Episode 18 - Vision Espresso & Manifesting Miracles in 6 Minutes a Day with Niko Arapkiles

Welcome to Super Connections. I am your host, Jennifer K. Hill, helping you with the Golden Triangle of Connection, where you will super connect to yourself, others, and your purpose. Join me each week as I will share from some of my favorite tips and tools for super connecting, and I'll bring in some of my favorite friends and thought leaders To help support you on your journey to super connecting to the life of your dreams. Hi friends, and welcome back for episode 18 of Super Connections. I'm your host, Jennifer Cahill, and I'm so grateful that we get to play in space and time and explore what it means to super connect to yourself, others, and your purpose. Today I have a new friend joining us today who has an incredible product app vision for the world that we're gonna get into here in a moment. We have Nico Arapkalis, who is the CEO of the AI and personal development company Just Grow Visions and founder of the Vision Espresso app. This is gonna be a very fun conversation coming off the back end of our last interview with Gio, who we just had on the show. Talking about future talking to yourself, because what Nico's app does is it's a powerful tool to clarify your vision and energetically connect to your highest self in 6 minutes a day so you can avoid distractions and costly relationships and systematically become the best version of yourself. I don't know about you, but that's why I wanted to have him on the show as soon as possible, as soon as we met. So Nico, thank you for being here, and shout out to our mutual friend Mindset Mary who introduced us.

Oh yeah, I gotta give it to Mary. But so grateful to be here, so grateful that we've made this connection. You've already shifted my life drastically since we met last week, and I'm just excited to continue the conversation.

I love that, Nico. That's the purpose of this show, being the fairy godmother of human connection. What if we could all just miraculously connect to the right people at the right time, and most importantly, love ourselves in the process as we do it? Which I think ties in beautifully to Vision Espresso. So talk to us about How you came to create Vision Espresso and how that vision is being birthed in the world and the magic and miracles that you're up to with sharing it with people.

Yeah, absolutely. Again, thank you for having me on. It's a true honor. So I, I played baseball in college and my mom gave me a copy of the book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, and that shifted my life because I started implementing it right away and I saw the fruits of the labor, right? I visualized seeing a dollar bill on the ground and then I saw it a couple days later. And then I, when I was in college playing baseball, I really had one season to play all out. Otherwise, like I was probably gonna be done playing cuz I was at a junior college. So I wanted to go play at the next level and didn't really have any prospects. So I really got into it. Like, I'm gonna use everything. I'm gonna work on my physical game. I'm gonna work on my mental game. And so I would visualize every night before I went to bed hitting home runs off the 7 of the scoreboard on the last or last inning, first pitch. And there was one game when that happened just exactly how I saw it.

I love it.

And it was just like, after that time, it's like, how can I not believe in this stuff? And I knew it was far bigger than baseball. So I was like, how do I like continue to recreate that more often? Because I also realized it was, it was also dependent on my practice and my practice wasn't very consistent. And so I was like, how can I create something that can help me stay more consistent with that? And it was a long journey from then to where we are now. But essentially what I developed is this product about 4 years ago now, and it basically took the concept of turning your vision board into an audio from your future self. And it was like they come back to you and tell you how amazing you are, how much they love you, how grateful they are for you. And then we have like emotional music on the background. We do some breathwork in the beginning to really get you into state. And then you listen to that every day and it just slowly reprograms your subconscious to Believe that you actually are becoming that person.

Ah, that's incredible. And I love that this episode is also coming off the back of another dear friend we just had on the show, Papa D'Annunzio, who's a brilliant entrepreneur, built a billion-dollar company. And like you, he's a huge fan of The Secret. And I did something similar when I was working in my first and real only ever corporate job. I had this thing where I would call it a statement of intent and a daily declaration. So I'd have job seekers when I was in the recruiting world, Write out this thing where it would be by December 31st, 2000. This was back in like early 2000s, 2005. I have a job paying me $100,000 or more within this amount of my house, blah, blah, blah. And I'll always remember, Nico, the most beautiful thing that happened. It was around 2012 when I had opened my own recruiting company and the market was tanked. You remember it was like the Great Recession and everybody was going through hardships. And I meet this lady for coffee in downtown LA, and it's like right around early November, just before Thanksgiving. And this job seeker is lamenting to me. I've never met her before. And she says, Jennifer, I'm the breadwinner in my family. I have 2 kids and I have a husband and I'm the breadwinner and I just lost my job right before the holidays. What am I going to do? And I said, number one, let's first look at this from a positive perspective. When was the last time that you ever had 2 months off with your husband and kids around the holidays? And she looked at me incredulously and said, never. I said, great. So step

