Unlocking the Power of Thought Leadership: Nicky Billou's Blueprint for Success

Hello everyone and welcome to a phenomenal edition of The Everyday Entrepreneur here on the Properly Placed podcast show. I'm your host, Paul H. Flowers Jr., and I've got the esteemed Nikki Bellew here with us today. Before I go down that list of accolades, as of course we'll get into that throughout the conversation, I love to just share the stage with you, Nicky. Uh, say hello to the audience and let them know what's going on with you.

Paul, first of all, it's an honor to be here, man. Thanks for having me on the show. Really fabulous to be here. And, um, secondly, man, really excited to get into it. Always like to, uh, start by sharing my backstory. So let me know when you're ready for me to do that.

Absolutely. And ladies and gentlemen, if you couldn't already tell, the energy and excitement that he is bringing to the stage is second to none. So we don't want to waste any time, Nikki. We just want to hop right in. Let us know, of course, where you've been, where you're at, and where you're going.

Absolutely fantastic question, brother. So I'm 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, okay? And There were gun battles taking place in the streets. My mom and dad saw this and they're like, this is not going to be a stable place to raise a Christian family. So what they did is they made a plan and it took them a while to execute it. It wasn't immediate, but they got me and my two brothers out of Iran, first to Greece, Athens, Greece, and then from Athens, Greece, after spending two years there, we moved to where I now live in Toronto, 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. You can appreciate that, right? I mean, kids—

Absolutely.

—like stability and they like being around that which they know. But as time went on, man, I could see the incredible nobility of my mom and dad's sacrifice Think about this. They left behind everything and everyone they knew for a chance at a better life for me and my two brothers. I believe, man, they did this because they saw Iran was devolving into tyranny and they wanted to move to freedom. Inside every human breast, Paul H. Flowers Jr. beats the living heart of freedom. Every man, every woman on this planet yearns to be free, to chart their own course, to march to the tune of their own drummer, brother. And as I started to realize this, the older I got, the more grateful I was for what Mom and Dad did. And if you're an entrepreneur, man, you rely on freedom just to exist. Without freedom, man, there's no free expression. You can't even have an exchange of ideas to come up with something that you might want to do. And without that, you certainly don't have free enterprise. You're going to have to lick a tyrant's boot just to be alive. But freedom, free expression, free enterprise allows you as an entrepreneur to chart that own course of yours. And I believe you as an entrepreneur, you're society's great hero, man. You're the one who through daring to dream moves the human race forward, forward, brother. And that's the beauty of entrepreneurship. And my father, he was an entrepreneur. He's the greatest man I ever knew, Paul. I'll tell you something, if you knew him, you would love this man. If you knew him, you were trying to find a job, he'd sit you down in his office, man, and he'd call all his buddies. And he had a big Rolodex, guys who owned other companies guys who were high up in government, and he'd wheedle, he'd deal, and he'd cajole until one of them said, you know what, I'm going to hire this fellow. And he'd just tell you, hey, you're starting right now, go over to this office, this is your starting salary, good luck. If you were trying to start a business, man, he'd sit you down, he'd clear his calendar. He always did that, clear his calendar. He'd sit with you, listen to your vision, and then he'd give you his best advice, and he'd introduce you to people. He'd introduce you to people who could give you access to capital, access to clients. That's what he was like. And if you were trying to buy a car, a house, and you didn't have quite enough money— and remember, Iran was a second world country, right? So the bank would say, this is all the money they're giving you, and that's it. So you'd go to him and you'd say, Mr. Baloo— Iran's also a pretty formal place, right? You call people by their last names, you know, Mr. Baloo, sir. Uh, even people who were his friends would say, Mr. Baloo, Mr. Baloo. I'm trying to buy a house, trying to buy this car. Bank's giving me this much, I need X, can I get a loan from you? And he'd always say, sure, how much, how much do you need? And they'd say it, he'd write them a check, away they go. And then people would come back later, try and pay him back, and say, get out of here. He said, what are you talking about? He says, get out of here. And that was a loan. No, it wasn't a loan, I gave you. And then go, no, no, no, I have to pay you back. And he'd say, don't insult me. You want to pay me back? Go find someone who's like you were back then, who needs help, and you help them. That's how you pay me back, you know? And I tell this story on virtually every podcast I go, and I'll tell you, a lot of people are impressed, but there's some people that go, come on, man, what are you talking about? Nobody's really like that. Nobody's really like that. They get cynical, right? Who's really actually like that in real life? That's like a Hollywood movie or some something. And, and I go, no, man, no, he was really like that. They go, yeah, what's in it for him? I go, that's a great question. What's in it for him? First and foremost, he was a devout Christian. He believed that he was blessed by his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and God Almighty, and that it was his duty to share those blessings with his fellow man. Now, he didn't take himself very seriously, but he took his faith very seriously, and that was important to him. Secondly, What was in it for him is he got pleasure from helping people because he was rich, he had the money, he could do it, right? He just got— there it is— pleasure from helping people. It just made him so happy. He'd be smiling from ear to ear when he could help somebody, you know. And me growing up as a kid, I wanted to be like my father, man. I wanted to be like this man, you know. And he would tell me every day, son, Life, it's about people, not about money. People. Okay, Dad, sure. He's a business son. Not about money, people. I'm like, but Dad, without money you can't do any business, right? He said, that's true, son, but without people there's no need for money. Imagine the Venn diagram with the 3 circles, right? In the first circle you'd write people, in the second circle you write problems, in the third circle you write profit. You solve acute problems for amazing people and you earn an awesome profit. That is the awe-inspiring purpose of business. That's all it is. And Dad would always say to me, that man standing in front of you, that's someone's husband, that's someone's brother, that's someone's son, that's a hero to somebody. Maybe someone just like you let them down in business or life. It's your job to restore his faith in humanity. And that's what he would tell me to do. He said, remember, son, everybody needs someone to love them. Someone to believe in them, right? You, me, everybody. So believe in people. And that, my friend, is what I've done. My life is about helping people, believing in people, right? You're right, I got a great skill set. You're right, I've got a heck of a resume, no question about it. But I'm not nearly as proud of those as I am of being Napoleon Belus' son and a professional believer in people.

