3 top tips from Nicky Billou: 

1. Take care of your health.

It’s so important to your life success for the vessel, with what you go through life to be in tip top shape. So you’ve got to like make it a priority to exercise to you know, eat right to learn about nutrition, to learn about movement, and really take care of all that and you got to do things to like take care of yourself mentally to so feed your brain with positive inputs like this podcast and meditation and things like that.

2. To show how much you care about people.

Be around people that are like you in that regard. Your associations are so important. You know what I mean? If you’re around people that are negative, or don’t care, that’s not going to feel good. So you know, let those people go, they can go with love, but they must go. So send them off.

3. Read books.

I’m going to say is read books, readers, or leaders, leaders, or readers. That’s the facts. And there’s so many people that are so proud today, I don’t read, I haven’t read a book in 15 years, you’re proud of that fact. Really, you’re proud that you have to read a book in 15 years. That’s insanity. a paperback book, I’m not talking about something that’s you know, on a phone or you’re listening to I’m talking about holding paper is soothing. You read this book at night versus read it on your phone, this will amp you up and you can’t sleep, this will help you calm down and sleep. You know, there’s something very satisfying about holding paper in your hand reading.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, book, money, business, restaurants, called, life, message, god, clients, helping, year, man, Nicky, talk, started, win, thought, care, sold

Nicky Billou  00:00

If you’re gay, in Iran they hang you from a crane until you die.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:04

Good morning and welcome to another episode of Better Business Better Life. Today I am joined by another amazing Canadian man, Nicky Billou, who is not only a best selling author of eight books, he is also affectionately known as the millionaire maker having transformed 11 people’s lives into millionaires. And he’s got the top one of the top 10 iTunes business podcasts as well. So can’t wait to hear what he has to share with us. Welcome, Nicky.

Nicky Billou  00:30

Thanks so much for having me. It’s an honor to be here. I’m excited to have this conversation with you.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:34

Same here I can’t wait. We had a little bit of a chat before we came on the podcast obviously. And I just learning how you’re actually a Christian from Iran, who kind of escaped the tyranny that goes on in Iran and moved to Canada and this the things you’ve been able to achieve. So just phenomenal. Tell me a little about your story, because I’ve just heard it, but our listeners would love to hear, you know, who is Nicky, where does he come from? And what are the things that you’ve done that you’re most proud of?

