Nick Papworth: Surviving Cancer in His 20s to Build a Business From Scratch

This transcript is auto-generated and lightly edited for readability, it may contain errors.

[0:00] Sammie Ellard-King: My name is Sammie Ellard-King, and welcome to the Money Gains Podcast. This is a show all about making, saving, and investing your money, interviewing the top minds in the industry to uncover their tips and tricks. And today, my guest is Nick Papworth, who is a social media and digital product expert. And we are gonna dive into one of the most hottest side hustles on the planet now. This is Germany, and it’s probably one of the most mentalist stories we’ve ever had on the podcast. Honestly is so inspirational, I can’t even tell you. So even if you just listen to it, you’ll be blown away. Let’s get started on the money in this podcast.

[0:58] Sammie Ellard-King: How are you doing? You well? Very well. Pleasure to be mate, I’m excited. I’ve been following you for a while, and I love what you’re doing. Lot of similarities in a lot of ways to what with some of the stuff that we cover, but I wanted to get you on just to kind of like unpack possibilities for people. And just kind of it’s a little bit of a different episode today of like straight personal finance. It’s going to be more around doing something different with your time and making money in some interesting ways. So yeah, I’d love to hear a little bit about you. Bring us up to speed, man. Yeah, cool.

[1:34] Nick Papworth: Um, yeah, it sounds like a great sort of uh setting for the episode, I think, showing people what’s possible, speaking to people that maybe were just like they were not too long ago, and that was definitely me. So I started my sort of working career in a state agency, decided I wanted to be a surveyor, and yeah, boo. Um, but I kind of enjoyed it. I like the sales side of things, and that was about it. I definitely didn’t want to be an estate agent. I thought surveying was going to be for me, so I went and did the degree. Uh, got a little bit ill in between, which we can go into um in a bit. But when I got to the end of the

[2:19] Nick Papworth: degree, I finished it. I thought, yeah, I’m gonna go and head to the city and some real money, and this is gonna be great. Uh realised actually, no, it just looked like it sucked. And uh as I’d sort of gone through, I think it was like the second year of my degree, I started learning about business and making money on the side, and I thought, oh, I don’t think I really would like a boss. I think it’d be quite nice to just sort of do what I want to do. Started up an Amazon business after a failed online business directory, and yeah, the Amazon business really led me on to decide not to be a surveyor, um, give up on all of that, and

[3:04] Nick Papworth: I started doing that full-time uh a little while later.

[3:08] Sammie Ellard-King: Love that journey, man. It’s kind of cool that you well, I mean, to be honest, who does what their degree is? Let’s be honest. Yeah, it’s bad, isn’t it?

[3:19] Nick Papworth: Yeah, I sort of realised maybe I I think by the second year um that this probably wasn’t going to be something I was gonna do, but I thought, well, my mum always said to me, I never finish anything, so I thought, right, I’ll I’ll finish this one. Um, but the one the one good thing it did give me was we learnt a lot about critical thinking, learning how to like question things, and I I think one of the big things uh that I think about quite a lot is so in schools they teach you how to write, and we’re all like we go through each year and we have to sort of sound as impressive, use complicated words and try to sound as intelligent as possible. That continues through university,

[4:05] Nick Papworth: it gets even worse. When you sort of come out into the working world, unless you’re doing something uh where you’re having to use big clever language, you realise that that only really complicates communication. And now the sort of world I’m in, which is marketing, communication, digital marketing, actually, the sort of more simple you make your sort of sentences and your words, uh, the better effects they have. And it’s why some of the sort of most popular newspapers in the world are written at like I think the New York Times is like at a grade nine reading level, I think something crazy like that.

[4:46] Sammie Ellard-King: Um something that I’ve been doing in all of my marketing. Don’t take any offense to anybody listening to this at all, but I speak at like a grade three, grade four level, uh in the newsletters, in the way that we present stuff, offers, anything. And as soon as I did that, our conversions are up enormously. And yeah, I think The Sun writes at a grade four level. Um just like it’s easier to understand. Uh and interestingly, Donald Trump, you know, not a biggest Donald Trump fan, but he actively rewrites all of his speeches to speak at a grade four or grade five level. Uh because people immediately can

[5:31] Sammie Ellard-King: just understand it. As soon as you start using words like onomatopoeia or like all these weird words that you used to learn in school and have to like spell back, people just switch off. And so it’s really interesting that you say that.

[5:42] Nick Papworth: Yeah, it is. I I think the easiest thing somebody can do if they want to write something that’s gonna convince someone to do something, maybe that’s buy something, maybe that’s give you a chance, a job interview. It is to simplify the language as as much as possible. So you’ll want to try and, you know, in some cases we’re sort of taught, oh, I’ll try to make the sentences longer, this will really help. And it won’t, uh, people just get bored, and you you should learn to write how you talk as if you’re just chatting to a friend. Um, yeah, that’s it’s so counterintuitive. You spend years learning sort of how to write and how people sort of expect you to sound when in reality

[6:27] Nick Papworth: it’s much different.

[6:29] Sammie Ellard-King: Completely different, yeah, yeah, the way of the world, man. But let’s dive in a little bit about your story. You put up a post the other day, and like I was blown away, man, and just simply like through the journey that you’ve gone through and where you are now. Um, so yeah, first off, absolute hats off to you before we get into it because it’s an incredible story. Um, but yeah, let’s let’s spill the beans, dude.

