Nicky Billou with The Thought Leader Revolution Podcast

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. It is my pleasure to introduce you to this amazing guest that I have on today, Nicky Billou. And he has spent the last 20 years figuring out the mindset of champions. He’s worked with athletes and entrepreneurs at the highest levels, from Olympic gold to billionaires. Nicky will ignite your passion and push you to go further than you think possible. He’s a two time New York best selling author, host of an amazing podcast called Thought Leadership. Excuse me, Thought Leader Revolution. And he’s a podcasting guest expert. Why else wouldn’t I want Nicky, Nicky Billou on my show. Welcome.

Nicky Billou: Trish. It’s an honor. A pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to getting into it with you.

Trisha Stetzel: Me too. All right, so I gave you a really great introduction, Nicky, but I am sure that I missed a few things. So what would you like the audience to know about you, Nicky?

Nicky Billou: 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 in Iran. And, uh, my late father and my mother, you know, God rest my dad’s soul, they could see the writing on the wall, right? There was gun battles in the streets. And this was not going to be a place to raise a Christian family. So they made a plan, and they were able to get us out of Iran and to the west. And eventually we settled where I now live in the great free nation of Canada. Now, at the time I was a kid, I didn’t want to leave my home. I didn’t want to leave my friends. But looking back now, I could see that this was an unbelievable selfless sacrifice by my parents. They left behind everyone and everything they knew to go into the unknown. On the chance, on the hope to be able to create a new life in a land of freedom for themselves, for me and my two brothers. And as I got older, I could appreciate the nobility of what they did, and I just became so, so grateful to them. I believe, Trisha, that inside every human breast beats the living heart of freedom. Every man, every woman on this planet yearns to breathe free, to march to the tune of their own drummer, to chart their own course. And for those of you who’ve only known freedom, you cannot appreciate what a great and precious gift your forbearers have left you, because you’ve never known not having it. For people like me who were raised in tyranny, this precious gift is so important.

Nicky Billou: It’s what moves and drives me and everything I do. I got into business because I wanted to help entrepreneurs create a legacy of freedom for themselves. My dad was an entrepreneur. He’s the greatest man I ever knew. He was the kind of man. Trish, if you knew him, you were his friend and you were trying to buy yourself, you know, get yourself a job. He’d sit you down in his office, he’d call all his buddies. He’d ethically manipulate them until one of them hired you. If you were trying to start a business, he’d sit you down and he would give you his best advice, because he was a very, very, very accomplished businessman. And even if you were a so-called competitor, he’d still do it because he didn’t really believe in competition. He’d give you access to capital, to clients, to friends, resources, get you going. And if you were trying to buy a car or a house and you didn’t have quite enough money, the bank wouldn’t give you all that you needed. He’d top you up with a loan, and if you ever tried to pay him back, he’d say, come on, get out of here. And if you tried to say, why are you doing this? It was alone. He’d say, no, you pay it forward to the next person. Okay. But that’s what he would do. And my dad would look at people every day and he would try to help them. He would go out of his way, be a generous spirit, a generous heart. And I’m a kid and this was my example. This is the man who raised me, and he taught me, son, life is about people.

Nicky Billou: Nothing else. Not money, not numbers. Even business, he said, is about people. And I was a kid. I’m going. What do you mean, dad? But without money, there’s no business. He goes, that’s true, son, but without people, there’s no need for money to do business. All business is. Imagine a Venn diagram is about solving problems for people for a profit. You solve acute problems for amazing people. You make an awesome profit. That is the whole awe inspiring purpose of business. And I got to tell you, I got into business because I wanted to serve people. I wanted to be like my father. My dad would say to me, believe in people. Everyone needs someone to believe in them. Nicky, you, me, everybody. Because there’s moments where our self-belief wobbles. We need that little spark of belief that can turn into a roaring fire. And then we’re off to the races. So what I do for a living? I’ve helped dozens of people make millions of dollars. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’m the best in the world at podcast, guesting and teaching it. I’m one of the best in the world at thought leadership and helping people become thought leaders. And I got to tell you, I’m somebody who’s written 11 books, six of them collabs. Two of them have become New York Times bestsellers, one of them endorsed by none other than President Donald J. Trump himself on Truth Social. So I’m an accomplished man with a serious resume. But I got to tell you, what I’m most proud of is I’m Napoleon Bellew’s son, and I’m a professional believer in people I love.

