[0:00] Nicky Billou And dude, you can't go after a client group because they make a lot of money. You know what I mean? I mean, it's nice if they make money, don't get me wrong — that shouldn't be a criteria. But if that is the criteria, you got a problem. It's not going to work.
[0:27] Rich Smith: Hello and welcome to Revenue Science, the show where we translate marketing and sales complexity into boardroom clarity for CEOs, founders, and growth leaders building predictable revenue growth systems. I'm Rich Smith — CMO, founder, executive adviser, investor, and thrilled to be back behind the Revenue Science microphone as your host. Thank you for joining us today, and please help us reach more leaders by liking, subscribing, and sharing this episode.
[0:55] Rich Smith: Entrepreneurs spend enormous amounts of time chasing tactics, tools, and growth hacks. But the leaders who create lasting impact often build something far more durable: trust, authority, and relationships. Today's guest is Nicky Billou, president and CEO of E-Circle Academy, New York Times best-selling author, creator of the Thoughtful Leader / Heart Leader movement, founder of Sovereign Man, and host of the Thoughtful Leader Revolution podcast.
[1:26] Rich Smith: Nikki's story begins far from the world of entrepreneurship. Born in Iran, his family fled the Islamic Revolution in pursuit of freedom and opportunity. That experience shaped his lifelong belief that entrepreneurship is one of the most powerful forces for human flourishing. Over the past two decades, he's helped entrepreneurs position themselves as authorities in their markets, build meaningful relationships, and transform expertise into influence.
[1:57] Rich Smith: What makes Nikki especially relevant for Revenue Science listeners is that his expertise combines behavioral science, positioning, personal branding, leadership, trust, and business growth. While many companies focus on generating attention, Nikki argues that authority is the ultimate growth asset, and that people buy from those they know, trust, and believe in. Today we'll explore entrepreneurship, freedom, thought leadership, behavioral science, authority-building, relationships, and why the future may belong to those who can combine expertise with genuine human connection. Nikki, welcome to Revenue Science.
[2:37] Nicky Billou: Rich, thanks for having me on the show. It's an honor to be here.
[2:44] Rich Smith: Great to have you here today — I think it's going to be a really interesting discussion for our audience. I wonder if you could start by giving a quick intro to yourself, a little about your background, and then we'll get into it.
[2:58] Nicky Billou: Great. I'm actually originally an immigrant from the Middle East — I'm a Christian from Iran. When I was 11 years old, the Islamic Revolution took place, and the moderate, pro-Western government of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Pahlavi, was overthrown by this repressive, theocratic, Nazi-like regime of the Mullahs. They very quickly clamped down on everything — there were literally gun battles going on in the streets near our home for a while.
[3:26] Nicky Billou: My mom and dad had me and my two younger brothers, and they were freaking out. One day their freak-out factor went up a thousandfold, because there was this big crash through our living room window — shards of glass flew everywhere, and this object landed right next to my feet. I'm 11 years old, I don't know what the hell it is — it was a bottle full of some sort of liquid with a burning cloth rag in the top. A Molotov cocktail.
[4:02] Nicky Billou: My dad quickly grabbed it, pulled out the burning rag, and poured out the gas that was in the bottle. He and my mom looked at each other and said, "yeah, it's time" — this wasn't going to be a place for them to raise a Christian family. So they took me and my two brothers and got us out of there. It took a couple of years, because it was really difficult to leave revolutionary, torn Iran at that point.
[4:32] Nicky Billou: We went first to Europe, and after two years there, we landed where I now live — Toronto, Canada. I'm about 15 at the time. I'm looking around going, "I hate this place, I don't want to have left my home or my friends — mom, dad, when can we go back?" And the truth is, man, I don't know if I could fully appreciate at the time how they must have felt — they wanted us to start over, to have a new life.
[5:04] Nicky Billou: It took me years to figure it out, but then I really got it — I saw what an unbelievably noble sacrifice they made. They left behind everybody, everything, for a chance at a better life for me and my two brothers. They took us from a country that had lost its freedom and descended into tyranny, and they took a legacy of living in tyranny away from us, and gave us this beautiful legacy of living in freedom.