[6:55] Nick Papworth: Yeah, no, I appreciate it. So it’s probably best to start by saying, and I want to say this because I think there’ll be someone listening right now that maybe messes around quite a bit. Um, I spent my younger years trying to be as popular as possible to please as many people as possible, but I thought the whole sort of success and peak of life meant people liking you and you maybe being accepted and you in friendship groups and you had to be interesting, funny, all of this stuff. So I became quite obsessed with that. Spent my teenage years like doing absolutely nothing, really, just thinking

[7:40] Nick Papworth: I would probably be successful, but my actions were actually like you know, crazy, just drinking, like being a bit of an idiot, um, thinking I was going to be successful, but really it was just all talk. And I got to the age of 21, and I th I’d say, you know, I’d I hadn’t yet, I’d been away to university, I went away to Leeds the first time, came back after like a week and a half, and decided now I couldn’t do it, when actually, you know, I just wasn’t I wasn’t ready for any sort of serious change in my life. And then I sort of went, ended up uh going to Chelmsford University, did a year there, and was still like

[8:25] Nick Papworth: mucking around and and just like wasting my time. And I’d noticed like that year I was starting to feel unwell. I think maybe it was around probably June or July, I started to feel uh quite unwell. I was losing quite a bit of weight, but I didn’t think that was that strange because I wasn’t really looking after myself very well. And it started to get worse. I went to the doctors and they thought, oh, yeah, we think you’ve got glandular fever, you’ve got quite a high sort of infection count in your blood. I thought, oh, you know, okay. Anyway, it started to get worse. I started to have veins sort of appear on my chest, which

[9:10] Nick Papworth: is very strange. Um my head actually started to swell up, which was um sort of really weird. Um and anyway, I I went to it got worse and worse, and I was starting to feel out of breath, and I knew something was up, but I just didn’t know what it was. In the night, I was having I was waking up and the bed sheets were like drenched in sweat. Not not just like you know, a little bit, just like completely. And went to the doctors, they said, Cool, we’ll give you an x-ray. And I said, Oh, Nick on really sorry, but it looks like your right lungs collapsed. And they said, Oh, you know, it’s it’s quite common with uh young men that are quite

[9:56] Nick Papworth: tall. I thought, I’m I’m not really that tall, I’m maybe nearly 5’11, I’m 5’10, 5’11, something like that. And anyway, I thought, okay, they said, We’ll we’ll send you up to Ipswich Hospital, which is near near where I live, and um, you know, they’ll they’ll talk about like re-inflating your lung. I thought, oh, it’s a bit a bit annoying. I don’t really like the sound of that, getting my sort of like chest stabbed or whatever it was it was gonna mean. Got there, things were like starting to maybe get a bit worse. I think I passed out, and they started doing some tests, and then I had blood tests, they went into my like chest, took a little sample out,

[10:41] Nick Papworth: like a little needle thing, and the next day I sat down in a room with a doctor, and it was a very different vibe. You know, we when you walk in summer and you’re like, ooh, it’s like somebody died. What’s what’s uh what’s going on in here? And uh, yeah, they they just said, Um, you know, we’re really sorry we found uh a tumour and it looks very suspicious. And I said, uh like I was sitting there with my parents, it was obviously incredibly upsetting. Um they I just said, Is you know, does that mean it’s cancer? Is that what it is? I I didn’t really know. I knew what cancer was, but I just thought, oh, if you have cancer, it’s really bad. Um so I didn’t know anything about it. And they said, Yeah, and

[11:26] Nick Papworth: from that point, I I was blue-lighted to a hospital in London in St. Paul’s called St Bart’s. And yeah, like that that day I went up, or that evening, um, I went up on my own because um I think my it was quite late at night in Ipswich by the time they sort of could take me up. And yeah, I remember sitting down and or lying in the bed, and a doctor came in and said, Look, we’re gonna start like chemotherapy tonight. I thought that’s that’s crazy. And anyway, so my family all like got up there first thing the next day, and we sort of found out it was a um

[12:12] Nick Papworth: it was a type of testicular tumor, just that type, um, although like nothing was going on down there, like thankfully, that’s what I was very pleased about. But the the the type of tumour, the type of cell had just found itself in my chest and started, you know, growing. And it got so big that my right lung had sort of fully flattened. So that the scans of it, this thing was like um can’t really see, but it was like 20 centimetres by 14 centimetres. And I think Ipswich, it was absolutely like huge. Ipswich Hospital said it was the it was the biggest uh infection, so tumour marker. That’s how they measure

[12:57] Nick Papworth: like the sort of progression of a tumour, how big it is. Um, someone that’s really into biology or science might just correct me, but please do. I don’t really know what I’m talking about. But anyway, it’s really big. They said the it’s a big one, yeah. It’s a big one. I thought, oh that’s that’s pretty bad. And they said, you know, you’ve got 60% chance of survival. And I was like, Jesus, what that is absolutely outrageous. You can’t tell me that. I thought that doesn’t sound very good, even though you’re like 60% small than 50. You’re like, I don’t think anyone really would fancy even a like 95% chance. So anyway, the the best part about it was I I was lucky in that it was

[13:42] Nick Papworth: a type of testicular um cancer, which is one of the most curable, one of the most treatable, curable. Um it just needs like aggressive chemotherapy. And you know, there’s some a lot of types of cancers out there that aren’t responsive to chemotherapy or radiotherapy, which is why the outcomes are so different. So they said, look, like it’s it’s bad, but it’s treatable. I thought, cool. So I was in I I had chemo in the hospital for about three months, and I went home I think twice in between, lost all my hair. And my eyebrows, that was the worst bit. It’s not it’s not the hair, it’s you everyone looks so weird without eyebrows, and you just don’t know it until

[14:28] Nick Papworth: they’re gone. But um went through that, had a had surgery, which was like about, and they said at the beginning of the surgery, they said, right, it’s it’s shrunk enough, but because it’s invaded all your central like um arteries and things, it’s attached itself to like the safety sack surrounding your heart. Like we can’t shrink it anymore, but it has to come out. And I think some of my nerves had like got you know were within it as well.

[14:57] Sammie Ellard-King: So all a bit weird.

