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1% Better Podcast Chris Nikic – Quick Links

Get a signed copy of Chris & Nik’s book, 1% Better
Snag yourself Chris’s1% Better t-shirt and other fun items
Watch Chris’s speech at the ESPYs
Donate to the 1% Better Chris Nikic Foundation
Follow Chris Nikic on Instagram
Connect with Craig Thielen on LinkedIn
Check out host Craig Thielen’s full bio page

Key Takeaways

• Start Small, Stay Consistent – Chris’s transformation began with a decision to get off the couch at 18, taking daily steps that built toward world-class achievements
• Measure Against Yourself, Not Others – Chris only competes against his past self, proving that true success is personal progress, not comparison
• Simplicity Drives Execution – Nik’s adaptation of business improvement systems into a simple routine enabled Chris to thrive physically and cognitively
• Every Day Is a Win – In the 1% Better system, you either improve or you learn and both count as success
• Everyone Has Hidden Superpowers – What was once seen as Chris’s weakness (routine and repetition), became his biggest strength when harnessed the right way

1% Better Podcast Chris Nikic – Transcript

[00:00:00.00] – Craig
Hello, I’m Craig Thielen, and this is the 1% Better Podcast.

[00:00:09.10] – Chris Nikic
Today, I’m speaking with Chris (and Nik) Nikic. Chris has a lot of accolades, and I’m going to list a few of them, but I’m going to probably not catch all of them. But he’s the first and only person with down syndrome in the world that has completed an Ironman… He’s run all six global marathon majors… He’s won two ESPYs… He’s a global ambassador for Special Olympics and Ironman, and he’s done a fair amount of speaking in some very large companies, schools, and nonprofits. So that’s just to scratch the surface. Right, Chris?

[00:00:47.06] – Chris
Yeah.

[00:00:48.05] – Craig
All right. Well, welcome to the show. And show everyone your T-shirt. The show is 1% Better, and you got a t-shirt. And so this has been a theme for you for a long time. So we’ve been talking. I think we met maybe close to a year ago, and we’ve been trying to arrange this. But I’ve brought you up on a lot of our podcasts, actually, as just such a perfect example of what is possible and this whole idea of one 1% Better. So maybe let’s get you talking, Chris. Tell us about your background and some of the challenges that you faced early on.

[00:01:23.11] – Chris
Yeah, so I’m 25 years old. My background was I was home alone, isolated from not being active, not being able to participate in any events because no one work for me, Sean, but I had no future, no girlfriend, nothing. I was home having nachos and cheese.

[00:01:58.04] – Nik
What do you mean nachos and cheese?

[00:02:00.00] – Chris
Let me talk to him. Okay. Then I was playing other video games. I realized that it could be the end of my career. I decided to call my Nik and then said, Hey, you better go home. Then he came home. When he did, he started training from being on the couch to being active again.

[00:02:36.08] – Craig
Wow. How old were you when you decided to make that shift? You remember?

[00:02:41.05] – Chris
18.

You started…

Oh, 18.

You finished your Ironman in ’21.

So I finished the Ironman at like 21, but then I first started at 18.

[00:02:56.03] – Chris
Wow. So when did you figure out, Chris, I’m sure there was a lot of times when you felt left out and you felt like you can’t do what other people can do. When did you figure out not only can you do what other people can do, but you can actually do way more?

[00:03:11.10] – Chris
I can do way more than being on the couch

[00:03:16.11] – Craig
Right. So at 18, you figured out there’s nothing stopping me. I can get off the couch. I can do anything I want. Yeah. It’s pretty amazing. Well, out of all the things you did, you started running, you did a marathon, and you just kept going and going and going. So tell me about that. Just running a marathon, most people… I’ve never run a marathon. And you just said, Hey, I’m going to do that. I’m going to keep running them, and then I’m going to do Ironman’s. And you just kept going. How come?

[00:03:45.05] – Chris
It’s an award where guys just come out, and then the guys who just be there for a safety part of…
Why did you decide to keep going?
I decided to keep going because I knew I had to overcome those obstacles. The real part that is I mean, keep going was my old man.

You call me an old man?

Well, you are. The more I run every day, the more I get stronger because the inspiration was not from him. The inspiration was from my mom.

I think he wants to know-

I think that’s the reason why the audience needs to know who is the real person.

I think what he wants to know is some of the dreams and goals that you had for yourself that inspired you to keep going.

I think the goal was a big dream, and then it didn’t lead back to the house, the car, and the wife.

The house, the car, and the wife?

Yeah.

[00:05:15.06] – Craig
That’s pretty good.

[00:05:16.12] – Chris
Because it needs a strong goal or a strong dream.

[00:05:22.09] – Craig
Right. Something that you can always shoot for and you can always aspire to, right?

[00:05:28.03] – Chris
I started off by saying, A boy with a dream, but now it’s a man with a dream.

[00:05:41.13] – Craig
Yeah, for sure. No doubt. So out of all of all the things that you’ve done, you just kept accomplishing them and then finding the next goal. Out of all the things you’ve done, what would you look back and you say that was your favorite one? What was your favorite one that you did?

[00:06:01.01] – Chris
Chicago because I did seven-hour marathon.

Chicago Marathon was your favorite?

Yeah.

Are you sure?

Yeah.

Better than Boston? Yeah.

Better than Hawaii Marathon? Yeah.

I’m asking. Talk to me.

It’s both.