[5:38] Nicky Billou: Rich, I believe inside every human breast beats the living heart of freedom — every man and woman on this planet yearns to breathe free, to chart their own course, to march to the tune of their own drummer. Growing up, reading books, taking courses, doing all this stuff, I'm thinking: who are the people who appreciate freedom the most, whom freedom is really necessary for them to win? It's the entrepreneurs — the people who dare to dream, to make their dreams come alive.
[6:11] Nicky Billou: Being infused with this love of freedom, I said, I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to help entrepreneurs. And that, my friend, is what had me go from living in a country infused in tyranny, unfortunately, to living in freedom and doing what I do.
[6:32] Rich Smith: It's a remarkable story — I'm smiling because I share so many of the same opinions and philosophy. Luckily, I won the cosmic lottery — I was born in the United States and never had to live under tyranny like that. But as a student of history, you really get an appreciation for how those things happen, and what the antidote is. I think you touched on one of those things — it's really the engine of growth, honestly the engine of improvements in our standard of living, and that's entrepreneurship. That's one of the reasons I do what I do today, because I think it's so central to progress in a lot of different ways.
[7:27] Rich Smith: I wonder if you could talk about what lessons from that experience — your parents leaving a country, starting all over in a new place — still influence how you make decisions today.
[7:44] Nicky Billou: Man, everything — my entire worldview is defined by that. Let me tell you a bit about my father in particular. He was the greatest man I've ever met — I'm biased, I'm his son, but let me explain. He was the kind of man that if you were a friend of his and you were looking for work — he owned a business with a lot of employees — he would clear his calendar, sit you down in his office, tell his secretary no calls, and figure out what kind of job you were suited for and wanted.
[8:17] Nicky Billou: Then he'd pick up the phone and call every high-level contact he had, guys who owned companies, top people in government, and he'd ethically manipulate and push them until one of them said, "okay, I'll give this guy a job." An hour or two later he'd say, "Rich, we got you a job — assistant to the deputy minister for trade, your salary's 150,000, you start in five minutes, so get the hell out of here, see you." People would be blown away.
[9:02] Nicky Billou: And people starting a business — he was always ready to give advice, connect you with people. Iran was a second-world country back then — let's say you wanted to buy a car, a house, an apartment: the bank would give you so much money, and if it wasn't enough, tough, you had to find other sources of cash. A lot of people who knew my dad would go to him — "Mr. Belaloo, Mr. Napoleon" — his name was Napoleon Belaloo, regal name, right — and say, "sir, I'm trying to buy this car, this house, I need 2,000, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000." And he'd say okay, write a check, give them the money.
[9:36] Nicky Billou: Everybody would say, "okay, I'm going to save my money and pay him back." A year, two, three years later, people would come back — "here's your money." And he'd say, "what's this?" "That's the 10,000 you loaned me two years ago." "That wasn't a loan." "What do you mean it wasn't a loan?" "No, that was a gift." "What are you talking about, that was a gift?" "No, that was a gift. Come on, get on with your day."
[10:08] Nicky Billou: Iranians do this thing called taarof — a little dance, "no, no, that's impossible, you can't do that." Dad would get mad — "don't insult me." And they'd say, "okay, but what do I do with this money?" He'd say, "go find somebody in your life who's as badly off as you were when you came to see me, and give it to them as a gift."
[10:38] Nicky Billou: I tell this to Westerners, and people go, "Nikki, come on, forget about it, nobody does that — you give $10, $50, maybe $100 gifts, you don't give a thousand, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, who does that?" And I say, in my home country of Iran, a lot of people did that — but my father especially did. He raised me, and he'd tell me growing up, "son, life ain't about money, it's about people."
[11:05] Nicky Billou: I'd say, "okay, dad." He said, "even business ain't about money, it's about people." I said, "but don't you need money to do business?" He said, "true, but without people, there's no need for money, because all business is a method to solve problems for people — and that's how you make a profit. That's the purpose of business." People, problems, profit, and purpose — the four P's. That's what he taught me.
[11:36] Nicky Billou: When I got into business, I could hear my dad chirping in my ear: "son, you got to believe in people — everybody needs someone to believe in them, you, me, everybody else, our self-belief wobbles. Your job is to find good people, believe in them, correct the wobble, turn that little spark into a roaring fire." In my work, I look for good people who are good at what they do, but maybe a little nervous about selling or marketing or branding — maybe the idea of selling scares them, they don't want to be seen as one of those pushy people.