Nicky Billou  00:58

Absolutely. So thanks for asking that question. So as you said, I’m, I’m an immigrant from the Middle East. I’m a Christian from Iran. And when I was a boy in the late 70s, and I’m dating myself by saying that my late father, you know, he was a very brilliant man, and the Iranian revolution happened, and it wasn’t an Islamic revolution. So it was really a theocratic-based government that came into power. And my father could see the writing on the wall, he said, This is not gonna be a great place to raise my family, we need to hightail it out of here. And he was so far seen, he got us out of Iran, eventually, we moved to Canada, and I thank God every day that he did that, because, you know, we get to live in freedom, we get to choose what kind of life we want to live, we get to disagree with the powers that be that are in charge on over the last couple of years. And what’s so good about the disagreements. And you know, I think it’s very fashionable these days in the West, or among certain circles, to just say, Oh, my God, the West is so oppressive, so racist, so sexist. And I’m, like, really want to come to Iran and come to the Middle East. I think I’ll show you what real oppression looks like we’re real racism and what real sexism looks like. Just to give you a sense of an idea that behind us and Iran are actually killed for being behind killed. They are a peaceful, religious sect, offshoot of Islam. Peace will be there you being behind is the death sense, just so you understand. So secondly, if you’re gay, when you want to hang you from a crane until you die, they hang you from a crane until you die. And it’s not like in the western movies where you know, the your neck snaps, you are hanging there in agony for minutes, suffocating. Yeah. And, um, you know, if you’re a woman in Iran, well, you have to cover yourself up. If you don’t, you’re in trouble. So, and you want us not the only places like this, obviously, and compared to a lot of other countries, it’s quite free. But I just want to give an idea to folks, we live in freedom, we are so blessed. We are so lucky in these idiots that say, oh my god, that was supposed to be what the hell they’re talking about. And I think everybody needs to appreciate our freedoms, everybody needs to really give thanks to the men and women who fought bled and died to give us those freedoms. And because of those freedoms, like I get to be an entrepreneur, you get to be an entrepreneur, we get to live the kind of life that we do. And I think it’s important that we share this kind of message with people that listen to this so that, you know, jolt them awake a little bit. And they understand what they need to do. Yeah, yeah. And secondly, my, my father, he was the businessman that I’ve ever known. He was an entrepreneur, and this kind of man he was, if you needed a job, and he had a job for you and his company, give you that job. If he didn’t, he would go out of his way to help you find a job like he would make calls on your behalf, meet with people and get you a job. I mean, just like, it was unreal. And if if you were trying to start a business, he would help set you up in business. If you work for him. And you couldn’t afford to buy a new car or buy an apartment or buying a home. He would help you buy that car buy that apartment buy a home. What really, are you serious Nicky? Who does that? Like houses, cars, apartments, and I call my father did that. But he wasn’t the only one. There’s lots of folks, in Iran that work that generous. mean, we come from incredibly generous people. Like our people are incredibly generous. But my dad did that number one because he was a Christian and he felt they’ve been blessed by God and wanted to share his blessings as he was instructed to by his Lord and Savior. But secondly, he did it because he could, have had the financial means to help people. He helped me. I wanted to be like that. When I was a kid, I’m like, dad’s the best. So I became an entrepreneur, I’m all about helping people like today, we did an event, free of charge with no upsell to people to help them finish the year. And sprint to the finish, we call the Darren Owens sprint to the finish. And we gave him a half a day of our time. And that’s what we do. But when I became an entrepreneur, one of the things I noticed was there’s a lot of good people, that entrepreneurs that are frightened to death, out of business development and sales, they don’t want to come across as pushy, they don’t want to come across the sales if they don’t want to reek of commission breath. Okay? So what, What they want to do is, they’re kind of hopeful that people will just, you know, they just want to be the coach, they want to be the consultant, they don’t want to do the sales part. Problem is that, you know, that’s worth about 30 bucks an hour, someone will hire you to be a coach, you’ve got to get good at business development, you have to, but we help them reframe that, from selling to serving, nobody wants to be sold, but everybody wants to be served by a caring human being by an advocate, you know, I can tell you a very kind person, right. And kind people, sometimes they just they hold back, and when they hold back, they don’t they don’t make the money they should. And when we show them how to serve, when we show them how to come across and market in an authentic way not like, you know, some of these cheesy charlatan marketers that lie their way to make money, that someone who speaks from the heart, man, those people, their their businesses start to soar, it just becomes absolutely incredible. You know, and like you said, I have helped about 11 people become millionaires, I’ve helped about another 70 odd people, you know, add anywhere from 100,000 to, you know, 678 $100,000 a year to their, to their income. And we did that by really helping them see that their kindness wasn’t a liability, but an asset. Because your greatest asset is how much you care about people. And we help good people really see that and live from that and act from that. Because if you can show somebody, when you’re working with them, that you care about them, that you’ve got their back, that you’re going to be there for them, you’re not going to let them falter. Man, that is that is such an awesome thing in business, your your methods could suck. You know, they could totally suck, but people are gonna go, Oh, my God, this person cares so much, they’re gonna care their way into making sure I win. You know what I mean? And that is more important than anything in my opinion. And then you know, our methods thankfully, don’t stop, we show people how to really nail their message and really stand out. Because if you’ve got a mayonnaise message in this day and age, it’s not gonna work, you need to dial in message, it’s really going to help people how do you get a dial in message? Well, that’s a fantastic question. The first thing is you cannot be talking about yourself. And so many people today talk about themselves. Well, I’ve got this fantastic methodology, and it’s got this great acronym to it. And these are the six steps in which we help you. Really, nobody cares. Nobody cares about your fantastic methodology with the incredible acronym. You know what they care about, they care about themselves, they care about the problem they’re facing. And if you want to help somebody, if you want to have a good message, the best way is to ask them, what are the key problems they have? Sit down and ask your clients, you know, what are the key problems you have? And ask them enough questions until you understand their most acute problem. Because what is business business is a way to solve acute problems for people. Because the people who came it’s not a numbers game. It’s not about, you know, dollars and cents. I mean, it is at one level, but it’s about people, you solve problems for people. Right? And if you come from business is a people game, a numbers game, and you ask people, so let’s just say as an example, I’m talking to you and you’re making 300,000 a year and you’ve been stuck there for two years, and you want to make a million, let’s just say that’s for purposes of this. That’s That was the deal. And I’ll ask you, well, what’s it like to be stuck at the same level? And you might say, Oh, my God, well, you know, I’m frustrated. You know, I’m starting to lose a little bit of faith. Can it happen for me? Can I win? You know, what’s that doing to your relationships? Well, you know, me and my sweetheart, we’re fighting some times and I’m getting short with him. He’s getting short with me. And I’m just worried about that. And, you know, I’m not sleeping, I’m stressed out, you know, I’m breaking out in hives, you know, all that kind of thing. So we go deep into what the pain points are, to the point where the entire conversations about how horrible it is that you’re stuck. And then I don’t know, where do you want to go? I want to make a million dollars a year and I want to work 10 hours a week less. Okay, well, what would that make possible for you? Well, I’d be able to buy my dream home. Finally, we’d be able to go on that second honeymoon, we’ve always been wanting to go to, you know, I get to this charity, I’m really, really passionate about helping them. I give them a little bit of money, but I really want to give them the kind of money that would absolutely change the trajectory of what they can do. I want to just give them a good chunk of money. Yeah, that’s, that’s fantastic. The first parts the hell the second parts that haven’t, you know, and I learned this from one of my mentors, how long have you then there’s the bridge from hell to heaven, and the bridge is what you do. So you want to talk about the hell you want to talk about heaven for 95-96% of the conversation and just, you know, four or 5%, you’ll talk about how you do it. Most people do it. Don’t do it that way. You know, they take what they do.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  10:45