Well, tell them, what about the others?

I have done many countries, Ironman Marathons, and I just love it.

Chicago was your favorite? Yeah. I don’t think so.

I look back at Chicago with a highlight memory of classwork in this night.

I thought you said Hawaii Ironman was your favorite.

That, too.

That, too?

Yeah, so two of my favorite was Chicago and Hawaii.

[00:06:42.04] – Craig
Okay. Well, Hawaii sounds amazing.

[00:06:46.04] – Chris
And Germany.

Germany. You like Germany?

Yeah. Wow.

That was fun. Berlin.

[00:06:50.01] – Craig
So what’s harder? Running a marathon or getting in front of a big audience and speaking? Which one’s harder?

[00:06:59.10] – Chris
Nothing.

[00:07:00.11] – Craig
Nothing’s hard.

[00:07:02.08] – Chris
I can talk all day if I want you.

Yeah, you could.

[00:07:06.08] – Craig
That’s a good thing. All right. So you’ve met a lot of really amazing people. Who’s your favorite person that you’ve met? Famous people that you’ve met or anybody?

[00:07:16.13] – Chris
Of course, my favorite two people is Jason and Rhonda and Christine.

So these are his guides, by the way. So he’s met a lot of famous people. Last week, he met Tom Brady.

Oh, wow.

He’s met Tim Tebow. He’s met a variety of Hall of Fame superstar athletes, actors at the various events he’s been… musicians. And his favorite are his guides, the people he interacts with on a daily basis.

[00:07:50.03] – Craig
So when he goes and trains, those are his guides?

[00:07:53.14] – Nik
Yeah. People who do the major marathons with him, with their demands with them, and they’re his favorite people.

[00:07:58.11] – Chris
And then it just starts to I see them almost every day.

[00:08:01.05] – Craig
That’s awesome. You’ve probably built some really good relationships with them. That’s why. Yeah. Amazing. Well, what does 1% better? You’re wearing the T-shirt. It’s the name of the podcast. What does that mean to you?

[00:08:15.11] – Chris
You know it means get better each every day. It’s more about making sure that you just put in the work and then grind everything out. When you’re tired or exhausted, make sure that you get the job done. Then usually for my free schedule for my summer, in summer that I’m doing right now is fun training. I have two-hour smart trainer, and I did over one hour for smart trainer. Then I did a nice swim in the backyard. Then I just went to Russell for another workout with my sponsor. Then now I’m going to do this, and then I’m going to take some nice to get a nap, and then do my second round of smart trainer. Then go to the gym and probably stay there until my dinner time. Usually for recovery, I take cold tub. I did an ice bath.

[00:10:04.13] – Craig
Wow. Ice baths are tough. They’re cold.

[00:10:09.00] – Chris
But I can take the cold though.

[00:10:12.04] – Craig
Wow. Yeah. I did an ice bath once, and it was… I don’t know if I want to do it again.

[00:10:19.01] – Chris
It’s like almost every day now, I’ve been training hard. And this upcoming In August, I’m really training for what’s called a Navy Seal Swim.

Wow.

Basically, you swim a mile, and then you do pull-ups, dips and crunches, and then you run 3.1 miles Then you swim again. Just like 10, four rounds.

You swim three miles in the Hudson.

Just like 10 times.

[00:11:14.14] – Craig
This is like what the Navy Seals do?

Yes.

This is how they get certified or this is like their normal training?

[00:11:24.05] – Nik
No, this is a fundraiser in New York City.

[00:11:26.12] – Craig
Okay, but it’s like…

[00:11:29.00] – Nik
It’s a little bit like what they do.

[00:11:30.13] – Craig
Yeah, right. Okay. Wow. That sounds tough.

[00:11:33.09] – Chris
What they do is hard.

[00:11:34.10] – Craig
Is it harder than an ultra marathon or Ironman?

No. Nope. No.

It’s tougher because it’s a three-mile swim in the Hudson and it’s really cold.

[00:11:45.03] – Craig
Oh, crazy. Yeah, it is cold.

[00:11:47.14] – Chris
I am crazy.

[00:11:49.13] – Craig
You are. Well, crazy in a good way. So let me ask you this. Everyone has goals. We’re not all superhuman like you, but we have goals. And some days we up and go, I’m tired. I don’t want to go in the cold bath. I don’t want to run. How do you get through those days?

[00:12:06.07] – Chris
Every day. Same thing

You just do it. You just say, I’m going to do it.

I just do it. I just do it every damn day.

[00:12:15.12] – Craig
You’re just tough. You just got to suck it up.

Here you go.

All right. Well, it’s amazing. I like the pipes. You got the pipes.

The guns.

When the sun’s out, the guns are out?

The gun, babe. The gun.

[00:12:35.07] – Craig
I love it. All right. So Chris, you got to give some of us people some advice. What advice would you give us?

[00:12:44.02] – Chris
Just be able to just push yourself, making sure that you have the right hydration in terms of training, nutrition, hydration, having the right mindset, because it’s all about the brain and the repetition. When you work out and then when you have two things. One is real pain or fake pain. When you work out, it’s called fake pain. But when you do something that’s positive, that be something that includes just twist an ankle.

Yeah, a real injury. Yeah.

Or anything that be push you back. And they hear.

Yeah.

