INTERVIEW: Nic Haralambous: DO. FAIL. LEARN. REPEAT.

Obsessive entrepreneur, global keynote speaker, and published author of his business autobiography, ‘DO. FAIL. LEARN. REPEAT.’

Meet Nic Haralambous who recently sat down with Jarette Petzer to talk about building disruptive and innovative startups, embracing failure, and how entrepreneurs can navigate this surreal time of lockdown. 

“I’m very familiar with failure, I’m very fond of failure.

Nic built his first website at 12, started his first business at 16, and is a proponent of learning through failure.  For the first 10 years of his entrepreneurial journey, each attempt was a failure.  He embraces the Edisonian philosophy of trying ‘9,999 ways how NOT to build a lightbulb before finding success on the 10,000th attempt’.

“I’m very familiar with failure, I’m very fond of failure.  Most entrepreneurs I know embrace failure. ”

 “They are learnings until you get to the right way.  Failure is not an end point – it’s a through point.”

Not one to sit still for long, Nic has used the lockdown to be intentionally productive.  He’s written an ebook, “How to Start a Side Hustle”, redesigned his website, and prepared for the soft launch of a new business helping speakers and entertainers work in this new world of remote work.

“We forget that we’re not in this alone.  EVERYONE is going through the same thing.  We are all suffering on a global scale.”

On the subject of helping people navigate, particularly entrepreneurs, through the lockdown: His encouragement is to have small businesses be realistic.  Prepare for the next year.  Have cash on hand.  Know what your expenses are. What are the best and worst case scenarios?  Start answering these questions.

“Remember the macro of this situation:  For the 1st time in history 206 countries are ALL fighting the same enemy.  We’ve never experienced anything like this in this generation or any generation before us.”

“We forget that we’re not in this alone.  EVERYONE is going through the same thing.  We are all suffering on a global scale.  We’re isolated physically.”

Hear more about what Nic has to say about being in a healthy mental space, how to practice what he calls ‘Radical Candour’, and about reframing our thinking and priorities in the ‘post lockdown’ period.   

What’s Nic’s one final message for South Africa?  It’s all about communication.

“We are all struggling through this together, so suffering in silence is never going to work.  The old adage that if you want to understand a person, just walk a mile in their shoes – we must be conscious of that today. “    

Edited By:  Maggie Wolfe Miller

GOOD THOUGHTS • GOOD WORDS • GOOD DEEDS