Now talk about inspiring. I'm so— I really wish that he was— I assume that he's transitioned on at this point.

Yeah, he's passed away 5 years ago, man.

Uh, so first and foremost, my condolences. And it appears that though he may have left us physically, he very much is still here, in so much that all the things that you were able to experience growing up and all of the lessons, all of the connections, just all of your father Napoleon Belou still seems to live in you. So I'm going to thank him through you for being who and how you are today, because that legacy continues to live on. And I'd like to touch on that for just a moment, effectively leaving a legacy, because I'm not sure if that was ever his honest intent. And if you don't mind, I'd like to ask about, about him as much as you can recall. But when it comes to legacy, did he talk to you about that being his purpose in doing how he did and operated business, bringing you around?

You know, Dad never used that word, um, with me. Okay. But I have to say that he lived it. Dad was all about how many lives he touched, man. I mean, he was good at making money. He just was. He was amazing at it. But what really moved him was touching lives, helping people. He was all about that. He uplifted everybody around him. Everybody. That was his deal. You knew him, you'd be uplifted. It's just the way it was.

Love it. Love it. Well, again, I'm getting the opportunity, I should say, to experience him through you right now. So let's talk about again now, Nikki. Nikki, you're here, you're in— excuse me, here. You're actually in Canada. You're there, right? And you made that transition. From Iran to, you said Greece at first, and now over to Canada. I'm curious, are you multilingual?

Yeah, I speak Farsi and I speak English fluently. I speak some French. I used to speak some Greek as well, but it's been years. I'm sure if I went back to Greece, it'd come back pretty quick, but it's been a while.

Little beloved. Yeah, and the reason I ask that is because when it comes to people and how they interact with others, you know, sometimes we just have a narrow focus. And at times it takes the ability to be dynamic in how you approach situations, both from a person-to-person, actual practical standpoint, but also how you think about things. And I noticed that, of course, like you said, phenomenal resume. And I like to hop into a little bit about eCircle Academy and just discuss how you're helping people at present. And look, well, clearly for the last decade, right? Plus, um, but at present, how are you helping people with eCircle Academy?