And here’s what I do. Let me tell you all about why don’t you?

Nicky Billou  10:48

 Why don’t you? Do what I do? I do it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  10:55

Yep. No, no, I completely understand that I, I’ve certainly seen it. From my point of view where people have come to, to sell to me, you know, it’s really frustrated will come in all we want to do is tell you all about sales. It’s like, Yeah, how about you take some time to get to know me as a human start to understand what’s really going on for me. So tell me a little about, you know, what you when we talked in the beginning, you said, you know, you help inspire people to get out of pain? What do you do? How do you do that? I mean, obviously, you’re talking about the Heaven and Hell and you’re helping to bridge that gap. What are the things that you actually do to work with them in that bridge? What is it that helps them get from heaven?

Nicky Billou  11:33

I think the most important thing I gotta do, is I gotta show them that I I want them to succeed, I want them to win. You know, and I do that by asking really good questions. Because when they’re understanding the consequences, Debra, staying in Hell, they want to stay in hell anymore. So that’s the most important thing is to get them to a point where they decide I’m done with this. You know, there’s a lot of folks who don’t understand how important that is to the process, right? Because you want a person to be in a space where their commitment to winning is total. Right? So they have to make a decision, I call these these are the four characteristics of a winner. Number one is they’re decisive, right to kill off any alternative to victory. So in your case, you’d go Nikki, I’m going to make a million dollars. That’s it, there is no staying stuck here. That decision is made. There’s no walking back. It’s like, you know, the Greeks burning the ships. When they landed in Troy, you know what I mean? They burned the fucking ships, it was Victory or death. Right? And death wasn’t really a great option. So victory, we’re gonna look better. And that’s, you know, victory is the option that decisiveness is you’re gonna go victory. And then then you got to be committed to doing what you got to do. There’s not I’m going to try this for a while. And if it doesn’t work, I’m going to quit, there’s no uncommitted, I’m going to make it happen. My commitment is to success and victory. And then you got to obviously be coachable. You got to be willing to take the coaching that we deliver to you. And then finally, you’ve got to be resourceful. Because you’ve got to come up with money to invest in yourself, the most important investment you can make is in yourself. You know, Robin Sharma, who when I was a fitness trainer was one of my clients, the author of the legendary book, the monk who sold his Ferrari million copies around the world. He’s from Toronto, he lives in the same city as me, and I’ve become friends with him. And he used to be my client. And he said to me once, if you ever want to double your income in any given year, triple your investment in personal and professional development. Let me repeat that, if you ever want to double your income in any given year, triple your investment and personal professional development, because when you do that you are strengthening your most important asset. If you’re afraid of selling, you need to invest in programs that will shift your mindset and show you how to sell, you know, like what we do for people. Like if you are bad at marketing, then you got to invest in yourself to at least learn enough about marketing so that you can mark it or or manage someone that you hire to market for you. So you gotta invest in yourself. And these people go to too much money. I mean, I mean, let’s look at Jeff Bezos Do you know when Jeff Bezos started Amazon, he didn’t put his own money in there. He borrowed money. He found a bunch of people that gave him $50,000 each. And by the way, that $50,000 investment he put it was $750 million today

Debra Chantry-Taylor  12:11

That investment.

