How Thought Leader Nicky Billou Of The Thought Leader Revolution Activates Profitable Relationship By Serving Your Podcast Network

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority Magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazzard shares strategies, tips and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters.

Authors and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor.

Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital.

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Hey everyone, welcome back to the Binge Factor. I'm Tracy Hazzard and I've got Nikki Ballou today the Thought Leader Revolution podcast and I kind of thought when he first was proposed to me, Thought leadership. Do I really want to talk about that? Another entrepreneur podcast with an overstated name, overused terminology. But this was nothing like I expected and once I listened to the show I knew instantly we were going to hit it off famously and this was going to be quite the philosophical discussion about thought leadership and not one of those cursory surfaced type conversations at all. So he also has other shows. So Nikki Blue has got over 425 episodes. I mean I think just in one show alone, let alone multiple shows. He's been doing this a long time and he really has it dialed into being just a great show, being exactly what it needs to be, but in addition really bringing in this great perspective and deep thought on his market area. So Nikki Ballou is the number one international bestselling author of the book Finish Line Thinking how to Think and Win Like a Champion. The Thought Leader's Journey, A fable of life and the power of Connecting how to activate profitable relationships by serving your network. This is something that he uses really well in the podcasting market. He is an in demand and highly inspirational speaker to corporate audiences such as RBC, Lululemon, Royal LePage and Tour Star Media. He is an advisor and confidant to some of the most successful and dynamic entrepreneurs in Canada. He is the co founder of E Circle Academy where he runs a year long mastermind and educational program working with coaches, consultants, corporate trainers, clinic owners, realtors, mortgage brokers and other service based entrepreneurs positioning them as authorities in their niche. He is the creator of the Thought Leader Heart Leader designation as the host of the number one podcast in the world on thought leadership, the Thought Leader Revolution. Nikki has interviewed over 400 of the world's top thought leaders such as astronaut Chris Hadfield, George Ross of the hit series the Apprentice, Barbara Corcoran from Shark Tank, supermodel and business mogul Kathy Ireland, John Maxwell, world's number one leadership author, Seth Godin, Marie Forleo, Jack Canfield, and Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert. So I think you're gonna have as much fun as I did. I let this conversation go on for a longer than normal interview because I was just really fascinated with where we were going and how we were debating things. And we got into a little discussion here on AI, so you're definitely going to want to listen in. And let's hear from Nikki Ballou, the Thought Leader Revolution. Nikki, thanks so much for joining me. Thought leadership. I just love to talk about this topic. It's so interesting to try to build something that has become a little bit of a catchphrase, right? Thought leadership. And how can you present that in a really different way? And I think you do that. And so by adding the word revolution on, I think you really sort of set the mark for where you want to go. Were you thinking that at the time, or did you just really want to dive deeper into thought leadership?

Well, Tracy, first of all, thanks for having me on the show. It's really great to be here. And thought leadership is a powerful concept. And the best way to really understand it is by drawing a distinction between an expert and a thought leader. So an expert is someone who knows something, but a thought leader is someone who's known for knowing something. Another way to put it is an expert is like a cover band, while a thought leader composes and plays original music. Experts are a dime a dozen. Thought leaders are rare and valuable. Right. And it's important to kind of understand the difference between being a thought leader and having a strong personal brand. I mean, personal brands are great, and they're very important and all that, but thought leadership comes from having taken the time to take a deep dive into your favorite subject, you, and seeing what all the experiences of your life have taught you, what is really at the core of your expertise, at what it is that you're supposed to be able to really help people with.

I love that you're saying this this way, Nikki, because I think too often that's where I say, like, thought leadership has lost its essence because people aren't understanding this true definition of it.

Yeah, well said, Tracy. Well said. So let me give you an example of some thought leaders and some experts in business and in the cultural zeitgeist. So I'll give you a business example first. So in 1998, there were two major American computer companies that were roughly the same size, and they were Dell Computer and Apple Computer, Right? Both were roughly about 8 1/2 billion a year in revenue. Roughly had the same market capitalization, Both made really great products. Now, one of them was led by someone who really took on developing his own thought leadership, what he was all about. And that company grew at a different rate and scaled at a different rate than the other ones. So dell computer in 25 years is now roughly an 83, 84, $85 billion a year company. Very respectable growth.

10X growth, still pretty good.

Yeah, really great. But Apple is worth over 320 billion a year in revenue. Apple is the world's most valuable company and Dell is valuable, but not in the top 50 or I don't even think the top 100 most valuable companies in the world. Why is that? Well, everybody knows that Apple was led by Steve Jobs. Very few people know that Dell was led by Michael Dell. Steve Jobs put himself out there and really created for himself a following of people who wanted to be like Jobs, who wanted to learn from him, who wanted to understand how he thought, who wanted to run their businesses that way. Michael Dell wanted to be in the background. He didn't care for that, and that's fine. But doing it one way could have.