Trisha Stetzel: And I feel that, like today, so much. But even in the conversations that we’ve had before you came on the show, I could feel this, uh, love for other people and the way that you even interacted with me personally. So I look forward to carrying on our conversation beyond what we’re talking about today. Um, Nicky, you mentioned before we started the show today that you’ve got something on your mind. So tell me what’s on your mind today. And then let’s jump into how people can connect with you and what they can connect with you for.

Nicky Billou: So right now in my home country of Canada, an election has been called. The last nine and a half years, we’ve been under the rule of a tyrannical, uh, so-called liberal party. I think they’re they need to change their name to the new Fascist Party, because that’s really what they’re like. What they’ve done is they have, um, deliberately embarked on a policy course to remove rights and freedoms from Canadians. They did that during Covid. Uh, they did that to the truckers that were trying to, uh, protest against the vaccine mandates. They sent salt. They sent, uh, armed police, uh, on police horses against grandmothers with walkers. That’s the kind of people that we were dealing with. And, um, they became very unpopular. Justin Trudeau became very unpopular, and he was forced out. Now, another man who was his primary advisor and Were worse than him, in my opinion, because he was his primary adviser named Mark Carney is the leader of the Liberal Party. And unfortunately, because Trudeau’s gone, um, he’s risen in the polls and right now he’s a little ahead of the opposition conservatives under Pierre Poilievre. This election is an existential election. We either in Canada are going to vote for, uh, the traditional Canada, a free Canada, or we’re going to vote to continue with the policies of tyranny, which I believe will send Canada down a very dark path from which we may never recover. And as such, if there’s any buddy listening to your show who’s a Canadian or knows Canadians, I want to encourage them to not be fooled by Mark Carney, to not be fooled by this lipstick they put on the liberal pig, and to make sure that they understand that this is just a way of fooling them, to try to get these people that have wrecked Canada over nine and a half years in power, and they should be voting for the conservatives under Pierre Poilievre, who’s a very impressive man and who has promised to do much to take Canada in a direction.

Nicky Billou: Of prosperity. One of the things he’s going to do is he’s going to allow. Us to do oil and gas refineries in Canada, which basically the liberals outlawed. It’s one of the reasons that we’ve been forced to sell all our oil unrefined to the United States. If we have refined oil and natural gas, and we built pipelines because they have an anti pipeline law, we can send that to Europe, and then we won’t have so much of an issue with the United States. I’m a big fan of the United States. I love President Trump. He’s a great guy but not not happy with the direction he’s taking with the tariffs. And, uh, honestly, we need to not be so reliant that have that we have 75% of our exports going to the United States. We need to diversify. That means we need to make sure that we sell a bunch of our oil and gas to other countries, and all of that’s important. It’ll make both of us better neighbors, in my opinion. And, um, I have this to say, if you’re a Canadian or, you know, a Canadian, vote for Pierre Poilievre and the conservatives. Or make sure that you speak to your Canadian friends and you see what they’re going to do. And if they’re considering voting liberal. Still, after all this craziness. Do everything in your power to persuade them not to do that. This is an important existential election, and I believe we need to have all hands on deck to make sure that freedom prevails and tyranny dies.

Speaker4: Thank you. Nicky.

