—by Adam Turner
With countless ventures under his belt, Australian businessman Nick Bell has made momentum his trademark. His latest obsession applies the same systematic approach to the ultimate challenge: redefining what it means to age.
Running his first side hustle from a high school locker in the 1990s, enterprising farm boy turned rich-lister Nick Bell set off early on the road to success. Growing up on a sheep and cattle farm in Mount Macedon, northwest of Melbourne, Bell dreamed of the big city lights. Determined to make it a reality, the ambitious teenager set his sights on moving to London and went to work raising the cash for a plane ticket. “I was always hustling to make money,” Bell says of his school years.
“That [attitude] comes from my father. He had a couple of businesses, they weren’t all that successful, but he always had the itch for it and I thought that was amazing. When I was young, I thought being an entrepreneur was like being a movie star, offering the freedom to march to the beat of your own drum, and I wanted that life, even though I wasn’t sure if it was attainable.” Determined to make the dream a reality, Bell wasn’t content to wait. Setting up shop in his locker at recess, he started leasing out sports equipment, computer games and videos to fellow students. He even sold his school lunches to raise cash, going hungry in his first taste of hustle culture which prioritises work and ambition over all else.
Thanks to his extraordinary drive, Bell finished high school with enough funds to get him to London, where he worked in bars before returning to Melbourne to study marketing. His academic career lasted six weeks before he returned to hospitality work. With his sights set on bigger things, Bell bluffed his way into a data entry job by claiming he could touch type, then moved to sales where he quickly climbed the ranks. By age 24, Bell says he was tired of climbing the corporate ladder to make others rich. Determined to put his sales skills to work for himself, he founded his own skincare business focused on a tablet-based acne treatment. In a harsh reality check, after three years of hard work, the reality was sobering: he was still earning a mere $75 a week from the business. While the fledgling skincare business didn’t completely fail, it never took off, hampered in part by supply chain issues and an inability to scale. The setback offered Bell valuable lessons about resilience and execution—but perhaps more importantly, it crystallised his understanding of what drives him.
“An ex-girlfriend said to me many years ago, ‘you’re too dumb to realise you’re going to fail’,” he says. “The problem she saw was that I didn’t focus on the negatives—I always looked at the upside and how I was going to succeed.”
It is a trait he’s come to both embrace and examine more critically over the years, admitting it does not always serve him well. “But I’ve learned that [what drives] success is not just spotting a good idea—it’s also knowing how to execute and bring the opportunity to life.”
In 2008, aged 28 and living in a Richmond sharehouse with only a few hundred dollars to his name, Bell needed a new plan. Rather than looking for a job, he decided to pivot and teach himself the then-emerging art of search engine optimisation. Founding digital marketing company Web Marketing Experts (WME) in his bedroom, he started cold calling thousands of businesses that featured on the second page of Google search results—promising to improve their search ranking while undercutting their existing marketing provider.
This time around, tapping into pent-up demand and nailing the execution, Bell’s project paid off. He was making money within days and had netted around $2m by the end of his first year. The business grew to a headcount of more than 300 before he sold WME to Melbourne IT for $39m in 2017.
The deal put the then-37-year old on the AFR Young Rich List, but rather than rest easy, he already had several other irons in the fire. Chief among them was mobile application development agency Appscore, which Bell and former flatmate Alex Louey bootstrapped with just $3000 in 2010, growing it into a $25m global business which morphed into enterprise software developer Trideca. Beyond WME and Appscore, Bell has founded or co-founded more than a dozen companies worldwide, including fast-growing Removify (which made Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 list in 2021) and digital marketing agencies across multiple markets. He also maintains an active investment portfolio spanning ventures globally.
However, not everything Bell touches turns to gold.
He’s pulled the plug on several underperforming startups, though he frames these as necessary learning experiences rather than failures. “If you want to [succeed] then you can’t let fear of failure hold you back,” he says. “I’ve had multiple businesses fail—not because they ran out of money but generally because the product offering wasn’t right. I enjoy building things, but I can’t sell a service or a product that I’m not happy with, so I will shut the business down rather than let it flounder.” Despite these setbacks, Bell’s wins have far outweighed his losses. Capitalising on his successes, the 45-year-old today has a net worth of more than $600m. His profile has led to television appearances, including Celebrity Apprentice Australia in 2022 and a more recent judging role on Shark Tank Australia, where he mentors aspiring founders. In Bell’s eyes, those who run their own business share a common drive.