Like, I'm a late 90s girl. I'm older than I look for those of you out there. So I'm definitely older than I look. And I remember so clearly lots of interviews with Michael Dell. Like, I really remember them that, you know, he's a wired magazine a lot. But it didn't have that same energy. You're absolutely right. It was just like, this is how we run things. This is what we think. But it was like Brand and his publicity team forced him out there. It felt like that. Like it was just too prepared. And Steve Jobs would say all kinds of stuff back then. Like, he was a little wild at that point.

He was. But he also had done some original thinking about why Apple existed, why Apple was important, and there was more to Steve Jobs than Apple. He also was a CEO of Pixar. So this is a man whose thought leadership created for him an absolutely incredible legacy. Now, jobs died in 2011. I'm doing this interview on a Mac. I've got an iPhone. My whole family is on Macs and iPhones. I still go online and I watch YouTube videos of Steve Jobs just to inspire myself. I read Walter Isaacson's book Steve Jobs. I didn't do any of that for Michael Dell. And I'm sure Michael Dell's pretty fascinating.

I think there is a book about Dell, but I Don't have it on my shelf either. So that says a lot, right? Absolutely. How did you become a thought leader on Thought Leaders, though? How did that progress for you?

Well, that's a great question. So I'm actually originally an immigrant from the Middle East. I'm a Christian from Iran. When I was a young boy, 11 years old, the Islamic revolution happened in Iran. And the relatively benign, secular dictatorship of the Shah was replaced by the absolute tyranny of the mullahs, who implemented a theocracy. And my late father, God rest his soul, he could see the writing on the wall. He was like, we got to get out of here. He made a plan. He got us out of Iran, and eventually we settled in Canada. And me, I thank God every day for my dad having the foresight to do that. It changed my family's historical and future legacy. Right? And my dad was someone I looked up to. He was an uplifter of humanity. If you knew him and you were looking for work, he'd find your job, he'd make calls and make that happen for you. If you're trying to start a business, he'd sit down with you and go, okay, okay, we're going to make this happen for you. He just invest of himself into you, and he'd even help you find capital. If you worked for him and you were looking to buy a car or a house or an apartment, you didn't have enough money, dad would top you up so you could buy that car, that house, or that apartment. And like, I would look at this and I'd just go, like, wow, man. Who does that? Well, my dad, Napoleon Ballou. He did. And then why? Well, first of all, he was a Christian and he believed he'd been blessed by God. It was his duty as a Christian to share those blessings with others. Secondly, he did it because he could. He had the financial wherewithal. I wanted to be like dad. Dad was an entrepreneur. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Dad believed that. Son, you got to understand that life is about people, not about how much money you make. Business is about people, not money. Right? The first time he told me that, I go, but I thought, dad, business was about money. He goes, no, no, no, no. It's about people. You got to help people. It's about solving problems for people. It's about solving problems for people for a profit. But solving problems for people for profit. And I just made that part of my mantra. Nikki Billow's seven figure three PE Business, success, solution. Right? So you solve acute problems for awesome People for an amazing profit. And if you did that, you had a wonderful business. So to me, that was really, really important. Right. That was kind of my background. And I became a champion for freedom. Coming from tyranny. I just laugh at people in America and in Canada who go, oh, my God, we're so oppressive here. I'm like, what?

You have no idea, right?

Like, are you out of your fricking mind? This is the greatest, freest, most tolerant place on earth. You open your mouth like that, come with me to Iran. I dare you to do it, because they're going to beat you to death in the street. The police. Right? And just gotta help some people.

Put it into context here. Yeah, yeah. I grew up at the age of like 8 to 10 in the height of apartheid in South Africa. And so that gave me a very different worldview like you have. That is just watching something that wasn't right, that isn't the way the world should work. And it provides the context for the rest of your life in a way that this has formed everything you do. And I love that, that that has been the driver for you. I think it makes such a difference.

Yeah, a hundred percent. Thank you.

Yeah. So you've been immersed in this idea of thought leadership from the beginning without really realizing that that's what you were being immersed in.