That's a great question. So, you know, this all comes from my father and what he taught me. I got into business. I went to university and I studied business entrepreneurship. I got a master's degree in something called international business diplomacy, which is a mouthful, from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. And it was, it was, it was all about, you know, the world of politics, of business, of economics. And when I finally got into being a businessman for myself, I noticed that there was a lot of good people out there in business. A lot of good people, right? And they were really good at delivering, you know what I mean? So to be successful in business, honestly, um Imagine a diagram with like a big circle on the top that says success in life and business. On the one hand, you need to have self-belief and strong mindset, right? Self-belief and strong mindset. On the other hand, you need to have expertise. Okay, so these people that I'm running into in business, their expertise, the product, the service they delivered, it was excellent. But their self-belief wasn't the best, and their, and their business skills like sales, marketing, all of that, not the best either. So me, I come to people with a high level of belief, and believing in people is, in my view, the fastest way to help them believe in themselves. I don't know about you, but when someone believes in me, my belief just climbs. You know, it just climbs. When there's someone who cares enough about me to pour themselves into me with belief, my belief just climbs, climbs, climbs, climbs, climbs, climbs. But as important as that is, you also need to learn how to do the business stuff. Like so many people in business, right, marketing and sales in particular, Paul H. Flowers Jr., they're not good at it, right? Like they're, they're like nervous. They don't want to be seen as pushy, as salesy. They don't want to reek of commission breath when they walk into the room, right? They just don't want to do that. So, so they don't go after sales and business they should go after. And this is terrible. Why? Because they don't get the business that they should get, right? So they still stay stuck financially, right? And then some charlatan marketer, right, comes in and scoops up all that business. And if they deliver It's a happy accident. So the client that needs the help doesn't get the help. The sum total of goodness in the world recedes and goes down. You don't succeed because you're not making the money you should be making. The client doesn't succeed because, well, they did— their issue didn't get resolved. And the charlatan in the long run doesn't succeed because what goes around comes around. God is like that, right? So I see this and I go, hmm, I know how to help guys like this because I have a business background and I never had that issue with sales. To me, sales is an act of love. It's an act of service, right? So I said, let's help these guys reframe love and reframe sales. So rather than looking at it as sales and pushy and whatnot, look at it as service. Now, Paul, nobody likes to be sold. You don't like to be sold, do you? I don't like to be sold. But Paul, don't you love it when someone serves you? Serves you? And don't you want to buy from them? And you don't— you almost don't even talk price with people like that because it's like, no, man, this person's amazing. Here you go, here's my credit card, here's my money, right? You think about it, there's certain stores that are like that. Like, I don't know if you've ever been to a Neiman Marcus store in America, right? They're like that. They don't come, they're not like piranhas trying to sell you, right? Neiman Marcus is like, they say, hey, do you need our help? You need our help? We're here. And they'll come and they'll speak to you about what's best for you and not trying to get you to buy, right? And that's the truth. When we help people take their attention off of themselves and I hope they buy from me, I hope they like me, I hope they love me. And we have them put their attention on the customer. I hope that whatever it is they're dealing with, that I'm able to steer them to a good solution. And if it's me, then so be it. And if it's someone else, then so be it. Because when someone feels that you're coming from caring about them, they're far more likely to want to do business with you. You. So take the attention off of you, put the attention on them. That's step 1 to adding 6 figures to your business this year. And we've had people come to us, and that's the only thing they learned from us— how not to be so, oh my God, are they gonna buy? Oh, I don't want to be pushy, and I want to serve. Just that alone, that alone had them double, triple, quadruple, tenfold their business. Like, I can tell you a story of a, of a woman who came to us. She was a functional medicine doctor, really sweet lady, and she wanted to grow her business. She had a big why. Her father was, uh, her hero, and he was dying of brain cancer, glioblastoma, and she wanted to honor him by becoming successful because he'd been a successful entrepreneur. And then he passed away a few months later. I went to his wake. I mean, it was very sad. And she came to me and she said, you have to help me win. And I said, okay. And I said to her, look, you've got to— there's a few things we did with her, but I'm going to focus on this for this part of the story. I'll tell you the rest. Another— but I told her, I want you to focus on helping people. Helping people, not selling people. And I want you to have conversations with people about what they need. And she started to do that. And then, brother, she doubled her income in her first year. She doubled it again in her second year. She doubled it again in her third year. And a big part of why is she stopped putting the attention up, I hope they buy whatever I got going on, and started putting her attention on, I'm looking to help these wonderful people. She went from 6 figures a year to 6 figures a month. That's the sort of thing we do at eCircle Academy. We teach people to let their humanness come out and lead with being human rather than trying to force themselves into a box of being a business person and being professional and salesy.

Yeah, yeah. So effectively, though your official title is the President and CEO of eCircle Academy. Uh, you're more like the CBO, the Chief Belief Officer, right?

Because you're building— I gotta write that down.

That's pretty good. You're, you're building belief in people that they otherwise would not have had, hadn't, had they not come to you. And that in and of itself, I think is fantastic. And you, you really spoke to me and I hope the listeners are really catching this. That when you believe in another person, you unlock things in them that they ordinarily might not have been able to tap into. Again, so thank you for being the human being that you are and bringing that to, again, this show and this audience at this point. Now, you're, you're no, uh, stranger to, to creating things and, and basically bringing about new things that weren't there before, uh, designations. If you will. I believe you've got some stories along the lines of how you've been able to help create new designations for the business space. So if by all means, you could share a little bit about that.

Well, I'm glad you said that, because that's, that's really, really, really cool. So, you know, our work is really into thought leadership, right? And people just say, well, what's thought leadership? Well, thought leadership really is all about helping you be seen as the go-to authority in a market space. Mm-hmm. So the people seek you out, they come to you, right? And so they say, how's that different from an expert? Well, an expert's someone who knows something, but you know, experts are a dime a dozen. There's a lot of people who know things. That's right. Thought leader, someone who's known for knowing something. Thought leaders are rare and valuable. Another way to put it is an expert is like a cover band while a thought leader plays original music. Right? I like that. Yeah, that's good. That's right. So, yeah, I gotta give credit because that comes from David Meerman Scott. He said that on my show. He's one of Tony Robbins's advisors. And the beauty, And the beauty of this is, is it is like this, right? People who take thought leadership seriously, first of all, they're authentically bringing their expertise out into the world. But secondly, man, they're able to serve a ton more people, make a lot more money. Yeah. A lot more money. Like just today, there's a client of ours, okay, who made a massive sale. Right, in, in the €40,000 range, which is like 50 grand, um, for designing a garden. Now you got to understand, designing a garden is a, you know, it's definitely a service and it's a skill, but not everybody thinks they need to have a garden designed, you know what I mean? Everybody thinks they need to make more money, everybody thinks they need to be healthier, everybody thinks they need to have a great relationship with their wife or their husband or their kids. Not everybody that they need a garden, you know what I'm saying? So for Buddy to be able to make this kind of sale comes from a couple of places, and one of them is that he is seen as a thought leader in this space. Like, and I, I gotta tell you, before he met us, it wasn't like this for him. He wasn't making these kinds of sales at this kind of level. What allowed him to make these kinds of sales at this kind of level is that he stepped into the identity of being a thought leader, an authority, the go-to person in the gardening design space.