[12:21] Nicky Billou: Their head hurts when they think about marketing, about creating visibility. And me — I get all that, I come from that background, my father was a businessman, I studied business in school. So I go to good people and say, "you got to reframe how you think about all this — sales isn't a bad thing, sales isn't being pushy or slimy. Sales is service. Let's not even call it sales, let's call it service."
[12:44] Nicky Billou: Rich, you and I are both in business and both into sales — but nobody wants to be pushed into buying something they don't want, not me, not you, not anybody. But if someone meets you and, say, you need help with something and they just serve you, treat you like family — don't you just want to give them your money, don't you even want to give them more than they asked for sometimes, saying "man, you were great, here you go"?
[13:16] Nicky Billou: Good people can wrap their hearts around that — "yeah, I'm here to serve people." Just by teaching people that reframe, and helping it take (it takes time sometimes, it's not immediate), they double, triple, quadruple, 10-fold, 20-fold, 50-fold their income and sales. So what influenced me? Being brought up in that culture before it went crazy, having a man like my father raise me, teach me, instill in me what it took to be a good human being. It was like being determined to honor him and his legacy by being that kind of man myself.
[13:57] Rich Smith: That's another great story, and some amazing lessons from someone who sounds like an incredible person, your father. I completely agree with everything you said. Just to double-click on one thing about sales — I do think a lot of people have this feeling that sales is the process of convincing someone to do something they don't want to do.
[14:29] Rich Smith: And that's not it at all. Sales done well, as you described it, is a service function — you're trying to determine, as business people, since most of the companies I work with and most of our audience sell B2B, but it doesn't really matter if it's B2B or B2C — we should approach those conversations as discovery: let's see if what we do will help you, and let's see if you'd be a good fit for us. It's a two-way interview — you're talking to the prospect, but you're also interviewing them to see whether they'll be a good customer, because you don't want to bring on someone who won't be — that's not good for them or for you, it just creates more cost, more opex, and probably churn. It's best thought of as a service function. I totally agree.
[15:38] Rich Smith: Changing gears a little — when did you realize that expertise alone wasn't enough, that becoming known for what you know matters just as much?
[15:48] Nicky Billou: Great question. Many years ago I worked with a fella — I used to be in the health and fitness field, a top fitness coach, worked with Olympic champions and billionaires, a lot of high-level people. The last guy who was my client in that space, we'd talk every day after the workouts. One day I said, "man, our conversations are great, we should be in a mastermind together." He looked at me intensely and said, "and we should call it the Entrepreneur Circle, E-Circle for short, and we should charge for it and get other people in it."
[16:31] Nicky Billou: So we started that, had a mastermind, about 12 members, went really well. Then one day he came to me and said, "the biggest problem our people have is nobody knows them — they're invisible." I said, "yeah, you're right, so what do we do?" He said, "I found this guy in Australia who teaches you how to become known, and it's real, not sizzle — he just sells steak." He was Australian, they don't do the sizzle-selling we do in North America, they're straight up.
[17:13] Nicky Billou: We checked this guy out, his name was Matt Church, and he used to say: "an expert is someone who knows something, but a thought leader is someone who's known for knowing something." I thought, wow, that's pretty cool. Around that time I got introduced to a kid — I'm a devout Christian, so God has these ways of putting people in front of me at exactly the right time — this kid was 25, a fitness coach just like I used to be.
[18:03] Nicky Billou: A client of mine who'd done well working with me introduced us. His name was Dan, I called him Danny. I said, "Danny, tell me about you, your business." He said, "I'm a trainer, I can do anything for anybody — help him lose weight, help him pack on muscle, I can do it all." I asked how many clients he had — seven. How much money a month? He got quiet, embarrassed. "Come on, tell me, I'm trying to help." He said, "last month I made $1,200, and that was a good month."
[18:47] Nicky Billou: I said, "$1,200? Jesus, man, we got to shift this. Here's the problem — you're trying to be all things to all people and it's not working." "Okay, what do I do?" "We need to narrow your niche, narrow your focus." I was about to show him an exercise, but he interrupted: "I'm going to work with doctors." That came out of left field — why doctors? "My dad's a doctor, I love my dad." "That's nice, but why else?" "Don't doctors make a lot of money?"
