Nikolai, 20At a glance
Who
Nikolai. The Real World’s caption gives the age as 20 and shows a Norwegian flag; Nikolai doesn’t state an age or a country in the video.
Starting point
“At the time I joined, I was making like two to three K a month” (2:29). Nikolai doesn’t say from what.
How Nikolai found it
“I found Hustlers University, as it was called at the time, and it said, hey, you want to make money with no job?” (0:08).
Campus
Strategic Marketing, which the caption calls Copywriting. Nikolai’s words: “You review each other’s copy, and then you start sort of connecting” (1:45).
Timeline
“It’s like 14, 15 months now” since joining (0:27). The video gives no dates; it was on The Real World’s home page by 8 June 2023.
Result (video)
“roughly around like seven to 12K, depending on the month” (0:45); asked if that is “about an average of 10K a month”: “Yeah, something like that.” No currency; revenue or profit not said.
Result (caption)
The Real World’s caption: “New revenue: $10k+/month”, and that Nikolai “went from being homeless and learning copywriting out of [a] car… To earning $10k a month.”
The caption and Nikolai agree on about 10,000 a month: Nikolai gives seven to 12K and accepts the interviewer’s “about an average of 10K”. The caption adds the dollar sign and calls it revenue. Being homeless and learning from a car are in the caption only; Nikolai doesn’t mention either in this video, and says “two to three K a month” at joining. The figures are Nikolai’s and The Real World’s own; this site hasn’t seen them.
What Nikolai said
7 lines from the interview, copied exactly, each with what it means in plain English. The times are where they fall in the video.
“I just didn’t see, like, any reason to go the corporate life or go the job life. I found it all super boring.”
What it means: Where it started: no interest in a job, before any income.
“it said, hey, you want to make money with no job? And I was like, yeah, I want to do that.”
What it means: What brought Nikolai in: the Hustlers University pitch of the time.
“It’s roughly around like seven to 12K, depending on the month.”
What it means: Nikolai’s current range, about 10K on average. No currency; revenue or profit not said.
“At the time I joined, I was making like two to three K a month.”
What it means: The before figure, 14 or 15 months earlier. Nikolai doesn’t say what that income came from.
“I was mostly just, like, consuming the lessons and going and implementing it on my own.”
What it means: Honest about the start: Nikolai didn’t use the community much at first.
“a lot more part of a brotherhood. And that helped me immensely too.”
What it means: What changed later: a group of more established members.
“thank you for pissing me off and showing me I got to work harder.”
What it means: Another member’s wins pushed Nikolai to work harder.
What Nikolai did, step by step
Nikolai joined Hustlers University
Drawn by “hey, you want to make money with no job?”, 14 or 15 months before the interview.
In the video at 0:08
Nikolai leaned on the mentor and the lessons
“especially the mentor, Andrew”, who “answered all my questions” and “posted a lot of good resources”; then “consuming the lessons and going and implementing it on my own”.
In the video at 1:09
Nikolai swapped copy reviews with other members
“You review each other’s copy, and then you start sort of connecting.”
In the video at 1:41
Nikolai joined a group of established members
A member, TB, invited Nikolai to a group of “more established people from HU who had all gotten, like, results”: “a lot more part of a brotherhood”.
In the video at 1:48
From two to three K to seven to 12K a month
“At the time I joined, I was making like two to three K a month”; now “roughly around like seven to 12K, depending on the month” (0:45).
In the video at 2:29
Full transcript
Read the full interview transcript (4 minutes)
Transcribed on 31 October 2026 from the interview audio with Whisper speech recognition (run locally): a first pass on 25 October, then two more full passes with the medium and small models; punctuation fixed, fillers and false starts dropped, nothing added; “[unclear]” marks words the passes don’t agree on (1:41, 3:05, 3:54 and 4:05). At 1:41 two readings hear “reviewing coffee”; “copy”, which two of three readings hear in the next sentence, is used for both. “Andrew”, “the mentor”, isn’t identified further. “TB” and “Chief” are other members as Nikolai names them. “HU” is Hustlers University, The Real World’s earlier name. The video starts partway through Nikolai’s story, and shows the student’s full name as a call label; this site uses the first name only, as The Real World’s caption does. Speaker labels are ours. The interviewer is from The Real World, not a Tate.
0:00 Nikolai: I just didn't see, like, any reason to go the corporate life or go the job life. I found it all super boring. And then I found Hustlers University, as it was called at the time, and it said, hey, you want to make money with no job? And I was like, yeah, I want to do that.
0:23 Interviewer: Okay. How long ago did you join?
0:27 Nikolai: It's like 14, 15 months now. It was a long time ago, man.
0:32 Interviewer: Feel free if this is confidential, just wondering: would you be able to disclose roughly how much you're making per month now?