Trisha Stetzel: I you know, we’re all human beings, right? And because of the place that you come from. And thank you for sharing your story. This becomes really important to you and really important to others. And so I appreciate you sharing that. And as human beings, we have to get out there and share the way we feel and not get mad at others because they’re sharing the way they feel, right. Uh, so thank you for that, I appreciate it. Let’s talk about what Nicky does. So when I met you, you, uh, I, you were introduced to me as the best guest or the number one guest for being on a podcast. And I was like, what exactly does that mean? You must be on my show then if you’re the number one guest. Uh, and then I learned that you actually teach people how to do that same thing that you’ve been doing. So if it’s okay with you, I’d like to talk a little bit about that. And then some of the other things that you’re doing for the, um, entrepreneurs and business leaders out there.

Nicky Billou: Absolutely. So, um, about three years ago, uh, Canada was still under lockdowns and, um, my business took a half $1 million hit because we weren’t able to do in-person meetings anymore. And, um, we were trying to get around that. But, uh, after a while, we weren’t able to do that anymore, and I was freaking out. You know, my business is me and my beautiful lady. So half $1 million is a lot of money to us. And, um, I went to my business mentor and coach, Mark von Mauser, and I said, Mark, freaking out over here, man, I gotta replace this income. How do we do this? He said, let me think. And he’s one of these fellows. He’s Buddha likes when he thinks he can’t say anything to him because he’s got to think so. He sits there and he thinks and he goes, I got it. I said, okay. He said, I want you to go be a guest on other people’s podcasts, but not, you know, just to get, you know, likes and and exposure and all the stuff you normally do. I want you to go and be a guest on other people’s podcast to get leads, sales and clients. And I said, okay, great. How do we do this? I was willing to try anything. I was desperate, right? And he gave me the single best piece of coaching I’ve ever received from anyone at any time. And I’m going to quote it to you verbatim, because it was that powerful and profound and impacted me. So he said, and I quote, I have no freaking idea, but we’ll figure it out together.

Nicky Billou: I’m like, okay, crap. All right, let’s go. So here we go. Mark and I, we start putting me on shows using a, a platform, um, called Pod Match. Now, Pod Match is an incredible platform that uses an AI algorithm to match hosts with guests, and there’s like 15, 20,000 shows and guests there. So I very quickly was getting booked on shows because of pod match. So every day I had 24 shows that I could pitch 24 shows a day. So I didn’t pitch that many every day, but I pitched quite a few and I started going on a lot of shows. So Trish, here’s the deal. At first I got no leads, I got no sales, I got no clients. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I sucked at that part of it, you know, great conversations and all. But but here’s what was amazing. Mark is a former military man. He trained to be a Navy Seal. And after every show we did an after action debrief. We looked at what worked and what didn’t, and we made adjustments. We kept doing this for a hundred shows with no leads, no sales, no clients. But after 100 shows, it all clicked. It all came together. Have you ever had one of those moments when things click? You don’t know why they click, but they click. They make sense and you run with it and they work. So show 101. I got my first lead, my first sale, my first client, and I’ve been on 700 plus shows probably right now approaching seven 3740.

Nicky Billou: And here’s what I got to say to you. I have generated for myself nearly a half a million part time, 2 to 5 hours a week by being a guest on other people’s podcasts part time. I do other things to make money. I speak on stages. I’m a very accomplished speaker. I also have a, um, warm market and referral strategy, which is very strong, uh, as well. And we’re about to launch a LinkedIn strategy. So there’s a lot of other things we do to get business. But this was something anyone could do. You didn’t need to like, invest in starting your own podcast. You didn’t need to be some tech expert. You didn’t need to know how to sell. You just need to be honest and articulate and have something to say and do your talk the way I show you to do it, the way everybody else does it. Does it. You’ll make no money. So I started to teach it to people. I had clients on who did it successfully. And everybody goes to me. They go, Nicky, man. So listen, it’s all great and all, but you’re this, like, force of nature. You’ve got energy up the the yin yang. I’m like you. I can’t go on a show. I can’t put on a show like you do. I’m not Nicky Ballou. I go, okay, let me introduce you to my friend Michael. Michael was a tax accountant. Great guy, great humor, no charisma, no big energy. None.

Trisha Stetzel: Michael’s listening to the show. I’m just saying.