Yeah, exactly. And then a few years back when I was in business, I had a client, I was a top fitness coach, and I was transitioning into the world of services for business owners. And this fellow and I were talking, he was my last fitness client one day, and I said, you're a pretty smart guy. I really enjoyed talking to you. We should create some sort of mastermind together. And he's like, it's a great idea. Let's call it E Circle for entrepreneur circle, and let's charge for it. And boom. That's how my thought leadership journey started. We started running peer groups for business owners. And we started to realize that there was a lot of good people in business. Good people, big hearts, want to make a difference, but they sucked at business. You know what I mean? They were good technicians, but they sucked the business. They don't understand sales and marketing. They didn't understand financial statements, balance sheets, income statements, cash flow statements. They didn't understand hiring, firing culture. They didn't understand customer service. They understand structure systems. Their businesses were just wobbly. So I looked at this and I'm like, okay, well, I come from a business background, so people need to know they can trust me. So let me Start to position myself that way. So I wrote some books. So I've written and published eight books so far. My ninth one's coming out soon. This is six of them.

Yeah. I was noticing your ninth one on the most recent episode. So you've got another book coming out. Wow, you've been busy.

Yeah, it's been great. But that was a part of me writing primarily. Most of those books are business books. One of them is about having the mindset of a champion and applying it to business. The other one is about the power of connecting and how your network can be the source of your net worth and that most people don't properly utilize their network to generate business. And you probably right now. Probably right now, I could say, if you're listening to this, there's at least a quarter million dollars in annual business in your network right now that you should get that you're not getting. Right.

And then I so agree with that.

Yeah. And then I wrote a book called the Thought Leaders Journey, which really, it's a fable. It's written in the style of the monk who Sold His Ferrari or the Greatest Salesman in the World by Augmentino. And this book goes deeply into what thought leadership is, how to become a thought leader and whatnot. So for me, I started to build some credibility in the marketplace. This is the fellow who wrote all these books. And then I had my podcast, the Thought Leader Revolution.

Well, that's what I want to ask you right now. So, like, when did you decide and how did you decide that podcasting was going to fit. Fit into this model of thought leadership? Like, what was that impetus?

I have a mentor, and my mentor said, start a podcast.

So you're like, start one?

Yeah, start a podcast.

And, you know, 425 plus episodes in right now. And so you've been doing this a while.

I have. I have a second podcast. I do as well. It's not a business podcast. Podcast for Men. So overall, we've released just over 500 total episodes between the two podcasts. And I've been a guest on probably a couple hundred podcasts minimum.

Yeah.

As well. Yeah.

Your name pops up everywhere when you search, that's for sure. So when you approach this podcasting, we hear this a lot. There's a lot of coaches out there go, just start a podcast. There's many, many reasons why they recommend that, but so few actually turn it into something that becomes a thought leadership platform. And that's what you've done here.

Yes.

What do you think the approach that you made that was different. That really made this sort of integral into the growth of your own thought leadership.

Well, this comes from my dad again. And most people that get into coaching, here's the first thought that's in their head is, I want to sell my program. I want to sell my program or my programs. And what they don't understand is people don't buy their way into something, AKA your program. They buy their way out of something, AKA their hellish problem.

The problems. The big, as you put it, they.

Don'T care about your program. They don't care about your expertise. They don't care about that wonderful methodology you developed or all the degrees and credentials next to your name. All they care about is, can you help me stop the pain? And the reason most people fail at being a coach is because they talk about themselves. We're the biggest, we're the best. We've been around the longest. That's the kind of messaging they put out there. And God, like, your eyes glaze over when you ask someone what they do and they go, I'm the biggest, I'm the best. I've been around the longest. Okay, stop talking. Right? But what if instead they said to you, well, you know, what I do is I help really awesome people that are coaches that are kind of making maybe the average amount of money a coach makes, which is 52,000 a year, or between 50 and 100,000. I help him double that in a year or less. Now, if you're a coach and you're in that bracket of 50 to 100 grand in income, that message would be really interesting to you, right? Like, you'd go, I wonder how he does that. Where if he said, I'm the biggest, I'm the best. I've been around the longest. You're like, oh, my God, stop talking. Let me get out of this.

You're going to sell me something. I know it. I know it's very, very true. And I think that actually, that is the big problem with why so many podcasters quit is because they come in there with this mindset of, this is a platform to hawk something instead of this is a platform to build and help people with their problems. Right? And sometimes we don't always know what the real acute problem is. We could discover it on our show if we're listening properly.

Yes. When I have someone come on my show and all they're doing is pitching, I typically don't publish the episode. There was a fellow. I'm not going to mention his name. He's written a lot of books. He's got a little bit of a following. All he did all show long was pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch. And so what I did is I just cut him off at some point. I said, hey, it's been great having you on. Thanks for your time. And I ended the interview and I deleted it. I wasn't going to have it out for somebody to listen to, but the people that I bring on my show right now, these people don't pitch. They come and talk. They don't need to talk about their expertise. They talk about how they help people. I had Lieutenant colonel David Grossman on my show, right? Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman is the author of the book on killing. He created the Killology Institute. He's a man who thought deeply about the impact of killing people on military, law enforcement. Right? Like, think about it. These people have to kill people. They're the good guys, but they have to kill people. There's an impact when you kill a human being.