[19:24] Nicky Billou: Dude, you can't go after a client group because they make a lot of money — it's nice if they make money, that can be a criteria, but if that's the criteria, you got a problem, it's not going to work. He said he wanted to try anyway — wasn't super coachable at that point. Two months go by, he got one client. "Danny, this ain't working." "You're right, narrow the niche — cardiologists." "They make more money than doctors."
[20:04] Nicky Billou: Dude, you're not getting it, it's not about how much money they make. Month or two goes by, zero cardiologist clients — they were laughing at him. But God has an interesting sense of humor and sent him a Paralympian, a guy named Pahita Wilson — an Afro-Cuban who defected to Canada, really good, but lost a leg in a childhood accident. Pam and Dan worked together, it went great.
[20:43] Nicky Billou: A month later Dan comes to me: "Nikki, I owe you an apology. You were telling me not to go after people for the money and I wasn't listening — that's why it wasn't working. But I realize I know how to help people who are missing limbs, and I want to help people with missing limbs." When he said that, I felt electricity go through my body — this is exactly what he should be doing and who he should be doing it with.
[21:24] Nicky Billou: We rejiggered the conversation. In six weeks — remember, he had seven clients, making $1,200 on a good month — he signed up 400 people. He had to completely transform his business model because he could no longer work one-on-one, didn't have time to train 400 people one-on-one, even working every hour of the day. We turned it around, and he made $111,000 or some crazy number in a single month, and signed contracts putting him at a six-figure-a-month run rate for the foreseeable future — by not trying to go after the money.
[22:11] Nicky Billou: Everybody asks, "how'd he do it, some crazy Facebook ad?" No, man — all word of mouth. "Why would people —" Put yourself in the shoes of a person with one or more missing limbs. Probably not thrilled about that, fair to say? Probably felt upset, resentful, angry, maybe even that they're not as good as other people — that went into their psyche, their emotional self-concept.
[23:02] Nicky Billou: His message wasn't "I'm gonna train you." His message was, "hey, I see you, I know you, you're just as good as anybody else, you can do anything anybody else can do, and I'll prove it to you." That message landed and spread like wildfire — you didn't need to be fancy, there was truth, love, honesty, and authenticity in it. That's why this kid went from being a screw-up to one of the top guys anywhere in the world in his field at that time.
[23:55] Rich Smith: There are so many important lessons in that story I want to double-click on. The first, and I think the largest, is that focus creates power — if you try to be all things to everyone, you end up being nothing for anybody, because we all want to hire specialists, not generalists.
[24:21] Rich Smith: I use this example a lot: if I need knee surgery, do I want a great orthopedic surgeon who does hands, shoulders, knees, and hips, or the expert in my area who just focuses on knees and my specific issue? You'll always go to the specialist over the generalist — we're like that as consumers across pretty much every product and service category. Even in B2B, it's the same — we want people who've solved the specific problem we have, for people like us.
[25:17] Rich Smith: It's remarkable how often I see organizations think, "we have a product we can sell to this industry, that industry, this vertical, that market — it's great for everybody." That may actually be true, but if you try to be that for everybody, the specific individuals won't gravitate to you, because it doesn't seem like you solve their problem, for people like them. That's a really important lesson.
[26:02] Rich Smith: Another thing in your story, around messaging — this individual, he wasn't selling fitness, he was selling more than that, an emotion: that you can be just as good as anybody else. He wasn't selling fitness services. I think that's another key lesson — we think we're rational and think our buyers are rational; they're not, they're emotion-driven beings, and it's emotion that gets people to move, and then they rationalize the decision later.
[26:46] Rich Smith: In this case, he tapped into a very focused audience where word of mouth is probably rampant, and they have a trigger — they want to improve themselves, be better at whatever sport or activity or daily living, and they want to feel like they're not less than, they're as good as. That's a great formula, and that's why his business took off — no shock there. That's a great example of redesigning a system into a revenue-generating enterprise.
[27:38] Rich Smith: I write a lot about moats, about things you can do to insulate your business from competition. Do you think thought leadership can become a moat?
[27:54] Nicky Billou: It is a moat — honestly, without thought leadership, I don't think you can build an effective one, no matter how big or small your business is. Let's look at the automotive industry — I'm going to name two companies, and see if you know who heads them: General Motors...
[28:21] Rich Smith: No.
[28:21] Nicky Billou: Tesla Motors.
[28:30] Rich Smith: Elon, easy.
[28:40] Nicky Billou: Why did you instantly know Tesla Motors was led by Elon Musk?