And rest up for a couple of days, and then you just get back stronger. Because it’s all about that process, but it’s not more about getting It’s a failure, and it’s more about, if you ever we want to get some advice, the best advice you ever get is from Derek Goggins and Dr. Ping. Because I’ve been training every day. I’ve been busting my tail off, and I’m literally listening to those videos every time I go hard.

[00:14:53.06] – Craig
Okay. David Goggins… That guy is-

[00:14:56.05] – Chris
He’s one of the few people that he’s been talking to.

[00:15:00.00] – Craig
Right. He’s a good one. He motivates you, huh? You listen to David Goggins and he gets you going.

[00:15:06.07] – Chris
He motivates me, man.

[00:15:08.08] – Craig
When you’re running, do you listen to stuff, music, or you listen to David Goggins? You do that?

Yeah. Music.

Ok.

[00:15:16.01] – Chris
Sometimes I’m running in the neighborhood with music. But when I’m running indoors, it’s different.

[00:15:27.04] – Craig
Yeah, you got a trainer. Well, hey, it’s amazing. I love what you’re doing, and you just keep doing what you’re doing. What’s your next big event or your next big goal that you’re working on?

[00:15:40.00] – Chris
I’m working on doing the Ultra Man.

Okay.

It says 300 and something miles. It says 20 minutes cycle. Two days, you do a swimming and bike twice. And third day, double XX marathon.

[00:16:02.01] – Craig
Xx marathon. What’s that?

[00:16:04.04] – Chris
Double.

[00:16:05.05] – Craig
Double ultra or double marathon?

[00:16:08.10] – Chris
Yeah.

Wow. Unreal.

And you know what, though?

I’m just getting a little bit better each every day.

[00:16:16.08] – Craig
That’s all you can do, a little bit better every day. Well, keep doing what you’re doing. I love it. You’re my hero, and you’re giving a lot of people inspiration.

[00:16:26.08] – Chris
Thanks man.

[00:16:27.14] – Craig
All right. Thanks, Chris.

[00:16:29.12] – Chris
Ready to get some lunch?

Yeah.

All right. Have mom take you for lunch.

[00:16:33.01] – Craig
Thanks, buddy.

[00:16:35.02] – Nik
Good job, buddy.

[00:16:36.03] – Craig
No sidelines all in.

[00:16:38.07] – Chris
I know.

I’ll see you soon, okay? Go get some good lunch.

You’re going to be busy all day?

Yeah, I’m busy all day.

That’s all for an ice bath, right?

Yeah, lots of ice bath. Yeah, absolutely. Have fun. And sushi? And sushi, as much as you want. I got a whole box. Yeah, of course. Love you, buddy.

[00:17:03.14] – Craig
Wow, you got quite a kid there.

[00:17:05.13] – Nik
He’s unique. He’s one of a kind.

[00:17:08.06] – Craig
And I love the sense of humor. And I love how you guys can give each other a hard time. That’s also very special.

[00:17:16.06] – Nik
It’s a pretty cool relationship, one that you could never even begin to imagine. A lot of the other parents who are trying to help their kids do some of the kinds of things Chris is doing, there seems to be a lot of tension between the child and the parent. I’m blessed that Chris trusts me, and he’s very coachable, and we have a lot of fun together, and he knows I’m going to protect him and make sure that he’s going to be okay. So if I ask him to do something, he knows that I’ve thought it through, and he trusts me that it’s going to be okay.

[00:17:48.14] – Craig
Yeah, that’s clear. And any parent-child relationship, we all have aspirations for our kids, and those same dynamics are in every relationship. Tension or trust, what have you. So I’m really excited to talk to you because this story is so incredible and you’re such a big part of it. So maybe just go back, go back to the early days when he’s a young child and you first got the news, and how that went, and how challenging it is. And then I’m sure you were told all those limitations and all the things that he wasn’t supposed to be able to do. And there’s certain things that they probably coach you on as parents. And then at what point… Maybe just walk back to there. And at what point did you say, I think there’s more to this than just following the norm or the normal protocol that I think maybe Chris can do more. I just would love to hear, where did that start? How early was it?

[00:18:51.06] – Nik
Well, you’re right. Our journey started the same way as every other parent with a child with special needs, with the community, starting with the doctors telling you all the things you couldn’t do, and then he’ll never be self-sufficient, and you’re always going to have to be there to take care of them. That rocks your world, because you don’t expect to go into your ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and your biggest thought every day is what’s going to happen to my child when I’m gone? Who’s going to take care of him? And that’s how it started. And then it continued through schools, where the thought process and the belief system is reinforced by all the teachers where he’s not capable, he doesn’t fit in, we don’t know what to do with him. So it’s first five years, seven different schools just to try and find a place for him. Finally found a small private school that at least accepted him. And then he went through that. But acceptance and real inclusion are two very different things. And so there’s not much inclusion in the world for kids like Chris. And we’re bombarded by the entire community, family, friends, coaches, the social circles, the teachers, the sporting events.

Everything reinforces the belief that Chris and others like him can’t learn and succeed, and they can’t be self-sufficient. Then at the age of 18, something hit me. I looked at Chris and thought, At 18, we’re all off to college, and we’re beginning our careers because we begin through an education. We make our friends, our lifelong friends. We may even meet our spouse there. But it really is the beginning of the rest of our life. But for Chris and his friends, it feels like the end of their life. It’s like a cliff just drops off. And so I looked at that and thought to myself, this can’t be how it all ends, right? It was hard getting there, but it was even harder once you got there. So I decided, look, I’m going to try something different. I’m going to try this concept called 1% better… I own a consulting firm. The core of my company is helping sales organizations build a culture of continuous improvement. I implement a program called 1% Better with leadership management teams, and I teach them how to build a culture of constant and continuous improvement in order to hit big audacious goals and build a culture that does that.

