When the Cold Breaks: Nikky Kho on Building Businesses, Forgiveness, and Seeing the Peak

Summary

00:00 - Introduction and Recollections of Nepal Trekking

06:44 - Nikky's Journey: From Self Mastery to AI Innovations

11:28 - The Thread of Continuous Learning and Breakout Moments

18:36 - Navigating Challenges and Breakout Moments in Influencer Management

20:51 - Pioneering the Influencer Industry

22:45 - Building a Business with AI and Technology

24:53 - The 150 Tasks for Business Success

27:35 - Overcoming Mindset Barriers

30:37 - The Power of Gratitude and Forgiveness

42:50 - Sharing Insights and Experiences

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Full Transcript

Jeff Holman (00:01.216)

Welcome back friends to the breakout CEO podcast. I'm Jeff Holman, your host, and I am here. I said friends, welcome friends, but I really want to say welcome friend, Nikky Kho to the show. Nikky and I, we met, well, I'll go into that a little bit later and we'll talk a little about how we met, because I think there's some of that that is context for all of the fantastic and amazing things that Nikky has done. But Nikky, thank you for joining me.

Nikky (00:29.468)

Thank you so much, Jeff. I'm so excited to be here.

Jeff Holman (00:31.798)

Yeah, it's fun to reconnect. You and I haven't talked a ton lately, but we spent, I bet I'm the only person who has spent, what was it, eight days with you in tea house bunk rooms, in trekking through Nepal. Is that correct? Has anybody else done that?

Nikky (00:52.603)

Yeah, that is correct. All way up to Everest Base Camp. And that was amazing. Definitely a life changing.

Jeff Holman (00:55.406)

That is that. That was, that was so cool when we spent those days. That was what two years ago, right? Two, two and a half years ago.

Nikky (01:03.193)

Yeah, yeah, so, so meaningful. think that was definitely one of the most physically and mentally. I think that every time I saw us at one of those tea houses, I kept looking at you and thinking to myself, I can't believe you made it. I can't believe I made it. I can't believe everyone else made it. That was insane. I'm so, so, so amazed that we actually survived that thing.

Jeff Holman (01:13.966)

You

Jeff Holman (01:20.067)

Well,

Jeff Holman (01:24.266)

It was amazing. was, you know, for those who haven't been just a little bit of context there. You know, you start, you start, you go to Kathmandu, you fly to a place called Lukla. It's about 9,000 feet. I guess that's maybe 3000 meters, right? And then you hike up to, well, you probably do over eight days. You hike through maybe six different villages along the way, stay in these tea houses and you eat the food on the main floor, go upstairs and sleep on the.

on the upstairs gets colder and colder as you go higher and higher towards Everest Base Camp. And at Everest Base Camp, what you see, what we saw was the Everest Base Camp Village, which is a bunch of empty tents because all the climbers going to the peak were at the top or on their way to the top while we were there. But you also see the Kumbu Icefields, which is, you know, we're told we didn't go through them, but they're the most dangerous parts of climbing Everest. That's where people often.

Each year somebody gets lost or falls into a crevasse and they never find them It's a very dangerous place and so we we were able to climb up there together and with a with a small group and our guide DB You know, it was it was a lot of fun and a lot of work

Nikky (02:37.604)

Yeah, and all of us made it all the way, which is amazing. I mean, some of us had to go straight to the emergency room, but I think that was great.

Jeff Holman (02:43.598)

Yeah, did, you know, I'll confess, I opted to grab and share a helicopter ride back with you. That was one of the most depleted times I've ever experienced. Aside from, you probably heard I went to Kilimanjaro the next year and I got helicoptered off before somebody because I was getting fluid in my lungs. So, you I don't have a great track record with these things.

Nikky (03:10.393)

You definitely looked pretty strong when I was climbing with you. You're always at the front.

Jeff Holman (03:14.35)

Yeah, that was a fun trip and we had a great group. Well, on that trip, let me remind you about one experience from that trip that I think really captures how I know you. And I think, let me say this upfront, I think there are so many dimensions to you. You have so much going on, you've done so much, you've accomplished so much that you might be the most interesting man in the world in real life.

But this one moment, I remember really distinctly. It was the night before we made the final leg up to Everest Base Camp. what was the morning of, I should say? You'll remember we got up early that morning. It was like 4.30 or 5 a.m. I had a splitting headache from the altitude. I did not wanna eat. I was just, you know, those pillows that we had there, they were really hard. I should have brought my own. And I just remember...

It was dark in the room. We had to get up and, I w you know, kind of open my eyes or something. And I, kind of rolled over and our beds weren't too far apart. And there you were sitting on the edge of your bed. think you were dressed already for the day. And you just said, Hey, Jeff, if you had, if you were able to do it all over again. And I'm like, Whoa, wait, wait, I'm still waking up. Nikky. I, you're going, your, your mind was always going, if you had to do it all over again, what would you do to.

