Courageous Ones

SPONSORED BY AMZA SUPERFOODS Discover traditional Tibetan nutrition with Amza Superfoods, a Tibetan-owned food company based in Oregon. https://amzasuperfoods.com/courageous Use code COURAGEOUS15 for 15% off your order. Available in the United States. --- Sometimes, believing in yourself means continuing even when nothing seems to be working. In this episode of Courageous Ones, I'm joined by Tenzi...

Anik is a fitness coach, creator and the person behind Infinite. In his fourth conversation on Courageous Ones, we talk about what happens when you stop waiting to feel confident and start giving yourself evidence that you can actually follow through. We get into putting yourself out there, dealing with rejection, following your curiosity, building self-belief through repetition, and how you chang...

Yassin Mahhou returns to Courageous Ones for a fourth conversation. He is the founder of Mahhou Solutions and a co-founder of the Jonge Ondernemers podcast, and he is still pursuing the goal he shared in his first appearance: becoming a millionaire before 25. This episode is not really about the number. Yassin explains why the goal matters because of the person the process can make him. We talk ab...

Harsh Pandorwala is a content creator, entrepreneur and new father who has spent more than five years building online, travelling the world and learning what happens when your work becomes tied to public opinion. He and his wife went from starting a travel page with around a hundred early followers to rapid growth, while Harsh also experienced the less visible side of creating online: burnout, dop...

David Green is a filmmaker, storyteller and lifelong traveler whose experiences across different cultures have shaped the way he thinks about life, relationships, creativity and himself. In this conversation, we explore what solo travel taught David about humanity, his experience studying yoga and meditation in India, learning to sit with yourself, protecting your time and energy, forgiveness, fri...

Tenzin Tsering, also known as Tenzoni, is a Tibetan-Filipino Canadian artist and illustrator. In this episode, we have an honest conversation about creativity, identity, courage, and what happens when the thing you love also becomes your profession. Tenzin shares how growing up surrounded by Filipino and Tibetan art shaped her creative path, why art became a way for her to connect with her culture...

Amin Alamdari is back on the podcast, almost two years after our first conversation. A lot has changed since then. In this episode, we talk honestly about what happens when the excitement of chasing your goals wears off and you’re left with the reality of actually building the life you wanted. Amin opens up about almost quitting entrepreneurship, questioning his definition of success, losing relat...

Jamyang Dorjee Chakrishar is a Tibetan calligrapher, artist and cultural preservationist whose life has moved between public service, spiritual practice and art. After building a respected career in the Sikkim government, he made the difficult decision to leave behind comfort, status and a much higher salary to serve the Tibetan administration in Dharamsala. Years later, he helped bring Tibetan ca...

Doina is a singer, marketing coach, and creator from Moldova, now living in Bali. She helps people build a personal brand without losing who they are. She grew up in a house of teachers, reading twenty pages a day from the age of six and learning discipline before she learned anything else. She started singing to stand out from her sister, competed on X Factor at 17 and The Voice at 19, and then s...

In this episode, Tenzin sits down with Yassin Mahhou for a long and honest conversation about ambition, entrepreneurship, discipline, burnout and the pressure to succeed. Yassin shares what it is like to build Mahhou Solutions while working multiple jobs and helping grow the Jonge Ondernemers Podcast. They discuss co-foundership, choosing priorities, why hard workers seem to get luckier and why no...

Anik is a fitness coach in Ireland and co-founder of Infinite, a coaching brand he built with his best friend. He breaks down creatine dosage, training splits, and the CNS fatigue most people mistake for ordinary tiredness. The conversation turns personal. Anik talks about the jobs he hated before fitness, the identity shift that came from staying consistent, and why the fear of judgment never ful...

Lhamo left Tibet as a child, moved to India, then made her way to France for university. She studied medicine, dropped it, switched to business, graduated, and then did something most people in her position wouldn't consider: opened a Tibetan restaurant in Paris with her mom. This episode goes into what it's like to build a life in a country whose language you don't speak, the moment she realized...

Corey Downey is an actor based in New Jersey. This conversation goes into self-worth, purpose, sexual alchemy, and what it means to fight for love, not as a concept, but as a daily practice. Corey grew up watching his younger sister Charlotte spend 75% of her life in hospital. Born with special needs, she survived 15 years through two open heart surgeries, dialysis, and every form of medical suppo...