So I thought to myself, why can’t I adapt that system to Chris? Why can’t I design something similar for him? And so I did. I took that system was designed for the business world, and I asked all the questions we as consultants ask in order to tailor to my son in his situation. And once I got the answers to the questions I asked, the solution became pretty self-evident. I simplified the 1% Better system. I modified it for him. I tweaked a couple of the components to adapt to his learning style and his rate of learning and his superpowers. And we applied it to his physical activity. So we started doing swimming and biking and running and got into doing a sprint triathlon. And we used that as a way to teach him how to learn, how to get physically more active. But we use it both for his physical and his cognitive development. We stayed on that task, measuring everything, every step of the way for three years. My objective was Chris can’t learn and succeed at the rate other people do. But as long as Chris can learn and succeed, and we could measure that progress, we’re going to keep going until he hits a wall.

Well, we started that journey when he was 18. He’s 25 now. What we’ve learned along the way is that we weren’t interested in Chris competing with others and performing at a level that other people perform. We were only interested in helping Chris make progress on a daily basis so that he could move closer and closer towards his potential, which we didn’t know what that potential was. We had been taught that it was limited… But what we learned was that it’s almost unlimited. And so in two and a half years, Chris went from couch to Ironman. The following year, he did a couple of marathons, including the Boston Marathon. The following year, he did the Hawaii Ironman. The following year, he did another six or eight marathons. And then last year, he did an Ironman, two Half Ironman’s and 10 marathons. And he did more last year than he did in the first four or five years put together. And this year, he’s continuing to get 1% better, moving heading towards much bigger goals like an Ultraman, a 320-mile race, and other things on top of that. And so what we learned through the 1% better method that we created for him is that in his pursuit of potential, we’re realizing that the closer he gets to his potential, the further away it gets.

Because every time he hits what we believe to be his potential, it becomes the new baseline and the new foundation to take him to a whole other level. And so the journey has really exciting, been exciting, both from a physical and a cognitive perspective. Because even though it’s hard to understand him because he’s got a big tongue, he has a lot of great ideas and thoughts. When you understand him and you have conversations with him, you realize… even though he’s got a much lower IQ than most people, under 70, his capacity to learn is incredible, and his capacity to communicate and to socialize and to participate in sports and other things is just incredible. So we’ve learned this incredible lesson that our kids are so much more capable than we give them credit for. And then I realized, boy, if you apply that to everybody, someone with an 80 IQ, a 90, 100, 120, 140, 150, if they just get 1% better every day and they keep moving towards their potential, what could they accomplish? So it’s been quite an experience and quite a learning journey for us to see what’s possible. And Chris just keeps showing us that we keep setting our sites way too low.

[00:25:00.00] – Craig
Oh, yeah. Yeah, there’s so many questions I have to ask you on this because it’s so core to the show that we are doing. And one is, in some ways, this idea of 1% better Chris is actually a really, I don’t know if better is the right word, but an even more clear way to prove the point, because 1% better is all about if you just make incremental change, you do it consistently and over and over and discipline, then you can accomplish big goals, quote, unquote, anything. And if Chris, with limitations that he’s been given, can apply that with even smaller increments and accomplish even bigger. I mean, again, most of the things that he’s done, the average person that has technically no limitations have not done. It proves the point of the mindset and the method even more so. So I think that’s fascinating. And then on the opposite end of that spectrum is just what you just said, which is if you’ve been told, and we all have this mental mindset of all the physical and mental limitations that he’s had, and he’s able to just blow by them, not without a lot of hard work, by the way, but just exceed them, and then almost to the point, like you said, there’s really no limitations for him.

Well, then what’s possible with all of us? It’s just an amazing thing to see it happen. Again, it’s a grind. I mean, it’s not easy, but just what you’ve been able to see. I mean, at times you must look back and go, I can hardly believe what he’s doing.

[00:26:54.11] – Nik
I still can hardly believe what he’s doing. To your point, he is absolutely a perfect example of the power of simplicity and execution, consistency, a certain mindset. This whole journey started out because the belief system was he couldn’t learn and succeed. And the belief system drives your behavior. And the behavior then becomes, okay, since I can’t learn and succeed and really be part of the world, I can just play video games and sit on the couch. Yeah, that’s acceptable. That becomes the norm, right? Yeah. And so what we did with the 1% system was we used it to transform his belief system. Because he had 18 years of repeated reinforcement of what he couldn’t do and failure and reinforcement of that. We had to reprogram his brain and his mindset to transform that thinking from hearing 18 years of everything he couldn’t do. We needed to build a foundation in a belief system of what he could do. And so the 1% better system really is a powerful system for building a mindset and a belief system that starts to transform you from the subconscious to your conscious. You layer in success after success after success.

And so what Chris is today, seven years later, is someone who has experienced success. And success is, did I get better at something today than I was yesterday? And every day, Chris has experienced that at least two or three times. Today’s swim might be better than the last time he did a swim. Today’s pullups might be better than the last time. Today’s run. Each day he has success and experiences success and layers that success in a subconscious mind at least one time per day. You string together seven years of that times 365 days. You’re talking about 25,000 days. What is it? 2,500 days? Imagine having 2,500 days in a row. Reinforced success. Now, what does your mind think? Well, the mind now starts to believe it can do anything. So when we said, Hey, Chris, how about an Ultraman? And we explained what it is. He said, Sure, let’s go do it.

