Speak to Nic Haralambous, better known as Nic Harry, about the businesses he’s started up, built, and sold as a serial tech entrepreneur, and he’ll be happy, sooner or later, to tell you the secret of his success. He’s a failure.
That’s because failing in business, over and over again, has taught him the hard lessons that have helped him, finally, to pull up his socks and make it big.
Since falling head over heels in love with computers and the Internet as a child, he’s turned his passion for technology into a string of ventures, ranging from news aggregation to mobile communities to online video to cryptocurrency.
But today, he is better known as the Nic Harry behind Nic Harry, his snazzy brand of footwear that has put a bright new spin on socks, which he sells online and in retail stores.
Now Nic has distilled his learnings into a just-launched book called “Do. Fail. Learn. Repeat”, a must-read for anyone who wants to know to succeed, eventually, by failing, repeatedly.
Nic sat down with Ruda to chat about his unique approach to business, the “radical candour” of his relationship with his business and life partner, Jennifer, and the joys of living a mobile, minimalist lifestyle in the age of high tech.
Ruda: Hello, welcome to another session of the Change Exchange and my guest today, Nic Haralambous, what should I call you? A serial tech entrepreneur? That’s a nice way of putting it.
Nic: I’ve started saying I’m a serial failure because I just got a lot of failures behind my name, but ja, that works.
Ruda: But you have, at the age of 33, you’ve sold two tech companies and so do not believe him for one minute. Nic, when you were 10 you were coding?
Nic: Ja.
Ruda: And were you always into computers?
Nic: No. Weirdly at the age of 10, my parents decided it was a good time to get a computer for the house and an internet line. I mean that’s 23 years ago. They decided to get an internet line on dial up and for our younger viewers they won’t remember what that noise sounds like. Um, but that noise was a prominent part of my life. It was for me and my brother. And uh, within a couple of weeks it had become my computer. I was emailing one or two people that I knew in the world who had email and I decided to dig into the world of online and there were chat rooms back then. Very rudimentary chat rooms, kind of like WhatsApp, but that was the way we spoke online. I was called IRC …
Ruda: Did you know anyone else around, you, your immediate circle of mates who were into this? No?
Nic: No, not. Not until I got to high school did I meet the first person that I knew who was also trying to hack computers, trying to build websites, so everything I learned was through IRC, chatting to other people around the world, finding chatrooms.
Ruda: IRC?
Nic: Internet Relay Chat. Literally WhatsApp, but 23 years ago. It’s really crazy how it all comes around. That’s … Yeah, you’d find a room. You’d ask people, I want to build a website, how do I do that? And they would send you a link to their websites and then show you how to do that and you do it and so on and so on and so forth.
Ruda: And this was at the age of 14, 15.
Nic: This was between the ages of 10 and 13, and at that time I got into high school at 12 and met a guy in my school who was doing the same and the two of us got together and we tried to get into other people’s computers and at one point we actually did Telnet, that was the program that was existing back then, into someone else’s computer because it was such nice people, we didn’t know what to do, so we’d just be like, ah, this is a bad idea. It was the end of my hacking days and we just built websites from then.
Ruda: But then at university you studied journalism and politics?
Nic: Politics and philosophy.
Ruda: What was the idea?
Nic: So, I can’t tell you why exactly, but from the age of about eight, seven or eight, I wanted to be a war correspondent. I must’ve seen a movie or something that sparked all of this need to go into a war zone and report on the crime. Um, so I studied journalism and even from school I focused on English, got my writing and my prose down well so that I could get access to Rhodes. And so, I studied at Rhodes University, journalism, politics and philosophy.
Ruda: So, you saw the computer stuff as a hobby?
Nic: Ja, it was definitely … more of a passion more than anything else, but getting into university and I mean I did a computer literacy at high school level and learned coding in a bit more of a formalised way and listen …
Ruda: You were lucky to find a school that taught that that early.