You know, and we had a, had a conversation, but I had to, I had to, you know, wake myself up and catch up to you, uh, or at least try to catch up to where you already were at 5 a.m. for the day, you know, in the, what they call the pyramid, right? Was that La Bucce, if I remember right, in the pyramid and, and you were wide awake, already thinking, already like reflecting on things. I think that's what you do, right?

Nikky (04:55.533)

Haha!

Nikky (05:05.722)

I wake up every day at 430 to 530. Start my day strong. I think that is the number one thing that Warren Buffett says allowed him to get success. I know Ray Dalvey and Bill Gates also claim the same. I love getting up early. I love reflecting. I love meditating to start my day. I think also meditation is supposed to be one of the number one things to start your day. So I always love doing that. But I do remember that day. remember that I never felt

three hours where it felt like ice or even just the wind, but it felt like ice was penetrating every pore of my body, not the most plethora of feeling. But I think that I've gone through a lot of ups and downs in my career and pain and suffering is something that is something that you could tell a story about. So some people experience sensations in their body. I've learned this in like Vipassana meditation retreats where you'll say, wow, this is unbearable. I can't deal with other people.

Jeff Holman (05:42.497)

Yeah.

Nikky (06:03.45)

I'm still around, I'm dealing with the sensations, but it's just a sensation. And I think I've learned that through a bunch of business experiences. And I'd love to actually share some of those with you and how I've gone through what think what you call breakout moments. I think that your audience is really interested in. See your breakout moments.

Jeff Holman (06:16.555)

Yeah. Yes. I would love to hear some. so I'll, I just wanted to get a little bit of intro, let people know where you and I met and how that happened. But let's, let's do that. Give us a background, at least at a high level for now about some of the things you've done. I think we'd need four hours to get a summary of everything you've done, but give us a high level view of where you've been and you kind of where you're at now.

Nikky (06:44.153)

I spent 25 years building a company called Self Mastery Company from zero to over a hundred million revenue. I exited that company and then I went on a seven-year traveling tour when I went to 150 countries doing over two million dollars in spiritual journeys. mean Tony Robbins program, Deepak Chopra program, living in marble temples in India, going to Latin America and doing tribal rituals. And then buying back that company after launching a new

AI business, a tech house program where last year I traveled four to seven times a week doing presentations and teaching AI and entrepreneurship and people could live with me in a tech house environment and in 30 days they go from not having a business to having a successful company.

Jeff Holman (07:28.225)

That's awesome. I think you might've introduced me to AI back. In fact, every time we'd stop at a tea house, not to dwell too much on this, but what was your AI assistant's name? Was it Stacy or?

Nikky (07:40.917)

No, there's an app. It's called Call Annie. Yeah. And Annie, at the time, looked like an animated image that you could talk to. She has memories. She remembers everyone you're talking to, about them, everything. Now it's actually custom avatars that could look like however you want her to look.

Jeff Holman (07:45.197)

Call Annie, that's what it was.

Jeff Holman (08:01.357)

Cool. Yeah, you were doing that and then you were also creating photos of us reaching the summit before we reached the summit. So yeah, you were all over AI. sorry, go ahead.

Nikky (08:14.017)

Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to manifest our success.

Jeff Holman (08:17.707)

Yeah, yeah, that was awesome. And so you've been doing AI stuff now for a while. Is it safe to say, this is my perception, you can tell me if I'm wrong, but I would guess you're one of the top experts in AI in the world. Is that a fair statement?

Nikky (08:34.058)

Yeah, I have a great book called Unlock AI Masteries, number one best-selling book on AI. Definitely one of the pioneers in terms of AI because I had access to GPT before it became GPT-2, before it was launched to public, before there was even API access or was public. And I also was grateful to also have a father who actually wrote one of the first articles about AI, even before it was called AI. My dad was a computer science professor, so I grew up

Taking his classes from age 12 to 16, I had to take his computer science classes until I eventually ended up building a website development company and then started doing tech development on the back end for Intel and UPS. Eventually that turned to me building a tech platform for personal growth education, which eventually became a self-mastery company, which teaches, originally taught dating advice, then went to personal growth advice, business advice, all sorts of things.

Jeff Holman (09:08.301)

You

Jeff Holman (09:26.134)

Yeah.

Nikky (09:33.217)

but we basically just manage influencers. And now we're an AI-focused company using AI for integrations to accelerate our growth.

Jeff Holman (09:41.838)

And for the listeners, this is what it was like every time we stopped on the trail. We went to different places and we'd learned something new about all the accomplishments that, that Nikky has had because you really have done so much. think the one that stood out to me was you, said you were a, and this is, it stood out only because it was, you you've done, you've, you've got all these degrees. You've started all these companies. We talked a lot about that for several days. And then one day you're like, you started talking about

You were the captain of your polo team at school, right? And I'm like, wait, that too? Like really?

Nikky (10:13.975)

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, when you're like a teenager, you know, don't have any money and my parents were pretty frugal. So to cover horse riding lessons and polo school, I did development on websites for a guy who owned a polo ranch. Eventually, I went to boarding school and Princeton University at the same time, and I was able to then be captain of my polo team. And that was that was a pretty cool experience. I guess.