[28:46] Rich Smith: Because he's made a name for himself, built authority and thought leadership in that area, no question.
[28:55] Nicky Billou: So I want you to speak to this from your heart and your brain — what is it about Elon that makes him noteworthy, in a sentence or two?
[29:13] Rich Smith: For me, what makes him particularly noteworthy is that he's a polymath — he's become an expert in many different areas, demonstrated he's started businesses in many areas, he's a visionary in many areas. I think that's what makes him instantly attractive. And I think part of the lesson is that people buy from people, not companies or brands. Having Elon as the head — some people may not like him, may not want a Tesla because of Elon — but there are plenty of other people who identify with him, see he's a visionary pushing technology forward, and gravitate to that. He's created a market amongst those people. Sorry, that was more than a sentence.
[30:22] Nicky Billou: A lot more, but that's fine. Here's what makes Elon a noteworthy man and a thought leader: almost everybody will give you an answer similar to yours if you ask what makes him noteworthy. He's a polymath who sees the future better than any entrepreneur alive, maybe ever. Most people can agree with that. He's very clear on what he stands for, and will both attract and repel because of it. A good thought leader attracts and repels.
[31:19] Nicky Billou: I'm going to be straight with you — I'm not for everybody, and I'm not only okay with that, I want it that way. I'm a Christian, conservative, libertarian, Iranian man. I'm against wokeism, communism, socialism, godlessness. People who believe in that, or even just excuse it, aren't for me — I don't want them near me, don't want to work with them, don't want to help them, go elsewhere.
[31:50] Nicky Billou: But people who are for the things I'm for are magnetically drawn to me, because they look at me and think, "this guy isn't another — excuse my language — ball-less wonder in business. He's a guy with actual opinions and stands who's willing to state them." He's cool — not just cool with offending people, he wants to offend certain people, wants them far away from him. I like that, because secretly that's what I want too.
[32:22] Nicky Billou: The people in business today trying to be liked by everybody are starting to lose credibility, starting to lose the following that makes them special. Real thought leaders stand for something. Elon Musk attracts customers because he comes up with products and visions that are out of this world. He attracts employees because what he's building, nobody else is remotely doing, and people want to be part of that — will do anything to be part of it. And he attracts investors, because if you're smart, you're going to bet on Elon.
[33:21] Nicky Billou: I bought Tesla stock about 10 years ago — not a lot, two or three thousand dollars' worth. A friend of mine in financial services told me to sell it, "it's never going to do anything, this guy's terrible." I said, never bet against Elon, I bet on Elon. My stock's gone up 2,500% — 25-fold. I wish I'd bought $30,000 worth instead of two or three. He just had an IPO with SpaceX, and at the moment there's a lot of hoopla and the price is kind of high, but I think it'll settle down — I'm planning on investing in SpaceX too.
[34:17] Nicky Billou: I recommend everybody consider evaluating SpaceX — I'm not an investment adviser, not giving advice on what to invest in, please hear me, SEC. But I will be purchasing SpaceX myself, because I believe in it — not because of the company, but because of Elon.
[34:49] Nicky Billou: If you're listening and thinking, "well, I'm not Elon Musk, I don't have crazy visions of the future, I'm just a regular dude, how do I become a thought leader in my space?" — I'd push back and say, what Elon's doing specifically is unique and special, I agree. But in the broad abstract, what he's doing is not unique: he's boldly saying what he's for. You can do that too. He's taken a lifetime to develop expertise at certain things — you can do that too, you probably already have.
[35:32] Nicky Billou: Your expertise isn't in whatever business you're running or whatever you're selling — Rich, even yours isn't really in podcasting and revenue systems, nor is mine. I'll tell you what my expertise really is: it's holding people accountable and pushing them out of their comfort zone. I do that better than anybody on the planet, straight up, and I can give example after example.
[36:13] Nicky Billou: I don't have a business ghostwriting books, but every year or two someone approaches me about writing a book with them, and I charge a good buck for it. I've done this for about six or seven guys. One fellow I'm just completing a book with is a real estate mogul from Montreal — he owned 168 apartment units at one point. Montreal's a top-three city in Canada — imagine owning 168 apartment units in Chicago, that's a lot of dollars.