[00:29:11.08] – Craig
Right. It’s just another challenge that any challenge is accomplishable. How did you… I mean, break that down a little bit, Nik, and maybe this is, I don’t know, the book. You guys have a book. Maybe it’s broken down there. But break down how… Because I mean, take any kid, take any kid, forget about the challenges that he has with down syndrome. When you say, Hey, how about we do this goal? And the goal might be, let’s get an A in a class. It might be, let’s try to make a team. It might be, let’s try to play an instrument. Whatever the goal is, I think the immediate reaction is, Oh, no, here’s all the reasons why I can’t do it, or it’s a lot of work, or no, I got to do this with friends, or there’s a million things that can get in the way of… And there’s that resistance. There’s a natural resistance. Some of it’s programmed into us. Some of it’s just… How do you change that mindset? How did you change it?

[00:30:08.07] – Nik
Yeah, so it’s a system that we designed, and it has several components to it. The most important component is the linkage between the dream and the goal. Goals by themselves don’t get accomplished because barriers and obstacles along the way make you quit and they derail you.

[00:30:27.14] – Craig
Yeah, like 98% of New Year’s goals are failed within 30 days.

[00:30:32.08] – Nik
Because they’re not attached to a meaningful dream. Right. So what we do, what I do with Chris and everybody, all his friends, because now there’s a dozen of his friends with special needs who are all doing an Ironman. So it’s not just him now. It’s actually being leveraged by others in his circle. And so it’s becoming the norm around here in Florida. And so we tie it to a dream. And a dream is something that’s natural to all of us. Whether you have special needs or not, you still have dreams. You want to go out on a date. You want to buy your own house like everybody else. You want to live on your own. You want your own car. You want to maybe have a career as a teacher or a public speaker. It’s amazing that even our children with special needs can sit down and articulate their dreams. But what they don’t understand is how dreams and goals work together. And they’ve never been taught that because, quite honestly, nobody ever thought that that was reality. So why even teach them that? We in the business world learn that stuff as a matter of course.

It’s normal for us. So we started with Chris with a dream and a goal, and we tied it. You heard him say, with a big goal, you need a big dream. And he gets that. And it’s on a big whiteboard, on a big dream board in his room. He sees it every day. And then what we do is we tie that to the daily activity. And then we have daily activity, weekly milestones, monthly milestones, and then quarterly milestones that we all tie together so that he doesn’t have to worry about hitting the goal. He just focuses on today. And he knows that his only objective today is to get 1% better than yesterday. He sees on his dream board, and in the spreadsheet we created, he sees the correlation between what he did today and the progress he made towards his dreams and goals. The dreams and goals become the anchor that keep him focused, but it’s the daily activity and the daily results or outcomes that we call the achievements, the 1% better, that actually sustained the effort. Because the brain is naturally hardwired when you accomplish something.

[00:32:45.07] – Craig
Yeah, it’s got to get some dopamine hits. It’s got to get some, I just did something good, and now that dopamine goes, That’s good. Do more of that.

[00:32:52.10] – Nik
And that happens every day when you achieve something, meaning it doesn’t happen with activity. It actually happens with achievement. And that’s why the 1% is so important. It’s not enough for him, if he did 10 pushups yesterday to do 10 pushups today because that becomes monotonous. What’s important is that 11th pushup. That 11th pushup releases the dopamine. The dopamine start creating the habits, and they start making the daily activity and the daily achievement of those activities.

[00:33:18.02] – Craig
It’s addicting to do more. It’s addicting to do one % better. He’s so bought into it.

[00:33:25.14] – Nik
It’s normal now. Now, when we… We go out, and right now we’re working on something new. Chris runs, but he runs very slowly. And so we’re working on speed now. We’re trying to teach him how to let go and start increasing his speed. So we started like, Let’s just go run a 5K. 5k is nothing to him. But we ran the first 5K in like 36 minutes. He was like, Okay, that was easy. I said, Great, we’re done. Then we come back a day or two later and he says, Now what, dad? I said, 1% better, buddy. Well, how do we do that?

[00:34:00.00] – Craig
Thirty-five minutes? Thirty-four minutes?

[00:34:01.12] – Nik
Yeah. He says, Do we go to 3.2 miles? I said, No, we’re staying at 3.1 miles. But instead of 36 minutes, you got to do it in 35 minutes. He said, Oh, so I could do even. That’s doable.

If it’s not much more, it’s doable, right?

We just crank up the speed, just 0.1 mile per hour, whatever, and now he’s at 35 minutes. Well, we started doing that about three weeks ago. Two days ago, Chris ran his 5K in 27:34. Today, he’s going to go do it again, and it’ll be probably around 27. We’re going to keep that up for the next three months. We don’t know what his potential is, but at this pace, if he keeps getting 1% better three or four months from now, he should be able to do a 5K around 21, 22 minutes, which is faster than most humans can do it. That’s an example, but that’s where the dopamine hit comes in because he sees that he’s done it better. Even though he’s exhausted at the end of the 5K, the dopamine hit that comes from the achievement that he went faster than last time just makes that worthwhile. And then he just feels really good about himself.

