Meet Nelson Nio | Women’s Self Defense Instructor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Nelson Nio and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nelson, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
In 2003, a friend of my coworker was brutally assaulted while walking from her car to her apartment. That incident prompted me to research about sexual assault in this country. I still remember the exact moment when I first read that women are sexually assaulted every 2 minutes in the US. It was so mind boggling for me to hear that statistic.

So my first thought was…what if I create a self-defense training system specifically for women and girls to fight back against sexual assault? That’s how SHIELD Women’s Self Defense System® was born.

SHIELD Women’s Self Defense System® was born as a way for women to fight back against a much bigger & stronger opponent. It did not start as a business. It was a system of fighting. How to efficiently and effectively fight back against a much bigger opponent in a close-range situation.

We fight fast and dirty, relying almost entirely on our lower body strength. It’s different than anything that is available out there. So I started teaching friends, and volunteered to teach for rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, homeless shelters, etc.

Before long, the training started to get some media attention. SHIELD as a business was then created. It was more of a ‘social entrepreneurship’ where I conducted more than half of the training for free on behalf of some non-profit agencies.

To me, it was not about making money. I still held my day job working as a senior analyst for a commercial real estate mortgage banking firm. The act of teaching women self-defense was in itself the reward, thus, I was ok not to charge money for it.

In 2008, I quit my day job and taught self-defense for women full-time. That was a hard transition for me. I didn’t have much money saved at the time, so I had to cash out my 401K just to get by. The next 4 years were the hardest years to get the business up and running.

My friends and family were advising me to quit and go back to my day job. They said you can’t make a living by just teaching self-defense for women.  Those were painful years…but there was an urge from within that made me keep going and felt more alive than working in an office. So I just kept going. I had no money to advertise. It was all strictly from word of mouth.

Fast forward 19 years after it was born, I have personally trained over 25,000 women and girls in self-defense. SHIELD has been taught for Fortune 100 companies, schools, government agencies, and private groups. The training has been featured in most major TV networks such as NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, E! Entertainment, France24, Hallmark, Univision, Telemundo, etc.  It is also now a part of the curriculum taught in 19 schools in Tanzania, Africa.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
SHIELD Women’s Self Defense System® is different than any self defense or martial arts training out there. Our training is exclusively for women and girls, and specifically geared to fight back against sexual assault.

We focus on the lower body strength to generate power, which is very advantageous for women. We also train in real life scenario based situations, in a fully adrenalized state. Students get to feel what it’s like to be jolted off the ground and fight back with full force.

The journey hasn’t been easy at all. Teaching self defense exclusively for women and girls is not a common business practice. No one is really offering that. But it’s such a specialized training that is greatly needed. Women are attacked differently, and for different reasons than men. Women also have a different body structure than men. Utilizing lower body strength to generate power is key for women in fighting back. To teach generic self defense for women is simply misleading and does not work very well.

But if you are doing something you are very passionate about, you just keep going no matter how hard things seem to be. In my mind, there’s no giving up. It’s just something I do no matter what. That helped me to persevere and kept going. The lesson learned is: find your passion, and follow through no matter how hard it seems.

We are very thankful that SHIELD Women’s Self Defense training been received very well by women from all walks of life. We’re proud to have taught the training for large companies and organizations such as Kaiser Permanente, FOX Studios, Lionsgate, Buzzfeed, NBC, USC, UCLA, Pepperdine, Santa Monica Police, etc. We’ve taught celebrities like Kim, Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian, America’s favorite chef Giada De Laurentiis, and Princess Noura (Saudi Princess). Our training has been featured across the world for NBC, ABC, CBS, E! Entertainment, Hallmark, France24, Telemundo, Univision, etc.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I would take them on a boat to cruise around. Dinner at the Moon Shadows restaurant in Malibu.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
City of Glendale Commission on the Status of Women was the first agency that used my services when I just got started. They put me in front of hundreds of women and girls every year during April Sexual Assault Awareness Month for 8 years in a row.

Website: https://shieldselfdefense.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shieldselfdefense/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SHIELDselfdefense

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/SHIELDSelfDefense/featured

Image credit:
First and third photo is taken by Alex Selamat