I'm taking notes. When you see me look away from the camera, I'm jotting down a couple of things because this is good. And I think that when it comes to certain areas of bringing yourself out in front of people, you, you hit the nail on the head. There's a big difference between a person that's an expert, and when you said that, I admittedly didn't really see there as much of a difference until you broke down, broke it down with that analogy. And now it's helped me to look at it as a person who might know a bunch of stuff and sit themselves over to the side, kind of like a book on a library shelf, and a person who is— that also knows a lot of things, but people are like running and raving to go and get the insight because they've taken that belief, they've taken that identity, and they are now that go-to person again, versus just the person that hangs out, knows what they know, but no one's coming after them. So can you talk about some additional distinctions between that expert and maybe a transition into a thought leader for those out there that have expertise but don't know how to become the go-to person in their field.

Let me continue with this story of this functional medicine doctor, this woman, Dr. Vicky, I'm going to call her because she, she, she's a private person. She doesn't want her real name used. So she came to us, right? She'd been in her space for a long time. She'd had thousands of clients, but she was in a plateau. She was making about 6 figures a year, 10, 12 grand a month. Not bad money, but certainly like not amazing money either, right? And the first thing that I asked her was, so tell me, you know, what exactly is it that you do as a functional medicine doctor? And here was her answer. It was a classic expert's answer. It was, I can help anybody with any health-related problem.

Now, pretty broad. Yeah, it is.

And let me ask you a question. Let's imagine you had type 2 diabetes, okay? I'm not saying you do, hopefully you don't, but let's just imagine for the person that you did. Would you rather go see her who says, I can help anybody with any health-related problem, or would you rather go see someone who says I specialize in helping people overcome and reverse type 2 diabetes. Which one of those two would you rather go see?

The latter, of course. The specialist.

The specialist. So I said to her, um, if you try to be all things to all people, you'll be nothing to nobody. That's why you're stuck. Your personality is good enough that people, you know, like you and will end up doing business with you, but nobody knows really why. They just know that they like you and hey, you got them results, right? That's, that's all they got. So she said, well, how do I fix this? And I said, I have a tool and this tool, let me see if I can pull it out here. This tool is called the Ideal Client Exercise Tool. So this is a pretty cool tool. So let me just, uh, see if I can grab this guy. Here we go. So this is the model I created. Can you see it? Yep, I can. So over here is who are the clients you've gotten the best results for, right? Who are the clients you've enjoyed working with the most? Who are the ones that are easiest to do business with? So you make a list of all the clients you got amazing outcomes for, and then you make a list of all the clients you enjoyed working with the most, and you make a list of all the clients that you found easiest to do business with. So, you know, this is the sort of the type of tool that we have for that. So she used these tools, made all these lists, right? Now, once she had those clients all listed out, I said, I want you to star all the ones that are on all 3 lists. She did that. And I said, I want you to make a separate list with all those. And I said, I want to know what do they all have in common? This is a very valuable tool, by the way. This exercise is worth $10,000 to you. Like, I do this exercise, I charge people for it, $10,000 to be inside our program to do it. So I'm giving it to you and your listeners for free today. Honestly, thank you. Yeah, yeah. It's really powerful. And when she did this exercise, she came up with, okay, gosh, good gosh almighty. I got it. Um, they're all women, it seems like. I go, okay. They're all over the age of 45, it seems like. Okay. What else do they have in common? Well, the women are pretty much mostly married with children, happily married, great families. Okay. And they're all professionals or they're entrepreneurs. So they're like successful. They make a lot of money. I'm like, okay, so why are they seeing you? I mean, they seem to have really great lives. She says, ah, there is one problem they have. Okay, what's the problem? She said, well, now, Paul, I'm a man, right? So, you know, obviously I'm not a woman, and I don't claim to really truly understand women. I think any man who does is lying, right? But I've heard somewhere that women like feeling young, desirable, sexy, beautiful. I've heard this. Have you heard this?

I've heard that this might be true.

So, um, these women all felt that they were no longer young, sexy, desirable, beautiful, and that time had passed them by and that they could never ever recapture that. And it really bothered them. They were really, really upset. And I said, okay, Dr. Vicky, that's why they came to see you. She said, yeah. I said, so were you able to help them? She goes, oh yeah, absolutely. She said to me, and this was brilliant, by the way, what she said. She said, getting older is inevitable. Like, if you're 50 this year, you'll be 51 next year, God willing, to stay alive, right? That's inevitable. Nobody can stop that. However, aging is entirely Optional. You can look and feel just as good in your 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s as you did in your 20s, 30s, and 40s. And I'm like, hmm, that's good. She says— I said, you can deliver on this? She goes, oh yeah, I have. And she showed me all this. I said, okay, here's what we're going to name your program: Genius Nikki Blue Get Your Sexy Back. Get your sexy back.