[14:59] Nick Papworth: And they said, like, you basically got another 60% chance of survival, like the operation. We have to tell you, like, sign this form. I was like, cool, by that point, I was a bit braver, I think, than than the first time around. And I think it was like an 11-hour op. Um, which yeah, you can see I posted up a picture, I think that was maybe three days after surgery because I was I was in intensive care at that point, but um I was a bit more with it, and yeah, without a doubt, the best thing that’s ever happened to me, which which sounds horrendous, but and and I will explain that. Um, but I was really lucky they they got it out. Um, I’ve been this was 2011,

[15:45] Nick Papworth: August the 26th was the day of I sort of started treatment, and we’re now you know 18th of June 2024. Um, so how many years is that like 13, um almost 13 years. And uh yeah, it’s been it it was the moment that made me it changed my perspective on everything, but gave me a great story to tell people about. Yeah um but also something that I don’t know, it inspired me to sort of question what I thought of myself before. So before I thought you’ll never die. I literally just thought I will never

[16:30] Nick Papworth: die. Like I know other people will, but I’ll be fine. Like I just I just won’t. When you face your mortality, especially at a young age, it’s I think it can actually be quite like a powerful thing when you understand like oh shit, this this could be um this could be it at any point. You start this could be it, yeah.

[16:52] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, you see things differently, and and you think like, oh, like, oh, what have I done?

[16:58] Nick Papworth: Yeah, and the the funny thing is I wouldn’t say like it it happened, and then some people have these things, and like, oh, and then I became like a superstar. That that definitely didn’t happen. Um, like I’m still on my journey, like I’ve been in business maybe like eight, seven, eight years now. Um, but it gave me the thing it did give me was like resilience and the belief that what two things are gonna happen. Like I’m either gonna die or I’ll I’ll find a way to be successful and happy. So that that they’re the two options. So either way, I’m I’m gonna be fine because I’ll either be not alive or uh sort of working towards that. And uh I think

[17:43] Nick Papworth: that’s the um the thing. Everyone says it’s all all in your brain, it’s in your mind. Most people brush it off and think, oh, but that’s you know, what are you on about mindset? I need real, actionable answers right now. And everyone that’s like been through some sort of business success will tell you on the other side. Like it’s if you can get your like mental space in check and your sort of mindset and your limiting beliefs out of the way, everything starts to like snowball. So like self-belief, yeah.

[18:16] Sammie Ellard-King: Talk to us about that moment then, like where you you woke up. Was it like a were you like quite did you have clarity in that moment?

[18:28] Nick Papworth: So I really I really wanted um some peach juice.

[18:34] Sammie Ellard-King: Yes, a good start.

[18:36] Nick Papworth: That was the one thing I I remember was that you know, you had I had one of those tubes down down um you know, in me, I was on a ventilator, it was breathing for me. And I don’t know how I can remember them put like pulling it out, but they have to you have to cough and they pull it out. Um and I just remember thinking, I am so thirsty. Yaking for some peach juice. I would love some peach juice, and um very strange, but they didn’t they didn’t have any peach juice, which is isn’t really a surprise. Very, very niche. So yeah, I was like, oh cool, like I’m I’m alive, and and you sort of instantly um you feel quite grateful

[19:21] Nick Papworth: and stuff. Definitely, I think my my family, I have quite a big family, I’ve got quite a lot of brothers and sisters, and I’m like one of five, and my parents, most of them were there, the ones that weren’t were in school, so they couldn’t be there. But that that was really nice when some of them came in, and I mean I was a bit out of it. I think for the next two or three days I was maybe on like morphine and stuff. Um the good stuff, but yeah, just just like obviously the peach peach juice was I just remembered it, the one thought, but um I felt yeah, I I suppose not surprised. I I always knew I’d be okay, um, but yeah, it was

[20:06] Nick Papworth: like I I woke up and felt like okay, this is the starting point, if you like. This is this is like a different starting point. Definitely felt that.

[20:15] Sammie Ellard-King: Almost reborn in a way.

[20:17] Nick Papworth: Yeah, I think so. And straight away I thought, okay, I’ve I’ve met, you know, made a lot of good friends across along the years, but certainly I had sort of fallen in with a crowd that you know, lovely people, but just different habits and different sort of aspirations as to what I had and where I wanted to go with my life. So rather than you know, I never fell out with anyone, but I just thought, okay, nobody’s going to sort of make this decision for me. I’m gonna try and do something different with my life and try and make a change. And it felt like quite a good reason, really, to do that.

[21:45] Sammie Ellard-King: Wow, man, what a story, what an incredible story. Um, it’s a good one. I’m sure everybody listening to this is like you know, going whoa, yeah. The only way I can explain it is even hearing that for me. I suppose my question from that is it’s a brilliant story, but how can someone that’s listening to this perhaps take inspiration in their own way, having never gone through an illness in a way? Like, do you see how it’s going with that?

[22:16] Nick Papworth: And someone when I shared it, someone said to me the other day, like, Oh, I want your disaster, and I really felt I really like felt for that person, and I understood. Um people like they want a big reason to change, and I think they need they feel like he’s lucky he had something really big happen to him, and I can like assure you that even I mean, I’m 34 now, but there’ll be like Younger people listening to this thinking, you know, this big thing, I want a big thing to happen to me. You will be you will have already had really big things happen to you, and everybody goes through stuff. So, like at your age, Sammie, I’m not sure. I guess

[23:01] Nick Papworth: you’re maybe a similar age to me. Um 34, just like you, man. Nice. You will have had some horrendously difficult things that you’ve come up against in your life and and like you’ve worked through. And I think it’s more about other than what’s happened to you, the story you tell yourself about what is happening. And there’s I think there’s sort of two options with it. This certainly has been the case from my experience. You can play this sort of story of whatever whatever’s happened to you. Um, I am the the victim in a very sort of unjust, unfair thing, and that might be losing a loved one. I’ve got no doubts, that’s terribly

