What do you actually do?

what do you actually do? A fair question I keep getting these last few weeks.

For a while I was working it out myself. Not because I was lost, but because I'd never really put my own name first. For years my work sat under another brand, one step removed. Building my own thing has finally forced me to say it plainly.

So here it is. For the last nine months I've been helping other businesses get unstuck. It started with a few friends asking for advice and grew into working with around thirty of them, on strategy, growth, and AI. The same patterns kept surfacing, so I built myself a framework to name them. That became the FOG Diagnostic: Foundation, Optimization, Growth, the three phases every business moves through, and a way to find the one you're actually stuck in. I'm genuinely proud of it.

I've failed more times in my career than I care to count, and those failures are the whole point. They're exactly what let me help someone else skip the mistakes I already paid for across sixteen years of running my own businesses. Watching a founder get unstuck because of something I learned the hard way is the most genuine joy I get from this.

The failures are the qualification.

Turns out the thing I loved most about DJing, reading a room and giving it exactly what it needs, is the same thing I love about this.

I also practise what I preach, which is why I'm documenting my own climb from zero to fifty thousand a month in recurring revenue from my own digital products by the end of 2027, out in the open the whole way.

My ask today is simple. If you know a business owner who feels stuck, send them this: niccjohnson.com/writing/find-the-signal-in-the-fog.

🎵 Empire of the Sun — Changes A song about changing into the next version of yourself. That's been the last nine months.

— Nicc