Simple, straightforward.

She went from being, I can help anybody with any health problem, to being the get your sexy back lady.

I like that. So basically, by helping her to identify exactly who it is that she was looking for, right? Putting her through— we'll call it a process. I'll say it's proprietary at this point, but you did share, uh, quite a bit. So for our audio listeners, he had a visual up on screen, and I'm gonna— I'm not gonna— I'm not even gonna re-describe it like I usually would. I'm gonna urge you to go to YouTube to check it out because you want to see this. Again, he charges a significant amount for clients to go through this exercise, and he shared it with us again at no cost. So thank you so much again. Now with that, you helped her through this process, and she came out on the other side again very well. Now, of course, I got to dig in. I'm not to be contrarian, right?

But I want you to— tenfolded her income in 3 years. Tenfolded.

Yeah, that, that, that's significant.

Actually, technically 12-folded, but we say tenfolded for the purposes of these meetings.

Yeah, that, that works. And again, I'm not that great at math, but I'm working at it. Okay, so let's talk about your, your ideal client. Who is it that you like to work with? Again, you shared with us that exercise for someone else, but who is that for you?

That's a great question. So my ideal client is someone in the West, like Canada, United States, you know, Western Europe, and maybe Australia and New Zealand, right? Okay. Someone who is in business for themselves as a solopreneur or maybe 1, 2 staff. That's ideal for us. This person ideally has been in business for 3 years and ideally is making at least, I mean, at least $75,000 a year. So our zone is kind of $75,000 to $300,000. We really know how to help those people, um, double to fivefold to tenfold and beyond their income. The best result I got for someone was take them to $11.5 million in a year. The average result we get for people is at least like 6 figures, $114,000, something like that a year. Um, but a good chunk of our clients add at least $1 million a year to their business, like 11, 12 of them. And about 80, 90 of them have added anywhere from an extra $100,000 to $500,000 a year to their business. And I'll say what else is ideal about them. Um, they are politically center-right, right? So we don't really work well with the woke. Just, that's just the thing for us. They are, um, typically, not exclusively, but typically 40-plus. Typically 40-plus. Um, and they really like, you know, that, that, that model that I showed you, um, I didn't actually show it to you, but I described it for you, the model of, uh, success in, in in life or business, you need to have the belief in the, and the, what's it called? You need to have a belief in yourself, you need to have a strong mindset, and then you also need to have business skills and product skills. So these are people whose product skills are very good. So we don't work with people who suck at delivering the result. Like, that just doesn't work for us. But if they're really good at delivering the result, but maybe their sales and marketing skills aren't that good and their belief isn't as high as it could be, man, pop. Those are people we really make a powerful difference for, uh, in a, in a beautiful way. So I'll tell you a story of, of one of them, right? Um, there's this man, he was at the time I met him, he was 57, which is actually the same age I am now, which is pretty wild. Um, he had been an executive vice president for a large manufacturing concern in my home, uh, province of Ontario, Canada. But he burned out, so he quit, right? He just quit. He didn't want to do it anymore, but he made a lot of money at it. He made $350,000 a year, and then he got into coaching. And he loved coaching. And the reason he burned out is he was working 60 hours a week, right? He didn't want to do that anymore. So in coaching, he was working 25, 30 hours a week. He loved that, but he didn't make so much money. He took a big haircut, 80%. He went from $350,000 to $70,000 a year, man. That's a big drop, right? That's a huge drop. Huge drop. So He was in a BNI. Are you familiar with BNI? Absolutely. Networking groups. Yep. I've actually— I'm actually friends with the founder of BNI, Ivan Misner. He's actually been a guest on my podcast 3 or 4 times. Phenomenal man. Phenomenal man. So in this BNI was one of my clients who we'd helped get to over $1 million a year. And this guy was a personal trainer. So 7, 8 years ago, that really wasn't happening. Personal trainers did not make that kind of money. Today there's quite a few that do, but back then they were not making that kind of money. Not at all. Okay, so here's, here's what he wanted. He wanted to make the same kind of money he used to make. And he saw this personal trainer doing well. And this personal trainer, you know, he's a good guy, but he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. He's a really good guy, but he wasn't. Self-admittedly, self-admittedly, right?

Okay, okay. I don't even know if he finished high school.

