Crypto, Notion, and the Entrepreneurial Spirit: Nixi's Inspiring Story

Nixi, a computer technician, who excited with the world of crypto. Seeking to optimize his trades, he stumbled upon Notion and realized its potential for both personal portfolio management and helping others. Despite initial hesitation, Nixi shared his self-built templates on the new Notion Gallery, catering specifically to the crypto niche. His "learn-by-doing" approach and free resources like Canva helped him acquire his first customers through free templates.

November 2023 marked a turning point as Nixi fully embraced his "On-Chain Income" brand, generating a "decent income" from template sales. Nixi's journey highlights the power of starting small, embracing slow progress, and prioritizing value creation. His advice? Start, be yourself, and celebrate each milestone.

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how it led you to where you are now?

I'm a computer technician that did carpentry and worked as a factory worker soldering electronic devices, One day I had a talk with my best friend, he told me he invested in stocks, so I started investing too, I quickly found out about crypto, read a ton of books about it before buying my first bitcoin, so I forgot about stocks and went full in crypto, I have zero regrets doing that, as it set me free from my 9-5 job and gave me the life I always dreamed about.

What inspired you to start your business?

I was trading full time now and investing into crypto, but since I had systems in place I was doing my trading mostly on autopilot, at that time I was also looking for a tool where I can store all my info about trading so I can improve it even more, I found out about Notion but it kind of turned out as a side business and another income stream. I meet some amazing people on this journey as well, So I stuck with it.

How did you come up with the idea for your business?

It was always there, but After a year of trying to be something I'm not, I decided to share the templates that I had build for myself for managing my crypto trades and portfolio. I didn’t do it sooner since crypto is not that loved by most people…

Were there any particular market trends or gaps you noticed that influenced your decision to start this business?

Probably why I switched to my niche is when I saw the new notion gallery and it didn’t have almost any crypto related templates, I knew I had to grab the name and chance if I wanted this to succeed.

What were the initial steps you took to launch your business?

Trial and error, learning along the way, I had time so…

How did you fund your Digital Business initially?

With my crypto income, but mostly I started everything for free and it is still free, except the domain and some tools.

Did you face any challenges or obstacles during the early stages, and how did you overcome them?

I just didn’t give up, because I enjoyed the process of building I still do. But yeah there were many times I thought to myself why do I do this anyway…

What strategies did you use to grow your business?

Mostly posting on X about what I did, Email marketing, and building my own website was the best thing I did for the business.

What tools do you use for your business?

I use Canva pro mainly, Photoshop, Notion of course, Miro for visual planning, Make for automations, Gumroad for payments and email and recently I started using Typefully creator plan.

How did you acquire your first customers?

By sharing my free games tracker templates on Twitter

Can you share any significant milestones or turning points in your business's growth journey?

I started my Notion for crypto brand called On-Chain Income a long time ago, But started taking it seriously only recently In November 2023, and since then I earned a decent income from just the templates sales! I plan to scale that even more, and make it on autopilot, but not everything, otherwise I will be bored again.

What have been some of the biggest challenges you've faced as an entrepreneur?

The urge to give up and do something else, maybe I will in the future, but not now, I still enjoy creating templates and using Notion.

What lessons have you learned from these challenges?

That it’s okay to take it slowly, not punish yourself if you didn’t do something that day, there is always another day to make it happen.

Is there anything you would do differently if you could go back and start over?

I would go straight to my crypto niche and build more templates for it. Otherwise I would change anything, I learned a lot about running a business and being an entrepreneur that I otherwise wouldn’t if I didn’t have failures.

What advice would you give to someone who is just starting out as an entrepreneur?

Just start, build a website and be yourself, Don’t try to make everything perfect because you will get caught in a lop of improving until the end of time, you will never launch anything if you do that.

What are some common misconceptions about starting a business that you'd like to address?

Trying to make everything legal when starting out, I hate that, validate your idea first, make it legal if you make profit. It’s why our start up Notionerd failed… Truth is you don’t need any paid tools at the beginning, you can do everything for free. Pay for the tools you will actually use, test the free trial for 3 months first. Just because everyone is doing it doesn't mean you have to do it too.

Is there any particular mindset or approach that you believe is crucial for entrepreneurial success?

Believing in yourself and listen only to people that really try to help you. Others will only try to take you down because you are not playing by the book, but decided to do it differently. I listen only to my girlfriend, she is the only one that supports me and helps me grow as a human and in business, together we are unstoppable, and I would say everyone needs a partner like that.