Meet Nicholas Kuqali

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nicholas Kuqali. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Nicholas, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

I think that I must get it from having to do so much without any applause or recognition in many other areas of my life. Even in my current actual employment, a success is largely shared or even passed on to the participants, rather than the person in my position. In that way, I’ve learned to just listen to myself mostly and focus on things that maybe only I care about. To say that in a different way, if you’ve shared things you find interesting to your closest friends and family members and they aren’t as excited as you, don’t be discouraged.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

What I really love to do is walk or bike cities all around the world. One of my favorite things to do is explain to people what certain things are and what they used to be and what events happened there or nearby. Often these events can be dark or sometimes hard to process but they usually fit a larger narrative in a broader historical timeline. They can also be places where great things happened. I try to focus on smaller stories or niche facts that had an underrated or lesser known impact on an event that is commonly known. I also try to make sure I share a human story even while major world events were taking place.

I’ve proudly had the opportunity to visit many countries, many with a tumultuous past. I like to interact with the place first in ways I’ve researched, like addresses and other sites/buildings/monuments. Then, I try to build in present day context by speaking to food vendors, shop owners, and even people on public transit to get an idea of how the place is currently. Thankfully in a continent like Asia, motorbike taxis are far more common (and more affordable) which allows for more frequent interactions with the locals who are working on a daily basis. Foreigner blogs and hotel/hostel guests opinions are of course relevant, but my most memorable interactions were with people I’ve met while in a new place. Often the more open you seem to them, the more of their world that you’ll get to experience. I’ve sent friends and family members back to visit friends I’ve made on trips and it’s thankfully enhanced their own travel, as well.

Due to it being my largest sense of community, I stream most of this on TikTok live. I am open to other platforms, but this one just seems to have the most traction for me. I’ve built up a fun community of just under 15,000 which includes 5 great moderators that help me along the way. I’d like to have a similar following on other social media platforms or possibly build it into a website or blog, or even host destination tours. I post my own videos on TikTok and YouTube shorts regarding these topics but my other social media handles (twitter, instagram, facebook) are for my actual job. Lastly, one of my most recent favorite things to do is to reply to TikTok questions with another video itself (a newer feature), which has seemed to provide a lot of value, and I find it very fun. I’ve recently made a BlueSky account that I’ve used for more of my historical interests. FYI, IF TIKTOK GETS BANNED ON JAN 19 2025, ALL OF MY ATTENTION WILL HAVE TO SHIFT TO YOUTUBE!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I played hockey from age 7 to to age 25 before I was ever paid a dime to do it. I feel lucky I was paid to play for 9 seasons after that. Most of the work you’re going to do is going to happen in the dark. You’ll have nominal success here and there, but most of that time will be mixed between struggling to learn, constantly assessing yourself, and of course, moments of doubt or.actual failure. I think one of the reasons I tried to lean into my historical interests after finishing my playing career, was it had a similar feel of very little success and a lot of self teaching, but a strong sense of accomplishment. There’s a certain peace with pursuing things that only you care about or that even your friends and family don’t bother to listen to. I always thought that social media would be the place that I could interact with people with like-minded interests (since my friends and family are not, lol) I’ve had some fun with TikTok where I’m proud I’ve found people that come back to watch my livestreams. The most important thing is to just start, and then keep yourself going.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

I would love to learn how to produce motion graphics. I wouldn’t mind creating an entirely different channel just dedicated to this historical topic, rather than simply using my name, I struggle with making logos and creating names for things that seem interesting. I’ve also recently started to figure out how to make decent thumbnails, but still I feel like I move at such a slow pace.
So basically if I could acquire skills overnight they would be: graphics to enhance my preferred boots on the ground strategy of exploring cities, editing so the hook is effective so that my personality can be featured later in the video when explaining a topic that I find fascinating, streamlining these skills to make posting something that is less time consuming.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

All photos are my own.

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