[23:46] Nick Papworth: like unfair, it’s horrendous, worse than what happened to me. Um it could be your health, it could be anything. It could just be that you really struggle with like your mental health and you’re always just feeling down. Like what whatever it is, people have these big challenges. But you will be telling yourself like a story that you believe about why things are the way they are. So I would say the the one thing that anybody anyone can take away is just be a almost like you don’t have to suddenly try and change the story you’re telling yourself. But like the first step, I think, is just being aware. So just like say, okay, I’m just gonna keep my eyes and ears out for any of these, like maybe slightly negative or victim-sided

[24:32] Nick Papworth: stories I might tell myself about myself and where I think I’m gonna go in my life, because that’s something you can you can do. You can’t tell yourself something different without being aware of what you’re already telling yourself without sounding a bit woo-woo with this. But it it’s such a simple thing, and I think that that phrase, like, whether you whether you tell yourself you can or you can’t, you’re right. I think that’s something important to remember. But nothing good’s gonna happen for you unless you try and get yourself to a place where you at least believe it’s possible. If you believe it’s gonna happen, like even better. But even that things could look up for you is better than 100%.

[25:14] Sammie Ellard-King: That’s why I wanted to ask that question. That’s a really good answer, because I felt like you’d be best placed to answer that question. It’s interesting for me because when we, you know, one of the things we do as a business is we help people start their own businesses on social media. We’ll get onto that in a in a second, because I know there’s a lot of similarities there. But yeah, yeah, the one thing that I come up against all the time, and it’s usually is some people need to get out of their own way. They actually, and interestingly, I was learning about this. We are born into this world believing everything is true, and the limiting beliefs that we tell ourselves are 99.9% learned, and so having this

[25:59] Sammie Ellard-King: moment happen to you, you’ve now got a fresh set of belief in a lot of ways. And it is so difficult for people to say, but like the number one thing I get asked all the time is yeah, I’m not an expert, so I don’t know if I can do this. Um, and you know, you have to tell stories of similar individuals and relatable things so they can rewrite those beliefs in their own mind. I suppose that’s probably why a lot of people were messaging you after that saying, I wish something had happened to me, because they want that reset. I suppose how do we break those in the everyday person? You mentioned awareness, yes, but like what could be something that else that someone could do? Because

[26:44] Sammie Ellard-King: if someone goes, Yeah, all right, I’m aware of that I need to make a change, but then they just don’t, because we’re like comforted, I suppose, in a way, with a nine to five salary. You get paid, everything’s alright. Nothing’s really wrong. Um, but you said you know you’re better at and you know you want to go and do something else. Like, how would you do that?

[27:04] Nick Papworth: I think um another really good saying, the one that really stuck with me, and things changed for me when I remembered this. And I’m I’m not perfect, but I do remember this. How you do anything is how you do everything. So whatever your like bad habits you have, bad relationships you have, say you get home and you treat your other half awfully, or like you’re a bit mean to like one of your friends, or you you’ve got some sort of issue there that you haven’t like worked through, you know it’s a problem. That will come out in your business somewhere. So whether you’re trying to start something, or whether you’re growing an existing business, it will come out

[27:50] Nick Papworth: because it’s it’s something within you, some sort of belief, and yeah, I think that’s that’s like a massive part of it. Um, so yeah, some some people come come to me. The thing I help people with usually is they’ve got an existing business, like an offer, and they’ve got no idea how to one sort of tie in a social strategy around the thing that they’re selling. And one of the main things we do is like look at their offer, put together sort of offer offer packaging if you like, or just dress it up. But the the reason I mention that is 99% of the time people I work with say,

[28:35] Nick Papworth: Oh, I don’t think I can charge that much, or yeah, how do I know I can get the outcome for this person? Like, I can’t guarantee it. And there’s so many like limiting beliefs, like you just sit back there and and watch, and you’re like, Oh, you know, I’ve I’ve been there, I used to think, oh, I can possibly charge like ten dollars for this information, and then it was oh, I can possibly charge $150 for this information, then it was a thousand dollars, and then it was four thousand dollars, and it is nothing changed within that time, it was just that I don’t know, I maybe pushed myself to try something different, uh, push myself to believe in in what I could do. But I I think the the

[29:21] Nick Papworth: one thing it’s like a very long-winded way of answering your question, but it has led to this point, which which should be good. When I think about people that are in in the sort of mind space of, I’m not an expert, I can’t I can’t do this. Uh no nobody would pay me for the information I have. I I believe you like you only need to be a step or two, a step or two ahead of someone. So you only need to have done something yourself to then show somebody else how to how to do it. The main thing people are paying you for, whatever you’re selling, isn’t the product itself. Okay, physical products are a little bit different,

[30:06] Nick Papworth: but it’s you can still sort of use the same theory. It’s not the the deliverables, whatever it is, it’s the transformation and the outcome that comes with it. So someone’s in a current situation. I don’t know, Sammie, maybe they they come to you, I don’t know exactly what your offer is, but say they want to, they’ve never made any money before, they want to learn how to sell like a digital product, maybe grow an audience. Their current situation is newbie, uh, don’t know what I’m doing, and the

[31:47] Nick Papworth: desired outcome they want, their sort of desired situation is I’ve just made my first X online and I now know how to grow an audience. So that’s the the transformation, that’s all people want. Um so I think when you think of it in in terms of okay, forget about the product, what can I actually help somebody do? And yeah, there’s all sorts of things. People will pay you money to help them with all sorts of things. A lot of the time as well, nuts. Yeah, I I think a lot of the time people aren’t paying you for the information, they’re paying you for help with the implementation and accountability and guidance. Um, so yeah, that’s how I sort of think about it.