Nic: Absolutely we were. It’s luck. I mean you’ve haven’t, if you haven’t heard about Bill Gates, he happened to be at a university where the only computer that was programmable happened to be in existence because his parents happened to lecture there. It’s all about luck. So, we were lucky enough to be at a school, my brother and I, where coding was a thing. So, I learned how to code and then went to university and then figured out that the message was changing. We were studying print, but I was, I had my own blog at the age of 18 and I was publishing to the world at 18 and 19 at university level out this new thing called WordPress had come out in my second year of university and I mean, I’ve been on WordPress for as long as it’s been around. So, I started to realise that newspapers weren’t really a thing, and we’re at that time, we were one of the few countries in the world, where newspaper sales were increasing. The rest of the world, it was decreasing. So, the trend indicated that web is where it’s at. And that was actually one of my first businesses, it was a student news aggregator called Student Wire, that failed dismally because students want to drink, and they don’t want to spend money on news. So that didn’t work.
Ruda: When you started as a journalist, you started at the Financial Mail, right?
Nic: My internship was at 702. Rhodes makes you do a formal job at a real news organisation. And I went where all the Greeks were, at 702, with Katy Katopodis, and Aki Anastasiou. And um, my first job was making coffee at 702, actually.
Ruda: Did you like radio?
Nic: I loved radio but didn’t get onto radio because they don’t let interns on radio. Now I actually get more radio air time with the likes of Bruce Whitfield on his show than I ever did as a journalist. But ja, I loved radio. I think it’s a very cool medium that actually might survive the tech trend.
Ruda: But you started in print, but on the digital side, but you didn’t find the bosses and the managers very receptive. No one was really buying into your view, that what they were doing was on its way out?
Nic: Yeah. Um, I was a little bit ahead of my time at the Times Media Group, which back then was Johnnic, and then became Avusa. Um, I worked to Financial Mail in their campus magazine section, trying to shift them into a more online focused medium. And it just, it wasn’t very easy. It’s not where their money came from. It’s like, what’s a Vodacom trying to be WhatsApp. They couldn’t see beyond their nose because WhatsApp is now eating their revenue. So, it’s a very difficult thing to show people the future when their present is the money and it’s there.
Ruda: But you were with the FM and then went to the Mail & Guardian and then with Vodacom. All quite for short stints. When you think of young people, do you think it’s something one should do? To be in different jobs to try different things?
Nic: Yes, I, I think it’s indicative of people who are searching for the thing and I think younger generations are searching for the thing, the motivating factor. I don’t think that our generation, I mean I’m talking as if I’m in my twenties – I’m not anymore – but I don’t think that that generation is looking for a 50-year career at one job. I think they’re looking to build a vocation and that’s kind of what I was trying to do. And I think that the truth is I was trying to find my entrepreneurial leap and while I was at all these jobs, I was starting businesses on the side and selling them and running them and failing and doing those things. And this was just a means for me to grow and learn by someone else’s business so at Mail & Guardian I learnt about mobile and that was what I did there and at Vodacom I learned about social networking and scale and building tech and working with my business who would soon be my business partner. We learned how to build things at rapid speed. So, I was learning lessons that I then applied to my own businesses and I think that’s what I would advise people to do is learn in essence. But you don’t get good at something by job hopping. I didn’t, I didn’t get good at any of those jobs. I was becoming good at being an entrepreneur. So that’s why I job hopped.
Ruda: And then you started, was it Motribe? Was that uh, what we would call now an app that you designed or what was it exactly?
Nic: Interestingly, that … We built it as an app, but a web-based application because when we started Motribe in 2009, the iPhone hadn’t actually launched yet. Well, it was just launched, it was relatively new. I lie. And so, smartphones haven’t come to Africa and we were all on feature phones and we built a platform to help other people build social networks for themselves. So, you could build your own little mini social network for your family or for your soccer team or for your school and it’s kind of before anything really gained traction here like Facebook or LinkedIn. We were still very young in those, those moves.
Ruda: Jis, it’s happened quickly!
