Over the past 25+ years Nick has worked in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. As a seasoned entrepreneur he has founded and sold multiple multi-million dollar agencies and advised countless others, including Fortune 500 companies, non-profit organizations, small businesses, entrepreneurs, political parties and members of royalty.

Nick wrote the best selling book, ‘Exactly Where You Want to Be – a business owners guide to passion, profit and happiness’. He owns and operates a coaching and peer-advisory agency, an international marketing agency, and a project management company.

Fun fact – Nick met his wife eighteen years ago at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.

Outside of work, Nick is studying to be a Sommelier and loves international travel.

Find Nick Online:

https://www.exactlywhereyouwanttobe.com/

http://www.nettresultsllc.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickleighton/

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Transcript (Provided by CastMagic.io)

Seth [00:00:00]:

Entrepreneurs Enigma is a podcast for the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, the wins and the fails that we all face being entrepreneurs. How we learn from adversity. Every week, I talk to a different entrepreneur with a story to tell. I’m Seth Goldstein. Come with me on the journey. This is Entrepreneurs Enigma. Let’s get started. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Entrepreneurs Enigma podcast. I am, as always, Seth, your loyal host. Today. I have a budy of mine, nick Leighton. He is the author of Exactly Where You Want to Be a Business Owner’s Guide to Passion, Profit, and Happiness. He is a business coach, a life coach, peer advisory agency. He’s run a digital agency out of Dubai. Actually, everywhere. Literally everywhere. He’s been all over the place. Hello, Nick. How are you?

Nick [00:01:03]:

I’m doing great. How are you doing?

Seth [00:01:04]:

I’m doing well. I’m doing really well. It’s hot here. It’s the summertime. We’re on a code orange now. I’m like, great. The beginning is starting again. Yeah, no, that’s okay.

Nick [00:01:14]:

It looks like you’re set up for it, though.

Seth [00:01:16]:

I just walk right before this, so I’m a little out of breath because I have a 65 pound air doodle, and that thing walks me, so it’s kind of crazy.

Nick [00:01:26]:

I’ve got a little one which is nine pounds. It jumps up, jumps too.

Seth [00:01:29]:

But when she jumps up, she’s about as tall as you. It’s fun. So, Nick, you have been all over the place. You’ve done the corporate. You’ve done the corporate in the Middle East Asia area. You then decided, I’m going to do it myself. I can do it better myself. You did it. You’re on your own for a while, and then you had some exits. You wrote a book, for crying out loud, which is quite enjoyable, especially when you read with a British accent. You have to because you’ll get the humor better that way. Nick, how are you doing today?

Nick [00:02:03]:

I’d say great. You know what it is? I think there’s a journey. There’s several different journeys you can be on. Either they all kind of sequentially go together, or somehow they magically mesh. So, yeah, it’s fantastic. I’m doing what I want to do, so that’s the main thing.

Seth [00:02:15]:

Exactly. So let’s go back to corporate. So you were working in advertising, right?

Nick [00:02:21]:

So I worked for a large tech company. Listed company, yeah. And I was their marketing manager. Quick story. I was hanging out in England doing my own thing, and some guy said to me, hey, Nick, you owe me a favor. Can you go to an interview for me? I’m like, I’m not looking for a job. My way Deal isn’t an HR guy, and I’ve got to get six people to go for the job. You won’t get it. Don’t worry. Thanks. Okay. But I’ve got to present six people. I’m like that’s. Cool. So what’s the job? Marketing manager for this tech company based in London, actually, in slough, which is like the Armpit of England.

Seth [00:02:55]:

If you say so.

Nick [00:02:56]:

I have no idea where the original office was filmed. That’s where it would be.

Seth [00:03:01]:

Oh, really? The Burbs. The Burbs, as we call it here.

Nick [00:03:04]:

Yeah. So I went for this interview and a woman who interviewed me, who was French and 20 minutes late because all French people are 20 minutes late, said to me, what job have you come for? I said, well, what jobs have you got? And she said, this marketing manager job based in the UK or marketing manager in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. I’d never been to Eastern Europe or the Middle East. I’m like, Yep, that’s the one. Where did they get I wasn’t even looking for a job, so had this nice little conversation with this woman. About a week later they called me up, I’m still not looking for a job. And they’re like, hey Nick, can we interview you a second time? I’m like, sure. Hey look, can you just fly to Paris for the day?

Seth [00:03:39]:

It’s not terrible.

Nick [00:03:40]:

No, right? They set up a business plus ticket. Okay, go. I landed, some driver picked me up, I chatted to them for 45 minutes. They sent me back again, sitting in Business Plus sea with my champagne.

Seth [00:03:52]:

What is it, two hour flight?