[00:35:10.10] – Craig
There’s a couple of things. There’s a lot of psychology in what you’re talking about. There’s a couple of things that we touched on, but I think are really central to why that works so well. One of them is you said you don’t measure Chris against other people or other goals. You measure him against himself only. That’s absolutely critical. If you want to break barriers, the only person that can do that If you have some… The Four Minute Mile is a perfect example. You know the story at the Four Minute Mile, right? And so it’s a perfect example. There’s a mental limitation that all these great elite runners, no one can do it. Even doctors came out and did studies, and they said it’s physically possible for a human being to run under. So people believed it. And then one person, Bruce Banister, I think his name is, one person, now thousands of people have done it. So I think he’s only competing against himself. So that means the only limitation is the only limitation that he’s putting on himself. So that’s a huge part of it, right?

[00:36:22.10] – Nik
Yeah, it’s a huge part of it. And it’s also what makes him happy. Because if he goes to these events and measures himself against the other people there. Because of his limitations, and he’s competing against elite people in the world, he’s always going to finish towards the back at the end. And so it’s obvious or it’s natural to feel like you’re not successful because you’re comparing yourself to others. But when you meet Chris and you see him at these events, even with all his friends who finish ahead of him, and everybody starts talking about how they did, Chris says, I won. I finished first. Because in his mind, he did what he wanted to do, and it doesn’t matter what anybody else does. He finished first. Even though he always finishes last, in his mind, he’s finishing first.

[00:37:09.14] – Craig
That’s such a huge thing, too, because if you think about the world, 99% of the world is comparing themselves against someone else. Somebody else has a nicer car. Somebody else has done it better. Somebody else is better-looking, and they’re always competing. And we’re in a social media world, so it’s an Instagram world. So everyone posts their best moment. They never post their worst days or when they don’t do well or they finish 32. They always post the best. And so him just not falling into it because with the success he has, it would be easy for him to go, Well, now I’m a guy who runs marathons. I start competing. You see the boards, our whole society is geared around competition and really comparing against other people. And the fact that he’s so not immune to it. There’s two things I’m curious about. How do you keep him? This is not a one-time thing. I wouldn’t think. I think you would think it’s a constant thing of saying, Chris, don’t worry about that or don’t compare yourself to someone else. Just focus on what you can control. But how do you not fall into that, number one.

Number two, Nik, how do you… It sounds easy Is it easy to say, I’m going to do one % better every day. I mean, I follow this personally. I’ve got all the daily, weekly, monthly… But there are inevitably, there’s going to be days where you take a step backwards. You go, I got to take a day off or I can’t… And so how do you say, Hey, it’s not actually every single day. It’s not linear all the time. You might have to take a step back, and then you can take two steps forward. How do you deal with those situations? Or is he just blow by it?

[00:38:58.04] – Nik
Well, no, you’ve got a couple of good questions there. One is, how do we keep him focused on just being the best version of himself and not comparing himself to others? Because in this world, it’s easy to be in that other example where everybody’s comparing against everybody else. And the way we do it is we focus on his objectives every day. We burn into his brain and his subconscious that the only thing that matters is that he gets better, relative to himself. That’s why we have these-

[00:39:28.13] – Craig
That’s a constant thing. If you let that go, he’ll pretty soon go, What do other down syndrome people do? Or what are the other Special Olympics? It’s easy because all the people, the influence, right?

[00:39:38.13] – Nik
Yeah. So all that is formed not during the events where he sees them once a week or once a month, but all that is solidified on his daily basis when he’s doing his training on his own, where his focus is about being a better version of himself. So that’s the first thing. What was the second question you had?

[00:39:58.11] – Craig
Well, the second one was Well, inevitably, you’re not going to do better every single time. How do you not get disappointed, or you hit a plateau, or you go, maybe you do 34, and then you do 36. You’re just tired. I mean, sometimes your body just needs rest, right? Yeah.

[00:40:12.14] – Nik
What we do is every day has two outcomes. You either get 1% better or you learn something new.

Okay, love it.

If we don’t get better, it’s because we needed to learn something new. We celebrate that new knowledge that we just learned, that new whatever. And so we celebrate each outcome as a success. There is no failure in a day.

[00:40:40.06] – Craig
That’s it. That’s brilliant. Because physically, it’s impossible to just keep doing better and better. We’re not machines. But mentally, if you go everything, there is no failures. There is no take and say… It’s all learning. Now you’re in complete control.

Yes.

And it’s still positive.

[00:41:00.01] – Nik
It’s still positive. When he doesn’t hit whatever we were trying to hit at that moment because he’s too tired, he needed to recover, he didn’t sleep well, whatever the reason is. Things happen. And then he looks at me and he says, Dad, did I do great? I said, Honey, you did amazing. We just learned something new. Here’s what we learned. And he says, Okay, and then next time we’re going to use this and make it better. He says, Okay, so I did great? I said, You did amazing. Every day, I reinforce that concept that he does great no matter what happens, because we’re either making progress or we’re learning, in which case we’re making even more progress. Which is, again, that’s- And so every day is about progress or learning.

[00:41:40.02] – Craig
Yeah, that’s integral to the 1% better. It’s not just outcome, and that’s where I think sometimes people get confused about just when we talk about 1% better, it’s like, well, what if I want to get 10% better? Or what if… It’s not about the outcome. It’s actually about the process and the mindset. And if you follow the process and the mindset, which is what you’re talking about, you’re always going to learn and you’re always going to be better.