one,

what if we saw that as a gift? Wow. Instead of looking at this as something that's happening to you, what if we saw this as happening for you? And she said, okay, but I still need a job. I still have to put food on the table. I said, great. Here's step 2. We're gonna say by December 31st— the year was, I think, 2012— I have a job paying me XYZ. I think in her case it was like $70,000 or more within 5 miles of her house doing a thing that she loved. And so you write that out as a statement and you declare it first thing in the morning. The minute you wake up, you declare it out loud with vim and vigor. Yes. So the woman starts doing it, and, you know, I said, enjoy this time of the holidays. There might be less jobs, but still go out there and put your full attention and energy and spend the time with the kids. So a month and a half goes by. I didn't really have a lot for her. And I remember it was Christmas Eve, Nico, and I was getting ready to leave the office. And on the landline, I get this call from her. And she said, Jennifer— we'll call her Sue. It's Sue. And I said, yeah, are you okay? What's going on? How are you? How's your family? She said, I wanted to thank you. Today, I got a job offer closer to home, paying me more money, but the greatest gift that you gave me was the last 6 weeks I had to enjoy cherishing this time with my family. And I will always remember that. And she and I are both like in tears. And that's what's possible out of all of this is we can either live as though everything is a miracle, as Einstein says, or as though nothing is a miracle. So let's talk more about Vision Espresso. Like, how can we live life as though everything is a miracle and create hitting it off the back screen and the number 7, like, how can we all create that in our lives?

Gosh, you're giving me chills. Like this whole entire conversation. Just a quick side note, and then we'll get into Vision Espresso. I have this painting in my bedroom and it's this one where it's like, there's rain falling. It's all these different colors. And there's this guy that's holding a briefcase and the umbrella. And then there's a little kid next to him that's just like embracing it. And what that really tells me and shows me, I want to remind myself every day is that like, life is a choice. And every day is a choice and it's a choice on how you want to perceive it and how you want to look at it. No matter the challenges, the hardships, how do you want to look at it? Do you want to look at it as a positive or do you want to just say, oh, this is happening to me? And when you look at it from a place of choice, because we always have the choice to look at it, that's the type of stuff that can happen when you're intentional. And that's really where Vision Espresso comes in. It's a tool to help you become more intentional with your life than the life that you truly desire. And so basically it's so fun. We're so excited about it. And I'm just like enamored with the potential and the possibilities with AI. And it, people always ask me like, were you a developer? Were you an engineer? I was like, not even close. I just love personal development. And then I saw all my AI friends like living a lot easier lifestyle. And I was like, huh, I think you guys have something figured out that I don't have. So I just started incorporating more of it into our processes. And so now as it stands, it's really cool where You basically, all you have to do is answer 5 questions ranging from what do I not want to your ideal day to then your 1-year vision, 3-year vision, your, your ideal lifestyle. You answer those questions audibly, you speak them out. We all know how powerful our words are when we speak them with power and conviction. And then from there, you input those and you speak those into our app. And then about 48 hours later, you'll have a 6-minute audio from your future self telling you how amazing you are, how everything unfolded as if it already all happened. And then you listen to that every day, and we put you on a protocol we call 75 Easy as opposed to 75 Hard, because all you got to do is listen to an audio for 6 minutes. That's pretty easy. And then we've had clients that have had drastic results even before they even got their audio back. Like, we have people that manifest their dream life in literally 24 hours. We had a client that 5x their business in 30 days. Like, it's crazy, and it doesn't even make sense to, like, the logical people, but it's just— yeah, this is how it works when you speak with intention and you believe it and you have the And the conviction and the belief that it's going to happen, it does.

Yeah, it's— that's exactly what Poppy was saying, who wrote the book How to Manifest Anything You Can Imagine. He came from the lineage of Think and Grow Rich. Did you read that one? I think we were talking about that. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