There's a look at the suicide numbers amongst our service members. It's taking a toll. So we need to pay attention.

So he thought through what this impact was and wrote this tome of a book. And that book sold over a million copies worldwide. And this man then became the go to speaker for law enforcement and for military, not just in the United States, but all over the world. Like, that's a thought leader now. He came on my show, we talked a bit about that, but then he talked about what he's passionate about now, which is sleep. He said, most people sleep is we sleep deprived. I'm sleep deprived. Like, last night I slept like four and a half hours.

This is one of my favorite titles on your episodes because it's so compelling. Why Sleep is a Weapon. So you have Lieutenant colonel Dave Grossman, why Sleep is a Weapon. It totally caught my eye. It was one of the episodes I had to listen to because I want to hear what someone like that thinks. And using that terminology, weapon is so powerful too.

It is. And anyways, I was intrigued and I said, hey, I'd love to write that book with you. That could be your next book on sleep. And he's like, all right, I'm in. It was like, right there. It's like, so over the next couple years, I'm be writing a book with Lt. Col. David Grossman, which to me is.

That's awesome.

You know, I mean, it's just amazing that he's doing that with me. And it's because he came on the show, he delivered some really good content and this week, I had on Jimmy Capra. Jimmy Capra was the chief of global operations for the dea. He was involved in the capture of El Chapo. He was involved in the chase for Pablo Escobar and all kinds of these big, big wheels. He's the chief of global operations. Right. That was this whole shtick. And this dude came on my show and we talked about his principles of leadership, his principles of culture and team building. And he was so good, I brought him on my men's show as well. And then he told me the stories about what he did when he was the chief of global operations. I got to tell you, that was a lot of fun to have folks like that on the show. And then I've had folks like John Maxwell on the show, the world's number one leadership author. You bring good people on the show that are ready to talk about things that make a difference, and people listen and they find it valuable. And they don't come to listen to me so much as they come to listen to the awesome people that I bring on the show. But that also just ironically, gives me a bit of notoriety and gives me a little bit of authority amongst the folks. And that's what allowed me to be able to help so many people in making a difference, in turning their coaching practice into a thought leader practice. Taking something that's worth between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars a year and turn it to something that's worth 300,000, half a million dollars a year. And that's awesome. I love doing that. That's a lot of fun for me.

Yeah, I can hear it come through your show, your energy from the beginning to the latest episodes. And when we shows that get over 400 episodes, been around the block a while, and sometimes the hosts can get a little bit like, I'm done. I've, like, I've soaked through this. But you don't. You have that same excitement and energy. And I think it's because you have such fascinating guests that fascinate you. And that is really, really helpful. And I think it's the binge factor to your show. It's the reason why I want to go back through and not just listen to one episode, but I want to listen to all of them.

That's awesome. Thank you.

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about net worth of guests, because normally I do my three things on the show, which I talk about guests and listeners and monetization and return on investment and stuff. We're going to get to those. But I want to start with this guest one, this idea that you are the net worth of your network. You have a network of all of these guests, too. So what do you estimate yours is at?

You billion? Probably.

Yeah. See, that's what I think. I think you're about to hit, especially with this number of episodes and the caliber of the guests that you've had on, you're definitely talking about over a billion.

Yeah, I think it's probably 3, $4 billion is the net worth of all the guests. I mean, I've had a couple billionaires on the show, so that helps kind.

Of push it over a little bit more. Yeah, and it's not about the money. It's about the impact that that can have.

100%. Tony Robbins talks about the law of proximity, and proximity is power. Who you get to hang around matters. Your inner circle matters. The wandering around, it matters. And then the wandering around, it matters. It's important to be very deliberate in who you let into your circle. If you listen to shows like mine and shows like yours, then you're getting really good people that you're putting into your circles, and that's important. Proximity is power. Get close to the people that you want to be like. That's important.

Do you have any tips for the audience and for those podcasters starting out who want to make sure that they're continually expanding and growing into, like, I don't want to say better and better guests, but like, more renowned guests. More renowned guests, yeah. Do you have any tips for how you do that?

