I write because I write. It’s almost like I don’t have a choice. I started in my late twenties going through a rough patch and decided to write a novel about the events that had caused it. I became obsessed like I was driven by a daemon and have written in one form or another ever since. Sure, I take breaks, but always come back to continue with an old draft or start a new one – well over a million words of my adventures – real and imaginary.
I just took one of those breaks and even thought that the daemon might have left me, but then it came back with a passion and I finished off a draft that ended with me leaving Australia. It was a story of grief and trauma and ended with me and my beautiful young family flying out in business class to our new life in Lombok with enough to retire.
Friends would ask me what I would do in Indonesia and then follow with all these suggestions of business ideas. I would reply. “I think I might just hang by the pool with my wife and baby.” I really meant it, but now I am here, to be honest it gets a bit boring. We swim every day and I love it, but you can’t do it all day. God knows how you retire? I find it hard enough to have a holiday.
And retiring on a budget and having to do my own handyman repairs and cleaning sounds like harder work than working. I’m just not great at fixing and cleaning things in the real world. And it’s so God damn hot here. I’m exhausted after 20 mins doing anything outside.
I have moved to an area where I can get domestic help that costs me per month what my consulting rate would be per hour – if I consulted. To be honest it feels a little weird to be so much wealthier than the locals here, but I can deal with it (martyred sigh). We now have a maid and a kennel boy – he looks after the dogs and cleans the yard. It’s probably best if I sit in the aircon and focus on my core competency – selling shit online.
So I’ve established I have to write and work, but why this blog after all these years? One of my favourite TV series is “The Profit” with Marcus Lemonis. I could really see myself doing that. Well now I have my chance. I have liquid capital, personal experience, and a team to support me.
I have had so many failures. I’m not sure if that makes me a success or just experienced at failure. I really only have one success, one small niche in my garden planters business. I closed everything else when I left Australia. I did save enough money from these businesses to invest that have given me a decent war chest.
The worst failures of all was the mild successes, you can get lulled into a false sense of optimism when you can make a small profit and see a trajectory of success to then plateau. Worse were the businesses that had been successful in the first few years and then dipped to barely breaking even. The sunk cost fallacy kept me in these for a long time and it was hard to shut them down.
Flippa is full of these businesses. Microbusinesses that have peaked and now the founders are trying to cash out. I should have done that and hope I can act quicker in the future. I got offered 200K for one of my businesses just after Covid when online sales had ripped. I knocked it back out of emotions – I had had the business for 20 years and it was like my baby. I just couldn’t get rid of it. I recently closed it just before I left Australia. I probably could have sold it for something, but didn’t have the bandwidth while moving countries.
I believe I can spot a good business. It’s almost a compulsion. I walk into a business I am impressed with and just start running the numbers; rent, staff, turnover, cost of sales. Within a few minutes I have a profit and loss in my head – perhaps completely fictional, but I would like to think I am getting somewhere close.
I have a dream of investing in companies that I feel like I can understand and add value to in return for a profit share and a board seat. If they take my money then they will at least have to listen to my advice. And they will have to like my advice and business philosophy before taking my money – which they can get a feel for in this blog. This blog will be a window into my professional thoughts, dreams, experiences, mistakes, wisdom and shortcomings. And the audience will be entrepreneurs seeking investment.
I coach a few guys in business and considered doing it professionally, but the idea of an hourly rate, or even a retainer, or any consulting fee at all felt wrong. However as a board member and investor – that they have promised to listen to, is something I could enjoy. That is something I could build lifelong relationships and life changing money for many people from.
In my journey of this last decade I have consumed a lot of content from influencers. When I became single for the first time in 20 years I found men’s topics helpful. There was a few guys that had shared their experience and made a little content business out of it. Given my lean to writing, I thought I could do that, and a lot of the conversations with the guys I mentor end up being dating coaching. But I would rather retire than whore myself as a dating coach.
I settled down with my wife and my next obsession was finance and money. Again, I followed a lot of content creators who helped me gain financial competency – and make a lot of money investing. I thought one day I could find a niche like that too in the finance/geopolitics space, but I don’t feel like I understand it enough to teach. I only did well on the investing because of my judgement skills of people and was able to follow the right advice, rather than a detailed understanding of that advice. I think I could use that same judgement to back the right founders to invest with.
Apart from lack of talent holding me back from being an author/content creator is the fact I could never manage an audience. I fall of the grid for a week or 2 and obsessively start a new project, research a new interest or maybe even just read fiction if I feel the need. I could never be as consistent as I need to be a content creator and am unlikely to reply to comments on social media etc. I’m just not social enough to have a following.
However, as an investor, I don’t need to be an audience whore. I can just write what I want potential founders to know about me. You know, it will probably just be the daemon that does the writing.
Nickj Ecommerce Entrepreneur 