Good. So Think and Grow Rich, of course, was Napoleon Hill, who was trained by Andrew Carnegie, who then trained Earl Nightingale, who trained Bob Proctor, who trained Poppy, who we just had on the show. And in his book, he says, if you can imagine it with the energy of a child on Christmas morning, Then you can manifest it. And for some of us, I think it seems too simple. In fact, I was just listening to one of my favorite podcasts that I listen to every week, a teacher of mine, David Guillaume, and it was like a head exploding emoji. Everybody— I've literally been talking to people around the world this week and I'm sharing it and they're like, no, I just listened to that episode. And it was all about how many of us don't want to be bored, so we create our own dramas and our own pain in our life and chaos. Interesting. So that way we get to be the hero and come back in. It's that old hero, victim, perpetrator thing is we're always trying to be the hero, the victim, and the perpetrator. So we're perpetuating this in our own lives. I remember I was giving a speech one time in DC and I was teaching about the drama triangle, hero, victim, perpetrator. And I had people break out in groups and reflect on where they were being each. And this one guy raises his hand who's running a big law firm in DC and he said, Jennifer, I could just see where I was the hero, the victim, and the perpetrator. Like, in one particular case, I was trying to get a new contract, and the firm was already happy with its IT contract, but I wanted to be the hero, so I dove in and saved them a bunch of money. And so then I was the perpetrator because I was the one now having to work till midnight one night to get the contract done, and I was also the victim because I was the one who did that to myself.

Yup.

And that's the life we live, and it's a choice. The beautiful thing, though, is the moment— what you're talking about, Nico, is accountability is the only access out of that drama triangle, if we can move, if we can be 100% accountable, if we unequivocally go to bed every night seeing ourselves hit those home runs metaphorically, physically, etc., that's what's possible. Or even future talking like you were talking about. I love that you have an app that helps you future talk. A friend of mine, Joey Primiani, was one of the youngest guys who ever worked at Google. I think he was the youngest. He was like 13 years old and he manifested it. Same thing. And he would future talk into reality. We were having lunch one day in Silicon Valley and he said, Jen, I just had the best lunch with Obama and I'm on Richard Branson's standby jet to the moon. And you just future talk with people in real time as though it's already happened. Obviously get buy-in from your friends on this so you can be in agreement and not hallucinate. But, and not 3 months later, Joey texts me he's having lunch with Obama at the White House and then was on Richard Branson's standby jet to the moon.

Yeah. Oh my gosh, that's so cool. And I like the thing that I want to double down too is you feel it as well, because that's where like, like really all this came from. Because when I would close my eyes and see the home run is I would get chills. Like I even talk about it now and I get chills because baseball was my everything. I'd say only thing I ever thought about, breathe, sleep. Like it was everything to me. And when I would see myself hitting home runs, it would just like full body chills. And then when I went to go like visualize other things after I was done playing baseball, it wasn't the same experience. And I know like even it's— there's a book, Neville Goddard, I believe, The Feeling Is the Secret. And so I was like, how do I— how do I feel that more? Because I want to get back into that because I know that's how it like happened really well with baseball. And so then I was like, okay, how do we— How do we engineer a feeling? That's really where it came from. And As mentioned, I have a little sample for you, so maybe this is a good time for it to show you. Beautiful. So yeah, feel free to lean back, close your eyes. There's gonna be a couple breaths in the beginning, and then it'll just fade right into your future self telling you how amazing you are. Here we go.

Hey Jennifer, it's me, it's you, the future you. I'm so excited for you to get here, to see who you've become and all you've created. Yeah, the billion souls connected through Optimatch, the leaders and teams thriving in psychological safety because of your work, the healed hearts finding their light again, the communities transformed by deeper, truer connection, and the legacy of turning your intuition into a global movement that redefines What it means to belong, and all the lives you've had a massive impact on, especially your own. Jennifer, I love you. I love who you are. I love who you've always been, and I love who you're constantly becoming. Now get up and make it a great day. Oh my God, what, what is that magic? Is that Vision Espresso?

Yeah, that's a little sample of it. So that's just like 45 seconds, and the full one is 6 minutes long.

Wow. Oh, my God. I had full body chills. Like, I do all the things, Nico. I do the mind movies, and I do 2 hours a day in meditation. But that was just like— and I just— was that in my own voice?

That was your voice.

Oh, my God. I'm like a kid on Christmas morning right now. That was epic. Oh, my God. You're a genius. Thank you for the beautiful work you're doing in the world and for making this real. I can feel and sense. Okay. The next logical question has to be, Nico, where do people sign up for Vision Espresso or how do they sign up for Vision Espresso, connect to you?

Yeah, for sure. visionespresso.co is our website as it currently stands. And then we're also merging in, 'cause I'm a big community builder just as you are. And I've already been very inspired by your WhatsApp group. And then Sebastian too. I joined his Dream Team Network. Gotta shout out Sebastian.

Yeah.