So, look, it's one of my superpowers, is I connect people, right? And for me, I knew a guy, my very first guest was Raymond Aaron, who's, like, called Canada's coach. Right. We were nobodies. But I knew Raymond. I'd done some things for Raymond. Raymond liked me. And I said, hey, man, I'm doing a podcast. Would you like to come on and be our very first guest? He agreed. Right. And then we had a second guest, someone I knew who had spoken at an event, and I asked him. Third and fourth were like speakers I'd met at events. And you just got to go into your existing network, see who you know who's got some notoriety and some renown, and ask them if they'd be willing to come on your show. If you do that, you're going to crush it. You know what I mean? Because once you get some good names on your show, you can just use those names and name drop shamelessly to other people that you want on your show. So the fact that I've had a lot of big names on my show makes it easier for me to attract other big names to come onto my show.

Success begets success, right. In that kind of model. But how many of them? And I think you're. I mean, my instinct says your percentage is going to be really low, but very few of them probably asked you what the reach, the circulation of your show was.

Honestly, I've only ever had five people ask me that, period. And I think I've only had one of those five people that I brought onto my show.

Yeah. When they ask, I don't bring them on. Exactly.

Yeah. So, like, one of the things I say to folks is, I say, look, I don't jump through hoops to bring people on my show. It's either a fit or it's not. You either want me. And the same. I don't jump through hoops for people. I was introduced to someone today, and he was a production person on a podcast that I was looking to get on. And I didn't realize I was being introduced to the production person. I was polite to the fellow, but honestly, if I'd have known he was the production person and not the host, I would have never gone on that meeting. No offense to this individual, but they're not a decision maker. I only deal with decision makers. Deal with decision makers. And if you want to come on my show, love to have you on. But if you're wanting to qualify me and have me jump through hoops, nope, forget it. Not going to happen. I know who I am. I know what I've done. You can go in two minutes and go look me up, and that should be enough to let you know whether you want to be on the show. But don't try to put yourself in a position like this, because it's not the kind of energy I want on my show anyways. I want people that are loving, kind, free giving people.

So it's going to be a better show anyway, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. No, I think that's so true. But I think podcasters, especially in the early days, and you didn't have this problem because you had a different mindset to begin with and you had the exposure and experience of your father that you just come in with this energy that says it doesn't matter that my show is just starting because it's going to be successful. We're going to turn it into something so there's not this fear of, well, they're going to ask me about it, and then I have to tell them you're my second guest. You don't even have to go there because that's powerful. Just being a second guest is powerful because they're on a train to some place. Great.

Absolutely. 100%.

I think that happens now. Listeners like, it's the one thing podcasters are always like seeking is more and more listeners and everything like that. And of course you have your E Circle Academy, so you do want your listeners who are going to join your community and all of those things. But I pretty sure that your answer is going to be that that's not what's driving you, but audience matters to you. I can tell by listening to your show. In what way do you consider that audience and in what are you putting into that to make sure that they are helping you get more listeners?

Well, look, I think if I keep giving them good content that is relevant to their lives and their businesses, then they're going to want to continue listening. And then at the end of my shows I go, look, if you enjoyed the show, give us a, like a review, a rating. Share it with somebody who you think would benefit from it. You probably know somebody who'd like the message. Share this episode with them. That works, that helps.

I like that you do that personally. So for all of you listeners out there, Nikki does it personally, like he's telling them, hey, if you got something from this, make sure you share it. And I think that's better than just the outro doing it for you.

Yeah, 100%. 100%. The other thing that I think can work is you can do things like run ads on places like Facebook and Instagram and say, hey, we got a show, come check it out. That's the sort of thing that I think would be pretty valuable for a lot of folks. In fact, for my men's show, I may run some ads just to get some folks to come and check us out on Instagram and Facebook because I really would like to take our show to another level.

So I find that this works better and this is something that I've seen in the patterns of it because we've done this many times where we've watched clients do it and it doesn't work so well because it's hard to track because of the way people subscribe to shows. It's hard to have this direct click through link to being able to follow. Lots of people just go into their podcast app and your listeners do grow, but you got to watch it over time. You don't see the direct click through that you normally see in an Ad. However, the exception are men's shows. Men tend to take recommendations straight from an ad more than women do. And it's an unusual phenomena, but we've not seen it work on the same kind of show for women that we have for men, and I'm not sure what that says about it. I think maybe us women are a little more skeptical of social media advertising and we depend on someone else recommending it to us like we will for women.

That's. Someone said it to me.

I will absolutely subscribe and check it out, but when I see an ad, I doesn't, it kind of makes me wonder whether or not it's a lot of smoke and mirrors and a lot of advertising and not a lot of value. Like, I'm skeptical about that, but I find men don't do that. And that's a really interesting kind of phenomena. So it might work really well for your men's show. You'll have to try it. And come tell us 100. What's the men show called? Let's tell everybody about that.

It's called the Sovereign man. And there's two podcasts with that name. So mine's got crossed swords and a shield, and the other one is a man with a briefcase.

So a little bit different.

