"Someone sent me a cheque for $10,000": When Shark Tank Australia investor Nick Bell recalled his initial side hustle

Shark Tank Australia mentor Nick Bell revealed his side hustle, earning $10,000 while on Jane Lu's podcast episode, which aired on November 27, 2024. The founder of First Page, Nick Bell mentioned how he started his digital marketing side hustle and, to his surprise, during the first week, he received a cheque for $10,000.

While in talks on The Lazy CEO Podcast episode with fellow Shark Jane Lu, Nick recalled:

"I started a side hustle, which was digital marketing from my bedroom. And, thankfully, within three days, someone sent me a cheque for $10,000. I was like, oh, here we go. This is the most money I've seen in four years. And then the business went bananas after that."

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Shark Tank Australia investor Nick Bell recalls his side hustle, cold call businesses, and more with Jane Lu

Shark Tank Australia investor and The Lazy CEO podcast host Jane Lu invited fellow Shark Nick Bell to her podcast, which aired on November 27, 2024. After Nick revealed how he made $10,000 from his digital marketing side hustle, Jane Lu asked her about digital marketing and how he knew about it.

Responding to that, Nick stated that initially, he did cold call businesses in various regions. Starting from Auckland to the East Coast of Australia. Nick's cold call businesses also covered Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Adelaide during the day, and by evening, he would do Perth:

"And I'd choose an industry every single day. So I...I don't I didn't mind making sales calls. I could sell, but I couldn't do the work. So I would do the account management, do the finance, do the sales, and then I would outsource the work to India initially."

As the host called it "pretty brilliant," Nick revealed that he had no other "choice." So after that, when he earned some capital, he hired people. Before that, he started it from his bedroom.

"And then once again, yeah, got the money. Things just went crazy. So, yeah, it was completely unexpected," said Nick Bell.

Shark Tank investor Jane Lu referred to it as the "confidence game." Agreeing to that, Nick stated that it was that, and his goal was to make a "hundred grand a year." At that time, he thought, that would make him "set for life."

Jane Lu captioned the Instagram post with the following:

"Nick started his side hustle from his bedroom, made $10k in just 3 days, and sold his business for $39M and has now scaled to over 1900 staff members with $200 million in revenue! The key? Don’t overthink it. Make a decision, fix mistakes, and keep moving forward."

Further in the podcast, Shark Tank investor Nick stated that once he achieved his target, his next target was a "million." After that, he mentioned that his target kept getting "bigger and bigger."

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Fans can stream Shark Tank Australia episodes on 10 Play and witness Jane Lu and Nick Bell along with fellow Sharks.