious places.
Travel to the tough places.
Travel to learn.
Travel to discover.
Travel to the places that will challenge who you think you want to be.
2) Build things
Don’t spend too much time working on other people’s visions or in other people’s meetings. Spend time figuring out what your own world view is (see point 1) and where you want to take your own life.
Meetings are where ideas go to die.
If you find yourself in a corporate job that you wish you could leave then do it. Leave. If you don’t have a corporate job yet see point 5.
3) Read
Read every day. Read everything you can. Don’t just read about things you know about. Read about people. Read people.
4) Stop Watching Television
Right now. Stop it. It’s not helping you get better at anything.
5) Career
Do not take that corporate job. Just don’t do it (see point 2).
6) Trust
Even if it kills your relationships. Even if it destroys your ideas. Even if you lose your friends. Even if it means you end up getting hurt.
Trust people until they give you a reason not to.
But don’t be naïve. Some people are out to fuck you.
7) People
People are the best and worst thing that will happen to you. Some will help you go further, faster. Others will pull you down to their level and help you lose. Most are OK. Many are average. Some are excellent.
A few people will change your life forever. Find them.
You don’t need a lot of friends or people around you. You need amazing people who do for you as you do for them.
It’s simple really, a lot of average friends will leave you feeling alone when you need to feel surrounded by people who care.
8) Value Time
Don’t waste time on people who you don’t trust. Don’t waste time with lovers who cheat on you. Don’t waste time with friends who don’t treat you the way you treat them (see point 7).
Do not be late.
Value other people’s time. That means that if you’re late, you don’t give a shit about them or their time and that you think you’re worth more and therefore can keep them waiting.
Some people will tell you that it’s OK to be late. It’s not. Some people will tell you that it’s just the way they are. Then you need to reevaluate them (see point 7 above).
9) Fail
Fail a lot. Fail often. Fail at love. Fail at sex. Fail at socialising. Fail at making friends. Fail at work. Fail at business. Fail with family. Fail with existing friends.
Fail. But do it quickly and learn a lesson.
If you don’t learn something every time you fail then all you’ve done is failed. If you learn something, then you’ve grown. Every time you grow and learn and fail, you get better at figuring out how the hell to succeed.
10) Success
There is no point at which you will have succeeded. Not in your twenties. Not ever.
Get over that fact and start building things (see point 2 and combine with point 9).
11) Patience
Be patient. Nothing worth doing is worth doing quickly. Nothing worth building is worth building in a rush. Nothing of value is formed in a minute.
Plan in decades. Think in years. Work in months. Live in days.