0:41 Nikolai: Yeah. So it depends on the month. It's roughly around like seven to 12K, depending on the month.
0:53 Interviewer: Okay. So about an average of 10K a month.
0:56 Nikolai: Yeah, something like that.
0:58 Interviewer: Good. So now going more into The Real World, did the community have any effect on you?
1:09 Nikolai: Yeah, especially the mentor, Andrew. In the beginning stages, you know, he answered all my questions. He posted a lot of good resources. He definitely gave a lot of good mentorship. The community helped, but I would say I didn't leverage it. I didn't leverage its full power in the beginning. I was, like, in the chat sometimes, but I was mostly just, like, consuming the lessons and going and implementing it on my own. But I [unclear] make some friends, you know, just like reviewing copy and stuff. You review each other's copy, and then you start sort of connecting. And one of the guys I got connected to was TB. He's also an HU, like, OG; he's been there a long time. And yeah, he invited me to, like, a group after a while, where it's like some more established people from HU who had all gotten, like, results and stuff like that. And yeah, so from that point on, I became a lot more, like, group think, a lot more part of a brotherhood. And that helped me immensely too. At the time I joined, I was making like two to three K a month. And I think it helped a lot, like with the competition, the constant sharing of the knowledge and stuff of that sort. So yeah, it was great.
2:49 Interviewer: How much of an impact did the wins channel have on you?
2:54 Nikolai: I'm trying to recall. It's actually a long time ago at this point. But I mean, I had seen the testimonial on the sales page right away. I don't know if I would have bought [unclear] without testimonials. So I saw results. I saw, okay, people are making money from this. And so I just had to tell myself, you know, there's no reason why I can't do it. Just as simple as that, right? And when it comes to the wins channel, though, there's one thing that was, like, motivating, or I'd say it pissed me off more, which is this guy Chief, right? He joined, he's one of the apprentices now, he's like a big G in The Real World. He came in, and after like one or two weeks, I saw him, like, coming in, like, oh, this guy's cool, this guy's talking. And after like two weeks, he was like, yeah, I close this retainer, I close this. [unclear] what was going on? And I was like, I was super pissed off by that. And I was thinking, like, a lot of the time, like, I'm a fucking, you know, I'm a win. I'm going to be the best. I'm going to be the best [unclear] student. So that was nice. I was super pissed off, but I was grateful to him. Like, you know, thank you for pissing me off and showing me I got to work harder.
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What the Strategic Marketing campus offers
What the Strategic Marketing campus looks like from a member’s account, how a new member starts, and what the support is like. The Strategic Marketing campus page covers what it teaches, and the Strategic Marketing campus review covers the costs and what can go wrong.
How you get started
Join and add the Strategic Marketing campus
One membership covers every campus: $99 a month or $996 a year on the official checkout. Inside the app you add campuses from the “My Campuses” list. Strategic Marketing is the campus that used to be called Copywriting.
Read START-HERE
“Stay updated”: new strategies “drop regularly inside the announcements”. “Have questions?”: drop them in #newb-chat “and someone smart from the team will help you FAST”.
Take Start Here - What is Strategic Marketing?
Its first module, Rig The Money Game In Your Favor, has two lessons and opens with Welcome To The Strategic Marketing Campus. Next in the Learning Center come 1 - Strategic Marketing Bootcamp, 2 - Full Marketing Project Walkthroughs (2026), 3 - How To Sell To Business Owners and 4 - Get Your First Client in 24-48 Hours.
Follow the daily flow
The #daily-schedule post, “Best simple daily flow”: say GM in #daily-GM, attend the Morning Power Up Call in #power-up-live, do the Dojo Drill of the Day in #the-dojo-hq and the #daily-dojo-puzzle, attend the other live calls when you can, or “watch the recording”.
Get your copy reviewed, and review others’
How Nikolai made connections: “You review each other’s copy, and then you start sort of connecting” (1:45).
What support is like
- #newb-chat. START-HERE sends every question there. The Real World publishes no response-time promise.
- The mentor. Nikolai: “especially the mentor, Andrew. In the beginning stages, you know, he answered all my questions” (1:09). That is Nikolai’s account of the time; Nikolai gives no surname.
- The wins channel. Nikolai saw “the testimonial on the sales page” before joining, and a member’s wins later “pissed me off” into working harder (3:30). That is Nikolai’s account.
- Live calls. The Morning Power Up Call runs in #power-up-live; a post in #daily-schedule asks members to turn on livestream notifications for the campus’s pop-up calls.
- The Dojo. A channel group with #daily-dojo-puzzle, #the-dojo-hq (the Dojo Drill of the Day) and #the-dojo.