Nic: I mean, oh man, and it doesn’t feel quick, but Facebook is a 12-year-old business. Twelve years ago, I was in my early twenties. Like this happens quickly and I don’t know who said it, but things happen slowly and then quickly, so Facebook creeps up on you and then all of a sudden, they’ve got three billion users, which now is just astounding. We wouldn’t have thought that back then. The iPhone is turning 10 now. Like that’s just astounding. And when we were building for Africa, smartphones, touchscreens weren’t a thing. It was all about apps that are little data saving. We didn’t see that data was going to be cheap. Um, so yeah, we built a social network.
Ruda: You also, was that the first time that you worked in a partnership with Vincent Maher?
Nic: Yes.
Ruda: What, what was that like? As opposed to “I’m doing this”.
Nic: So, it wasn’t the very first partner I ever had. It was the first serious business I started with a partner. I’d had partners before, one of my early businesses was with two other partners. We actually raised R250 000 in private funding and three days later gave it back to the guy, but we don’t know if you’re doing just take this money back before we spend it. And we dissolved that business shut down and moved on. Which was a good lesson in not blowing other people’s money. The working with Vincent was interesting because he had been my lecturer at Rhodes, in new media and I didn’t even take his course at that time. He was just one of the people who helped me build student wire and that was six years before we started Motribe. Then he moved on. I moved on and we joined again Mail & Guardian when he was my boss and then we both moved to Vodacom and he was my boss there, so we then left Vodacom. And the interesting thing in that partnership was the dynamic between him being my boss and us then being equals. And that was, that was the interesting thing we had to figure out.
Ruda: And?
Nic: We didn’t. We struggled through that. There’s a lot to learn in your first very serious venture-backed business and we had raised a lot of money from venture capital firms here in South Africa, in Cape Town actually, specifically. And when you playing with millions of rands of other people’s money, you kind of, you’re operating on a different level. Tensions are high, stakes are high. So, unless you are quite mature – and I wasn’t mature at that age – you struggle with that conflict.
Ruda: You were bought out by MXit?
Nic: Yes, we sold the business to MXit.
Ruda: But you didn’t like the idea?
Nic: I did not want to sell. Um, I was a young and ignorant and naive 26-year-old and I wanted to build, and my thing was about building. In hindsight, it was definitely the best option for the business and I think it took an older, Vincent and my investors to kind of see that and I believe that we could have just ploughed through it, but the truth is sometimes you need to know when to cut your losses and sell a business, make some money and then recoup and regroup and grow and do something else.
Ruda: And then the next thing you started was … What’s it called? ForeFront Africa.
Nic: It was a consulting firm.
Ruda: A consulting firm, at the age of 12 and a half?
Nic: 26. So I had acquired through Motribe some very interesting skills that were in demand at the time and in short supply. And the skill was engaging with mobile network operators in African countries. And through Motribe we had expanded our platform to Nigeria. We built one of the largest social networks at the time in Nigeria for Guinness. Guinness is one of the largest beers in the world and in Nigeria is their largest beer and they also sponsor, at the time they sponsored Premier League Football, which was the largest sport, so we built them a social network and got nearly two million users in the space of a few months. So, we then have to engage with MTN and in Ghana, we did the same and in Kenya, we did the same, so I had this very unique skill of being able to talk to mobile network operators and lots of people who are looking to get into the operators. So, I partnered with a lady who had a similar skill set and we started gathering clients who would fly us into those countries, we would negotiate deals with the operators and then we’d fly back.
Ruda: How did you experience the meeting other parts of Africa for the first time? Because in my life, it was such an interesting and mind-boggling sensation.
