Properly initializing & using custom XIB UIView

Question

I've searched around StackOverflow for the optimal way to initialize and use a custom XIB UIView when working with a Storyboard, and all I've found was solutions similar to this one:

    - (id)initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder {
    self = [super initWithCoder:aDecoder];

    if (self.subviews.count == 0){
        SomeCustomView *viewFromNib = [[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"SomeCustomView" owner:self options:nil].firstObject;

        self.someProperty = viewFromNib.someProperty;

        [self addSubview:viewFromNib];
    }

    return self;
}

But technically speaking, this would be adding a subview to the existing view on the Storyboard.

How would I simply just utilize the contents of the UIView without having to add it as a subview?

Something like this:

self = [[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"SomeCustomView" owner:self options:nil].firstObject;

But when I do that, it returns BAD_EXEC error.