I tried to be the smartest in the room

There was a time I thought power meant being the smartest man in the room.

So I chased it.

Read every book. Memorized every framework. Tried to outwork everyone.

And it worked, on paper at least.

My agency scaled. The clients rolled in.
Until one day… it all cracked open.

Austin, Texas. September 2023.
Sun blazing. Slack lighting up like Vegas.

“$124K a month!”
“You bloody legend!”

The dream moment. The goal I’d been chasing.

I should’ve been buzzing.

But I wasn’t.

I’d just resigned.

The truth? I was empty.

Because I’d hit the goal - but lost myself in the process.

No amount of money or mindset hacks could fix that. What did?

A conversation. One friend. Who saw me.

Not the CEO. Not the numbers.

Me.

And it gave me the strength to fight on.

Now fast forward to last month.

I’m standing on stage in the Dominican Republic, staring at a circle of 35 agency owners.

I told them a story about someone I believed in.

His name is Tobi Chapman.

When I started working with Tobi, he didn’t have much. 

Just a single, relentless goal:

Take care of his mum.

He was raw, insecure, and completely unknown.

But he had heart.

I brought him up on stage to give him his flowers.

He hugged me. 

The room erupted.

People swarmed him afterward, because in Tobi, we all saw ourselves.

The underdog. The fighter. The version of us that refuses to die quietly.

And in that moment, I realized something that shook me to my core:

This room goes far deeper than business.

Because in the right room, you don’t have to prove yourself.

You just are yourself.

You can tell the truth. You can speak your doubt. You can belong.

We built that in the Dominican. And when I stepped off that stage, I knew exactly what came next.

Build the room again.
And again.
And again.

Here’s where the story turns to you.

You’ve climbed alone. Built alone. Bled in silence while the world clapped for someone else.

And still, you're here. Standing. Dreaming. Reaching for something most people gave up on years ago.

You’ve done what they told you to do.

But the truth is, the real Goliaths we face aren’t algorithms, or funnels, or funding rounds.

They’re the quiet ones.

Loneliness. Doubt.

The creeping fear that maybe… you’re the only one who feels this way.

But you’re not. You were never meant to do this alone.

And the longer you wait for someone to build that space for you, the longer you stay trapped in a story that was never written for you to begin with.

So here’s where it shifts.

You become the one, like me, who builds the room.

It doesn’t take a stage or a six-figure launch.

It starts with a message.

A dinner. An Airbnb booked for the weekend. Two people you respect, brought together not to network - but to connect.

If your chest is pounding right now…good.

That’s the feeling. That’s the fire.

You don’t need to find the room.

You don’t need to be the smartest in it.

You just need to build it.

Don’t wait like I did.

Yours truly,

-Nigel Thomas