You know, one of the unique things about me is that I've been in university since I was 12. So I've completed six degrees. I've done three different bachelors. I've done a couple masters and then a JD and I'm on a PhD program right now for AI. But I'm really just doing that as kind of like a continual learning process because I've literally been in university my entire adult life. I'm 45 now.

Jeff Holman (10:55.309)

Hmm.

Jeff Holman (11:02.753)

Yeah.

Nikky (11:12.246)

So that gives me 33 years of university education.

Jeff Holman (11:15.573)

Yeah, no, you're a busy guy. How does all that, like what's the thread that ties all that together? You know, all the things you've done, the things you're doing, where you're headed. What's that thread line for you?

Nikky (11:28.246)

Well my highest value is continual learning and education, knowledge and continually seeking that. I've also been always pretty unstructured as an entrepreneur. My first company that I created as an adult was like a private wealth management company, but by the time I was 22, I then built an education company and then following that, 60 other small education companies. Each of them were managing around different influencers.

And so 20 of them turned into seven figure plus businesses, one into an eight figure business. And now I have control of one of the businesses, which is the main business of education. But that's a company that also has had huge swings and huge, I guess we call breakout moments that have kind of inspired my life because I think I've learned a lot more in the field than I have learned in university. You know, I think that if you look at the time period of

of our lives, some of the biggest issues that we face are things like the recession in 2008. For example, for that, I actually had to do huge pivots for all my businesses, but more than anything, what got me to the point where I'm now kind of speaker of all kinds is that in 2008, my biggest and first career breakout moment was when I had about a half a million dollars in debt on my credit card. And you're like, well, how do you even get a credit card?

Jeff Holman (12:31.169)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (12:52.612)

yeah.

Nikky (12:54.198)

with a half a million dollars. Well, I basically had like eight credit cards and I growing them. I guess I kind of charged my business expenses to it. Then I did cash withdrawals to pay off the balance. I kept raising the limit until it eventually turned into a half a million. I call it the money tree, inventing credit out of just credit cards, which actually worked until I had this recession and people at the time, they were traveling to this $45 million house.

Jeff Holman (13:01.069)

you

Jeff Holman (13:10.267)

wow.

Jeff Holman (13:13.933)

You

Nikky (13:22.582)

in Los Angeles and doing events and at that kind of like an event center, people could live there, you go to my different events, but eventually people didn't want to travel to Los Angeles. So I was half a million dollars down, had no ability to pay for anything. And I remember I bought a flight to go visit my business partner and it was on Delta Airlines and the back of it was a map of all the cities Delta flies to. And so I decided to do

Jeff Holman (13:29.58)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (13:48.013)

Okay.

Nikky (13:49.878)

was noticing that I had a million people on our website each month. I decided I was just gonna put all the cities on the map, just on the internet with a date next to it, and I was gonna fly to all of them. I had no money, so I had no money for flights, no money for hotels, no money for venues, and didn't even money for expenses. What I did have was an email list, so I emailed that email list. No credit left, was matched, we were matched out. And so I said, hey, I would love to travel to you.

Jeff Holman (14:08.191)

and no credit left, right? You'd maxed out the cards.

Nikky (14:19.701)

and have you learn from all these seminars and workshops that our company teaches. In fact, I'll do it for free. These four hour presentations, but I need some help. I need people to give me their flight miles. I need hotels, I lodgings. If you have a cash estate, that'd be great. If you have an office I can do a seminar at, that'd be great. So I got over a thousand inquiries in the first six hours. And there have been people all over.

Jeff Holman (14:34.124)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (14:41.943)

So this is pre Airbnb, pre coworking spaces, and you're essentially inventing Airbnbs and coworking spaces so that people can host you and then invite their friends into hear this or what's the draw?

Nikky (14:45.609)

Yeah.

Nikky (14:57.333)

Yeah, exactly. had people say, oh, could use my university classroom, or hey, I work for a nonprofit, you could use her office, or hey, I know this park you could do a seven hour at and you crash in my house, I'll drive you from the airport. fact, I'll even drive you across the whole country. And I was like, wow, well, that's great. So I literally traveled to those 270 cities and 70 countries that Delta flew to at the time.

over a six month period. Now if you do the math on that, six months has about 180 days. So I'm talking about one to three cities per day, four hour events. So in a day could be I'm in a car driving to Portland from California and in the morning I'm doing a program in Portland, afternoon I'm doing a program in Seattle, evening I'm doing program in Vancouver. Or it might be I'm on a plane and flight to London and I do a program in London and an afternoon in Dublin and evening in Casablanca.

Jeff Holman (15:26.027)

Yeah. Wow.

Nikky (15:48.629)

Sometimes I would just spend one day in the city and do a program there. But what I did is I did these free events. Anywhere from 40 to 400 people would show up. I created... It was just me. Nobody else. I booked my own flights, my own travel. I had no one working for me. But what I did do is every single city I traveled to, I said, who here wants to buy my product and services? $300. It's going to get fulfilled by other people. But I also have some DVDs and videos at the time.