A little bit different. Yeah. So ours is a pretty edgy show. It's a little bit politically incorrect. We do have, I think 20% of our listeners are women, which is interesting. Some of the women that listen to our show love our message. Some of them hate it, but they listen, so they're listening.

Yeah. Always been one of my favorite things, the Howard Stern movie, whatever. I forget it was Private Parts. And I love how they said it's like the people who hate them listen even more like. And so I love that about that idea that you do have people who trying to get your viewpoint, trying to understand what's going on, and yet they hate it, but they still listen. That's powerful.

Yeah, it's good stuff. I like it.

So now, tying into this monetization or return on investment question that I ask, and obviously that multibillion dollar value of what you've built here is a definite return on investment net worth. But what kind of more direct things do you see in the growth of E Circle Academy and the sales of the books or anything like that, where you see a little bit more direct result from the podcast?

Well, I'll give you one example. A few years ago, a fellow called me that I knew, but I didn't know him well, and he asked Me to meet him. And he said, yeah, I'd like to coach. I'm like, okay. We sat, we met. He was really eager, and he was a multimillionaire already. And we made an agreement, we signed a deal. I became his coach. And as we were doing that, I just said, what made you call me? Because I was curious. I knew him slightly, but I didn't know him really well. But he said, oh, I've been listening to your podcast for a year. Feel like I know you.

Yeah, they feel like they know you right damn well. I just said this with my client base, is that too often people quit their show without really thinking this all the way through.

Yeah, agreed.

Are you getting faster closing going on? There's a whole bunch of measurements that if you really want to measure it like it matters to you, you could do that. Have nothing to do with your download numbers like that. I never even look at that.

And I had never download numbers don't mean much, honestly. They don't mean much.

No. You had a millionaire listening to your show. Like that means something.

It does. It does. And he became a client. And because of him, I probably generated about 300,000 in business from him and from other people that came to me. So it was one listener did that. My show has generated over seven figures in business for me. And since June, me guesting on shows has generated almost a quarter million dollars in business for me.

I think people really underestimate the power of guesting when you already have a show because you see more growth on your own show as well. That translates into much more. I mean, because if I heard you on a show and then chose to listen to your show, that's even more powerful flow through than me just picking up your show randomly.

100%. Very well said.

Yeah. So. Well, I'm so impressed by the sort of overall trajectory of the way that you run your show, too, where you have interviews and solo shows, you call them nuggets. How does that come about? And why are you doing that? Because I find that a lot of people don't do it from the beginning, but they do it over time. They sort of develop into that. Did that happen with you as well?

Yeah, it did. So there's a friend of mine who has probably the biggest men's show in podcasting. His name's Ryan Mickler. It's called Order of Man, and he does three shows a week on his podcast. So one show's with a guest, One show is with someone on his team, and they do Q and A and Then the third show is he does what he calls Friday Field Notes, which is a solo show. And he goes around and he basically gives people field notes on what he's thinking about and teaches them something. I really like that. So I thought I want to create Thought Leader Nuggets. My version of Friday Field Notes and the Thought Leader Nuggets are going to be about a nugget of information that could be valuable for whoever's listening to the show. So when I do that show, I typically don't video record it. It's just audio. But it's a powerful episode because what I do on that show is it's usually five to 15 minutes long and it's laser focused on one topic.

Yeah, you had, in fact, your most recent one is Focus is the name of the topic. But to me, this is really where I got the sense of you being a thought leader of thought leaders. It's really. I can see the tie. When you listen to enough episodes, I can see the tie where you're reflecting on what you heard from your guest a couple of weeks ago and you're now translating that into a nugget. So you're taking it, you're synthesizing it, and you're putting it into your own thought process.

Yeah, 100%. It's interesting you say that because one of the things I'm going to do now that Dave Grossman and I are talking about sleep is I'm going to start doing some episodes on sleep. Just what I'm learning from my own life, some of the things Dave taught me. I think all of that's going to be super, super powerful stuff. Coming onto your own show with a good idea of things that are interesting to you will give you some passion in how you speak and then people will want to listen. Right. So you want to talk about and explore concepts that are interesting. I think that's one of the reasons Joe Rogan is so successful, because he brings people on the show that he's really interested in talking to. He likes having conversations, he likes learning. So Joe Rogan's show is interesting. Not because Joe Rogan's particularly brilliant. I actually think reasonably smart. But I wouldn't call him a mental giant by any stretch of imagination. He's not. But he's smart. No one's going to deny that he's not smart. He's smart, but he's curious. His superpower is his curiosity. Super curious. And he asks good questions and he does good follow ups and he goes deeper into things and he wants to understand things. And he brings people on the show that know things about the subjects that he finds interesting. So when someone's on the show and you're listening to Joe Rogan interview them, what's cool about the show is that Joe really gives that person a chance to shine and talk about what they're good at. And I think I work hard on being that kind of person when I interview somebody on my show.

