Jeffery:
so welcome nick your, we’re very excited to have you today at asking Angel and uh, where we work with, interview and talk with investors globally and uh, tomorrow will be our 50th interviews. So we’re very excited um, to be having you today. And the way we like to start and jump into things is if you can give us a little bit of a background on yourself, kind of where you come from, where you’ve been up to, where you’ve come through and then where you are today. And then one thing about you that nobody would know.

Nick:
Okay, yeah, I mean, to give you a little bit of background, I was, I think I was born with the entrepreneurial jean. I was selling golf balls, my dad’s friends as a kid and had a pressure washing business and you know, really anyway, that I could generate value for the small community around me. I grew up in a suburb near Vancouver called Port Moody, beautiful area and really enjoyed my time there. Heading through university, I went to the University of Victoria just off the coast of Vancouver here. I took the entrepreneurship track, I got a commerce degree there and you know, started a bunch of businesses during my time there and just kind of got the serial entrepreneur ball rolling, moved to Europe briefly, was doing some schooling over there, I met a girl over there and was there for a little bit longer than initially anticipated. And then I came back to Vancouver when I was about 21 or 22 at the time and I dove headfirst into the public venture capital markets where I was raising money for public businesses, learning how to market them, how to speak to investors, accumulating a network of my own, had some fairly early success, kind of by the time I was 24 25 and began, you know, I had this network of amazing entrepreneurs around me, I was in front of starting a lot of these businesses and so I was using the capital that I was, I was making in the public markets too. Not only further fund public deals, but also kind of act as a, as an angel investor in private companies and helping people put put companies together and putting the right people in the right seat. So I was kind of in this unique situation being this 25 year old kid that didn’t really know anything, but had made a little bit of money in the markets and just really started getting my feet wet in the angel investing space. So I guess, you know, fast forward. I’m 29 now and I’ve started a bunch of businesses in the last few years. There’s a few successful ones that are still running. I’ve got a marketing agency that I started in the public space called Edge investments that’s done really well, run by a good friend of mine, Kevin Matheson. I sit on the board of a few private companies I’m invested in and public boards and then more recently teamed up with some great people to start a company called GoPublic.ai. And essentially what we do is we identify great private businesses around the world. We connect with their founders and we learn a lot about their story and how we can help and how we typically help is we typically find them financing of a minimum of $1 million dollars upwards of 25 million, depending on the capital needs of the business. And then alongside us helping them with that capital raise, we take them public on one of the two Canadian stock exchanges here. Either the TSX Venture or the Canadian Securities Exchange. So I apologize for the long-winded answer, but that’s, that’s kind of the history and up until now.

Jeffery:
No, that’s good. That’s a great history. Um, well, some of the content and things that I’ve read and learned and listened about your background and um, what fascinated fascinated me about, obviously the things that you do about everything you do is very fascinating. But the one thing that I really wanted to touch on and learn a bit more about is, and you mentioned this when you were a kid, you were um, finding golf balls and selling them to your father and everybody. What was it like through your journey around this hustle? Because it sounds like, and there’s, I don’t say very few people, but it’s limited on people understanding what it takes to be an entrepreneur and I think you kind of found that and you’ve built it into everything you do, maybe you can kind of dive into a little bit more on what hustle really means. You know, people use it as a side hustle or I’m doing these other things are like extracurricular activities, but really they’re not that it’s, it’s a completely different game and it’s, it’s understanding where you want to be in pushing yourself to get there, but maybe you can dive in a little bit about what this hustle means to you.

Nick:
Yeah, I mean, I try to only get myself involved in businesses that I’m really passionate about and how I know I’m really passionate about it is my, you know, my level of drive and excitement and and the pure hustle that goes into it. And it’s about for me that the hustle part is very innate. I just, I have that drive to work the 15, 16, 17 hours a day on end. Actually where I struggled the most with is um you know, being really conscientious of balance and making sure that I, you know, um you know, I make enough time to keep my mental health grade to keep my physical health great to make sure I spend time with friends and that I’m filling all those buckets because I can become obsessive about whatever it is I’m working on. I mean, to give you an example this morning was a good example, I rolled over in bed this morning and clock was three a.m. And couldn’t get back to sleep, so I was like, well, I’ve got some stuff that I can do to help move the company along and help out some of our stakeholders and so, you know, it’s a you know, it’s an amazing bug to have because it allows you to create change in the world through business and your ideas and putting the right people together. So I guess, I guess that’s a little bit about my mentality towards hustle.

Jeffery:
No, that’s great because that’s really the biggest part to hustle is being able to understand that you’ve got it, but then using it, Your brain turns on and you just start working and like you said at three. a.m. your I can either try and fight sleeping for the next three hours, I c