Jeff Holman (15:57.004)

Now, did you have a team with you? I want to hear about the events, but just you. you're...

Jeff Holman (16:13.538)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (16:17.922)

Yeah.

Nikky (16:18.132)

and you buy those and 20 % them will sign up and I'm like that's great. Also, raise your hand if you have a couch for me to crash on because I have nowhere to stay.

Jeff Holman (16:25.997)

This is while you're speaking. Hey, I'm going to tell you about this stuff. And at the end of the day, I need somewhere to stay if somebody wants to give me a couch.

Nikky (16:32.524)

Yeah. Yeah. I always have one person sign up. It wasn't always the best. One time I was in Berlin, I got a warehouse where there wasn't even a bathroom in the warehouse, but that was great. I had a place to stay. I also had a time where the third upsell would be also who here wants to volunteer for this thing called the Inner Circle? It'd be a local Facebook group in your city where it kind of like a fraternity. We'd have a president, vice president, secretary, marketing.

Jeff Holman (16:36.097)

Ha

Jeff Holman (16:41.673)

wow.

Jeff Holman (16:54.849)

Okay.

Nikky (16:58.999)

organize local events based on the curriculum that I'm going to be selling to you because you're quite good buyer.

Jeff Holman (17:03.093)

Yes. Did you have the curriculum already or was this something you were kind of just you were rebuilding the airplane as you were flying?

Nikky (17:10.964)

Yeah, I bought it. I built it while I was in the airplane while I was flying and then train retained. I would also do that. And if I was in Europe, I paid five hundred dollars. You get like a 21 day, 21 country pass and maximize that. had people drive me for city to city across the country for everywhere I went. I eventually got cash flow. I got over three million dollars. That's a pretty good six month venture, but I never spent more than two thousand dollars. I covered my debt each month. I spent two thousand dollars maximum.

Jeff Holman (17:22.945)

Okay.

Jeff Holman (17:31.819)

Yeah, wow.

Jeff Holman (17:40.204)

Wow.

Nikky (17:40.596)

I think the most I've ever spent in a month was $2,700. And that was super frugal. But that allowed me to build the base of a network of over a thousand volunteers working with us for these 270 Facebook groups, geo-targeted per city. And eventually that led to me then hiring 10 influencers. And those influencers ended up teaching a program that we sold for $300 in each of those cities. Now, eventually we got rid of the majority of those cities. We had about 120 of those cities that we kept.

kept going back to them year after year. And that's how I was able to build my core business.

Jeff Holman (18:10.775)

Yeah.

Wow, wow. And so this is just because you saw the back of a flight, back of, what is the magazine called? Delta, I forget the name of it, but we've all looked at it when we're sitting there with nothing else to do on the plane, right? You just like, look at all these. Like how did, is this common for you to just kind of put these, two and two together to create three million?

Nikky (18:32.147)

Make sure you get it. You know what?

Nikky (18:36.549)

Yeah, so I think that that's exactly what happened. And this is just one of those things that happens when you're managing influencers. They're probably the most challenging people to work with, especially highly successful ones. Every influencer I've worked with we've built from zero so far, but I'm hoping to change that in the future. I remember another challenge, a breakout moment we had was we had an influencer that was posting dating videos of himself.

in Japan, but they were kind of offensive. And so he actually had some of his videos edited by people that were offended and turned into a compilation video, but they made it really extreme. They added dungeons. They added all sorts of like terrorist phrases. And for some reason, people believed it was actually created by him. And so we actually had him in Time Magazine as Time Magazine's most hated man in the world in 2014.

Jeff Holman (19:33.271)

Do they do, I've never heard of that. Do they do that? The most hated person?

Nikky (19:35.507)

Yeah, if you Google time magazine's most hated man in world, you'll hear about this guy named Julian Blanc. Now, Julian now teaches personal growth about how because of that, we had him banned from 16 countries, every country and president and celebrities attacking him. And then he had to overcome his anxiety. And now he teaches how to overcome his anxiety. But one of the things that we did have was we had millions of dollars locked up for years.

Jeff Holman (19:41.472)

Okay.

Jeff Holman (19:49.421)

Hmm.

Nikky (20:04.882)

And I still have money locked up today, but it's under a hundred grand locked up for years because they thought we were a terrorist organization. But fortunately, I was very senior person at the FBI's daughter was actually my executive assistant. But it was crazy. We had things like fake anthrax bombs exploding in my house, people in hazmat suits there. had people following us on programs. So instead of actually doing programs in hotels and having a meet at the hotel, we'd meet in a shopping mall.

Jeff Holman (20:19.382)

Ha ha.

Jeff Holman (20:23.296)

Really?

Nikky (20:33.394)

and then escort people to the hotel where the conference was had under anonymous names. We even had people attack one of our venues where I had to charter a boat and get people out of there so they wouldn't get beaten up. Unfortunately, we had a mole on that boat and then when they got off the boat, they got attacked, but we still had crazy stuff happen.