Yeah, I think that it's so interesting that you're a prolific author and a prolific podcaster at the same time. So you've got both going on. Have you been doing some more tie ins to both launching the books and or creating the books with your podcast show? Is it helping you or are they going hand in hand in sort of developing your thoughts and your.

Sure, from a launch point of view they are. Because when I launch the books, I take excerpts from the books and I make them into thought leader nugget pieces. And people listen to that and they go buy the book and all that jazz. To me, everything I do, though, goes hand in hand with building my thought leadership and my authority. Right. Like, so I'll bring back like this book, right. The Thought Leaders Journey. So having written this book and having done my podcast, if somebody really is looking at thought leadership and how that can help them, well, they'll go, okay, well, who talks about thought leadership? Let me go Google it. Oh, who's this Nikki Ballou guy? Damn, he's got a show about thought leadership. Okay, let me check that out. Oh, he's also been a guest on all these shows. He wrote a book about thought leadership. All right, let me check this guy out. And when they go and they see all that and they consume some of that content, if it resonates with them, they're going to be interested in having a deeper conversation, deeper engagement with me, either through listening to my shows or maybe even wanting to jump on a zoom meeting with me. And that's how I grow my business. Right? Like, if you think about it like, thought leadership is about being known for knowing something. Let's just say you've got a great business, but let's say you want to make seven figures a year. Let's say that's your deal. Like, darn it, I want to make seven figures a year and I'm just going to make this number up. Let's say right now you're at a quarter million a year. Right? Let's say you're reliably making a quarter million dollars a year. If you want to Make a million dollars a year. Right. And you're thinking, maybe thought leadership can help me do that. How can I utilizing that? Is that going to work? Then you find out about me, you listen to some of my stuff. You go, okay, I might want to jump on a phone call with them. By the time you and I actually jump on that phone call, you'll have probably spent 2, 3, 4, 5 hours already exploring the concepts that I talk about. And so when I'm talking to you, the questions I'm going to ask you are all about what you want as an outcome and what's prevented you to date from achieving that outcome. And I'm going to go deep and really get that going for both your benefit and my benefit. But if I understand as an example that you're somebody who's, you've been really, really good at getting to a certain level, but then you've, like, plateaued as an example, I'm going to go into a why do you plateau? Tell me more about it, what happened? And I want to get deep into why that is. And then the final thought of it is, maybe you're really good at what you do, but you don't have any more bandwidth because you sell your programs too cheaply.

And if that's happening, prices, yeah, you earned it, right?

But I can tell you to raise your prices and you can go, great, but are you going to go home and own that? Or is your limiting belief around what you're worth to charge going to kick in? So if that's the case, I'm going to say, look, I'm going to help you own raising your fees. So you're going to work with fewer people than you're working now, but you're going to make three times as much money now if. How much longer? And the question I'd ask you in the call is, how much longer are you willing to work this hard for this little money? And I want to get you to the point where you're like, I'm done with that crap.

Okay, let's go, we're moving. I love it.

And that's it. When I do that with you or with anybody I do that with, they say yes to themselves. They're not saying yes to me, to my program, and nobody cares about my damn program. They care about themselves and what they're going to get out of it. They're saying, I don't talk about my program except very briefly when they go, okay, so how does this work?

Then?

I tell them briefly, like, two minutes. This is how it works. This is the investment. Are you ready? How can I support you in saying yes to your dream and saying yes to getting out of this plateau that you've been on? That's what I talk about. Of course that's what they're going to say yes to. They're not going to say yes to your program and giving you 10 grand, 20 grand, 50 grand. They're going to say yes to being unstuck and never again working too hard for too little money.

Right?

And if that's the case and they invest $20,000 in your program and they get out of that $20,000 investment, they get $100,000 return, a $200,000 return. That's amazing. Like I tell people, I can get pretty much anybody who's got real expertise, right? Let's be clear. Someone who's got something that they, that makes a difference for people and delivers an outcome. I mean, let's make that clear, right? I can take anybody from wherever they are to a half a million, to two and a half million a year in three years or less. And the total investment is $100,000 over a three year period. So if I told you, hey, Tracy, would you be willing to invest $100,000 if you had a really powerful chance of turning that into a permanent million dollar a year income within three years? If your answer was anything other than an immediate resounding yes, 10x return.

Like who's like, yeah, you don't get that anywhere nowadays.

Yeah, that's 10x return every year. Every year. Right. I could. So it gets.