Nick [00:03:54]:

Yeah, it’s tiny, it’s no big deal. From another Paris. An hour?

Seth [00:03:58]:

Wow. It’s like from DC. To New York, right?

Nick [00:04:02]:

I’m still not looking for a job. They call me up the next week, they’re like, hey Nick, can we interview you again? I’m like, sure. Like Munich this time. Hey, same deal, go to the airport.

Seth [00:04:10]:

Hey, get some beer. So you went from Paris, where you get some cheese and baguette and wine for lunch. Now you fly to Munich, which is what, you had an hour? So it’s 3 hours now or two and a half hours now. You get some good, really good beer.

Nick [00:04:23]:

Yeah, some pretzels, some good beer. We’re like, we’re enjoying that. I’m there, I chat in 45 minutes, I leave again, I’m coming back in. I’m like flying into London over all the traffic and the rain, getting my.

Seth [00:04:33]:

Business class, c, wait, London rain? Really?

Nick [00:04:36]:

Right.

Seth [00:04:37]:

What a surprise. Right?

Nick [00:04:38]:

Yeah, right. One of the 50 weeks was rain and I’m like, hey, this isn’t such a bad job, maybe I should just take it. So, yeah, they offered me the job, I took it. They never flew me business class ever again. Whole thing. Well, I’m like thanks a lot. So, yeah, I started in Paris, worked in Paris for this tech company. Then I said to them, hey, Paris is not in Eastern Europe or the Middle East and if I’m doing the marketing for those regions, shouldn’t I be there? They’re like, sure, where do you want to go? Like taking Prague? They said, OK, no problem.

Seth [00:05:05]:

Oh, another good city and still good beer.

Nick [00:05:09]:

Cheaper bit much cheaper. Bit.

Seth [00:05:10]:

Oh, my God, the beer is cheap there. Are they the euro now, or are they still the crown?

Nick [00:05:17]:

Back then it was.

Seth [00:05:20]:

Now I was in Prague. Oh, my God, the stuff I could buy for like $5.

Nick [00:05:28]:

If I bought a home in downtown Prague when I lived there, I don’t think I would have needed to work. I think I could have just retired on that one. Home price going up in value.

Seth [00:05:38]:

It would have been, yeah. So now you’re in Prague, you’re actually in Eastern Europe, you’re in the E. I’m doing it.

Nick [00:05:44]:

I’m traveling to different countries every week. It’s super fun. I’m in Poland or I’m in Turkey or wherever I have to go, and Middle East was part of it. So I’d go down to the Middle East, and then after a couple of years of doing that, I realized that I could really find people and agencies in Eastern Europe, but not in the Middle East. So I could have relocated myself over the Middle East. And that’s how I got down to.

Seth [00:06:05]:

So I got down to Dubai, because you’re filling a blank, essentially. There’s the workers there that are great. It’s just no agency to kind of organize it. Right.

Nick [00:06:16]:

So there’s no marketing agency. They didn’t understand how to do PR or marketing from a Western perspective. They suddenly didn’t understand technology. So now, okay, this is pretty cool. I’ve been doing for a couple of years. I call up like, five of my friends. They all are marketing managers for other tech companies. I’m like, hey, if I start this agency, would you guys use us? And everyone said, sure, Nick, we know you. We like you. And yeah, there’s no one else we can use. So why started an agency with five blue chip clients? Day one.

Seth [00:06:46]:

That’s nice. That’s very nice.

Nick [00:06:48]:

Yeah, pretty lucky. And then fortuitously, nine months later, the Dubai government announced Dubai Internet City, and that pushed every large tech company to my front door.

Seth [00:06:58]:

You got in there first.

Nick [00:07:00]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:07:01]:

We’re going to take a quick break here from our sponsors and get right back to the show.

Nick [00:07:05]:

So basically before I knew it, I had three offices, 20 plus people. It was a false growing agency, and it’s super fun.

Seth [00:07:12]:

And then later on, you had an exit. When we talked last, you said that they didn’t want the name, which was very fortuitous as well, because then you could use the name again, right?

Nick [00:07:23]:

Exactly. So this agency was expanding out of the UK. They wanted to buy the agency. That’s cool. You can buy my offices, which has worked a lot in my client base and my employees. And I said, so how are you going to brand this? And they’re like, Nick, we just want you to leave from day one. I’m like, sure, why not?

Seth [00:07:38]:

Wow. They actually let you leave from day one. That’s pretty wild.

Nick [00:07:41]:

That’s pretty wild.

Seth [00:07:42]:

Usually they hold you for like, three years.

Nick [00:07:44]:

Right? And they’re, no, no, we just want your just we don’t need you because we have managers, we’re going to bring them down and we’re going to rebrand your agency from day one to our brand, which is like, we’re just going to turn around.