[32:32] Sammie Ellard-King: It’s a lovely way, and I really love what you said there, the one or two steps I’ve been telling the story about Frank Abagnale, Catch Me If You Can, played by Leonardo DiCaprio Chased by the FBI agent Tom Hanks. Amazing movie. If you haven’t seen it, definitely watch it. It’s like right up there with my favourites. But he was an airline pilot, he was a pediatrician, and then one of the big major ones for me was he was an advanced sociology teacher at a top college in the US for an entire semester with last final year students. So these are smart kids, right? And they uh he didn’t know anything about sociology. And when the FBI turned around to him and said, How on earth did you do that for an entire year? Like that is out of all the things you’ve done, that’s

[33:17] Sammie Ellard-King: the craziest thing that you’ve done. And he said, Well, I just needed to be one chapter ahead of everybody else. And it was the stark realization that you do not need to be an expert to be able to deliver at such a at an extremely high level of education. You can still go and deliver if you’re just one step ahead of people. So if you’re starting from day one today, if you’re one step ahead, you can turn around and teach someone that step to get to the first step like you did. And as your business grows, you continue up the steps, and then you can teach all the way down those steps right down to the first one. So that’s the way that you should view this if you’re stuck in a rut thinking, oh, you know, I’m not an expert.

[34:02] Sammie Ellard-King: And that’s how you get out of it. And it’s such a lovely way of turning that on that limiting belief right on its head, because every single person today, if you know a little bit more than the other person, you’re ready to go.

[34:14] Nick Papworth: Yeah. I I’ve got a fun challenge for anyone listening that if if you do this, you’ll you’ll not only if you do it, not only will you probably feel very scared before you do it, but on the other side of it, you’ll you’ll be like a slightly different person, which I think definitely means you’re outside of your comfort zone and you’re and you’ve grown. Is whatever you’re doing, if you’ve got a little business idea or some sort of idea and you want to make money around, try and sell it before you’ve built it. Like one of my main philosophies is sell before you build. So like any uh and I’ll I’ll explain and I’ll give it some context. Like, it’s a lot about around transformations

[34:59] Nick Papworth: and businesses that come to me to say, like, I want help with X, Y, and Z. But I’ll give a different example. So anyone here like listening to this could don’t do this, but you could reach out to me and say, Nick, um, I will put together a training plan for you in the gym. Um I you you don’t need to actually know anything about training. Um, that might not be the best example because I don’t know if there’s health and safety and sort of legal things around it, but if I wanted a workout plan and you were coming to me and saying, like I was in in the spot where no, I I want a new workout plan, like I want um I want to build like a godlike physique, and that

[35:44] Nick Papworth: that’s what I want. You could come to me and say, Nick, I hear you you want a sort of workout plan, and I’d I’d be really happy to put one together for you. And I say, Cool, yeah, how much is it? And you say, Nick, it’s gonna be $100. I’m like, okay, cool. You can then say, Great, I’ll take your details. So you I don’t know, you would then say, you know, I’ll get back to you with some information. All you could then do if you wanted to do this was go onto like ChatGPT, explain your scenario. You could you could even go onto Google, but I don’t know why you would if if you had AI and just explain the situation. Say, I want to help this person with their dream outcome. I haven’t given you enough information, so you’d have to say, like, Nick, what specifically do you want? What’s your weight now? Like, have you

[36:29] Nick Papworth: lifted before? Where are you at? And where can I get you to? What is this outcome you want? Go and feed that back to ChatGPT, uh, whichever AI you use, and they will tell you how to do it. And then you would just go and source the information, give it to me. I’m not going to be upset that you have gone and got that information from somewhere because this is how the world works. I’ve come to you, you’ve got a solution for my problem. And if you do that once, and somebody goes through and follows the plan, and you’re there as their like accountability partner, you listening to this that has never put together a workout plan before, I get to the end of the eight weeks and I’ve had great results because I’m just following what you told me to do. If you

[37:14] Nick Papworth: were to do that a number of times, and this could be any of any niche, you’re gonna start to build a really good understanding of that A to B journey. And before you know it, you’ve got a whole training community with testimonials built up. So yeah, I think this applies to anything. But that’s why I’m so big around sell before you build. Unless it’s like, you know, I I need um like space travel or something like that. There’s there’s certain things that are gonna be a bit more complicated for you to deliver on.

[37:41] Sammie Ellard-King: Um yeah, certain niches for sure. But the more obvious ones, I like that. You know, you can also be like, I’m a personal trainer now, and I want to go and try and search online and build an online business alongside my service-based business, which I’m doing on a day-to-day basis. Or I’m working in paid ads for you know a marketing agency, and I want to go and build a paid ads community online, and you can go and test those offers again, sell before you buy. Really like that strategy. And it’s a good way of just like testing the market, you know. Daniel Priestley, um, if you haven’t seen the episode, if you want to start a business, number one thing you should do, from my opinion, is go and listen to uh Daniel Priestley and Ali Abdal. There’s a two-hour podcast, is a part one and part two of

[38:26] Sammie Ellard-King: it as well. Uh recently came out. Amazing episode. But one thing he talks about, kind of similar mentality to you, is he will put together, say, like an online workshop or something where he can register people for a waiting list as such, and he’ll go and test that. And he’ll go and you know, message people on LinkedIn, on Twitter, uh, or even Instagram, any sort of social platforms. And if he can’t get like a 50 to 100 people pretty simply and easily, he knows that he needs to either tweak the idea or it’s a bunch of bull. And so it’s kind of following that same similar mentality that you you know that you’re following. And then you could even pre-sell the thing and you haven’t even done it yet. You get 20 people buy it, suddenly you

[39:11] Sammie Ellard-King: need to go and make it. But if you don’t get anyone buying it, there’s a problem there, right? And you can tweak it and retest it and go again. I think there’s one thing that comes up along there is like hurdles of jumping into this. And one of the things that you’re breaking down really well on your channel at the moment is like how anyone can start, say, your TikTok case study, for example. Anyone can start a TikTok channel and monetise it and actually start bringing in some revenue. And that you’re not actually spending a crazy amount of time on that either. Do you want to bring us up to speed on that TikTok case study? I love it, man.

