Nicolas Cole
30 statements across 5 episodes · 13 bullish · 7 bearish · 2 people on the record · first statement Jan 19, 2023 by Nicolas Cole · said 12 times in 8 episodes since 2022 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Nicolas Cole's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Greg Isenberg (11), Case Kenny (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2024 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2023 6 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
Everything said about Nicolas Cole, oldest first
Jan 19, 2023 neutral
Cole: Execution skills do not automatically translate into articulation skills
“There is a drastic difference between doing something and being really good at explaining how to do it. And so a lot of times when I would go straight for a founder, they'd be accomplished. But then when I asked them, can you explain how you solve these proble…”
Jan 19, 2023 neutral
Cole: Dominating a Niche Dramatically Increases Switching Costs for Creators
“And once you start unlocking rewards in a niche, you realize that the switching cost goes up. Right. So the more that you dominate a niche at this point, if Ryan holiday went to his publisher and went, I'm doing a hard pivot pivoting out of stoicism, that's li…”
Jan 19, 2023 positive
Jan 19, 2023 positive
Cole: Gaming background primes entrepreneurs for pain tolerance and strategy
“It's like the background in gaming clearly primes your brain for certain skills, for certain ways of thinking, for a certain threshold of pain, for strategy, for learning rules, then bending rules. You know, it's like video games prime all of that.”
Jan 19, 2023 positive
Nicolas Cole: Digital writing is about owning a category, not personal fame
“The whole thing is not for you. It's not for Dickie to be famous. It's not for me to be famous. It's not for Greg to be famous. It's for each one of us to become known for a niche that we own. It's to be known for a category of thing.”
Jan 19, 2023 negative
Cole: Dismissing social media as cringe signals inability to play the game
“So when someone sits there and goes, I'm upset that I'm not winning. What they do is they point and they criticize everybody and go, you're cringe. Imagine taking that seriously. Look at you. And it's like, all you're doing is just admitting that you don't kno…”
Jan 19, 2023 positive
Cole: The Largest Demand in Any Niche Comes From Beginners
“Where, where do you create the most demand? It's all the people who haven't started yet beginning, right? So take any niche, any category, anything. Web three, get more specific. Start web three. Community, get more specific. Start a community. And if all you …”
Aug 3, 2023 neutral
Aug 3, 2023 positive
Self-publishing 'The Art and Business of Online Writing' out-earned traditional deals
“Even if it's self published, art and business of online writing, self published. It's made me way more money than if I would have gotten a publishing deal for it. And everyone in the online writing world references it.”
Aug 3, 2023 negative
Aug 3, 2023 neutral
Aug 3, 2023 bullish
Aug 3, 2023 negative
Traditional publishing functions like VC, requiring massive hits to avoid failure
“I think, you know, he, cause I'm assuming he got a like a publishing deal. Totally different. It's like venture backed versus bootstrap. Totally different set of expectations, right? He, his book needs to sell a million copies or it's a failure, right? Like VC…”
Aug 3, 2023 positive
Aug 3, 2023
Aug 3, 2023 positive
Aug 3, 2023
Aug 3, 2023 negative
Accepting massive capital offers inevitably destroys founder autonomy and freedom
“You know, cause you know, when someone offers you two million dollars or someone offers you a hundred million dollars, like they're not just giving you that, that there's a lot of strings that come with that. And all of a sudden you have a boss and all of a su…”
Jan 18, 2024 negative
Cole: Substack writers miss massive upside by only selling subscriptions
“The missed opportunity is realizing that the recurring revenue is the beginning, not the end. So what you, what happens is you have all these creators that go, I started a paid newsletter, and then they reach success. You have paid newsletters on Substack doin…”
Jan 18, 2024 negative
Cole: Touting multi-year cumulative revenue as annual size is misleading
“There's a lot of context stuff, like people taking lifetime revenue and calling that the revenue of their business. So they'll be like, I've done, you know, five million bucks over the past five years. And then you'll see them go on podcasts being like how I b…”
Jan 18, 2024 positive
Cole: Commodity products sell at scale when branded around consumer intent
“You go into the tea aisle, and it's just white label green tea, but one of them says calm, and one of them says energy, and one of them says focus. You're gonna buy the one that says the word of the thing that you Associate with. So you could easily do that fo…”
Jan 18, 2024 bullish
Cole: The next major publisher will be a single AI-trained author
“So one of mine is I think that the next Simon and Schuster or Penguin Random House or whatever is going to be one individual that builds, I mean, one author, but has like a whole team. So the, an author is being treated like a venture backed startup and the te…”
May 22, 2024 positive
Nicolas Cole: Dominating Amazon Niches Requires Catalog Density Over One-Offs
“The mistake that I see is one is the person sees that opportunity and then goes, okay, I'm just going to go write one book for that keyword or that subcategory, and then I'm going to do it again in a different subcategory And then do it again. And then do it a…”
May 22, 2024 bullish
May 22, 2024 bullish
Jan 20, 2025
Cole: Struggling writers lack process, not talent
“The majority of people don't have a talent problem. They have a thing called, I don't want to practice and execute the basics, and I would rather, no offense, drink a bunch of coffee, close my eyes, and hope that something smart comes out when I hit the keyboa…”
Jan 20, 2025
Jan 20, 2025 bearish
Jan 20, 2025 neutral
Cole: Writing intuition is just subconscious pattern matching
“Every time you sit down to write, your brain is cycling through previous quote unquote templates that you have seen work. Either something you've read and were inspired by, or something that you've done already and you received a positive response from.”
Jan 20, 2025
Cole: AI cannot automate tasks users do not already understand
“People expect AI to automate and do things that they don't understand how to do themselves. And so it is worth recognizing that, you know, AI is not a silver bullet. On some level, you do have to have a baseline understanding of how the thing is supposed to wo…”