We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nick Italiano. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nick below.

Nick, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later

Starting a business is the greatest yet most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life. I often ask myself if I should have done it sooner.

I spent a long time working corporate, and some independent jobs, in the financial industry. As a whole I found in unsatisfying despite the pay being good. So I set out in 2017 to build a “side hustle” that I found more rewarding.

I founded Black Flag Survival to make some money doing what I loved being in the great outdoors, promoting the products and small businesses that I loved, and teaching others how to safely enjoy the great outdoors. This remained a side project for a few years until I finally realized I couldn’t truly build what I wanted to build on part time effort.

In 2021 I finally decided it was time to give it my all. In a lot of ways I wish I did it sooner, but if I’m totally honest I did it when I was ready. I learned a lot of hard lessons in my previous employment that prepared me to run my business the right way including time management, money management, and most importantly networking skills. Without these lessons my business would not be where it is today.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Black Flag Survival is a multi-faceted project that was built on promoting small community oriented businesses in the outdoor, hiking, and bushcraft spaces through social media promotion and blog writing both on my own website and on other websites.

The other aspect of the business focuses on training and educating others on how to safely enjoy outdoor activities such as camping, hiking, and bushcrafting. This is also done over social media and blog channels, but is expanding next year into a full fledged online and in person education platform.

Personally, I’ve spent my life learning about and enjoying the great outdoors. I have a B.S. in Environmental Science, and an M.S. in Environmental Policy with additional graduate work in Ecosystem and Animal Population Managment. Despite this I spent most of my Profesional career in financial sales and business development.

My drive to educate others in outdoor safety stems mainly from a personal experience where I become lost in Olympic National Park when I was 12. Having very little gear and skills I consider myself lucky to be alive. Beingba lover of the great outdoors I chose to rectify that by spending most of my free time learning the skills I needed to “not die in the woods.”

By combining my outdoor skills and my marketing, sales, and business development skills I learned spending nearly 2 decades in the financial field I feel I am uniquely positioned to provide valuable business and marketing consulting and promotion to small businesses in the outdoor space.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Let’s face it, starting a business is challenging, but what is even more challenging is keeping that business going. Very few businesses, mine included, start making money right out of the gate. In fact mine was quite the opposite I hemoraged money for a year before I made a dime.

The expenses pile up fast and as someone who built their business on social media those expense were fairly large. Camera, video, and audio equipment where big spends. Software to help manage posting and posting schedules, costs to maintain a website, equipment and software upgrades when writing became a big part of the business, advertising and merchandise costs…the list goes on forever.

Time is also a big factor, and as I tell everyone my boss is very demanding. Being your own boss is not always easy and it certainly isn’t glamorous because in the early stages of business development you are the boss, the secretary, the data processor, the finance manager, the marketing team etc. For me this meant hours in the woods(the part I loved) followed by hours editing photos and videos, crafting captions, writing articles, responding to comments and questions, building and upkeeping my website, and so much more.

Putting all that time and money in and not seeing results is frustrating and can really wear you down. Tenacity is key though. With a solid business plan, and consistent effort that time and money will yield results. You need to believe in yourself, believe in your purpose, and constantly remind yourself of your goal. Two years into this I am far from wealthy, but I do well and have a strong enough business to launch my second phase of my business.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Life, like business, is funny sometimes…and meeting the right people can sometimes just be a matter of chance or just having a little extra conversation. I met my business partner phase 2 of my business while working in phase 1 of my business.

Phase 1 of my business involves marketing and growth of small businesses in the outdoor space. Tom, who owns Knives by Nuge, was one of the people I was working with to help grow his outdoor/culinary knife business. Through our many conversations we found that we had much in common in both skills and vision. When I had mentioned to him that I was planning on establishing a hybrid style outdoor skills training program, he was very interested in helping me to promote and grow that business. When I realized that we wee both really going above and beyond to help each other grow our businesses it just seemed to fall in place that we would go into phase 2, The Black Flag Outdoor Academy together.

Contact Info:

• Website: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/black_flag_survival
• Other: https://instagram.com/black_flag_outdoor_academy

Image Credits
All me or my wife