Jeff Holman (20:51.092)

Really? Well, so this was not your everyday organization then, right? Like I think people listening to this will say, wait a second, I run a SaaS business or I've got e-commerce or I'm a professional. Like they won't relate to that, right? You were doing something that was edgy at the time, right?

Nikky (20:56.737)

Hahaha!

Nikky (21:07.163)

Yeah.

Nikky (21:11.473)

Yeah, at the time we were pioneering a whole new industry of influencers. nowadays, my biggest breakout moments are really just about hustling. So if you look at what we do now, I'm primarily launching new businesses that involve with AI and technology. And even in that, I still have to do a lot of the same lessons. For example, in order to grow my business from zero into where we are now a year and a half later, which is now over a million in revenue, I started a real AI dynamics.

Jeff Holman (21:15.915)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (21:26.528)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (21:37.886)

Which business are we talking about right now? which, okay. This is the one where I went and you, you were presenting, you presented four to four to seven times a week last year, right? On this real AA.

Nikky (21:41.177)

real sky dynamics.

Nikky (21:49.84)

Yeah, I copied my old seminar tour, but now, as opposed to in the past, we actually built our own audience from social media, YouTube, Instagram, email campaigns. This was all built through speaking at famous events like Volcano Summit or Utah Tech Weeks, San Francisco Deep Tech Week, all sorts of technology events. Like next month, I'm speaking at the Build Stuff Software Development Conference. I'm in a club called the Young Presidents Organization, YPO.

Jeff Holman (22:03.712)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (22:08.14)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (22:16.588)

Yeah.

Nikky (22:16.913)

So I'll speak there, I'll speak at an entrepreneur's organization and to have all sorts of chapters around the world. And that's where I found a challenge. It's challenging to build a business and maintain it live at that speed. But the typical growth I wanted to have was fast. So that's why I was literally traveling four to seven times a week, different cities teaching these programs. But it worked. More importantly though, I the biggest challenge if you look at just like any kind of business, could be a video production business.

It could be a life coaching business. It could be a software business, it's data cleanup. It could be a real estate company that manages Airbnb's. Any day to day company that you want to create. I found that entrepreneurship still is challenging, but we've created a formula of just 150 tasks. That if you do these 150 tasks, then you will have a business guaranteed, impossible not to have clients. I've never had anyone who done these tasks. It's literally impossible not to get clients at the end of this.

Jeff Holman (23:10.284)

I haven't heard this before. What are some of the, I mean, are these the tasks that we would think of when running a business?

Nikky (23:15.119)

These are tasks like things like, let's build your personal brand to make you an expert by launching a best-selling book. Let's build a video commercial for your company that really conveys your brand and hooks into the pain of your target customers and shows how your service fulfills that need. Let's build a 30-page sales letter and branding kit that markets your company in a proper way. Let's build a website and social media campaign that promotes your website. Let's make a list of 40 of your potential target customers

Jeff Holman (23:21.248)

Okay.

Jeff Holman (23:30.687)

Okay.

Nikky (23:44.28)

and get somebody on the phone to agree to be a customer service and product even before their service and product has been completed so we can build your service around their need as opposed to the other way around. Now that last one is probably the scariest one. It's actually something that we require people to do even before they start the Tech House program. And the other ones, each of those could typically take more than 30 days. But that's an example of what you would do in one of those 150 tasks in 30 days, which means that that might, all that entire list of five tasks

You might be completing all of those in just one day. Now that seems impossible, but with AI it is possible. And so we give people AI tools and methodologies, show them how to do it. People work with me one on one. And we actually will launch all those things at rapid speed, at rapid sensation. And we do it on such a phenomenal level that we've now done this every six months in different cities like Las Vegas, LA, Hawaii.

We also have available at our tech house in India. It's a pretty amazing experience.

Jeff Holman (24:44.374)

Wow. And so this is what you're doing with the tech house participants and you've done multiple cohorts in some of these locations, right?

Nikky (24:53.284)

Yes, we have multiple cohorts now in Las Vegas. We've also done cohorts in LA. It's been pretty cool. Some people come for a week. Some people come for a month. If you're here for a week, we definitely can't accomplish the entire 150 task list, but we can accomplish lot. And so we've been doing that and people could learn more about us or again, touch me on nickyco.com and I see all sorts of information about it. Yeah. But basically,

Jeff Holman (24:59.562)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (25:09.536)

Yeah. Wow.

Jeff Holman (25:17.836)

Okay, we'll put that in the show notes. Yeah.

Nikky (25:22.947)

You'll basically see all these lessons. I love showing what our people have done. It's pretty amazing. But every single month I launch it, I have to launch one of my own businesses. And they have to be completely fresh businesses.

Jeff Holman (25:32.748)

Okay.

Wait, you're running the cohort, but then you're like, while I'm running it, I'm going to do another business. We're going to get off the ground. And you're doing that in parallel. Really?