Okay, so, um, but he's making way more money than this executive vice president with degrees up the yin yang. So he said, how'd you do it? He says, well, you got my coach, you got me my coach, name's Nikki Balu, blah blah blah. So he called me, he said, hey, my name is Carl Kramer. You know, alliterative name, which I like. KK. Absolutely. All Kramer. So, and he said, I'm a friend of Dan's, and I hear you've done some good work with him. Can we meet? So we met. And he said, listen, I really need to grow my business. And he said, I got a good feeling about you. I think you can help me. So, you know, he said, what are you charged? And I said, you know, and he said, okay, here you go. And then he came to me and he said, um, Nikki, uh, how do I do this? And I said to him, well, Carl, um, first and foremost, man, you got to believe it's possible. Right now you don't think You can do it. And he said, right. He said, you're right. I know. So we did a couple of belief exercises with him. And candidly, I work with my sweetheart and she's, she's been a coach for Tony Robbins for 8 years. She isn't anymore. She just works with me. But she's like a rockstar level coach, man. And she knows how to break people's beliefs up. I mean, I do too, but She's better at it. She worked with this guy, helped him break up the negative beliefs, and he was like, okay, now I'm believing it. Let's go. Let's roll. And he said to me, so what do I do? I said, well, have you had clients? He said, yes. He did the same ideal client exercise with him. And I also looked at what he charged. So we found out his ideal client, which was solopreneur, law practitioners, law firms. Okay. And I looked at what he charged and I said, dude, these guys are lawyers. You charge this little, no wonder they don't wanna work with you. They don't trust that you're good at delivering the results. He says, but I'm excellent. I said, your price says otherwise. He says, you mean I need to charge more just to get these people to trust me? I said, yes. I said, Is your belief strong enough right now for this after the work we've done with you? He goes, yeah. So you raise his fee to $25,000 a year and upfront. They had to commit upfront and pay upfront. Buddy, he was really good at taking action and we coached him to take action daily to get in front of these lawyers. Now it took him 6 months, right? But he went from $70,000 a year, which if you do the math is like $6,000 a month, just under. Mm-hmm.

Just under. Yep.

So month 6, he hit $40K for the month. Month 7 was $50K, like $225,000. And then he was steadily signing up. And then one month he said, I'm gonna go for $100K. And he did it. He signed up 4 guys at $25K, right? But he was working 50 hours a week to do it. And he goes, oh, okay, let's go back to 50. I don't know. 50's good. So $50K a month is $600,000 a year. Remember I told you he made $350,000 as an executive vice president of manufacturing industry? Mm-hmm. $600,000 as a coach, 60 hours a week in as a manufacturing executive, 25 hours a week as a coach. Now I'm gonna tell you something. This is a bittersweet story. A few years later, Carl contracted cancer, pancreatic cancer, and he died. Died in the summer of 2022. And it was sad. Um, in our Facebook group, we still have his, his, um, profile there because, you know, to honor him. And absolutely, on his birthday, we always say rest in peace, Carl, and Happy birthday, and you're smiling down on us from heaven. And people say to me, man, that's terrible. Why do you share the story? I mean, the guy died. And I said, yeah, he did. Everybody dies. You will die. I will die. You get that? And they go, yeah, yeah, I get that. But you know, Carl went to his maker having broken through his limiting beliefs. Mm-hmm. And in those last few years of his life, he lived his best life. He lived his best life. I, for one, am honored to have been a part of his journey and to have helped this man live his best life. And if you're listening to this, What happened to Carl, maybe not the specifics of pancreatic cancer, but him dying, will happen to you. Will. Not maybe. Will. The only question you ought to ask yourself is, do you want to go to your maker with your potential fully intact? Or do you want to have made something of your life? Do you want to have mattered? Do you want to have been able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, I deserve the life I have and I'm happy with it? I tell you this story to wake you up because you're asleep. You're asleep. You think you have all the time in the world and you don't.

You don't. Nicky, this is powerful. I am looking forward to the replay of this, and I'm thinking of a few individuals who I want to share this with before it even gets into post-production and all that. I'm like, somebody's got to hear this message, and they've got to hear it now, right? So I, I thank you so much for again delivering these stories. We're going to start to land the plane. We're getting close to the top of the hour, and I definitely want to respect your time. So a few things that I like to ask our guests on the show, um, You've gone through and you've created several significant companies, and you've left impact. You've helped to create impact through the lives of others. Uh, if you could share with me one of the most memorable stories of impact from your work.