Nic: Yeah, absolutely. It is really interesting to step out of Europe, which is Cape Town. Cape Town is not an African place. It is not deep, dark, interesting Africa. It’s European, Western white South Africa. Um, so going into Lagos over and above everywhere else, is just astounding. I’ve never seen that many people in a very focused place before. We think we’ve got poverty here. There are people there who build shacks on lakes because there was no more than that to build shacks on that is just riveting to see. Yet they’re all innovative. They’re all l happy, they’re all entrepreneurial, they all have cell phones. They all work for their air time … Like, that part of the African experience is just astounding. It’s so interesting. There’s so many people who are just happy with the innovation that they can do in the community. And yeah, it was, it was a really eye-opening experience.
Ruda: Was there also something humbling to it?
Nic: Yeah, absolutely.
Ruda: We’re not the only people who know something in Africa,
Nic: Especially working in Nigeria and it’s a very uh … The South African way of approaching business is we think we are the African experts. We think we’re the entrance into Africa and in the last five years that has become Nigeria and that has become Kenya. Kenya’s tech scene is screeches ahead of ours. So, we go in there to MTN in Nigeria and they just completely block you until you’ve worn them down and built up a rapport. So yeah, it was an eye-opening experience engaging with them as a South African doing business. They see themselves as this behemoth – and they are – they projected forward in the next 20 years, Nigeria is a global power. So yeah, it’s interesting.
Ruda: And did you have to change in that interaction?
Nic: Absolutely. So, there’s a push and pull, I learnt a lot of negotiating skills from engaging with mobile networks firstly and secondly, South African to other African entrepreneurs and business people. You learn to speak less and listen more. Um, I think we have a tendency to just speak. Um, so yeah, I learnt how to listen. And one of the things I learned was in a negotiation, who speaks first loses. So, I let other people talk now and when you’re in your twenties, you also feel you have the need to be the loudest person in the room. And I learned that that’s just wrong. The softest person usually wins.
Ruda: And then you sold that business to Imperial Holdings? Is that how it goes in the tech sphere? That you build up something, and there’s someone big out there, you make a bit of money out of that sale and you move on and you start something else.
Nic: Uh, I, I would say that that’s how it goes if you aren’t overly passionate about what you’re doing, if you … So, I became good at launching. building and selling and that’s mainly because I don’t think I was really passionate about the things I was building, and I haven’t found my niche. I think the people who build stuff they love would rather hold onto it and grow it. Not for selfish reasons but because you believe you can do it the best. So yeah, at that time it was about build, sell and move onto the next thing and buying what I wanted to do. And so yeah, I sold to imperial logistics and that was more of a, we want to partner with Imperial. Okay. Actually, I don’t like this as a thing so it just, I just want to get out. And we sold the business and I got out and my partner stayed, and I moved onto the next thing.
Ruda: And the next thing was socks? You must please get a shot of the socks.
Nic: So, the Forefront Africa thing was really short. It was about a year and a half, so I was still kind of reeling and had started Nic Harry, which was then Nic Socks, in-between Motribe and ForeFront … I started this in the middle of those two. And the plan was really simple. South Africans have got a problem with success. We are not humble people and not pleasant to people by nature when it comes to business, we like to point and jeer at people. So, if someone has a Ferrari that they’ve just bought, and you know them, in Greek you call it the Mati, the evil eye. You curse them for having it instead of going, well done, how did you do that? In America, the culture is let me learn from you. You’re a millionaire. Cool, teach me. So, I wanted to do something that helped people understand that it was possible because when we sold Motribe, people pointed fingers at us and said, oh, but you raised venture capital. It was easy. You had money. And the truth is when you raise venture capital, it becomes harder. You’re in debt, you have multiples to hit, you have very clear tranches that you need to achieve. And it was hard. So, I decided to build a business with R5 000 in a six-week period and if 30 days had arrived at the end of that and we hadn’t turned a profit to shut down the business and start again. And the reason I chose R5 000 was the average South African earns between three and a half and five and a half thousand rand a month. So, most people can save R500 over a 10-month to 12-month period and have R30 000 and or have R5 000, have some amount of money. So, 10 months, R500 a month. And at the end of that you’ve got R5 000. So, I’ve been wearing a brand of socks is not that great but very fun and funky and I wanted to do something that was light, so socks you can ship really easily, uh, they have no sizing. So, we didn’t want to do returns and that we could do locally. So, I started googling and my partner, who’s now my business partner, she found a factory in Cape Town. We drove out to the factory and said we’d like to make socks. And they were like, no, no, we can’t make those socks. No one will buy those socks. So, we said to them but that’s not your job. You just make the socks. We’ll buy. We didn’t even them. We got them to make us a sample and we took three designs. I built a website, we partnered with back then was Citymob, now it’s called Superbalist and we launched a sale and the R5 000 within 10 days had become R30 000. We sold 500 pairs in our first 10 days and we rolled the business from there.
