Here’s how young CEO Nigel Borg turned a pipe dream into reality

At first glance, business and creativity don’t seem to have much in common.

One deals with finances, commerce, and progress, whilst the other tends look inwards, paying no heed to commercial development but rather focusing on personal growth.

But marketing guru-turned young CEO Nigel Borg is here to disprove just that.

From a very young age, Nigel knew he wanted to get to a point where he’d have his own company and make his own money – but he was also aware that nothing inspired him like a healthy dose of creative liberty.

That’s how Nigel first got acquainted with the marketing world; what he refers to as an “industry that allows you to be creative, especially when clients trust your vision.”

As soon as that realization clicked four years ago, Nigel set off on creating his own marketing firm – NB Media, which has now rebranded to Sharphawk.

“Being in the B2B service sector allows us to work with several brands from different industries – thus each experience is unique in its own way,” Nigel tells MaltaCEOs.mt.

Nigel makes sure that every new client that Sharphawk works for presents the team with a new and exciting experience, thus keeping the job fresh.

“This allows my ideas to be executed in a variety of different business sectors,” he continued.

And despite the company’s humble beginnings – having started out as a one-man operation back in 2017 – Nigel is surely not short of ambition.

“Over the years I want to turn Sharphawk into one of the most recognized names in the marketing industry,” he confesses.

“Not only so, but I want to elevate the company to a level at which it can comfortably work with international brands,” he continues.

Since its foundation four years ago, Sharphawk has already established a number of key milestones. Perhaps the first of such milestones took place in 2019, when the company (still under the name NB Media) brought on its first four team members.

“Managing to rebrand NB Media to Sharphawk, an exercise which took a lot of time and effort, has easily been one of my biggest achievements,” Nigel remarks.

“The process took us around six to seven months to complete and has allowed us to grow more liberally and broaden our service offering,” he continues.

Like every other start-up, Sharphawk has ran through its fair share of challenges throughout its four-year run, however, Nigel highlights that nothing was quite as hard as getting started.

Insufficient capital is easily one of the biggest hurdles most start-ups need to overcome, Sharphawk being no exception.

“Apart from that, there were also situations where my experience was questioned because of my age,” he says.

“But today, with our diverse portfolio, we let our work and results speak for themselves,” he notes.

A quick look at Sharphawk’s website would be enough to convince any client of the company’s expertise, and yet, Nigel’s already aspiring towards a bigger and brighter future.

“I want to see Sharphawk grow into a global influential marketing agency all whilst becoming an employer of choice through the creation of our unique work culture,” he says.

“If only I had unlimited resources, then I’d surely tap into new niches, such as Artificial Intelligence, and introduce other people to the team to keep widening our global footprint,” he continues.

Before parting ways with Nigel, we had just enough time to ask him one last question – ‘what advice do you have for young entrepreneurs?’

Here’s what he had to say.

“The most important thing is to do what you love and what really makes you happy. You need to be able to enjoy the journey, not just look at the money which a business is capable of generating,” Nigel concludes.