You know, this is a story I usually, uh, like to end off um, and land the plane on a podcast interview with. Perfect. A little over 7 years ago, a woman was introduced to us who had been the country director for Canada for one of the world's largest and most prestigious personal development firms. This woman was an amazing success story. But she felt for some reason that she needed help, and she brought a man on whom she thought was very talented to help her run the company. And at first, everything went great. They got along really well. They aligned in their vision. But after about a year, their vision of the future started to diverge. This may remind you of the story of Steve Jobs in the '80s when he brought John Sculley in. Same thing. At first everything was great, but after a while it just became clear it wasn't going to work. And there was a board of directors, just like there was back then with Apple, and the board of directors sided with this new person, just like they sided with John Sculley and not Steve Jobs. And so just like Steve, she was booted out of her own company.. And for a year and a half, she was completely bereft and lost. Mm-hmm. And she was introduced to me and said, hey, Nikki can help. And so, um, we saw her. She was a lovely person. We loved on her. We did all the exercises we do with folks. We helped her get clear on her ideal client. We helped her rate charge the right amount of price, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And within her first month, this woman did a $10,000 month. In her second month, she did a $12,000 month. In her third month, she did $18,000. But man, in her fourth month, she just took off. She was at $62,200, brother. And, um, that number will become germane in a moment. So she lives in Ottawa. I live in Toronto. Ottawa is Canada's capital. It's a 5-hour drive from Toronto. At the time, my oldest son was 12. He's 19 now. And he played soccer, went on to play at a very high level. In fact, for a while I thought he might go pro, but he changed his mind and decided to— decided to go work right out of school. And I'm proud of him for that. But man, he was good. He was amazing. He was great. He had a tournament in Ottawa. We're driving to Ottawa and I just dial her up and I said, hey, I'm on my way to Ottawa with my son. I know you have a son his age. Why don't you bring him over to, um, the tournament, watch him play a game, and then let's all grab lunch on our way out of the city. She said, that sounds great. We did that. We won the tournament. Excellent. And, um, everybody had a good time. I'm back in Toronto now. Once a quarter, Paul, I do a special powerful thought leader event, which honestly, you and your listeners ought to look into. It is simply amazing. And this is where we teach people how to go from being experts to thought leaders, right? And, like all these events, there is an enrollment opportunity at some point in there. Now, unlike a lot of people, we don't stuff the whole event with enrollment, enrollment, enrollment every 5 minutes here. We just do it once, right? About 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and that's it. Um, and the way I do it, it's actually pretty clever. I think you'll like it. I, um, tell people about, hey, let you know about our opportunity, and then I say to them, hey, um, why don't you hear from some of our members rather than from me? Way better way for them to be persuaded, as it were. Normally people put up their hand and I go, who'd like to share? And I pick somebody, they come on stage and I pick 2 or 3 people to share. This time, this lady, I'm going to tell you, she, I'm going to call her Julie. She leapt onto the stage, brother. Like bounded, like with energy and speed and pace. Like if I hadn't moved out of the way, she'd have knocked me on my butt. And I'm like, okay, I guess Julie wants to share. So I recede to the background of the stage. She's standing in the front, her hands are on her hips, you know. She's, she's well dressed and like she's got a, like a, like a business skirt on, you know, and, and a nice blouse. She's, she's a very powerful, attractive woman. Um, and like, I'm standing behind her and she's saying nothing. There's dead silence, and this is getting uncomfortable. And then she starts to like do one of these, like from behind. I can see the back of her shoulders, and I'm like, what's happening, right? And then I hear the first sob and then a sniffle. I go, shit, she's crying. Yep. And Paul, like any red-blooded North American man, when faced with a crying woman, the first thought that goes through my head is, what the heck did I do wrong to make this woman want to cry?

Is she okay? What, what do we do? What's wrong?

What did I do, right? That's what, that's what went through my head. My beloved girlfriend was much more sensory aware, comes on stage with a box of tissues. She gratefully grabs a couple and And she's still sobbing, sniffling. And then she turns around to me and she says, come here. And she puts her arm around my shoulder and says, now, when you and your little son came to Ottawa to visit with me and my little son, my little son was in the back of the car. He's 12, right? And Paul, I'm sure you've been around 12-year-old boys. They are 12-year-old son, right? High energy, hyper. Well, there you go. You get it, right? Right. Daddy, daddy, mommy, mommy. All that. Let's say, whoa, kid. Like, your energy is up here and mine is here. And so she's like, and the kid's like saying to her, mommy, mommy, where are we going? Who are we going to go meet? What's going on? And she's like, oh my God, I got to quiet this kid down a little bit. And she says, oh sweetie, we're going to go see Nicky Ballou and his son play soccer. And then all of a sudden, mission accomplished because the kid got real quiet real fast. So quiet that she got a little worried. She goes, son. And he's like so quiet, he goes, Mommy. And like this little, little, little voice, are we gonna go meet the man who saved our family? Wow. So bro, wow, you may have noticed this about me, you know, I'm a nice man, but I am I'm not a wuss. I don't cry in public, you know. I'm, I'm an old school man. I'm from the Middle East, man. I wasn't brought up in this woke nonsense here, right? Men are men in our world, right? Right, right. I don't cry in public, you know what I mean? I bawled like a little baby. Oh, Paul, she's bawling, I'm bawling. We hug, the whole room goes, oh. And then she's like, between her balls, and you know, when we disengage, she goes, you didn't know this, but when I first came to you all, all that time ago, um, I hadn't paid my mortgage to the bank in months because she was the breadwinner in the family. Her husband's an artist, like some photographer artist dude. He doesn't make a lot of money. He makes money, but not like her. She makes the money that pays the bills, blah blah blah. And so, um, on top of that, she said to me, yeah, the bank was about to foreclose on her home, and my husband and I were fighting like cats and dogs in front of our 3 young boys about money. Our boys were freaking out that we were gonna break up over this. And the family would be no more. I was freaking out that we were going to break up, but you helped me. You believed in me, and you helped me turn it around and succeed and make the money. And we paid off the bank, and we stopped fighting about money. We stopped fighting, period. That saved our family. Thank you. So, dude, Normally, like I said, I would call on other people, but I made an executive decision that nothing was going to top this. And we were going to move from this one story straight to the enrollment opportunity. So I said, sweetheart, Teresa, hand out the registration forms. And like I said, bro, normally some people go, I'm in, I want in. Some people go, nope, not for me, not for me, thanks. And some people are like, well, you got to do some persuading. It almost always goes that way. Okay, right, right. About this time, there were 8 new people in the room. We're selling a $40,000 US program. All 8 immediately started filling out their forms and signed up. All 8. 100%. That's a $40 grand. That is not a low ticket price, you understand what I'm saying, right?