[39:42] Nick Papworth: Yeah, it’s um so when did I start it? I think February the, I think it was probably February the 6th. And it was I I did it to show that anybody, I did it for a couple of reasons, to show that anybody could start building an audience like today, even without having any knowledge whatsoever of the niche itself.

[40:05] Sammie Ellard-King: Um you can also do the niche, do you? That’s it, yeah.

[40:08] Nick Papworth: No, I know, no, I don’t. And um it’s a bit bad actually. I haven’t I’ve I’ve been around holiday and like concentrating on the other areas of my business, but I haven’t um posted a video in like two days, I don’t think, on that case study. But anyway, the the the idea behind it has been really good, and people have really enjoyed it. And it’s opened up a lot of conversations to people, which was one of the main reasons I did it. So I think within I started a TikTok account, an Instagram account, a YouTube account, and a Facebook account. Started creating these videos, which uh I know how to do. I’ve I think I’ve maybe had 150 million views across social media, maybe more than that now, over the last two and a bit years since I’ve

[40:53] Nick Papworth: been doing it. So over that time I’ve become quite obsessed with um how to get attention from people. And in more recent recent times, it’s less about going viral and more about how you can get the attention of certain people. But anyway, the idea was uh I’d start this page in a niche I knew nothing about. Um I think within four weeks I was at 10,000 followers, and now I think I’m about like four 15 weeks in. Um we’re at over 90,000 followers now. And I think the views it’s had like more than 14 million views across TikTok and Instagram, it might be more than that.

[41:39] Nick Papworth: But it it’s it’s really funny because it’s all a bit like I was talking about earlier, it’s all about how you are able to communicate. So my my process looks like this. I’ll I’ll write a script uh for the video. Uh I won’t tell you guys the niche it’s in because I haven’t told anyone, and even people inside my community, some people know that like work with me one-to-one, but very few people do. I found uh I found a niche that I like the look of. To find that niche, this is what I did. I I went on a website called clickbank.com, which is a very very yeah, it’s a very, very popular affiliate marketplace. And I I looked to see what were some of the top

[42:24] Nick Papworth: offers in sort of rather niche subcategories. So I found a subcategory, I won’t tell you what it is, but thank you. I found uh all of the ClickBank offers are measured by something called a gravity score. The higher the gravity score, the more that item sells every day. Um, just be aware some of some of them are over-inflated. Um so look for ones that are really quite high or have been at the top for some some time. And I looked at it and thought, okay, there’s definitely money within this niche. So that’s cool. I will go and create a page around this. Uh, I then went away, created a script. Uh going back to very simple um communication techniques, writing very simply.

[43:09] Nick Papworth: I use a website called hemingway.app to I’ll write a script. I’ll use hemingway.app to make sure I’m writing it like a grade three um reading level.

[43:19] Sammie Ellard-King: It’s like free as well, isn’t it? Hemingway.

[43:21] Nick Papworth: Yeah, yeah. And there’s an AI tool, which I really like because I’m I’m a sucker for things that sort of save time, where you just click, so you write your script, put it up, and then you can click and it will adjust everything so that it reads better. Um, it will remove adverbs, any passive tense, uh, reduce the reading level. Um and the most important part of writing those scripts, everyone says this, but it’s the hook, it’s the first five sentences, uh the first five, the first five words. So the first sentence, however many words that might be. And when I knew my niche, I found other like meme pages in my niche that I thought

[44:06] Nick Papworth: were interesting, that people were liking and had super high likes on like posts and carousels they did. I took those very same phrases that they used in the memes that had been really popular, plugged it in at the front of my script, maybe edited like a couple of words. So I found socially proven hooks, put it into a script, built the script, and the main thing about videos and scripts. Okay, I knew the person that would be interested in my niche, but my I had one goal, I wanted to make them feel good about themselves. So got the hook and then completed a video, uh scripts that was over about a minute in length, using a website called ElevenLabs, where you can generate AI scripts,

[44:52] Nick Papworth: and yeah, and then just put together a load of AI images to sort of take people through the scene. And yeah, that’s that’s basically how I’d how I’ve done it and how I sort of continue to do it. Um and what’s the results like? So I think so far uh I’ve made maybe I haven’t I haven’t actually looked, I think about $1,500. I think nice. So not not loads, but I I’ve only been able to this was just from the TikTok creator program, right? Yeah, and I also push some of the traffic. Yeah, so TikTok and I also push some of the traffic to uh one of the

[45:37] Nick Papworth: Clickbank offers that I found originally. Oh, okay. Um so the traffic is like monetised that way. Um I did put up a digital product, but it didn’t it didn’t do as well as The sort of clickbank offer did, so I switched it back. Um yeah, that’s that’s basically how it’s going. I think the thing is I only had or I’m only putting like maybe three hours into it a week.

[46:06] Sammie Ellard-King: And oh wow, okay. Three hours a week.

[46:09] Nick Papworth: Yeah. Um so that that is like the the problem. It like requires thinking and like restructuring and strategy, which I just haven’t had, which is why I’ve just plugged in the affiliate offer.

[46:24] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah.