Nicky Billou: It’s a fact. It’s a good friend of mine gone to dinner. My lady and his lady and him. Great. And, um. So Michael did our program, and then he did some follow on work with us, but he never spoke. He came to everything. He took notes, never spoke. So I’m like, I’m gonna talk to this guy, you know, because he’s coming around. But I don’t know what. He’s what he’s doing, what he’s got. So I said, hey, Michael, how you doing? Thanks for taking some time. So, how’s it going? You’ve been in our program. You’ve done our work. What’s going on? He says, well, I did your workshop, Nicky, and it was great. He said, did everything you taught me because, you know, he’s very methodical, detail oriented. Right? Tax accountant. Right. Not charismatic. First show I went on, he said the host and I, you know, we hit it off. The topic was something she was really interested in. And at the end of the episode, she said, Michael, I think all of my clients need your expertise. Would it be okay with you if I gave you some referrals? Now, Trish. Trish, would it be okay with you if I gave you some referrals? Would that be okay? Would you would you have a problem with that? Yeah, of course not. Yeah. Michael said he got 15 referrals in three weeks.

Trisha Stetzel: Wow.

Nicky Billou: He signed up at least five of them and made thousands and thousands of dollars. No charisma, No big energy, so that’s not a requirement. Are you listening to this? You’re going. Okay, Nicki. All right, all right, all right. But listen. Write like you’re articulate. You’re a good speaker. I’m not. I’m not articulate. I’m not a good speaker. Okay? I can’t do this. And they go, oh, all right, well, some other people even say, listen, English isn’t my first language. No, excuse me, but English is not my first language, you know. No, no, no. I’m like, listen, no, no, no, no, I’m going to tell you about my client, Matthew. Matthew. Matthew. Matthew is Belgian. His nickname is Belgian. Jesus because he’s tall, like Jesus. He’s got the long, flowing hair and beard. Like he looks like Jesus. I mean, it’s like uncanny. It’s wild. Belgian. Jesus. Matthew English is not my first language. It is not even his second or third language. It’s his fourth language. His first language is Dutch. His second language is French. His third language is German, German, German. Think about this. English. He goes on all the shows. He goes on are in English. And Matthew first show he goes on. He made a €3,000 sale, which is like, wow, 600 USD per show. And in 90 days he joined this 90 day, 90 day, 90 days challenge that I run. Still doing the stuff I taught him. He made €124,000 in 90 days. That’s English, not his first language. Okay. All right. So here’s the other one. Nicky, you look like you could sell ice cubes to an Eskimo man.

Nicky Billou: You look like you got the sales. Gab and gift. Come on. I got no sales skills. I don’t know what I’m doing. Let me introduce you to Sharon. Sharon is a grandma. She’s 76 years old. She has never sold a thing in her life. She was a teacher all her life. Does not know how to sell. Sharon. The grandma. Sweet old lady. Sharon. Second show she was on did everything we taught her. Sold a $5,000 coaching program. Sweet old grandma with no sales. But she was honest. She cares about people, and she’s articulate. And the only reason I’m good at sales is not because I got some slick persona and techniques. It’s because I’m honest. I care about people and I will take a stand for you until you say yes to yourself or you say no to yourself, but I will not let you down and say no to you, because I’m afraid of what you’re going to think of me around the sales conversation. Sales is an act of love. Sales is an act of deep love and caring. That’s what I believe. So when I sell, I’m showing my love to someone. So I love to sell because sales and love. Same thing as far as I’m concerned. So this is me, Nicky Belew. This is podcast guesting. This is how anybody can do this. And it’s super, super important because in 2025 Trish podcast guesting is a thing. Five years ago it was Facebook ads. You know before that it was blogging. It was whatever. Every marketing method has its day.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah.