- No guarantee. The Real World’s Terms of Use say it doesn’t guarantee any financial outcome. Every campus starts from the fundamentals and assumes no prior knowledge.
Real wins and reviews
No posts from the Strategic Marketing campus’s own #wins channel have been captured for this site yet, so these are other members’ wins from across The Real World, with names and avatars blurred (any that show this campus come first). Tap any screenshot to see it full size. They are individual results, not typical ones, and not a promise: The Real World doesn’t publish average member earnings.
What members said on Trustpilot
Trustpilot has since removed The Real World’s profiles. These excerpts come from archived copies of those pages, read on 25 October 2026, with the reviewer’s first name, country and date as shown; “Invited” is Trustpilot’s label for reviews that came through a business link. The jointherealworld.com.de profile was not run by The Real World; reviewers used it anyway. They are reviews of The Real World as a whole, not of one campus, and other people’s words, not this site’s findings.
“The biggest thing for me, besides the lessons and the professors, is the community. You have a problem, ask a question in chat, fixed in 5 minutes.”
“after a month, I informed them that their services were not suitable for me. Despite my clear communication, they attempted to withdraw a significant amount of money from my credit card for an additional two months.”
The Real World replied: “turn off auto-renew before your next billing date.”
“Most the informaton you could find for free online in other places but you'll spend more time trying to find a simple step by step guide then using this platform.”
“Despite paying $49 per month (around $300 total), I didn't make any money or gain valuable insights. Much of the content was outdated and U.S.-focused”
“the campuses are also perfect if you are completely new to these methods of wealth creation but it'll take you some time before you see results.”
“The courses themselves are okay, but they're difficult to apply, and getting real clients is even harder. Overall, I don't think this works.”
For the record, the scores on 27 February 2025: the profile at trwstudent.com showed 2.9 from 23 reviews, and therealworldeducation.com showed 4.4 from 82, most of them invited through a business link over two days. Both profiles have since been removed.
Is this path for you?
It may suit you if
- You don’t want “the corporate life” and would rather build an income from a skill.
- You will work through the lessons and put them into practice on your own, as Nikolai did at first.
- You have no starting capital and a few hours a day. The Real World lists Strategic Marketing among the campuses that “sell a skill instead of a product”.
- You are driven by seeing other people win. A member’s wins pushed Nikolai to work harder.
It may not suit you if
- You are shy or timid. In the experience of the member behind this site, selling your writing means talking to clients.
- You expect the caption’s story of homelessness and a car. Nikolai says neither in this video, and gives two to three K a month at joining.
- You can only give it the odd hour. The official courses page says “the checklist expects a few focused hours per day” and that “Members who treat it as a side interest see little.”
- You need a guaranteed return. The Real World’s Terms of Use say it doesn’t guarantee any financial outcome, and Nikolai’s figures are Nikolai’s own.
Nikolai’s numbers are one student’s account, given in an interview The Real World chose to publish. For more on who it suits and how long it took to feel confident, see the Strategic Marketing campus review, from a member who took the campus when it was still Copywriting, in the Hustlers University days.
What happens after you join
The member behind this site went through these steps himself. This is his own account, from 25 October 2026.
Choose a plan on the official checkout
You go to the official checkout and choose a plan. Only Conquer ($99 a month, or yearly at 17% off) can be bought now: Vanguard ($499 a month) shows “Sold Out” on the checkout (checked 25 October 2026).
Get the sign-in email
After you pay, you get an email with a link to sign in.
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On the sign-in page you click “Forgot password”, which emails you a link to set your password. Then you log in.
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Sources
- The Real World: Nikolai’s student interview video (Cloudflare Stream) — transcribed October 31, 2026
- jointherealworld.com home page with the interview and its caption (Wayback Machine, June 8, 2023)
- Inside The Real World app: the Strategic Marketing campus Learning Center, START-HERE and #daily-schedule (screenshots from the owner’s member account) — captured October 26, 2026
- The Real World: Strategic Marketing campus page (formerly Copywriting) — checked September 12, 2026
- The Real World: courses page (the campus list, where to start, time per day) — checked September 12, 2026
- The Real World Terms of Use (no guaranteed outcome) — checked September 14, 2026
- Trustpilot reviews of trwstudent.com, archived February 27, 2025 (Wayback Machine) — read October 25, 2026
- Trustpilot reviews of therealworldeducation.com, archived February 27, 2025, pages 1 and 2 (Wayback Machine) — read October 25, 2026
- Trustpilot reviews of www.cobratate.com, archived December 28, 2022 (Wayback Machine) — read October 25, 2026
- Trustpilot reviews of jointherealworld.com.de (not run by The Real World), archived February 27, 2026 (Wayback Machine) — read October 25, 2026