Nico attributes his strong work ethic to his parents, with whom he's very close. He even got one of his dad's favourite Japanese phrases tattooed on his tricep. "He always told me this growing up: Nanakorobi yaoki. It means fall down seven times, stand up eight," Nico told SSENSE. And though he's tight with his father, Nico also considers himself a "Mama's boy, 100 percent." When Nico was feeling a bit directionless at age 20, it was his mom he turned to for advice.
"I went through a little hard spot of being like, 'I don't know what I'm doing. I'm living with my parents and I'm 20 years old. I feel like i should move out already because I don't want to cause them stress,'" he added. "I talked to my mom about it for a while, and she told me, 'You're always going to continue to grow. Don't stop, ever.' We were on a staircase when she was telling me all of this, so I wrote it down in my phone — reminder: staircase talk. I put the sun emojis because she said she pictures me as a glowing sun. I'm going to put that in my everyday life and I'm gonna be that glowing sun."