But we're actually gonna, we're starting to build something where it's combining vision and community, cuz I've always had this vision to basically like what you do with, with matching people up, but it's all based on their vision. And so once they complete their vision, we know who to match them up with. So we're starting to build out, it's gonna be a bimonthly call where we all listen to our Vision Espressos at the same time. So it's a group experience. And then from there we'll do breakout rooms where you connect with the right people. And then eventually we're building it out to the point where like AI will just automatically connect you with the right people. So that's still being built out. It'll probably be ready here in the next like month or so, but that's just literally like a download that came through yesterday. But I was like, that feels so aligned. And I'm like, yes, let's build community around vision. And like, just, you know, just what you're doing is build powerful people and build them together. Because it's like these type of conversations light me up so much. Like I've shared Vision Espresso with lots and lots of people and It's like, this is one of the most powerful conversations because of how excited you are and how aligned we are. And that just feels so good. And I want people to feel that all across the world where they're like, they're so excited about what they're creating. And then they get connected with the person that's going to be that excited about with them about what they're working on and vice versa. And think about how powerful of a world we'd be living in when that's the case for millions of people all across the world.

Oh my God, this is amazing. I'm like thinking of 100 other masterminds. We need to do another call soon. I know, I think you and I have a call on Saturday because he also, Nico also has his own podcast. You want to do a shout out for your own podcast?

Yeah, it's called the Just Grow Podcast. We've been running it for almost like right about 4 years as well. And we did it unique where we do it event format. So we'll do a podcast in front of a live audience, but now we've published about 150 episodes on, on, in addition to the live events, we've done about like 13, 14 of them.

Amazing. Yeah. So you and I will be talking again very soon, but I can't wait to just share more and share with the tribe, everybody on the show. If you haven't, it's, if this is the first time you're coming to Super Connections, you can go back to, I think it I think it was like episode 3 or 5 where we talked about this wonderful tribe I was gifted, and Nico's a part of the tribe, and Giovanni and Poppy and everybody. And it's just this global love tribe. And oh my God, did I even tell you, Nico, the thing that happened with my sister just to wrap us for today?

I don't think so.

So what's wild was about 7, 8 years ago, my sister unfortunately had a schizophrenic break. She was using weed to self-medicate and was struggling with bipolar. And the crazy thing that a lot of people don't know about schizophrenia is that in other parts of the world, people who struggle with that actually are shamans and they are like the gifted ones, right? Wow. So my sister wound up being homeless, Nico, for a month and it crushed my family. All of us, we were day and night, didn't know, we were doing our best to keep tabs on her. And one day, Nico, my sister called me and I was so honored that she called me out of any of the family and she said, Jenny, I'm in the hospital. I know I need help. Please come. So I raced down there as fast as I could, get to her bedside and I'm holding her hand. And she said, Jenny, I know I need help because I think I'm the reborn Mother Mary. And I think you're part of a secret group called the Love Club that's here to help save humanity. And that was 7 or 8 years ago. Yeah. So I tell my sister all the time, like, it wasn't mental illness, it was prophecy. Like everybody I meet now, I feel like we're all part of the sacred Love Club to help humanity.

Wow. What a powerful story. Thank you for sharing.

Yeah. Thank you for inspiring it, Nico. Any closing thoughts before we wrap today? Obviously you and I could rap for days.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm just excited to do a podcast on our podcast on Saturday. So really excited with that, but I would just double down on what we shared about like life is a choice and you get to choose it every day. You get to choose it every moment. Like you can choose to be negative. You can choose to fall into the traps and what society wants you to believe in. It tells you to believe, or you can choose to be the best version of yourself in that moment, in that day, in that year, because you have no idea what that does for other people. Like the amount of times I've heard people tell me, because of you, because you continue to go after your dreams, then it inspired me to do that. And I think that's really the way to really inspire people. Don't tell people to do things like be the person. That's how you share the message. Don't share the message, be the message.

Yeah, that's it. It's actions speak so much louder than words. It's, we always spend our lives trying to change other people. Change yourself. Each one of us is the world. Change ourselves. And I'm so proud. Shout out to my sister. It was actually her birthday this week. She is extraordinary. She's a great mom. She has 2 incredible boys and a wonderful husband. And she is a shining example of anything is possible. She's a, she's an incredible life. And that's available to all of us, no matter what life throws at you, no matter what you think. Another friend of mine, Perry, was homeless, same thing, for the 9 months and went on to build one of the best movements in the world called the Octopus Movement. 10,000 members strong, nonlinear thinkers. NASA asked to work with him. So no matter what hardship you are personally going through right now, whether it's mental illness, lack of finances, whatever it is, know, as Niko just said, you have a choice. Choose the future you want. Paint the future you want with your words, your actions, your intentions, your thoughts. And then step into that future because it's available right here, right now.

Mic drop.

Thanks, everyone.