Nicky Billou  14:48

Pretty great, right? But that’s what he did. Elon Musk Buddy was like broke. When he started to pay down he borrowed money, but he had The confidence in the conviction that he could win. And if you want to win, you’ve got to find a way to get resourceful come up with the money. There’s no other way. There’s no other way. So this is what we teach people to do. You know, you got to have these four qualities, these four characteristics. We start with those, you’re gonna win.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  15:20

Fantastic. And so we’re talking very much about sort of coaches, consultants, individuals, the same principles must apply with business owners as well, right? Because we just mentioned, yeah, so give me a couple of examples of that, where a business owner might be feeling stuck, because they’re not necessarily out there doing the sales themself. But they’re having to not leave the team.

Nicky Billou  15:42

So I’ll give you I’ll give you an example. About a year and a half ago, January 2021, I had a client who was a restaurant on the time, he had two restaurants, okay. And in Ontario, where we live restaurants were locked down, and he was in any dining experience restaurant, his revenue had just shunted, you know, like it had gone in and gone down, like you wouldn’t believe. And he’s coming in. He’s like, God, I got it. How am I going to survive? You know, he was part of a peer group that I ran when we told him that peer group is body. No, you’re thinking of this all wrong, right? You survived me. Yeah. How many restaurants have gone out of business? And he told us, like, hundreds 1000s. And I said, Well, buddy, you gotta go. And you got to change your attitude, you got to go, which bankrupt restaurants can I buy really cheap. And it shifted his whole mindset. He ended up starting three more four more of his own restaurants. And he bought six restaurants. Right, six other restaurants cheap. His income went from like, kind of like negative to, he had 11 and a half million additional revenue by the end of the year. And he had 4 million in additional profit, just from shifting his mindset. And he had that because he had a coach, show me how to shift his mindset. You know what I’m saying?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  17:13

Yeah, completely.

Nicky Billou  17:14

And that’s Super powerfully. Yeah. And then there’s another story. I’ll tell you, this young fellow came to us he was a personal trainer. Okay, personal trainers don’t make a ton of money, as you know, right? He made really, really poor amounts of money. He made $1,500 a month and Toronto. That’s not enough for rent and food. It’s one or the other. So he had to borrow money from his mom and dad. As a grown ass man borrowing money from Mom and Dad, it’s 25 of the time. You came to see me and you know, he’s like, I What do I do? How do I do that? Okay, well, who do you work with? Well, anybody that’s your first problem. You need to narrow your niche needs to friendships. I work with doctors, doctors. Why? Well, that money. Not a good reason. To work with doctors. Well, doctors didn’t really see a reason to work on so they didn’t allow some cardiologist cardiologists and narrow or niche cardiologist and again, he didn’t, because they have even more money than regular doctors and in by, yep. But then he met a man who had been a Paralympian athlete, he had a missing limb, he lost the leg in childhood. And he just he just was called to help this man, workout and train and he loved it. And you know, this man was really grateful because a lot of people wanted to work with, you know, someone with a missing limb. And he just said, wow, there’s, you know, there’s so many people with missing limbs, I bet you nobody’s working out with them. I’d love to train with them. I want to help them. And Anyways, long story short was in six weeks, you sign up for 100 clients, or 100 clients. He could no longer do one on one. He had to do group programs for people. And you might go Why did he wait? Well, nobody was going after these folks. It was a blue ocean. You know, to quote it, the quote, the concepts from the magisterial book, on strategy. So blue ocean, he went into a blue ocean and he got a lot of clients. And his message was, I’m gonna get you fit, I’m gonna work out you. The fact that you’re missing a limb doesn’t mean that you can’t work out get strong and fit. Now. I am not someone who has, you know, experience with these folks who’ve experienced you know, I’ve experienced having been able bodied but I just put myself in their shoes, metaphorically speaking, and they’re probably not thrilled to have a missing limb or more than one missing limb. And they may have some ideas in their head. Like, this is terrible. I never know what normal life and I’m not as good as an able bodied person, I’m not as complete as an able bodied person. And his message was bullshit. You are just as good as able bodied person. And I’m going to treat you like you’re an able bodied person. Like anybody else, I’m gonna treat you like anybody else. And I’m telling you that the message must have just stuck. And that’s why I signed 400 clients in no time at all. That’s the power of having a really dialed in message, one that isn’t a mail message, but one that’s aimed at a particular group of people you care about deeply. But who needs to help. And their acute problem was huge. And he was able to turn it into a wonderful amount of business. And, you know, he went from 1500 a month to 150,000 a month pretty quickly.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  20:51