Ruda: And now you’ve also branched out to physical shelves?
Nic: Yes.
Ruda: How does it feel different?
Nic: Wow, it’s so different. So, we built the business, my partner and I, Jen, as an ecommerce company for the first three years. Then about two and a half years in we raised funding. It’s kind of what I know how to do. So, found an investor that gave us funding to expand the business to grow our product range to push into new markets and areas. And we, I was walking down in Cape Town in the streets and there was a vacant store and my friend happened to know the owner of the building and we sat down and he came for coffee and I said I’ll take it. And I mean the rent was so cheap that it was a no-brainer and that was the beginning of our first store.
Ruda: So, in some ways you allow for serendipity. For something just sommer to happen?
Nic: Absolutely, absolutely.
Ruda: If it’s not too much of a gamble.
Nic: No, I think the higher the risk, the more I’m inclined to go for it.
Ruda: No, you gave back the 250 000.
Nic: Yes, that was when I was 20 and I didn’t understand the idea of the risk. So, I’m willing to risk high risk when I understand the scale of the risk that I’m taking. At that point, we had no business plan, we had no idea what we were building. We had no idea of the technology …
Ruda: Who gave you R250 000?
Nic: I’m a really good sales person and that’s another problem that we have. I’m really good at selling an idea or to get my investors to give me more money and the execution is the part that is risky. And so yeah, at the moment the risks are pretty big and with physical retail, the risks are really big. High capital expenses, high human capital that’s involved. You need to train staff, retain staff, you need more stock. Whereas an ecommerce website, you launch the website, it stays up, your expenses is maybe five or ten grand a month. Now you’re leaning towards massive overheads. Rentals are 50 to 60 grand a month per store. It’s a real big thing and I kind of didn’t really expect it to be as big as that, naive a retailer that I am. So, the differences are vast. High overheads and lots of new metrics to learn like turnover per square meter. How much money you make per square meter you are renting. That’s not a thing in ecommerce, because you’re not renting any space. Um, so I had to learn all these new metrics and we scaled our team from four people to 22 in 18 months, which isn’t that big in the grand scheme of other businesses, but we opened a store every three and a half months, which put a lot of unnecessary strain on myself and the business. But you know, that’s how you do it.
Ruda: And emotionally the, the, just the responsibility for other people’s livelihood?
Nic: That’s a tricky one. I think that concerns me less than the emotional responsibility to myself and the people around me for my sanity. And I think that’s a really big one. Um, I’ve said for years that entrepreneurs are very broken people to do what you have to do.
Ruda: Why?
Nic: Because it’s not pleasant. Entrepreneurialism at the moment is made to be this very pleasant thing … start your own business, it’s the future. But it’s also really hard. I work seven days a week, 15 to 20 hours a day because I have to. And also, because that’s what I want and ….
Ruda: And why do you, why … Ja?