[00:42:07.09] – Nik
Aren’t we 1% better if we learn something new?

[00:42:10.07] – Craig
Exactly. Actually, you can tell that with Chris. I mean, he was talking just in our brief conversation, he was talking about hydration, nutrition. This is stuff that’s not like, I got 34, I got 35. This is stuff that he’s learning. He’s getting smarter, clearly, about how he can get better. Yeah, it’s great.

[00:42:33.05] – Nik
I’ll tell you a story. Tomorrow, he’s got a speech for a big company. They bought 450 books, and yesterday, he needed to sign 450 books.

Wow.

And so he started signing at around 8: 00 at night, and at 1: 30 in the morning, he still had about 50 or 60 to go, and I was getting tired. I need to go to bed. He said, dad, I said, Chris, why don’t you take a break? Just do them tomorrow. He says, dad I can’t. I can’t do it until the job is done. I can’t go. And I went to bed and he finished it. Everything was ready in the morning. We packed it up and got it ready to ship. But that was kinda what it was.

[00:43:14.04] – Craig
That’s Chris. A couple of times when we’ve been talking, Nik, it leads me to at what point… So we talked about everyone’s got gifts, right? And clearly Chris has some gifts, and you’ve been able to tap into that and let him explore those gifts. And some of those gifts you just explained, he’s tenacious, he doesn’t give up, he’s learning, he’s listening, he’s trusting, but he’s got something very special in him that you’ve been able to tap into. And I did a lot of coaching of kids, and sometimes I could tell kids when they were five, six, seven years old, they had gifts, physical gifts. And then they had this different mindset said, and some of them went on to play division one and even professional sports. My question for you is, when did you know Chris had this gift of like, he can really get after something. He can really stick with it. He’s got this determination, this discipline, or is that something that… it wasn’t like you knew it was there? It just evolved through you working with them day in and day out.

[00:44:26.05] – Nik
No, so he doesn’t have that gift. His gift is routine and repetition. He loves routine and repetition. So we use that to build everything else.

Everything else-

But you tapped that in an amazing way.

We tapped it. We had to learn, we had to figure out what was his superpower. His superpower was routine and repetition, which we thought was not a strength because his whole life, he’d like to put together 200 matchbox cars in a row.

[00:44:57.08] – Craig
Yeah, the same thing every day, right?

[00:44:59.06] – Nik
Same thing every day. We thought that was a weakness. What I did was I tapped into that as a strength, and I said, Okay, how do we apply that strength to helping build him up? And so 1% better and routine and repetition, go hand in hand. And so with that, he developed discipline, mental toughness, consistency, execution, no quit grit. All that came because we combined his strength of routine and repetition with the 1% better concept to build a mental mindset and a grit in his brain that would ensure that he keeps going and never quits. And that turns out to be his superpower and why he became what he became and why he won the ESPYs and why everything just happened. But think about it, for 18 years, we all were interpreting his gift as a weakness.

[00:45:53.05] – Craig
And that’s just it. That’s the magic is that, yeah, the gifts are disguised sometimes, but you’re able to figure out that code and leverage. Sometimes we say, use your weakness as a strength, and clearly that’s what you did. So Chris, what did all this teach you about yourself and about people?

[00:46:15.08] – Nik
Great question. It taught me first to stop accepting the societal truths about things. It taught me to question even more. I’ve always questioned, but it taught me to question even more. It taught me to take whatever people were telling me, it taught me to take the opposite approach to things and to look at, like this example of Chris’s strength, and not dismiss it because it doesn’t look like what we perceive as strengths should look like. It taught me that every one of our children, because now we’ve seen 12 of Chris’s friends doing an Ironman with autism and down syndrome. It taught me that for the last 50 years, this population has been perceived as incapable of doing anything like that. But now we’re realizing that with the right system and tapping into their strengths and their superpowers and creating an environment that helps them flourish, they are so much more capable as they reach closer to their potential. Their potential is still not your potential or my potential or someone who’s got a great physical ability and a great mind. It’s not the same potential. But while one person with autism can go build rocket ships because they got that mind, another one can do something else, where one person with Down syndrome can do Ironman’s like Chris, others can do other things.

And so it taught me that we need to look deep inside of each person and realize that there’s a lot of potential there. And if they’re not reaching their potential and not achieving it, it’s up to us to figure out why and to rethink the environment in the system in order to help tap into their strengths and their potential and help them achieve what they’re capable of achieving. And so I also learned that for our kids with Down syndrome and autism and all that, we need to design simple systems. We tend to overcomplicate the systems that were designed for their typical peers who are capable of handling a higher cognitive and physical environment. We need to simplify the environment for them. But then what I also learned is the simpler you make the system, the more powerful it becomes because execution improves. And so as simplicity becomes the norm, execution becomes turbocharged and results increase exponentially. And so Chris is showing that with all the physical and cognitive limitations, a simple system executed violently, produces incredible results. And he’s only 25. He’s just getting started. And the beautiful thing is his friends are just getting started.

And five years from now, you’re going to see an army of young men and women with Down syndrome and autism that are going to be doing things that would just blow our minds today.