Fantastic. And reminds me of Jim Collins and his book, Good to Great talks about the fact that you you’re never going to die through lack of opportunity, you’re more likely to die through indigestion in terms of the amount of opportunities out there. So there’s the clearer you can get about your niche and what it is that you do, the better it is for all involved. Yeah. Yeah,

Nicky Billou  21:09

I totally agree. Totally agree. So

Debra Chantry-Taylor  21:11

It all comes back to mindset that, doesn’t it. I mean, that’s, that’s really what we’re talking about here. And that’s what Robin Sharma offices is famous for, as well. And it really comes down to how you view things. I think that the example you give the restaurant is actually really, really good right now, because we’re obviously, there’s talk of global recession, I personally believe you can talk yourself into it or out of it. But the others definitely talk of a global recession going on, and people are worried about it. And so they’re gonna go into it with fear with what does it mean for me? And actually, it should be seen as an opportunity, it’s a chance to actually review what you’re doing See, like some of the restaurants, do I go out and buy more rather than shrink back? Is that how you see it?

Nicky Billou  21:48

1,000%, right, these times these tough times, you know, give you an opportunity to serve more people. So as a restaurant owner, what’s the pain of people? Well go, you know, they’re hungry. But the bigger pain is they haven’t been out with people haven’t gotten to feel like a normal human being. So if you’re a restaurant owner, you’re messaging shouldn’t just be Hey, our food’s great. Come eat our food. It should be, isn’t it about time you got out again, in you got to enjoy life. And I’ll tell you, that’s a more powerful message. You know what I mean? Way more powerful message. And that’s, that’s the sort of thing that these folks right now are experiencing. I mean, restaurants right now in Ontario. They, they can’t keep up with the demand to catch up with the demand. It’s because of the messaging. Yeah.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  22:39

Yeah. I was actually in Sydney a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been walking around Sydney around the Opera House, and what are we going to see a show at the Opera House, there was just every single restaurant bar cafe was absolutely booming. And I think you’re right. I mean, as a human nation, the last I mean, particularly in New Zealand, it sounds like Canada’s very similar. We’ve had some serious serious lockouts like that go for months and months, where everything is closed. And so yeah, just getting back together in person with other human beings is what we want and need right now. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So tips for people going into a recession, if you like, what would you suggest people do to help them get through it and make sure they have got the right mindset?

Nicky Billou  23:24

Fantastic question. So, you know, there are a few things I think that that are really important for anybody looking at today, to think through. One is you need to believe that you can win, you need to believe that you can win. And you know, one of my mentors did a talk about this subject, he said there was a study done with a bunch of rats, and they put some rats in water. And these rats, you really want to see how long they last. The rats that lasted the longest before they were you know, they gave up gonna drown lasted for 10 minutes. Now none of the rats drown they pulled them out and you know, fed them and let them rest and then they put them back in water. And then those rats were able to last for two hours plus in the water. Because they got belief that they could do it. You know what I’m saying? So your belief in your victory is super important. And if if you quit on your dream if you quit on your belief in you and your dream, that’s the only time you can actually lose if you don’t quit on your dream if you don’t quit on yourself, you win. And I’m telling you this is number one thing you got to do right now, but we you can win. Then secondly get clear on what actually is going on like you know in the United States Special Forces, right they throw people over the drop zone for a mission 30 40% of the time the people are not on the drops and they got to get situated figure out where they are. So look at what your business is actually act All right, be clear, don’t put your head in the sand like an ostrich look at where you’re at. Believe you can win. And then you have got to get help. You got to get people coaching, mentoring, peer grouping that’s going to help you get through. You need coaches who care mentors who care mentors who have a track record of delivering results. You know what I mean? peer groups have a track that if you do those three things, you will succeed, no matter what happens out there, no matter inflation, no matter what else.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  25:40

I’ve heard a lot about your mentors, right? So obviously, you’ve got you’re doing, you’re walking the talk, you’ve got your coaches, you’ve got your mentors. .