Nicky Billou: But it also has the day end and pass. Six years ago if you spent a dollar on Facebook, you’d get 20 back. Today you spend a dollar on Facebook. You’ll get $0.30 back. That’s a fact. That’s a fact. I’m not making this up, but podcast guesting today, the way I do it, nobody else does it. Nobody. No, no, everybody else goes on shows to have a great conversation and to get likes or exposure, and hopefully someone will reach out to you. Sorry, it doesn’t work like that. It does not.

Trisha Stetzel: Yep.

Nicky Billou: The way I do it, you will get leads, you will get sales, you will get clients. And you don’t need to be somebody with big energy. You don’t need to even have English be your first language or be the most articulate person in the world. And you don’t need to be a slick salesperson.

Trisha Stetzel: All right, Nicky, I am sure that some of the listeners are already interested and they want to reach out to you. What is the best way that they can connect with you?

Nicky Billou: I have a link to my calendar. It’s called E academy.com/appointment Ecircle academy.com/appointment. You can book time on my calendar and you will have a call with me. This isn’t with my team. I’m giving you my calendar link.

Trisha Stetzel: Beautiful. Uh, by the way, as you know, listeners, that link will be in the show notes so that you guys can just point and click, especially if you’re sitting in front of your computer. Nicky, thank you for all of that amazing information about being a great podcast guest and how you can get sales from doing that with your program. I want to talk a little bit about circles since you mentioned it. Uh, I know that you have an E Circles Academy mastermind, uh, and you just mentioned that in part of your, um, your calendar invite, if you will, uh, or your calendar link. So can we talk a little bit about that? What is e circles Academy mastermind?

Nicky Billou: So the E Circle Academy, the E in E circle stands for Entrepreneur Circle. So the Entrepreneur Circle Academy mastermind is really designed to help you as an entrepreneur, um, be able to be seen as the go to authority, the thought leader in your space. So imagine being the Elon Musk, the Steve Jobs, you know, of your space, right? Um, here’s the deal. Elon Musk is bigger than Tesla. He’s bigger than SpaceX. Steve Jobs was bigger than Apple. He’s bigger than next. He was bigger than Pixar, right? People begged to buy their products, to work for those companies and to invest in those companies because these people had a thought leader brand. So that’s what it’s all about. And people go, okay, well, I’m not Elon, I’m not Steve. I’m not going to have something that big. You don’t need to be. I’ll tell you a story of a client of ours, um, a woman. I’m going to call her Doctor Vicky. So, Doctor Vicky, not her real name, was a functional medicine doctor. She did well. She did six figures a year. It was good, but she wanted to do better. And she had a big why.

Nicky Billou: Her father, who was her hero, was dying of brain cancer. Geo. Blastoma. Horrible disease. And six months later, he died. Unfortunately, she wanted to honor his memory by becoming as good an entrepreneur as he was. As He was a very successful entrepreneur. She came to us and she really didn’t know a lot about business. And first thing we did was we said, so thank you. What do you do? Who do you help? She said, well, listen, I’m, you know, functional medicine doctor. I can help anybody with any health problem. And I said, I can see why you’re not doing so hot. She said, why? I said, because your message is vague. You’re trying to be all things to all people in the arena of health. That’s not going to work. And she says, well, how do I fix that? I said, well, let’s do an exercise called the Ideal Client exercise. And with your permission, I’m going to show you something about the ideal client exercise, because I think it’s simply fantastic. So let’s see if I can find this for you in my wonderful notebook. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doot doo doo doo. Doo doo doo.

Nicky Billou: Because the ideal client exercise is a fantastic, great exercise.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: And what a great place to start as you’re thumbing through your workbook there to find, um, how you coached her. That’s I think anytime we get into this marketing space or we want to create authority, we have to know who we’re talking to in the first place.

Trisha Stetzel: Right.

Nicky Billou: Okay, here we go.

Trisha Stetzel: Great.

Nicky Billou: So here is this model. So it looks like this. First of all, who are the clients you get the best results for?

Trisha Stetzel: Okay.