Nikky (25:42.573)

doing the hundred tasks. I'm showing them. Look, I don't want to be an armchair professor. There's so many people that teach in university, a lecture in university, I've been doing that too, but they don't actually do what they're actually teaching about. So in order to prove that it's actually possible, I have to do the same things, the same tasks that I assigned to the cohort. And so my business, Real Air Dynamics, it launched in our first Vegas tech house.

Jeff Holman (26:09.548)

really? Okay.

Nikky (26:10.191)

in real time. So one of the things I had to do was speak at live event and make an upsell and sell products to clients. So my first event, organized it at a thousand people show. I'm not the only one. One of my other cohort members, he also organized an event, almost a thousand people, and he sold 130 grand worth of products and services, which was amazing. So it's totally possible to do, not just for me, but also for the people who are participating in the program.

Jeff Holman (26:26.261)

Wow.

Jeff Holman (26:32.032)

That's fantastic. So you're running all these companies, you're advising, you're teaching, while you're studying, going to school. For some people, this might feel a little bit out of reach. Not everybody has, I don't want to say resources, although you probably have some resources at this point in your life from the past successes you've had, but maybe not everybody has the belief even that they can do these types of things. What would you say to some of your friends that you run into?

Nikky (26:56.652)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (26:59.382)

Do they all say, hey, I want to be Nikky? Or does someone say, listen, I just, I can't do what you do because X, Y, Z.

Nikky (27:07.151)

So I think that is one of the biggest things that we teach at Self-Mattery Company. How to overcome that mindset to be able to reach out to other people, to have that inter-confidence belief system, to interact with the world with more love, not just because you can, because you usually have to love yourself first and radiate that out and show the gifts that you've been given to the world, but basically know that you have it first. And I think that the other thing is you're right. There's a lot of things that I'm doing that's impossible without having successive resources.

I think that if you also want to launch just one business at first to get things going and automate that, systematize it, that's where people come to me and that's where they start. And I think it's completely possible for anyone. Look, we have lot of people that came to the tech house and they just want to be solopreneurs. So they created a video production company that's still making revenue today and they created it in a tech house. And all they do is just get a client to make videos with. the cohort also helps each other. They become clients for each other, testimonials for each other, support systems for each other.

Jeff Holman (27:39.339)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (27:44.652)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (27:50.902)

Okay.

Nikky (28:03.662)

I think they get just as much value from each other as they do learning from me. I think that's one of the great advantages of having everyone focus in a community at the same time of one thing. But also, I think that I can also hold people's hands and allow them to see what's possible. And that's why I love mentoring people. I do that all the time through online coaching clients. Each month I meet with coaching clients that have gone through the tech house and now they want to continue pushing things forward. I think also the other thing that people don't realize is that a lot of the

Jeff Holman (28:15.616)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (28:28.662)

Yeah.

Nikky (28:33.645)

inner belief systems that people have about who they are or what gifts they have is completely false. I think that the biggest one for me is that people think they're stuck in a static environment. But I believe that 100 % with 100 % confidence that anything is possible for anyone no matter who you are, no matter what background you have. I've seen time and time again. Now usually it's not gonna be done with the exact same story as me or the same pattern as me. But that's also why

Jeff Holman (28:58.389)

Yeah.

Nikky (29:01.742)

I became a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in this group called Tier One, where I educating people on entrepreneurship. Paul is from people from all over the world, not just from the USA, but from all over the world, and my goal was to help teach people how to create either a job for themself, a new business for themself, or how to get a job for themselves. I think a lot of people are just struggling just to maintain that first job or even move up the ladder. I think that's also fine. But I think the biggest thing, though, that people have that's stuck

is that they're used to a certain habit. And when you want to get out of where you are in life, you usually have to break a pattern. We call it a pattern interrupt. It's a term from psychology, from the hypnosis days of guys like Richard Bandin. And I think that if you look at what a pattern interrupt is, it's kind of like an instant shift in your belief systems. Like you're saying, I can't do this, to I can do this. Or I can only do this this way, to realizing I can do things in a million different ways. Or everything's a yes or no.

Almost nothing in this world is a yes or a no. It's usually just like a bunch of gray area and that gray area is usually not gray, it's multi-colored. And I think that when people start thinking entrepreneurial, then they become a shade of an entrepreneur. So some people are real true entrepreneurs, They just build new businesses. Other people are entrepreneurial in thought and it affects their entire personal life, settlements and deals. As you're an attorney, have to think really outside the box all the time, deal with primarily entrepreneurs. I think that entrepreneurial mindset

Jeff Holman (30:04.085)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (30:19.638)

Yeah.

Nikky (30:30.913)

To think about what's possible outside the box is probably your gain, the creative aspect of things.

Jeff Holman (30:37.194)

Yeah. Man, there's so much here. We might need to do a full season, like three months of Nicky Co on the podcast to get through all of this. I want to ask you, because I know you're super busy and I really appreciate the time you set aside for this. So I want to ask you about some advice you would give to people who are maybe a little bit further back on the path than you are.