Nicky Billou  25:47

Yeah. Yeah. And if you’re in business, and you don’t get clear about the reality of the situation you find yourself in, right, if you just kind of like head in the sand, and you don’t really work on your belief and make sure that your belief in victory is there. And you don’t have good mentors helping you out. You’re screwed. But if you do have those three things, covered, successes, 98 and three quarter percent guarantee.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  26:20

That was the last bit of hard work, right. But it’s so good. So tell me, tell me about your books, eight books. I mean, I’m just blown away by that. You eight published books, as you told me you’ve written a whole lot more, but there’s eight sort of published ones. They’re one of the books about and yeah, just thought about those.

Nicky Billou  26:35

Yeah, so this is my latest book. I wrote this with a client of mine. It’s called How to Create a million dollar a year income. He’s a insurance person. And I’m number one in his industry in Canada. And he has a million dollar a year income. So we teamed up. This is chock full of good tips and advice on how to do that. I wrote a children’s book for my kids when they were very young. Teaching them about free enterprise capitalism. Cathy capitalists and Johnny jump maker, right. Yeah. That was a good book. I also wrote, my most famous book was my first business book, it’s called Finish Line thinking how to think and win like a champion sold, you know, 10s of 1000s of copies. I wrote in about two editions of that. I wrote a book called The Power of connecting how to activate profitable relationships by serving your network. And I wrote, I wrote a book called the thought leaders journey. And that’s actually the one that I’m offering to your folks as a Kindle version of it is a free download. That is basically soup to nuts, written for someone who is in a job and wants to get out of that job and become an entrepreneur in the service industry, like a coach, consultant, etc. So it just talks about what you got to do.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:09

His journey of the podcast, yeah,

Nicky Billou  28:13

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then I got a political book as well. Okay, that’s interesting.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:21

Okay, all the stuff that we’ve got there. So that’s pretty good. I’ll put the link to the thought leaders journey at the free ebook in the thing down there. Loving the capitalists was Johnny job maker and something happened. Yeah, beautiful. I love it. Hey, look, we could probably talk for hours because I think you and I have got very, very similar approaches on life. I’m a big fan of Robin Sharma, I’m a big fan of I do believe that you create your own reality. It’s not like you just write something down, and it happens. But you have to actually have that belief that you can do it and then you, you’re putting yourself in the well, you know where you’re headed, you can then subconsciously, you’re always looking for how you actually get there. And knowing that you can do it’s really important. I think we could talk for hours and hours about this. But I suppose I want to just make sure that we get the real gold out of this. So in terms of the three things that the people can take away, or you’ve already mentioned a whole bunch of them. But if we had to just summarize three things that people could do, what would they be?

Nicky Billou  29:17

What a fantastic question. So I think the first thing you got to do is you got to take care of your health. It’s so important to your life success for the vessel, with what you go through life to be in tip top shape. So you’ve got to like make it a priority to exercise to you know, eat right to learn about nutrition, to learn about movement, and really take care of all that and you got to do things to like take care of yourself mentally to so feed your brain with positive inputs like this podcast and meditation and things like that. You know, because there’s so much negativity out there in the world, some of

Debra Chantry-Taylor  30:03

The news, I stopped watching the news 10 years ago is the best thing I ever did.

Nicky Billou  30:07

Yeah, there you go for you. So there’s that, number one, right? The second thing that I think is super, super important for you to do is to show how much you care about people. And be around people that are like you in that regard. Like, you know, your associations are so important. You know what I mean? If you’re around people that are negative, or don’t care, that’s not going to feel good. So you know, let those people go, they can go with love, but they must go. So send them off. Right. And the last thing I’m going to say is read books, read books, readers, or leaders, leaders, or readers. That’s the facts. And there’s so many people that are so proud today, I don’t read, I haven’t read a book in 15 years, you’re proud of that fact. Really, you’re proud that you have to read a book in 15 years. That’s insanity. a paperback book, I’m not talking about something that’s you know, on a phone or you’re listening to I’m talking about holding paper is soothing. You read this book at night versus read it on your phone, this will amp you up and you can’t sleep, this will help you calm down and sleep. You know, there’s something very satisfying about holding paper in your hand reading. So those three tips

Debra Chantry-Taylor  31:45

Love it. I just say there’s also something about I mean that probably people who love books might really hate this. But we can actually write things in a book as well as your reading. You know, you can’t do that on an electronic device. And it’s easy to switch between chapters ago. What was that again, in that chapter. I’ve had a Kindle for when I’m traveling, because it makes it easier than taking all the books. But I have to say, I’ve got a library and pretty much like I’m looking at yours behind you. There’s there’s books everywhere in our life, and it’s just such a fabulous, great way to wind down the end of the day.