[00:49:18.11] – Craig
That’s amazing. Yeah, it reminds me of one of my… I love simple truths, but Einstein said, If you can’t simplify something, you don’t really understand it. And if this This would be a great example. If you don’t really understand what it means to get better unless you can simplify it into its most basic element, which is what the whole idea of one % better. It’s a very simple, basic concept. In fact, some people just almost push it to the side. Like, that’s just a cute little saying. But it’s actually very profound if you understand the meaning, and then, like you said, you apply it, like, rigorously with high discipline. But that’s the way a lot of things in life, right? It’s the simple… E equals MC². It’s a pretty simple equation, and it took… Nobody figured it out before with complete whiteboards full of algorithms and whatnot. So what about-

[00:50:16.05] – Nik
Simplicity does drive execution, and that’s what I’ve learned. That’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned from all this. And I’m trying to figure out how to build a simple system so we can apply it in scale to people with intellectual disabilities to help them become fully included in the world in work, live, and flow.

[00:50:36.08] – Craig
Well, that’s an amazing mission. I could even think that it’s not just limited to that. I mean, that’s a focus, and that’s going to have some incredible outcomes and results for probably, like you said, an underserved and just a group of people that just haven’t… They’ve had a lot of labels and a lot of limitations put on them. But really, it applies to everyone. It applies to you, me, anyone can get better and achieve more in life with this, right?

[00:51:04.14] – Nik
I agree 100%. The system will work for anybody because it drives execution. Execution drives outcomes. Outcomes drive results. And ultimately, that’s what we’re all trying to accomplish.

[00:51:18.05] – Craig
So if people wanted to learn more about this, maybe wanted to get a T-shirt or wanted to learn more, where would they do that?

[00:51:25.01] – Nik
Just go to Chris’s website, chrisnikic.com. They can order a book, they can order a T-shirt. The book has a story, the story of Chris and what he’s accomplished, but also in the appendix, there’s a whole section on how the 1% better system works and why it works so well. And really, it’s just a simplification and a codification of principles that have been well-described and implemented across every area of life, from the Kaizen system, the atomic habits, the manufacturing systems that were built in Japan and all over this country, and the lean, all that. It’s already out there. What I did was I took those proven principles and concepts, simplify them, and adapted them to a group of young men and women who have a much lower cognitive and physical ability in order to tap into their full potential and help them become a much better version of who they really and show them how to tap into their gifts.

[00:52:34.03] – Craig
Well, last question that we ask everybody is just taking a step back from your son and the work that you’re doing for him and for building out this system and proliferating that. Just what are some life lessons that you’ve learned in this whole journey as a person and what would you want to pass on to others?

[00:52:54.05] – Nik
Great question. I’ve spent the last 40 years in a business world relatively successful. At least in terms of what I thought I could do with my life. I’ve been happy with the wonderful life that I’ve been blessed with, a wife of almost 40 years and two kids in a successful career in a business. But what I’ve learned in the last few years is in this stage of my life, the most important thing I can do is to find a way to bring people together around this mission of helping those who are less fortunate and who really have been left out of the opportunities that are available to most of us because the system that’s in place currently really is designed for those of us who are more capable of taking advantage of the system. And so I feel much better about who I am and what I’m doing in this journey of trying to find enough like-minded people like the group that we found here in Florida and other places, so that maybe together we can change the world and make it a better place for our kids who are struggling to find a place for themselves to fit in the world.

And hopefully, through these kinds of podcasts and through the other things that we do, we’ll continue to meet like-minded people who will jump in with both feet and help us to push this mission forward and help as many of these young men and women as we can.

[00:54:21.01] – Craig
Yeah. Well, it’s an amazing just pursuit. And you’ve got your own goal. And so I can’t tell you how much I appreciate talking to you. And as much as I’m incredibly inspired by what Chris has done, I know that that wasn’t possible without you behind him and just helping him achieve to his potential. And you don’t even know what his potential is at this point. It’s so unlimited. And so it’s just super inspiring because it shows how we can impact others, not only our own children, but now many others that you’re impacting. And what better legacy, what better thing that we can all do. But to impact people. I mean, it’s just can’t think of a better story and what he’s accomplished. And again, you’re there helping them and helping figure it out and just an amazing story in itself. So thank you for what you do. And certainly, I’m going to support you and anything we can do to help you guys to carry out your big dream.

[00:55:21.11] – Nik
Well, thank you. I think Chris is a great visual role model of what a good system can do, and it gives people the visual element that they need in order to dig deeper into the system and say, how do I get the system to my life, to my kids’ lives, to others, to my business, essentially, to people who are struggling to succeed? How do I use a simple system like that to help them achieve their full potential. Imagine what a company would be like if people could figure out how to tap into a system like this and help more of their employees reach their full potential, the power that would create with the company, but also with the employees.

[00:56:01.09] – Craig
And that’s just it. I don’t believe this is something just for the underserved or the ones that have the more visible limitation. I feel this is like breakthrough thinking for every human on this Earth. But it’s such a visceral… You can’t not be inspired and go, Oh, my gosh, if he can do what he’s done, what am I doing? And what is my… It really makes, I think, every person that sees Chris and sees the story question, well, maybe everything, like you said, it makes you question everything. Maybe all the limitations in my head are all wrong, and they don’t need to be there. So I love it. I think it’s amazing to show that. So thank you for everything you’ve done.

[00:56:51.14] – Nik
Thank you for having us. I appreciate the opportunity, and hopefully we can continue to stay in touch and find ways to do some things to help some other people as much as we can.

[00:57:01.14] – Craig
Very good.

[00:57:02.14] – Nik
Thank you.

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