Nic: The broken is that most people don’t want to work seven days a week, 15 hours a day on something they love on anything for that matter. They want their salary and they wanted to be someone else’s problem. I choose to make the salary payments my problem, I choose to make the businesses my problem and I think that you need to be a little bit broken to keep going back for that punishment because it’s punishment. It’s not easy. Um, alternatively I could go into a consulting firm and be making a crap load of money and smile and live for my weekends. But I choose not to do that. And that part, the people I know who are entrepreneurs, that keep going back a little bit broken because we should logically stop and go and get a well-paying job and go on holiday more frequently. But we choose not to. So ja, the emotional thing. Um, I recently have started seeing a psychologist and I think it’s an important part that entrepreneurs miss. Sports people have multiple coaches for their running and jumping and power and strength and mental fitness. And entrepreneurs just choose to do it alone and it’s a very hard thing to be an isolated entrepreneur. So, seeing a psychologist for me, I call him my mental coach, so helps me keep my emotions in check because at the end of the day, I just sell fun socks. It’s not life or death stuff. And the staff I employ are capable of getting jobs elsewhere. I don’t employ minimum wage people. We employ educated, intelligent, engaged humans who want to build a vision with me and if you don’t, then you leave, and you find someone else’s vision.
Ruda: So, you don’t take on responsibility of their lives.
Nic: Ja. I bring A-players. A-players don’t struggle to find work.
Ruda: Just about the psychologist – I always think that it makes such sense to hire a sounding board.
Nic: Absolutely.
Ruda: People think that it indicates weakness or whatever, but it’s not that. It’s a support system.
Nic: For years I thought that it was a sign of weakness and my statement, and I’m sure that many people think this and say this, no-one knows me better than me, but that’s just not true. You can’t see the wood from the trees, especially when you are manic depressive and bipolar and up and down and one day you’ve made the biggest deal of your life and the next day of being roughed out of your business. You can’t see those things when they’re happening and that’s literally what it’s like as an entrepreneur. One day you are signing a million-rand deal, the next day you’re closing down a store, and I literally mean one day to the next. I’m not talking about an elongated period of time. So, we’ve gone opening five or six stores to closing two in a space of two years. It’s just the way it goes. And that’s why I say we’re a little bit broken to keep going back to the punishment and we need help from professionals when we continue to do this.
Ruda: But you’ve also said that you’ve had to lighten up. To not take everything so seriously. And to know that a failure is also a lesson, uh, learning. And you move on from that. Talk to me about that?
Nic: I think the choice had to be made for my own sanity to, to realise that there are more important things in the world and having worked with my partner, so Jen and I had been together for 12 years and we actually worked together for four years in this business and built this business together and she’s been a really good sounding board to say to me, but maybe we shouldn’t work tonight. There’s going to be email tomorrow and if I send 20 emails today, I’m going to get 20 responses tomorrow. So why do them at ten at night? It doesn’t make a difference. So, we walk our dogs, we read books, we wake up early, we go to bed early, and that’s the life we choose to lead, because I don’t believe in a balanced life. I believe in an integrated life. My job is part of my life and I can’t separate the two and I won’t, because it’s how I choose to live. So yeah, that’s just how we choose to be. That you can’t take everything seriously because ultimately this business will succeed or fail and I’m going to start another one after that. Even if this succeeds, I’m probably going to start that one anyways. So just do the best you can do.
Ruda: So, tell me about Jennifer? How did you meet? How did your paths cross?
Nic: We met in Grahamstown. We met when we were 20. We both studied politics. We were in the same class. She attended the class and I did not. So, I didn’t know we were in the same class and we met through a mutual friend …
Ruda: You see? One can miss out if you don’t attend class.
Nic: For two years I missed out. I didn’t know, literally we were for three years in the same class. And we met in third year and we’ve been together ever since.
Ruda: Why? Why? What brought you together?
Nic: Because no one else will have me. No, she, she is …
Ruda: Surely, she has choices?
Nic: I don’t know why she stays with me. We’ve always complimented each other really well and she, she’s one of the few people who stands up to me and calls my crap and doesn’t let me just steam roll over her. One of the major roles in our business is to say no to me, because she’s the only person who is not engaged in my peripheral forcefield. Um, so yeah, I think from my side I stayed with her because she engages me in a very different way to most people that I’ve ever met.
Ruda: And how do you manage being business partners as well as life partners?