Nicky Billou  32:11

I’m proud to say that I read well over 100 books via PayPal. Yep, I’ve read over 4000 books in my lifetime. I started keeping track of my reading back in 2011. And then I found an app in 2016 called Goodreads, goodreads.com, which allows you to track the books you read, you know, you put down the name of the book, you can read a review, you can rate the book. And there’s a reading challenge. And every year I tend to read this many books. And last year was my best year since I started tracking. Although I know when I was younger. There were years I read more books than that, but I read 159 books last year.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  Debra Chantry-Taylor  32:56

Oh my goodness. That’s that’s phenomenal.

Nicky Billou  33:00

Yeah, this year, I don’t want to read quite that many, but I’m keen to do 110 120. And I’m at about 76 right now at this point in September. And you know, I’m scorecards looking good this week, I’ll probably finish two or three more Just this weekend, that I’m kind of reading simultaneously. So I’ll be at by next week at this time, I think

Debra Chantry-Taylor  33:27

You’re definitely gonna get I love it. I mean, I must admit, you are reminding me that I do love to read, but I have had a few things going on. I’ve kind of put that to the side. It’s time to get those books back out again and start going back into the evening. Thank you for the reminder.

Nicky Billou  33:40

Of course. May I share one last story,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  33:43

Please? Yes.

Nicky Billou  33:45

So a little over four years ago, kind of four and a half years ago, there was a woman that came into my professional life. I work with my better half. Teresa and I so this woman was the country director for one of the world’s oldest and largest personal development organizations. This organization had been around since the late 60s and they had multiple countries in which they operated and she led Canada and had for quite some time. She brought on a man to help her grow things and well it turned out that they didn’t really see things eye to eye and she ended up leaving, which is unfortunate. So she floundered for about 18 months, not really sure what direction to take. And then she came to us and you know, she signed up and we we started working with her she loved she loved, you know, she loved what we did and she very quickly said yeah, I’m all in. And, you know, in our first month she did quite well as a new kind of confidants slash Executive Coach she did $10,000 in profit. In her second month she did 12,000 Or third months she did 18,000. In her fourth month, she did $62,200 in profit. So a wonderful amount of money. And if you follow the work of Matt church who has thought leaders global

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:22

Speakership? Yeah. That’s a good friend of mine.

Nicky Billou  35:26

Oh, there you go. So Matt calls that a black belt month, like $60,000 a month. So, anyways, we were all so proud of her. She was, at the time the fastest person to reach that the first woman to reach black belt in our world that kind of paying it was great. Yeah. So a few weeks later, my son, who was 12, at the time plays football, soccer. And he’s, you know, he had a tournament in her home city of Ottawa. And that’s about five hours drive from Toronto where we live in. So as we were driving, I called her because I knew she had a son my son’s I said, Hey, it’s Nicky, I’m coming to Ottawa with my son for a soccer tournament. And I was wondering if you and your son would like to meet us, and we could maybe have lunch after the tournament on the way out of the city. And she said, that sounds great. So we did that. And it was wonderful that kids got along. You know, few weeks later, we had one of our branded thought leader, immersion workshops. And, you know, she was there. And then there was a bunch of new people. And she, she she was part of our annual program we had, we still have, and the time came for the enrollment opportunity into our program. During the enrollment opportunity, the way I do it is I ask our members to come up and share their stories with people. It’s very, very powerful when they do it, versus I think people are great. When people say you’re great. So I asked if anybody wanted to come and share it, and she leaped up on stage and sent me before anyone could put their hands up and I said, Okay. Just a black belt. This is great, man. As soon as she got on stage, she started to cry. And like any red blooded man, when I’m confronted with a crying female, I proceeded to panic. What I do wrong, why she cried. But my exterior was placid and calm. And between tears and sobs, she said, Nicky, you didn’t know this. But when you and your little son came to visit me and my little son and my city, my little son asked me, mommy, mommy, who are we gonna go meet? And I said, Oh, we’re gonna meet Nicky Billou and his son. She said, My little son looked at me and said, Oh, are we gonna get to meet the man who saved our family? And Debra, you may have gathered that I am not a snowflake, that I am not a beta male. I am an Alpha Man. I’m from the Middle East, I do not cry in public. I cried in public. Rivers of tears, we both hugged and between her sobs, she said to me, you didn’t know this. But when, when we when we met in Ottawa, you know, when we met, and I started working with you, I should say, I, I had been in a horrible place, we hadn’t paid our mortgage for months, the bank was about to foreclose on our home. And my husband and I were fighting over money, and look like we might break up that our family was going to break up. And I went, wow. And she said, coming into your program, literally saved our family. And when she told me that, I was blown away and humbled and I just thought, you know, God, God didn’t put me here in this business to make a certain amount of money. God put me here in this business to do his bidding and help people help people that are hurting, that are in pain, that maybe don’t feel comfortable sharing their painfully. And, you know, I’ll say this to you that everyone listening to this, you have customers that are in pain. You, Debra have customers that are in pain, and you don’t even know it. And if you get up in the morning, and you ask God, to give you the opportunity to alleviate someone’s pain through the work that you do, that’s incredible. That is what you’re here. to do. And here’s the pretty incredible part of what happened there. We had eight new people that were there for the enrollment eight prospects for the enrollment opportunity. And our year long program is a high ticket program. Or, you know, over three years, we say people need to invest $100,000 Through the work that we do to get them from where they are to half a million to 2 million a year. And if you don’t understand that investing 100,000 to make half a million to 2 million a year was a great investment for us. So it’s a high ticket program. And, you know, normally it’s, there’s a little bit of back and forth and persuasion that might be required with some people that just don’t people sign up right away. All eight people signed up before they like we’re like hanging papers. You know what I mean? And there were two that had told me Well, before the election, Nick, I know you’re gonna have an upset. I just want you to know, I’m not. I’m not by you just just want to make sure you’re not disappointed when I don’t buy right, buddy, no problem. You don’t have to buy, you know, he was the first the first guy. And he looked at me, he said, you said that she said I wasn’t gonna buy? Yep. And then he got a little tear. Yeah. And he just did one of these. And he said, but I guess you’re not full of crap. And I really do need some help. So that was, you know, the beauty of coming from home top of caring about somebody is that your service and sales pushing us and all that crap becomes unnecessary, counterproductive, right. And that’s my final story.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  42:05