[46:24] Nick Papworth: But it’s been a it’s been a really useful tool because um businesses that I work that I work with, I’ve worked with um you might know a guy called Mitch Varnell. He last year he sold um his company called Nicce. Um, they’re like a big clothing brand in the UK, pretty cool. Yeah, really, really cool. He’s one of my clients with his new business. And when I was first speaking to him, I said, Oh, like I’ve started this page on the side um just to sort of demonstrate I I know how to like drive organic traffic. And he was just absolutely blown away. He was like, This is

[47:09] Nick Papworth: this is mental. You don’t know anything about it. Do you think I should quickly explain how I’ve done it without knowing anything about it? Do you think people would find that useful? Please. Okay, so I’ve I’ve given you the one of my main sort of bits of source is sourcing, for want of a better word, the hooks from like viral memes that you know the person interested in your niche would like. So that that’s like a very big thing. The other thing I did, and and I I started by doing this because I just lack time. If you don’t know anything about writing scripts or um copywriting, that’s fine. Like you don’t need to know anything, you just need

[47:54] Nick Papworth: to start. Start pretending you know, and before you know it, within a few months, you’ll be like, Oh, I know a few things now. I would find a competitor video in in the niche, and I would play it on um on my desktop, and I would get my microphone that you can see here, I would open up a Google Doc, I would click voice recording, and I would transcribe the whole script onto a Google Doc. Since this point, you can actually use a website called uh TalkScript, I think it’s called. Just do that, don’t do what I did. It’s it’s way easier just to use TalkScripts or TickScripts, whatever it’s called. Anyway, once I’ve got the script, I’m like, oh well, this competitor

[48:40] Nick Papworth: video got millions of views on TikTok. Why did it get millions of views? I had it on a Google Doc and I wrote it out by hand, and I thought, okay, just like break it down a bit like a home assignment. Then I took that script. You don’t even have to do any learning, but it would help if you did, copy and paste the script into ChatGPT. Um, I have GPT plus because I just use it for loads of stuff, and say something along the lines of I want you to act as a professional copywriter or linguist expert, a specialist in words. This is a uh text version of a competitor script. I want you to rewrite this script,

[49:26] Nick Papworth: uh maintaining all of the principles they have within it, only change the words ever so slightly so that it looks unique. Also insert hook that you got from the viral meme page on the front of it. ChatGPT will then write you something completely unique and around a proven structure. You take that script uh in a niche you knew nothing about, and um create the voiceover, put together a video in CapCut, um, and that’s it. Just just do that every day, really.

[49:59] Sammie Ellard-King: Um, that’s a really cool idea. It’s a really cool idea actually. Like I I hadn’t thought about going that far. What what we tell our students to do is find three to five viral videos within your niche, similar to you, yeah, but because most of these guys have never made a video before in their life, we tell them to actually physically recreate the entire video from start to finish. So like try and get every single little part of that video exactly the same, but it should be coming from your mouth and the way that you do it. And what you’ll see by doing that is you’re breaking down every single tiny section of that video to understand what it takes to go viral. Yeah, and by doing that three times, you go from a one out of ten to a five out of ten in terms of

[50:44] Sammie Ellard-King: production, like pretty damn quickly. Yeah, um, but I didn’t think about adding that element of AI in there because that does actually really like speed things up, and I suppose as well, the mad thing about AI is you could go into X niche and give me 50 more ideas that I could be doing right now, and then cherry pick the ones that you want from there, and then suddenly you’ve got a week’s or a month’s worth of content like ready to roll, and you could just chop and change around the ones that you want.

[51:10] Nick Papworth: Yeah, I mean, I’ll make like the scripts for four 14 videos um in about like 60 minutes, like for for the case study. Only because of the of using AI and having done the process. No, so I’ll generate the script um as as I’ve said so, then I would just have the text, and then I would feed that text into elevenlabs.io, and that generates the script. So cool. You you can use uh there’s you everybody knows about like uh or everyone will have heard one of the very typical AI voiceovers, voices. You can pick different voices. I found quite a deep, uh

[51:56] Nick Papworth: sexy almost voice I knew would resonate. Yeah, it was it is a bit husky because it resonates. A lot of my target audience is female. Um not being not like stereotyping, but you’ve kind of got to mark it.

[52:12] Sammie Ellard-King: Deep voice, tall, works in finance, 6-4, all that stuff.

[52:16] Nick Papworth: Yeah, yeah. So I I think it all, like you said, all of these tactics, um, all of these methods boil down to like the psychology of the person watching the video. So whoever you are listening to this, if you’re making a bit of content and you want it to be as good as possible, don’t imagine you’re doing it to hit because you want to hit say 100,000 views, think of it as if you want to hit a hundred thousand individual people. So I know that sounds weird, but if if you make the video or the bit of content for one particular person in a certain moment of time, um David in his bedroom,

[53:01] Nick Papworth: or you know, Jenny in her office, something different happens if if you do that. Um, rather than just trying to mass produce something you’ve seen that’s viral, uh, think about the person on the other end of it.

[53:14] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, customer avatar, man. Speak to one person, you end up speaking to hundreds of thousands, because every single person then is not exactly that person, relates to tiny parts of that person, yeah, therefore relates to your messaging. It’s such a powerful way of like flipping this on his head because when we a lot of people go out and do really well on social media, but they’ll make like really broad channels, and then they come to sell something and they’re like, Why’s no one buying it? Well, because you’ve kind of made content for everyone and not like for one individual. Um, so viral for you is very different to viral for me because I might be happy with 10,000 views because I know 10,000 people in my niche is massive, like rather you know, it’s very different for every niche. Um, so don’t just look at it and go, Oh, I’ve got a million views. Like a million

[53:59] Sammie Ellard-King: views could mean nothing to you. And if you put out a video next day and it does 30,000 views, but you sell 10 products off it, which video is better? Yeah, you know, that’s the way definitely.

[54:10] Nick Papworth: I I think as well, like the the most important part of a video is like the hook, the headline at the top, or the first thing you say. And like Sammie, I know on on a lot of your personal brand videos, like obviously you do a really good job of calling out a particular pain point or a desire of people that I don’t know, maybe want to invest more, want to do better with their money, earn more. You’ve got that person in mind. So it’s that tiny like headline at the top that really dictates if you get people’s attention in the first place. Without it, you’re you’re in trouble. It’s not for you, it’s for them.

[54:49] Sammie Ellard-King: You’re there to serve, right? And the more you serve, the more you end up making at the end of it it really is that simple. So let me ask you this kind of closing question then. We flirted around a few episodes on it, uh, like digital product, social media, that type of thing. And I firmly do believe that everyone has it in them, but I’d be interested to know what your thoughts are. Social media, can anyone really do it?