Seth [00:07:55]:

It was Accohire minus the founder.

Nick [00:07:57]:

Right. I’m like that’s. Cool. I’m like, So you don’t want to buy the brand that I have? They’re like, look, we don’t care about your name. I’m like, you know what? I won’t even sell it to you. They’re like, that’s great, take it off the table. We don’t care.

Seth [00:08:09]:

Which is awesome, because then later on, you were able to open up something similar.

Nick [00:08:13]:

Really? Yeah, people would come to me. I was frozen out of the market. I’m like, no, I got to go to the guys who bought me. This is their name, Kosil. And then after less than two years, some guy came back and he’s not here anymore. They couldn’t make it work. They withdrew out of the region.

Seth [00:08:26]:

Oh, my God.

Nick [00:08:29]:

Interesting. I’m like, Well, I can’t really go back and try and pitch for my old clients. I can’t really take off my own employees, but I can turn my website back on and the same brand just came out. It’s like, awesome. 24 hours later, we’re back in business.

Seth [00:08:42]:

You get to double dip, essentially.

Nick [00:08:44]:

It is, yeah, absolutely.

Seth [00:08:45]:

That is wild. So what was the impetus for the book? I mean, obviously all your life experiences, you were hijacked at one point, which you can’t leave out.

Nick [00:08:54]:

Yeah, absolutely. As you know, I kind of lived in many places, so the whole story of how to build a business, how to find your real passion, how to have fun while you’re doing it, and I very fortuitous that I could do that and the way that things worked out for me. So all those learnings together, and I think the moment that I really realized that you had to have fun was when we got hijacked. We were hijacked.

Seth [00:09:19]:

Hold on, you were hijacked? That’s what sink in there. You continue.

Nick [00:09:23]:

So, yeah, there I was flying in a very large helicopter in Pakistan. We were doing work, pro bono work, for the United Nations. So we would take the media from around the world and we would show them areas. It could have been anywhere. Cambodia, somewhere in Pakistan, where all the aid was needed. And the idea was the media would report on it back in their home countries and then we’d get more donations.

Seth [00:09:46]:

Yeah, right.

Nick [00:09:48]:

So we’re in two helicopters, and the way this gig worked is we would fly everyone into a central city, so Karachi, and we would win and dine them. We would put them in front of the Prime Minister or president in the embassy. They saw the well, and then the next day we would take them to the poorest area to show them where that aid was needed. And that kind of juxtaposition worked really nicely for them.

Seth [00:10:10]:

Yeah.

Nick [00:10:11]:

Day one, we meet all dign trees. We see the next police. We’re just mines, have them together. It’s all good. We’re in our helicopters and I look down and I know our flight path. I’m like, It looks like these mountains are alongside of the helicopter. So I get up it’s one of these ones where you’re, like, all belted in together.

Seth [00:10:29]:

Yeah, exactly.

Nick [00:10:30]:

Yes. I stand up, go over to the pilot. I’m like, Dude, what’s going on? He’s like, Nick, you see the two F 16s? They’re telling us where to go. So that was my best.

Seth [00:10:38]:

You were hijacked by the Pakistani government, pakistani military police.

Nick [00:10:42]:

They had two F 16 in the air flying NASU. Now, I don’t know if you’ve seen an F 16 in the flesh. It is pretty intimidating, scary. I mean, it’s 42 foot one. I mean, it’s a big machine with a lot of fighting power. So I looked at the guy, I’m like, what are we going to do? He’s like, we’re going to do whatever they want us to do. Seems like a good idea. Bear in mind, we’re in United Nations branded helicopters, so he’s like, they’re going to tell us to put down somewhere, so we’re just going to go with that. I’m like that. Sounds good. So now I’m thinking to myself, okay, I got to go sit down, but am I going to tell the press what’s going on? I’m like, well, yeah, let’s see what happens. So we land in this field surrounded by guys with machine guns. We get put on this truck and we get driven to we don’t know where we’re going to go, but ten minutes later, we’re in this camp with all these refugees that have come out of the mountains, the Kashmir mountains, after this earthquake, they’ve all been put up by the government. And so we got out. We had no idea what we’re supposed to do. And they come and they offer us, like, tea and cookies. And we’re like, that’s cool. And this was the way in Pakistan, they wanted to use the media. They’re like, well, thanks, Nick. You brought the media to us. Now we will just use the media to showcase our aid. Athletes.

Seth [00:11:57]:

I love it.

Nick [00:11:57]:

We try to maybe walk out of the camp a little bit. That wasn’t going to happen. We were pretty much like back in.

Seth [00:12:03]:

You see where they are and then they return you the helicopter and they say, thank you very much.

Nick [00:12:07]:

That’s it. And then we went and did our thing. So we actually never told the media. That was an unplanned stop until they all got back to our home countries.

