Sobriety, Spirituality, & Sales Ep. 36 - Niko Arapkiles

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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**Mike** (0:14)
Hey, good morning, everybody. Welcome to Sobriety, Spirituality and Sales, brought to you by Mike Bader, State Farm Agency, First and River. Guys, if you're in the market for insurance, that's that time of the year, about midway through the year, I can almost guarantee you Mike can save you money as he definitely saved me money. So if you're in the market for insurance, whether that's homeowners, whether that's car insurance, motorcycle, RV, etc.
And his lady's a call at the office, his number is running below there. And if you're tuning in to the show for your first time, your fifth time, however many times it is, and you know Arapkiles is running your life, if you've been kind of hanging out in the background and kind of lurking and watching the show, and you want to find out who you really are on the other side of that, and you've been leaning in a little bit and listening to what we're saying, please reach out to me, hit up my website. And without further ado, Niko, welcome to the show, Niko Arapkiles. I had to practice that on the way over here in the truck, man.

**Niko Arapkiles** (1:06)
It's great to be here, man. Thanks for having me.

**Mike** (1:08)
Absolutely, brother. Good to see your smile.
And we connected roughly, gosh, a month and a half ago through an event, and you got to speak at it. I got to speak a little bit, did a little impromptu breathwork, and I'm so thrilled that you came up and introduced yourself afterwards. I just love your energy, dude. I love what you're about, and I was thrilled that you also said yes to the show. So thank you for being here.

**Niko Arapkiles** (1:34)
Yeah, man. I love the setup. It's legit, so grateful to be here.

**Mike** (1:38)
Yeah. You know what's funny is, okay, so your business, you help entrepreneurs get more clarity and focus through future self-work. Is that kind of the gist of it?

**Niko Arapkiles** (1:49)
Yeah, for sure. I mean, to pack it down into one sentence has always been a bit of a challenge, but really just helping entrepreneurs and business owners become a better version of themselves internally, and the external follows whatever is going on internal. You know that more than anybody else.

**Mike** (2:08)
That is incredible stuff. And the reason that I bring that up is because roughly about a year ago, I wanted to do a podcast. I had been thinking about it quite a bit, and I'm not a technical person. And within 12 months, this opportunity presented itself where I get to walk in this lovely studio.
I get to, you know, it's a turnkey operation, do my thing, and you know, walk out and get on with my day, and I don't have to worry about logistics. I don't have, well, I do a little bit of logistics, but I don't have to worry about the setup and all that stuff. And so I'm just grateful that I have a platform to be able to interview incredible people like yourself, and just truly get down to why people do what they do. You know, across the board, everybody wants to make this world a different place. They've just got their own niche within business, within society here. So I'm excited to hear about what you do.

**Niko Arapkiles** (2:54)
Yeah, man. Yeah, thanks for being there. Thanks for having me here. Absolutely.

**Mike** (2:58)
Absolutely. So I always kind of kick it off with just kind of just just, you know, where you grew up, what life was like for you early on, you know, the shows called Sobriety, Spirituality and Sales. So we'll cover all three topics, hopefully, and whatever you're comfortable with.

**Niko Arapkiles** (3:11)
So absolutely. Yeah, I mean, like a big piece of my story came from baseball. I played baseball all the way growing up, all the way through college.
I had a pretty pivotal experience. My senior year of high school, we were pretty highly touted to win the state title as we'd done pretty good the last couple of years and hadn't won it yet. So this was the year that we needed to win. Otherwise, like it was kind of a bust. So I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform. And because of that, I developed something called the Yips, which basically meant I just kind of fold it under the pressure. It's somewhat common in the baseball scene.