And while some might work hard in the hope they can eventually sit back to enjoy the fruits of their labour, he says the difference is that for someone like him, the work is never done. “Rather than just pick one thing and do it well, I’m always looking for new opportunities and chasing that next shiny object,” he says. “I enjoy the game of starting and building businesses, but it [comes with] a lot of stress and hard work.” The personal toll, he acknowledges, extends beyond just him: “I know this is to my own detriment—and causes my wife pain and anguish—because instead of one big business to worry about I have multiple smaller businesses to keep me very busy.” For Bell, success is not about constant reinvention—it is about spotting market trends early and adapting quickly to capitalise on emerging opportunities. This philosophy has served him well throughout his career. Just as he taught himself SEO almost 20 years ago to build his digital marketing empire, today he is undertaking a deep dive into artificial intelligence. While the technology’s potential is dominating headlines and has investors excited, Bell argues that accessibility remains a major hurdle for businesses. Many are unsure where to start, or struggling to implement AI tools effectively, which hands a competitive edge to their more tech-savvy competitors.
“I enjoy building things, but I can’t sell a service or a product that I’m not happy with, so I will shut the business down rather than let it flounder.”
Determined to be on the front foot, Bell has hired a team of four full-time specialists to proactively identify weaknesses within his organisations that AI can address.
But he is adamant it should not come at the expense of human connection. “I’m a massive believer in building relationships with people, and AI is never going to replace that,” he says. “If you’re a salesperson, I can’t see AI taking over your position anytime soon. Other roles which rely less on people skills are obviously more at risk, but I think AI works synergistically with people—so rather than fear it, the smart play is to embrace it and understand how it can make us better at what we do.”
Despite championing new technology for business challenges, Bell has never fallen for the trap of viewing tech as a productivity panacea. He unashamedly sticks with pen and paper when it comes to writing his daily to-do list and getting things done. “I know it’s quite old school, but they say ‘out of sight, out of mind’ so I always keep my to-do list in sight,” he says. “It’s not just the satisfaction of crossing things off—it’s that a written list on my desk keeps me on track and reminds me to action those items quickly.” Bell’s approach to goal-setting follows a similar low-tech philosophy.
“Meanwhile, the screen saver on my laptop is a bigger list of goals that I intend to achieve in the quarter ahead, so I’m reminded of them every day.”
It’s a refreshingly analogue approach from someone so digitally savvy. As someone who could be seen as a poster boy for hustle culture—which often glorifies overworking at the expense of personal wellbeing and work-life balance—Bell has a more nuanced take on the grind.
“I always say to people ‘the harder I work, the luckier I become’, meaning the more I put in, the more I get back,” Bell says. “You don’t need to sacrifice your health to find success—for me, exercising in the morning is more important than a board meeting.”
It is this creed that underpins his latest enterprise: longevity clinic Super Young, which is dedicated to “cracking the health span code.” Establishing the first clinic in Melbourne’s Armadale, with plans to expand along the east coast, Super Young offers tailored wellness programs aimed at helping members stay mentally and physically healthy well beyond 100 years old. Bell is also launching a digital clinic offering access to doctors who specialise in regenerative medicine.
“Money doesn’t buy you happiness, it buys you opportunity—not just to live as long as you can but also to live as well as you can,” he says. “I don’t want to live to be 100 years old if I’m buckled over in a wheelchair. To me, ensuring you remain vital and healthy is the key to true longevity.”
For Bell, investing in his own health, and that of others, is a smart investment, with McKinsey estimating the booming consumer wellness market to be now worth US$1.8tn globally. The self-confessed “biohacker” recently spent $700,000 on injections to alter his genes in a bid to improve memory function, ward off dementia and increase muscle mass and strength. Along with daily medications and weekly intravenous infusions, he spends 30 minutes each morning in a cold plasma human regenerator bed, a device that generates a field of ionised air with the aim of supporting the body’s natural repair processes.
Age has forced him to face his own mortality but, as an entrepreneur who believes there’s an answer to everything. Bell views even death as a problem to be solved.
“Combining healthcare with emerging technologies like AI, I think age will actually start reversing within 10 to 15 years from now,” he says. “I keep telling my friends, just stay alive for another 10 years and you’ll live well beyond 100.”