Seth [00:12:16]:

By the way, that little F 16, little side hustler, that was a hijacking.

Nick [00:12:24]:

And you might sort of be careful of how you report what part of.

Seth [00:12:27]:

The story crap their pants, right?

Nick [00:12:29]:

Well, that’s what I thought. I don’t want people freaking out.

Seth [00:12:32]:

True marketer. True marketer.

Nick [00:12:34]:

Right. But I knew at the time that this was I didn’t thought, oh, my God, I’m in huge danger. It was just part of the experience. It was part of the story. And so that’s kind of the genesis of exactly what you want to be. Are you doing things you love? At the time? I love flying. I was doing media. I love media. I love giving back to the community. All these things are happening all at the same time. So it wasn’t a crazy thing.

Seth [00:12:54]:

That’s crazy. So what is the best thing about being an entrepreneur? I mean, besides getting hijacked by the Pakistani military?

Nick [00:12:59]:

Well, okay, the flip side of that is freedom. 100% freedom position.

Seth [00:13:07]:

Yeah.

Nick [00:13:07]:

They do that because they want freedom. They want freedom to earn the amount of money they want to earn. They don’t want to answer anyone, which is north. True, but beyond to clients, et cetera, and maybe team members. But they want to do what they want to do. Right.

Seth [00:13:22]:

I love that. So on the flip side, what keeps you up at night, especially now that you’ve been through all that stuff? You’ve restarted the company, you’re doing your consulting, you’re doing your coaching. What keeps you up at night?

Nick [00:13:32]:

Nothing really keeps me up at night, I got to say. Good reason why I say that is because I think sleep is actually one of the most important things for health, which you need if you want to be an entrepreneur. You’ve got to be healthy all the time. So you’ve got to look after that.

Seth [00:13:45]:

Love it, love it, love it. And what is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Nick [00:13:50]:

I carry with me all night, all the time. Probably the relationship that I have with my wife. We’ve been married for 18 years.

Seth [00:13:56]:

Oh, wow. God bless you.

Nick [00:13:58]:

And I did not grow up in that kind of environment. My mother was married probably six times. Yeah. Long stories about who my father married, didn’t marry, had kids, didn’t nobody know.

Seth [00:14:09]:

You have a lot of siblings.

Nick [00:14:11]:

Say that again.

Seth [00:14:12]:

You have a lot of siblings, I assume.

Nick [00:14:13]:

Yeah, possibly. Although they say they’re siblings. Who knows? Who knows?

Seth [00:14:17]:

Exactly. I’m a child. Divorced, but more structured divorce. I’m not going to say yours was unstructured. I know my siblings and all that stuff, and I love it. I wouldn’t trade for the world. It’s all I know. But I could see how the upbringing does. I mean, I’ve been married to my wife 15 years, and that’s completely counteractive to most of my family. And I’m like because I find the value in working through things. Not saying divorce is a bad thing. Sometimes you have to kind of cut your ties, but it’s worth working through things. Especially for my kiddo.

Nick [00:14:49]:

Sure, absolutely. Yeah. Family. But having that constant that someone with you who’s sharing that journey with you. That’s important. I mean, I don’t know if you ever traveled on your own. If you travel solo, you want to turn someone. Did you just see what I saw? How cool is that? And that’s life. You do that trip of life with someone. That’s awesome.

Seth [00:15:11]:

It’s so much fun. Exactly. So, Nick, where can people find you online? Where’s your major watering hole? Where do you hang out the most?

Nick [00:15:18]:

Okay. Exactly where you want to be. That’s the name of the book. Exactly where you want to be. That’s probably the first place.

Seth [00:15:24]:

Very creative.

Nick [00:15:25]:

Yeah, exactly. Thank you. I try to keep it simple, or you’ll find me, Nick late on LinkedIn as well. It’s always a great place.

Seth [00:15:30]:

I’m always hanging out on LinkedIn. Absolutely. That’s the wornhole of the business folk. I love it. So, Nick, thank you so much for being on the program. This has been so much fun. I’m so glad you reached out initially on LinkedIn, and we became friends, and we’re chatting, and I think it’s fantastic. So thank you so much for being on Seth.

Nick [00:15:47]:

Thanks for you. This is awesome. I love what you’re doing with the podcast.

Seth [00:15:50]:

Thank you. And we’ll see everyone next time. That was a great show. If you’re enjoying entrepreneurs Enigma, please view us in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps other podcast listeners find our show. If you’re looking for other podcasts in the marketing space, look no further than the Marketing Podcast Network@marketingpodcasts.net. Goldstein Gee hopes you have enjoyed this episode. This podcast is one of the many great shows on the MPN Marketing Podcast Network.