[37:07] Nicky Billou: This guy's no loser by any stretch. He'd been talking about writing a book for 21 years, had hired other people, paid them good money — nothing happened. He meets me: three months later, draft one done, another month, draft two, now we're on draft three, the final draft, done in two to three weeks, publishing in July.
[37:35] Nicky Billou: He said, "Nikki, you're doing yourself a disservice — I got to give you a compliment. You helped me write this book in three months, 21 years, nobody else could do it. You should stop telling people you're a writer, a podcaster, you help people scale — everybody says that, no offense, a lot of people say that. That's not especially unique."
[38:14] Nicky Billou: "What's unique about you is that you give enough of a damn about somebody to get in the trenches with them, lock arms with them, and make sure whatever they told you they want done gets done — you just don't let up, you're a dog with a bone that way." I listened and thought, he's right. I set three appointments a week to write with him, told him I wouldn't start unless he committed to that upfront. We wrote together an hour and a half, three times a week, since the end of February — some serious commitment.
[38:48] Nicky Billou: Then people in my E-Circle community — entrepreneurs — a lot of them get weird about selling, sell for a while and then buy that story: "oh my god, selling is so rough, I don't want people to not like me." I sit with them and ask, "do you have a business or a hobby?" "No, no, I got a business." "Okay, then I want to hear no more crap talk about sales — if you have a business, you need to sell, yes or yes?" "Yes." No more entertaining ideas that sales is somehow negative. Sales is blood — without blood, you're dead.
[39:35] Nicky Billou: One dude hadn't sold in a month and a half — had a painting company, crews, 11 people. Not good. I don't do one-on-one coaching in my business, my girlfriend does, she's better at it than I am — but I told him, "I'm calling you every day, you're going to get sick of me, but you're going to get sales." I called him for 58 straight days of one-on-one coaching calls, which I don't even normally do — every day, "what are you doing today, what did you do yesterday, have you made a sale, do you have an appointment booked," dissecting everything for half an hour to an hour until it was clear what he'd done was good, or making him do something different. In 58 days, he made $180,000 in sales.
[40:25] Nicky Billou: Is that because I'm some great sales guru? There are plenty of people as good or better at the nuts and bolts of sales than me. But none of them would have called him every day and kicked his ass to make sure he did it — nobody else would have gotten in the trenches to that level with a guy. That's what was special about me.
[40:53] Nicky Billou: I'm not saying this to toot my own horn — it took me 58 years to figure this out. If you want to know your real point of difference, you got to stop talking about what you do, what services you sell — that's not your expertise, that's just the current expression of it. Your expertise is something very different.
[41:21] Rich Smith: I completely agree, and there were a lot of good nuggets in those stories. Your expertise isn't what you do — it's more inherent to who you are, what you bring to the world and the people around you. The thread running through your examples is that you're basically doing the same thing: helping people do what they're already capable of doing, giving them a framework, holding them accountable, giving them the motivation to get it done. You couldn't have written that gentleman's book yourself.
[42:13] Nicky Billou: No, hell no.
[42:15] Rich Smith: Only he can write his book — it's his book. But what you gave him was the path and the structure, the system within which to be successful and get it across the finish line. Another important thing you said — we all have so many options of things we could be doing, and I think this happens a lot to entrepreneurs: they latch onto a problem, product, or solution they're solving, and not the problem behind it. They get enamored with their solution, not the problem. The fact is, people don't buy solutions, they buy answers to their problems.
[43:19] Rich Smith: In your case, you've got it dialed in — people have a problem getting things done that are important to them, and that's the problem you solve.
[43:33] Nicky Billou: One of my mentors put it like this: people don't buy their way into something, they buy their way out of something.
[43:43] Rich Smith: Almost always true, because most of what motivates us isn't what we like, want, or need — it's our pains and fears. We're all loss-averse, all trying to avoid losses, and it's far more important to us to avoid a loss than to accomplish a comparable gain. That's one of the cognitive biases we all have — we'd much rather not lose $100 than win $100.
[44:20] Rich Smith: So helping people reduce their pains, their fears, solving those anxieties — that unlocks real power in a business.
[44:34] Nicky Billou: It does, 100%. In the case of the fellow I wrote the book with, and the clients having a hard time getting sales through the door — here's the point: the frameworks are super important, helping them see the frameworks and how to implement them is critical, but it wasn't nearly enough.