Anas grew up cutting hair in his garage in Montreal, then booked a one way flight to Dubai with no connections and built Backalive Barbershop into one of the busiest barbershops in the city by posting the whole journey on TikTok. Now he is building software that lets barbershop owners talk to their own data using AI. We get into the failed move to LA, the pivot to Dubai, and going from three barbe...

Amber De Muyt is a Belgian fashion model, founder of Monique Models, and Europe scout for Respect Models Belgium. In this episode she talks about landing in China on a modeling contract, getting told to lose weight on day one, spending two months working hard, then getting sent home anyway. We go into the two years she spent not eating carbs out of fear, the first agent she signed with who told he...

Tenzin Yeshi is a Tibetan-American actor, writer, and director from Queens, New York. He's the founder of Six Realms Production and his latest film Free Tea Bed is on Apple TV. In this episode, we get into what it took to follow a creative path with no roadmap, why he believes making bad work is the only way forward, and how a late-night conversation about Tibetan identity became the seed for his...

Yassin Mahhou is a young entrepreneur based in Belgium building a web development and audio-visual marketing business while co-founding Young Entrepreneurs, a podcast and community for young people building their own path. This is his second time on Courageous Ones. He hit his first online income milestone and felt almost nothing. We talk about why that happens, why the goal line keeps moving, and...

Nils Rydsmo is a 20-year-old Swedish creator in the men's health and hormones space who is currently serving in the Swedish Armed Forces. We met playing chess at Sam's Farm café in Canggu, Bali, became friends over a couple of weeks, crossed paths again in Chiang Mai, and this is the first time we sat down properly to talk. The episode covers what military service does to your mind, the difference...

Amy Lindsay is a photographer, videographer, and creative director from Scotland who spent four years in London building a career across the creative industry. She worked with brands like Hypebeast, directed music videos, and freelanced across fashion and music. In late 2024 she decided to travel. She ended up in Chiang Mai, Thailand, found Dang Muay Thai, got a job there, and never went back. In...

Noah Williams is an 18-year-old content creator and founder from Oregon. He completed his first 50K ultra marathon at 15 with almost no training, becoming one of the youngest finishers in the world. He is now building PlayR, a basketball app to make pickup games accessible to everyone. This conversation covers smile maxxing, morning routines, delusional confidence, and what it looks like to build...

Tenzin Kelsang is a Tibetan cinematographer and colorist based in Mumbai who has spent five years working his way into the Indian film industry, shooting music videos, short films, and commercial projects while building his craft from the ground up. We talk about what it's actually like being a Tibetan in Bollywood, how he learned to stop saying yes to everything and nearly burned out doing it, an...

Jinsel is the founder of KHOE, a Tibetan streetwear brand based in Delhi rooted in Tibetan art, symbols, and silhouettes. He spent three years in a corporate IT job before quitting to build something of his own, starting with almost nothing and learning everything from sewing to manufacturing on the way. We talk about why he chose fashion as a vehicle for cultural preservation, how he survived mon...

Lopsang Soepa is a Tibetan comic artist and muralist from Arunachal Pradesh who left college to pursue art, moved to Bangalore to train, and is now working on an eight-part comic series rooted in Tibetan folk tales and Buddhist stories. He also paints murals in Dharamshala's Mcleod Ganj, turning forgotten alleyways into conversations about Tibetan history and culture. We talk about why he started...

Aniq Malu is a fitness coach and endurance athlete based in Ireland who went from barely running 1km to training friends for half marathons. He lost his dad at a young age, grew up with a single mother, and has been doing the hard work of proving that little boy wrong ever since. We talk about the valley of despair, why most dreams die in the middle and not at the start, and what it actually means...

Sonam Dendup is a Bhutanese introvert who spent 25 years living on autopilot before deciding to do something hard. He started a clothing brand rooted in Tibetan Buddhism and Bhutanese cultural heritage, designing pieces inspired by the mask dances, temple motifs, and stories he grew up with. We talk about what it actually takes to start something when you overthink everything, how introverts can u...