Nicky Billou: And then who are the clients you enjoy working with the most and who are the easiest to do business with? Okay. So this is this is this unique tool we developed. And then, you know, over here I’m going to cover the names, but you start making a list of the clients you help get the best results for and then your favorite clients, you make a list of those and then you make a list of those that are easy to do business with, right? Like they pay you in full. They give you lots of referrals. So she went through this exercise and I said, who of these clients lives in the ideal client zone? Now you look at this. There’s a there’s a space where all three intersect. So who lives there? So she made a list of who lived there, and we started to see what they had in common. Well, first of all, Trish, they were all women. They were all married professional women over the age of 45 with children, successful careers, successful families, successful marriages. So you go, okay, these gals seem like they have it all together. So why the hell are they seeing Doctor Vicki.

Trisha Stetzel: Right?

Nicky Billou: Well, there was one little thing. Now, listen, Trish, I’m not a woman, so you’re gonna have to excuse me, but you are, and you can correct me if I’m wrong here.

Nicky Billou: But I’ve heard somewhere that women love to feel special and beautiful. Is this true?

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, it’s absolutely true. It’s true, of course.

Nicky Billou: So a lot of these women no longer felt special, but they felt that time had passed them by. They were not as pretty. They were not as slim, as desirable as. And they were really not happy about it. Really not happy about it. So I said, okay, Vicky, I’m thinking we got us a winner here. He said, really? I go, yeah. And I said, tell me what you do for these guys. She says, well, she said, listen, I teach these ladies that while getting older is inevitable, I mean, the number is going to be higher next year than it was this year. You were 50, you’re going to be 51, etc.. Right? But aging now that is optional. You can look and feel just as good in your 50s 60s even 70s as you did in your 20s and 30s. And I’m like straight up right? She says, well, look at me, I’m 50. And she was, how do I look? And I said, you look stunning and it’s true. And my, my lady who’s, you know, also over 50, um, looks stunning because, you know, she’s taking care of herself. And I like a good man. I did all of this in front of Theresa, my beloved. You know.

Nicky Billou: Of course you got to be above suspicion, you know, like Caesar’s wife, right? Above suspicion and all that.

Nicky Billou: That that’s important to me to make sure that my, my lady is respected enough. That in these situations, we all we meet together.

Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely.

Nicky Billou: Yeah. 100%. So, um, well, she said I can do this for and have done this for lots of people. I’ve got case studies. And I said, great. So we are going to have all your marketing be around this and we’re going to call your program, get Your Sexy Back if you like that name Trish.

Trisha Stetzel: That’s awesome.

Nicky Billou: Good name. I thought so. Good name. I’m Nicky. This is what I do. So, um. Anyways, within a year, she doubled her business. Like, that’s that’s an incredible result, right? You double your business in a year. And then she doubled it again next year. And in three years, she doubled it again. She went from six figures a year to six figures a month, a month.

Trisha Stetzel: Amazing

Nicky Billou: And all because she had a big why she allowed us to bring some powerful intellectual property her way.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah.

Nicky Billou: And she she was coachable. She did what she was coached to do.

Trisha Stetzel: That’s beautiful. Get your sexy back. Everyone needs Nicky to help them build a program like that I love it. Thank you for sharing that. We are I know already at the back end of our time together, which means you and I are probably going to have to have another conversation because there’s so much more to Nicky than Then what we explored today. I appreciate your vulnerability. Thank you for telling your story. I’m really excited about being a guest on podcasting and what that looks like on the other end. So if anyone is interested again, uh, to connect with you, Nicky, would you give them that link one more time?

Nicky Billou: E Circle academy.com/appointment e Circle academy.com/appointment.

Trisha Stetzel: And you get Nicky.

Trisha Stetzel: You get Nicky, not his team. Nicky thank you so much for being with me today. This has been so much fun.

Nicky Billou: Trish God bless you. It’s an honor.

Nicky Billou: Thank you,

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you.That’s all the time we have for today’s show. Join us next time for another amazing episode of Houston Business Radio. Until then, stay tuned, stay inspired, and keep thriving in the Houston business community.