[45:08] Nicky Billou: The fellow with the book had had other professional writers with fantastic frameworks; my other clients had worked with sales gurus whose frameworks were great. For whatever reason, when they hit a roadblock, they couldn't move past it — their fear, their lack of confidence. That was what made me special: helping them get over that, because I got in the trenches with them and loved them enough to say, "I'm not going to let you fall, I'm picking you up and we're powering through this together." That's what allowed them to win.
[46:06] Nicky Billou: Norm Gordon, the fellow I'm writing the book with — this isn't a man who normally has trouble doing things, but when it came to writing a book, he didn't want to admit it, but he didn't feel as confident writing a book as he did doing a deal for 500 apartment units. He needed somebody who could make him feel confident this was doable.
[46:32] Nicky Billou: The fellow with the painting company and crews who wasn't getting sales — he didn't want to admit, "I'm nervous, scared I won't get more sales," and getting stuck in that mindset kept him from doing the things that actually create sales. When I sat with him and said, "we're making sure every day most of your time is spent getting yourself and your company hired," that turned it all around.
[46:57] Nicky Billou: People go, "well, that's simple." Really? With all respect, I don't know a single person in personal and professional development who has that ability to do that the way I do. I'm not saying this to impress you or because I'm super special — that's just my genius. Everybody's got their own genius. Your genius is what can really differentiate you from other people and help you help the people you need to help. This just happens to be mine — not everybody needs this, not everybody can handle a very intense Iranian man like me getting in their face, saying "you're messing up and you got to stop." Some people, when someone gets that intense, just say "F this, I'm out."
[48:04] Nicky Billou: It takes a special kind of person to handle that. But if you are that special kind of person, you're going to win, bigger than you ever thought possible. The whole point is: we need to help you figure out what is truly your innate expertise — that's what we help people figure out and push forward as their message, instead of "I'm a sales expert, a marketing expert, a painting expert" — because that's not really all that special.
[48:37] Rich Smith: I completely agree with all of that. This has been a great conversation, I'm sure we could keep going for a long time. Let me ask one more question, speaking directly to my audience: if there's a CEO out there listening who wants to become the recognized authority in their industry, what would the first three steps be?
[49:03] Nicky Billou: Interesting you mention that — I'll send you a tool we've developed: a Thought Leadership Scorecard, a self-assessment in the order of a DISC profile or Myers-Briggs, but around thought leadership. First thing: take that assessment, it'll give you a good sense of where you're at, what assets you have in front of you.
[49:44] Nicky Billou: Second, you got to make the decision — "I'm going to be that person." It'd be nice isn't a decision; a decision is "it's happening." Tied to that decision is a commitment to get there, because you're not that person right now, and you're probably not very good at being an authority — but if you commit to becoming good at it, you will.
[50:07] Nicky Billou: Third: hire somebody to guide you. You need guidance, you need coaching, and you got to be coachable — that's really important. Throw yourself into it with everything you got, you'll get there. And if you want to talk to me and hire me, I'm easy to find.
[50:26] Rich Smith: Everybody needs a coach, right? Even the best athletes in the world — Tom Brady had a coach his entire football career. It doesn't matter how good you are, you can still benefit from having a coach. Nikki, again, this has been a great conversation — where can people go to learn more about you and your work and connect with you?
[50:56] Nicky Billou: My main website is ecircleacademy.com. I also host a couple of podcasts, so if you just type in my name — N-I-K-K-I — I'm the only Nicky Billou on planet Earth, you'll find it all. If you want to talk about applying thought leadership into your world, and maybe you're accomplished elsewhere but not super confident in this area, go to ecircleacademy.com — that'll take you to my personal calendar, let me know you heard me on the Revenue Science Show, and I'll give you 45 minutes of my time as a gift and we'll map something out for you.
[51:36] Rich Smith: That's fantastic, I'm sure people in the audience will take you up on that. We'll put links in the show notes so it's easy to find. Thanks so much for being here today — I really appreciate your insights, this has been a great conversation.
[51:59] Nicky Billou: Appreciate you, Rich. Man, you're awesome — thanks for a great conversation, had a lot of fun.
[52:04] Rich Smith: Thank you for your time and attention on Revenue Science today. I hope you've gained valuable insights to put into practice in your own life and work. Please join our goal of helping more leaders successfully grow their companies by liking and subscribing to this podcast. To connect with me, go to richsmith.com.