Nic: All sincerely, with very, with great difficulty. Um, it is something we work really hard at, but it’s made our relationship better and it’s an interesting thing working with your partner. So, one of the things we practice at Nic Harry is called radical candour. It’s extreme honesty and Jen and I practice that at home too. So, when I’m irritated with her, I tell her when she’s irritated with me, she tells me it’s harder than it should be sometimes, but on the whole, it makes us a more transparent couple and it makes us a bit of partnership. So, if I’m irritated with something she’s done at work, we choose to bring it up at work so that it doesn’t flow over into home life and vice versa.
Ruda: It can also … It sounds like Carte Blanche, to be extremely rude?
Nic: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s an exposé. Our entire life is an exposé and we’re just overly honest …
Ruda: Do you have a formula? Do you sit down and say what I like about you today was x, y, z. What I did not like was …
Nic: Ja, we have to practice that. The honesty applies both ways, so you can’t just be mean honest. You can be polite on as well, but something we have that’s similar to that is we have an AGM. So, every year we have an annual meeting where we discuss if we’re happy in our location and our home and our business with our dogs living in Joburg, living in Cape Town, and if anything changes, we align our desires and if it’s too fundamental, then we have a very big problem. So far it hasn’t been.
Ruda: Fascinating! And where have you decided to live?
Nic: In Cape Town. For now, Cape Town. Um, the reason initially was because our venture capital firm for Motribe was here in Cape Town and they wanted us in Cape Town. So, I moved. Jen stayed in Joburg and then joined me later. Right now, we’re really happy here. Cape Town’s got the best of everything. We’ve got …
Ruda: Except water!
Nic: And even that’s not a big deal. We have very short showers and we make it work. Um, but both of us have travelled extensively and we don’t want to live in Cape Town forever, but it’s where we want to build our business right now.
Ruda: Why don’t you want to live here forever?
Nic: Because the world is too small.
Ruda: For variety’s sake?
Nic: Yeah. The world is too small now and it’s so easily accessible. Why stay in one city forever? I mean I’ve got friends and family who’ve never left their town. Who have been in Pretoria forever or Joburg forever and that scares me more than anything else. And I think having been to like 20 countries already, I think there’s so much of the world to see. That’s why just stay in one place. I don’t have a better answer than that.
Ruda: So, do you have a dream? Of somewhere else that you want to be?
Nic: I do. It’s very cliched, sadly. New York. I travelled there a few times and it’s the only other city I can think of living as opposed to living in Cape Town. But the plan in the short term is to make Cape Town home and travel six months of the year in other cities, to open Nic Harry in other places.
Ruda: And will you have a base there? Or will you just …
Nic: Airbnb. With technology, the world is so easy. We can Airbnb and Uber everywhere. So that’s the plan is to …
Ruda: But what about the dogs?
Nic: That’s why we’re waiting. Dogs, dogs die. No more dogs. We’re going to wait out these dogs. But we genuinely thought moving dogs is not that hard. You put them on a plane and fly them over and then they wait for not even two months anymore. It’s like 10 days. And then your dog’s in another city.
Ruda: So, what makes a space your space for even if it’s just for six months at a time?
Nic: That’s such a great question. So, we move a lot. In the eight years I’ve been in Cape Town, we’ve moved nine times and every time we move we get rid of stuff. So, we kind of practice a minimalist lifestyle. To an extent – we have stuff, but not that much stuff. We have one couch because we can both fit on one couch. We have a four-seater dining room table because we go out when we have five friends. We just scale down, so we’re not married to stuff. We’re married to each other, not literally, we’re not actually married. Um, but the idea of two people being in a place for me makes it home more than anything else. Uh, I don’t. I don’t really like stuff. I think experiences are more important than stuff.
Ruda: Thank you so much for visiting with us. And all of the very, very best. And I hope the socks sell. Lots.
Nic: Thank you.
Ruda: Thank you. Go well. Until the next time, then. You must keep joining us. Bye-bye.
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