That is absolutely beautiful. And we’re absolutely on the same page. I mean, I think that if you go out there and you do what your God given talent is your unique ability, which is helping people and do it in an authentic way. The rest sort of follows. But I can see that you are very passionate about what you do. I can see how much love you haven’t people that you work with. And yeah, I’m so so honored to have spent some time with you and learn all these things from you as well myself, because they’ve reached out I said to him that before the podcast, every time I do a podcast with a guest, yes, the listeners will get some value out of it. But I get just as much myself I sit here, take copious notes, and I know that there’s things that I can add take away news. So thank you so so much for your time, just in terms of where people can find you. What’s the best way to get ahold of you? How can they find out about your courses, your books you?

Nicky Billou  42:52

So yeah, like, I’m all over social media and stuff. So if you go on to, you know, LinkedIn, you put in my name Nicky Billou, or Instagram or Facebook, and the only one I’m not on his Twitter. But I am on. I am on this alternative to Twitter called Gettr. Gettr and Partner. But yeah, Nicky Billiou You can find me there. It’s all good. Yeah. But if you’re, you know, if you’re in business, you’re a coach or consultant, you’re an expert, you’re a thought leader, and you’re like, hey, you know, I’m thinking I should check on my business. Go to my main website for you, which is ecircleacademy.com. Find out a little bit about you know, who we are what we do, though, yeah, there’s a bunch of free resources there, you know, like reports to download and all that sort of thing. But there’s also this really cool button at the top that goes book a Success Call. So a success call is all about really having a conversation about what success looks like to you, where you are now, where you want to be, what the gap is. And honestly, why the gap exists, and what the consequences of the gap existing are, are to you. financially, emotionally, health wise, relationship wise, we’re gonna go deep into all of those. And then we’re going to show you what you know, what you can do, should you choose to to get out of these horrible consequences. And that’s really what I recommend.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  44:25

Find your decisive, committed, coachable, resourceful,

Nicky Billou  44:29

Resourceful. You’re so good look at you.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  44:33

So now I love it. Hey, look like again. I could talk all day, but we haven’t got the time sadly. But I really appreciate you giving me your time for sharing your amazing knowledge for helping the listeners. Thank you so much, and we will definitely be talking more.

Nicky Billou  44:48

I look forward to it. Thank you so much. God bless too. Thanks for having me on the show.

=======================================================================================================================================================

Debra Chantry-Taylor 

Professional EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner

#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach

Professional EOS Implementer New Zealand

Professional EOS Implementer Australia

Professional EOS Implementer UK

Professional EOS Implementer NZ