What are one or two things you would do? But I'm gonna give you a second to think about that. While I just make a connection back to the beginning of the show we talked about, you you mentioned the three hours trekking up to Everest Base Camp on that final day and the ice that you felt in your bones. I remember that very much, that my feet were as cold as they've ever been while we were in the shade. But I distinctly remember about the time we got to where you could see

the peak of Everest, because you have to see it from a distance from Everest Base Camp. You can't see the peak at Everest Base Camp, right? About the time we got to where we could actually take a photo of Everest Peak was the time that we walked from the shadows and the shade into the sunlight. And I just remember the transition that that was, was, you know, it was night and day effectively and, you know, ice cold and

getting warmer, I might say. And so that to me is almost emblematic of the breakout moments that we have in our life. We're on this journey and we're going and we're struggling through the dark and the cold and all of a sudden we hit the light. Maybe we see the peak ahead of us where we're going. Like I just was thinking about that as you were talking and I can only imagine all the paths you've been on, all the times you've been in the shade in the cold.

And then found the light, seen the peaks, traveled to the end and then done it again and again and again and said, Hey, I've got, I've been down this journey. Why don't you guys come with me? You know, and you've shown other people this path and you're like, Hey, listen, we're going to get there pretty soon. You're to fill the sunlight. You're going to see the peak. Like that to me, I don't know. It was just an image I had, from walking that path with you and hearing your story that I think it's, I think it's.

Jeff Holman (32:59.372)

maybe fitting for what you're describing today.

Nikky (33:02.635)

Thank you, and I very clearly remember that moment because as soon as I felt the Sun that that morning I was just full of so much immense gratitude that I had a relief in a state change from the emotional experience that I had of What I I imagined was a torrent of an infinite amount of suffering and of the cold wind Flowing through even though I was wearing I think like four layers of pants daggers and every

atom of my body. And this is so grateful. That immense gratitude as part of my spiritual journey became like a central focus of my business career. One of the things that I got introduced to when I was at BYU was this concept called Christ-like leadership. And it's not because I believe that, you know, everyone is required to follow Jesus Christ, but I think that the law lessons that you can learn about

compassion, connection, and mostly the principle of gratitude, forgiveness, and all these great principles he taught. So I wanted to focus on those two, gratitude and forgiveness, infinite amounts, because I believe that more than anything, those two things have helped me. So the first one in terms of gratitude is that positive mindset is what I start every day with. We call it a gratitude waterfall. So to start my day, to get me the energy to actually want to push forward, especially when times are tough. And right now,

Jeff Holman (34:11.403)

Okay, great.

Nikky (34:30.014)

Times are very tough. was just mentioning how I just regot in and bought into my company. It's been like three to seven days of even just today, writing multiple settlement agreements for all sorts of issues. The most scary issues you could have from embezzlement, from conspiracy, from racketeering, from fraud, all sorts of issues that I have to deal with. People are like, wow, I can't believe you have to deal with that.

Jeff Holman (34:44.875)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (34:49.569)

Yep, yep.

Nikky (34:58.442)

How do you maintain gratitude in that kind of experience? You're so grateful for all the beauty around you, everywhere. You're grateful for the fact that you still have certain things in your life, even the smallest things. I look outside and I can see beauty in just like trees. Just all the little things that we do have that we can see, even that alone, but actually feel it, resonate with it, connect with it. These are the things that allow you to push forward so that stress doesn't overwhelm you into a complete state of immobilization.

And I think that other part of it is an infinite amount of forgiveness. And I've had to learn this, not just in business, because in my business, I've had every other year, massive similar experiences, including everything I told you about every other year in the amount of six or seven figure losses. And it's been tough for a career like that. But I also do think that you truly become a true entrepreneur once one of those things happens to you at least one time.

Jeff Holman (35:31.53)

Hmm.

Jeff Holman (35:43.244)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (35:53.418)

Yeah, yes, I think so.

Nikky (35:55.593)

I think as a joke I used to say you're not a true entrepreneur until you've dealt with your first lawsuit.

Jeff Holman (36:00.052)

Yeah. Well, that's why we're doing the show because so many the, so many CEOs, they don't necessarily want to talk about those things because it doesn't sound like something you want to share. It's not successful. It's not prestigious, but, but, but having people like you on the show, not just, not just to share your insights and stories, but to allow people to, you know, see a little bit behind the curtain. That's so valuable. I think from my perspective as an attorney counseling, a lot of different CEOs that, that

don't think that they have anybody to turn to. They don't know that they have a mentor or someone who's actually experienced a lot worse than them, but still is going down that path. And I love that you're still talking about gratitude and forgiveness, maybe even more so because of the things you've been through.