At all. It's a new car, it's private school tuition, right? Absolutely.

Like, I'm talking, this little boy is the best damn salesperson I've ever seen in my life. I had nothing to do with it, bro. It was the story that this woman told. And they're coming in and handing their forms. Now I gotta tell you the rest of the story. This part is gonna blow you away. There were two dudes in the room who had come to me the day before saying, "Nicky, I need to talk to you." Sure, there's a break, right? He says, "Listen, I know you're probably going to have some sort of an enrollment opportunity at some point, and I, I understand that. I didn't fall off the back of the turnip truck," right? That's what these, these dudes were saying. And the one guy in particular, he says, "I just want you to know, and I don't want you to be hurt or upset or offended," 'But I have zero interest in signing up for your enrollment opportunity, and I will not be signing up, so don't get mad.' I said, 'Dude, I'm not gonna get mad, okay? Obviously, whatever you want to do, you do. You do you, bro. You do you. It's all good.' And they're like— they made a point of like, with energy, like, they were the first dudes to hand in their forms. Of course, of course. And The one dude didn't give it to Teresa, he gave it to me. Like, he just like slammed it in the hand, right? And said to me, you son of a bitch. I'm like, whoa, why you call me that, man? That's uncalled for. He says, no, he says, I told you I wasn't going to sign up for your enrollment opportunity. I said, well, then why did you, right? I wasn't going to let him off the hook. And he said He said, well, I changed my mind after what I just saw, because I guess you're not totally full of shit like all the rest of them. And he said, and the truth is, I'm not figuring it out on my own. I need help. And, you know, People always ask me, they go, wow, what, why do you tell the story? I said, because that's the day that I realized it's not about me. God has given me, Nicky Blue, certain skills. There are things I am no good at. Mm-hmm. But what I am good at is I am damn near the best there is on the planet when it comes to speaking on a podcast. Right? And I can say that with a lot of confidence. And I care about my fellow man and woman, and I will go to the ends of the earth to help them win. If they're willing to take a step, I'll take a step with them. I mean, I can't do the work for them. Absolutely. But I will take a— I will take that step. I will help them win, and I will not ever give up on them. And I'm proud of that. And that's why I'm here. And that's why God has given me this purpose in this lifetime on this planet.

Excellent. Excellent. Nikki Blue, son of Napoleon Blue. We want to ask a question that again, I asked to our guests that typically might not see this part of you. Again, you've been vulnerable, you've opened up, and yet, and still, and looking through and doing my research, I couldn't find out this one thing about you, Nikki. What's your middle name? I don't have one. That's why I couldn't find it. Okay, okay, okay. And you know what, that's one of my staple questions, so I appreciate that. I know that it's different, right, depending on where you're from geographically speaking, that instance of a middle name or not. Now, one person told me they didn't have a middle name, but they had multiple first names or something to that effect. So for you, is it just Nikki Blue? Nikki Blue. First and last. That's it. Okay. Well, Nikki Blue, this has been again, one of the most energetic, exciting, and engaging podcast shows that I've had the pleasure of hosting. You know, it's your show. I just get to facilitate it. So I'm glad to be able to have God work through me in that regard. And I'd just like to offer this last minute or so, a minute or two for you to just speak to the audience. I don't want to prompt. I don't have any questions. Uh, this is how we typically land a plane with you just talking to the audience, share with them what you want them to know, what you need them to know. And then also tell them best ways that they can reach out to you?

If you're stuck on a plane and you're not getting off of it, don't try to figure it out on your own. Get help. Don't do 2025 alone. That's, that's the facts I'm going to tell you. And if you want to talk to me, all you got to do is go to my calendar link, which is at ecircleacademy.com/appointment. Tell me you heard me on Paul's show and I'll give you 45 minutes of my time for free. And let's have an honest conversation about where you're at. Let's talk about what it's going to take to get you unstuck, because you deserve better. You deserve to live your best life. You deserve that when you finally do meet your maker, to have been proud of the life you created for yourself and not disappointed that you didn't fully realize your potential. Hmm.

Powerful. Again, Nikki Blue, thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been another episode of The Everyday Entrepreneur. Even though our guests are nothing but legendary, I'll say at this part, uh, Everyday Entrepreneur here on the Polk Replays podcast show. This has been our guest Nikki Blue. I'm your host Paul H. Flowers Jr. And until then, Bye for now.