[55:16] Nick Papworth: Yeah, yeah, I I think so. I think it’s probably more about leaning into your strengths. So for one person, they are gonna be best placed to grow an audience doing short form videos. For another person, maybe like carousels and text-based content is going to perform better for them, not because of like how they look, but mainly because of what feels natural and right for them. So if you don’t feel like you’re the type of person that likes to sort of be on camera, there are things you can do around it. You know, you can take clips of yourself

[56:01] Nick Papworth: working, doing stuff, and just add in the text yourself. Um it’s about finding something that you actually feel comfortable doing, uh, then you can just continue doing that thing. So I think anybody can do it. Um, most people give it a go and then tell themselves that you know they can’t, and and that would be the sort of end of it. So most I think when any of you if you’re sitting there thinking I’m gonna do it, if you just make the rule my only rule is I’m just gonna keep doing it, all of your competition will give up before you because that’s just how it works. Like

[56:46] Nick Papworth: everyone’s got these good intentions, but words are very, very different to behaviour changes, so just keep going. Like, I I like some people would look at me and say, Oh, you know, you wow, I wish like I was doing that, not remembering like I haven’t just sort of popped up. I’ve been doing different things for seven, eight years, and some things work, some things, some things don’t. And I’ll constantly like evolve and change because I I’ve decided this is what I’m gonna do, and I’d I’ll just forever really be a student learning about it. Um that that’s that’s a really good way to go, I think, for anyone that wants to do it, just decide.

[57:30] Sammie Ellard-King: I love that, like just stick with it because some people like some of my students have popped off in like 30 days, and I’m like, whoa, like how have you done that? Like, amazing. Just so they just hit the nail on the head from day one and they got it. But other students of mine, four or five months in, and you know, have only just broke 1,500 followers. But that’s like totally fine because if you look at their last 15, 20 days, they probably got 800 followers in those 15, 20 days. Suddenly it clicked for them, and they started realising, oh, okay, when I do this, this happens, and it, you know, everyone’s different, every niche is different, every process is different. But the what you’re so right, the person that sticks with anything in life, not just social media, with anything in life, will you know, will outgo anybody else.

[58:15] Sammie Ellard-King: So make that your priority. I’m not gonna give up, and you’ll continually learn and grow. Um, you believe that fantastic advice.

[58:23] Nick Papworth: One one other thing, maybe I miss, which might be good. Um like most people get into this stuff like because they want to make money, which is is fine. Like, that’s exactly what I did. I was just thinking about money, I couldn’t think about anything other than that. If you can trick yourself just for like a month to not think about like the goal of making money, but just think about okay, I know that’s what I’m trying to do here, but let’s put that aside. The content I’m putting out there, like, is actually to help this person do this thing. So that’s all it is. And stick up on your wall on a piece of paper. I help this person do this thing. When you’re going out there every day and you’re making a bit of content and you’re working on it, if

[59:08] Nick Papworth: you literally do what you’re doing, pretending that is almost a friend of yours, that you’re just trying to help with that thing, your results are gonna be far better than the person that goes, right, how can I extract money from that person? Because everyone can can smell it through content as well. Um, so yeah, it it’s it’s super like simple. Most answers actually are, but if you try to not be just trying and be like a good person and help people with something, your results will be better. And funny enough, you’ll you’ll make more money as well.

[59:43] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, exactly right, man. That’s my whole business model. Serve, serve, serve, serve. And then if I get paid for it at the end of it, which is what happens when you serve a lot of people at mass. Um happy days. But instead of thinking, how am I gonna take £100 off this person today because I I really needed to pay my bills, I’m just gonna help that person and they’re gonna tell their mates who are gonna tell their mates who are gonna tell their mates, and then suddenly, oh you know, I want to buy your book, Sammie, I want to buy your course, Sammie. Fantastic, great. I didn’t actually need to go and do that. Like the products are there for you to buy, but I’m not like shoving them down your throat, you know. So, um, apart from perhaps maybe the last 24 hours of an email campaign, then I’m definitely selling to you. But other than that,

[60:28] Sammie Ellard-King: that’s that’s the only time you’ll get it from me. Um, Nick, I’ve absolutely loved this, man. I think it’s a really kind of amazing journey. I know we didn’t even unpack like all of the Amazon stuff, the e-comm stuff that you’ve done, and like I feel like so much more. And when I first messaged you, I said this is probably going to be a part two, and we’d be doing we’re going in person um in July as well. Um, so I’d love to invite you back on and just kind of frame uh perhaps a little bit more of uh like how someone could start from day one. Maybe we do like we’ll launch a business live together on on uh on air, like we’ll pick a niche and we’ll do everything like how we go through it, it’d be really good fun or something like that. So yeah, I’ve uh I’ve loved this, dude.

[61:13] Sammie Ellard-King: Thank you very much for uh your time and uh yeah, where can people find you?

[61:16] Nick Papworth: Yeah, no, you’re welcome, Sammie. Thanks for having me on. And if it helps like one person, even just decide, oh do you know what I’m gonna give that a go? Like for me, that it will all be worth it just coming on this episode because I wanted people like I wanted to hear people like me uh years ago when I started, and yeah, like people really are out there to to help you. It sounds like Sammie’s doing a really good job as well. Uh, yeah. If you want to want to find me um Instagram, uh I’ve got I’ve got all the others, but yeah, on Instagram, and most of them it’s nkpaps. So yeah, that’s like a short version of Nick Papworth, but yeah, nkpaps is is hard to find me. So yeah, it’s been it’s been a pleasure. Thanks for having me on. And um yeah, I’ll I’ll definitely uh be

[62:01] Nick Papworth: around for for a part two at some point. Um I’ve really enjoyed it.