Nikky (36:47.464)

Yeah, and I would love to help anyone who's going through so many situations because of passion of mine. I think that forgiveness, for me, is actually a gift to yourself as opposed to the person that you're actually forgiving. And that sometimes is yourself for not putting yourself in a better situation. Realizing you're still learning throughout the whole process. And it's the journey that you're even more grateful for because that's why we were brought here to this planet. God literally put us here, this planet, the whole purpose.

of having us become more like him and learn through these experiences and grow. It reminds me of how I had a beautiful pet peacock. He came to me as a wild peacock, literally flew into my house through the front door that blew open during a storm, a shelter. Pretty weird experience, but these things just came to me.

Jeff Holman (37:36.009)

I'm so glad you brought it up, because I wanted to hear a little bit about the peacock again.

Nikky (37:41.705)

But this peacock came to me at a unique moment because I just read about, I love saying multiple faiths. So I loved reading the Bhagavad Gita and how Krishna is a manifestation of God as a peacock that are behind his ears. I finished reading that. Next morning I wake up in my kitchen and I go, there's a peacock in my house. How did you get in here? I know you can't like fly through walls, right? But my friend door blew open and the next six years I've had this peacock. I've had him raspberries. I left the back door open. He'd always fly back in to eat food.

Jeff Holman (38:00.278)

You

Nikky (38:11.697)

every day until one day one of my neighbors came and killed my peacock with a crossbow. And I was pretty traumatizing. I was pretty sad. I was literally in some of deepest tears of my life. I loved that peacock. But when the media came over to interview me about what happened, I told them that my biggest lesson I've learned, the gift I had was massive forgiveness. I completely forgive. know that.

Jeff Holman (38:28.715)

Yeah.

Nikky (38:42.835)

I know that not everyone that's called follows Christ, but I forgave just like how like the immense forgiveness that Christ had to have for the betrayals that he's had in life. And it gave me a massive amount of relief and freedom. Now I'm not mentioning that because you also have a peacock or a pet or expect someone in your life to be assassinated by a crossbow, but I'm saying that because by doing that, I was able to give myself peace in my heart and I was able to use what happened there

as sense of renewal and purpose to try to make the world a better place, to prevent these kinds of things from happening, to kind of educate people about why this happened, because I know that what happened there was because whoever did that and didn't really understand fully how they were affecting the world, they wouldn't do that. They did not know what they did. And I think that that allowed me to also connect so that when people do things that violate my expectations, my clarity, whether it's a theft, whether it's a violation of trust, whether I think that things are supposed to be done a certain way or another, I can let go.

It allows me to move forward calmly, collectively. And so I now have two values that push things forward. One is clarity, that transparency about what people say is full of trust and integrity, and the other one is concistus. People get to the point, they're direct, there's no hiding behind things, and that concistus and clarity allows me to operate business. But it all comes from the standpoint that I had to learn through an immense amount of gratitude and forgiveness. And so if I was to recommend one thing above everything else, I recommend those two values to be

grown as deep as possible throughout the rest of your life.

Jeff Holman (40:18.087)

I love that. I love that you called it the gratitude waterfall. I want to call it the peacock of forgiveness, but I'm not sure if that's what you would call it. it's such a, those are just qualities that, you know, from the moment I met you, we first ran into each other, met up halfway to Nepal when I saw you and Carl in, I think it was in Cheon.

airport if I remember correctly and we were on a layover and I asked you, said, so what is it you do? We didn't know each other at all. And you said, well, I'm on a journey right now. I'm on a world tour traveling the temple sites for the LDS church. And I thought, is this real? That was my first thought. And then I thought, this is a man who

lives at a different level than a lot of people. And I think the advice you're giving about the gratitude waterfall and the depths of forgiveness and the benefits that is to everyone around you and to yourself, that is in alignment with the Niki Ko that I know. So I'm really glad you shared that.

Nikky (41:33.487)

Thank you. Well, you know what? To show people actually what I actually did on that tour, I'm going to give your audience a gift. I'm going send you a link to a video that I was able to record from speaking about AI and entrepreneurship to YPO, the Young Presidents' Organization. They gave me a quarter million dollar budget to hold an event and the only speaker at that event was me.

Jeff Holman (41:54.271)

Okay.

Jeff Holman (42:01.365)

Wow.

Nikky (42:02.023)

I was able to have them have all sorts of fun entertainment like race cars and small experiences of private view of the spear and all sorts of cool experiences attached to it. the content in that video includes AI avatar of Jesus Christ showing a collage of all the temples I went to around the world. It also gives these great tips about how to use AI and all sorts of tools.

Jeff Holman (42:23.253)

Really?

Nikky (42:29.479)

That'll be a gift, a message to you, a text to you, that you can give it to your audience.

Jeff Holman (42:32.735)

That is so kind of you. So, well, I think we're at our time now and I just wanna say thank you again. It's been fantastic reconnecting, hearing some of the stuff I'd heard before, being reminded of that and hearing some new things from you. It really is a pleasure speaking with you, Nicky.

Nikky (42:50.245)

Awesome, thanks so much Jeff.

Jeff Holman (42:51.891)

Yeah, and to our audience out there, we're glad you joined us this week. We'll have the show notes up. We'll post this in audio and video across different platforms, and we'll look forward to seeing you guys another week. Take care.