And you're not even spending the money except over 3. So yeah, you're spreading your investment out at 2. This is a thing that I really do think that so often I see is that like when you talk to people and I guarantee you, you're seeing this pattern of behavior, that's where their limiting belief is becoming clear to you. It's not clear to them because they're in the middle of it. Right. But there are two things that I see very often happen when someone plateaus. And the one is that this limiting belief has been happening to them again and again and again. And it is stopping them all along the way. It might be stopping them in different ways. It might be happening in the relationship and happening them in their fitness goals and happening them in their business goals. Right. Like it may be a pattern happening that way. And then the second thing is there are some people who hit what I would call like technical knowledge, tactical goals, and typically it's A do it yourself mentality. That is the limiting belief side, holding them back from getting the right support and help. Or it's a. I've been burned so many times by so many experts, and I just can't trust anyone anymore. Like, those are the things that happen in there. But there's something missing in their technical execution of things. And it's typically the thing that someone's out there selling a program on, so they don't tell you that that's what you're missing. So, like, they're waiting for you to buy the program so that they can reveal to you that that's what you're missing 100%.

And here's the deal with somebody like, this is one of my pet peeves is the charlatan marketers who are good at selling the sizzle. But zero steak. You bite into it, you burn your mouth. There's no steak there. I sell steak. I sell steak. People bite in the steak and they get juicy. Medium rare, Texas grade AAA beef.

I'm not a vegetarian, so my mouth is watering. Yes, exactly.

There you go. That's what you sell. And when somebody comes to the table and they've been burned, those are my peeps. Those are the people that I help. Because there's a woman who came to us a few years ago, first name's Adele. Just like the singer. Adele had been a coach who'd spent $125,000 with zero return. Zero return. I see on experts to help her. Zero return. So when she met us, right, she came to us and we showed her what we could do. We said, look, we can help you. Come work with us. And she says, okay, I'm trusting you. This better work. And I'm like, it'll work. And it did work for her. And she went from making between $500 and 2,000amonth to making between 20,000 and 50,000amonth within three months. She did that right because we knew exactly what she was doing wrong and we helped her do it right. And we locked arms with her. And we didn't just say, okay, you go do it. We were there every step of the way.

That's a part of the problem in a lot of the programs. That's right. Like a lot of people just leave people behind and only concentrate on the success stories they're seeing in their community or their group. And that doesn't help.

No.

Everyone needs their own pace, but they might need a hand.

They do. And the truth of the matter is that when somebody's had a situation where they've been burned many, many times. It's going to be harder for them to trust. But at the end of the day, you got to show them that you're sincere, you're authentic, you're real, you care about people and that you're going to do everything with them. They got to do the work. So they can't just like pay money and not do anything that doesn't work. They got to do the work. But as long as they do the work, the results will be there. And that's what we've noticed and that's what we've been able to help people achieve. Very important.

The episode that's going to follow this one is an episode that's what we call a crossover episode. So it's the very rare, I'm going to call it like solo show. Like you do your nuggets, we do like a couple a year where we do a crossover. And it's just because the topic is so relevant here that I'm mentioning it and it's going to happen to follow yours anyway, so it's perfectly timed. But we're going to be talking about this sort of AI chatgpt world and the reality is, is that thought leadership and AI can't connect. There's no way that, that you're going to create original thought from a chat bot from an AI. The role of a thought leader is going to be so much more powerful. The role of what you do on your podcast is going to be so much more powerful in this AI driven marketplace and world. And it kind of shocks me, the ones who we consider to be thought leaders in our world already are. I think their charlatan side is starting to show up to me like their trend following side because they just want to make sure they go viral on social media because they're talking about it is starting to show up if they actually think that the Gary Vee has been coming out. Like lots of people are talking about that. And I think that it's dangerous because they will not be really using it if they're going to maintain their thought leadership. What's your thought about that?

Sort of this AI found out about ChatGPT myself. I've been using it for the last few days, asking us some questions. I had it write a love song, love poem for my lady. And I actually did a pretty good job with the love poem. I sent it to my girl. I told her I didn't write this because I've written her quite a few poems and she says, oh my God. Yeah, this was AI. And there are questions you can ask the AI algorithm platforms, which are good questions and they come up with good comprehensive answers. But if you outsource your thinking to that, it's lazy. It's totally lazy. You gotta do original thinking on your own. You can do the research. Yeah. You can get those guys to come up and give you good ideas. You can use some of those ideas and incorporate them into what you do. But you gotta do your own thinking. You totally gotta do your own thinking. If you don't do your own thinking, you're screwed because they're going after something that they can find and search in a database. Right. And so I was on chat.

That means it's out there in a lot of places, right. That I want you to hear what Nikki's saying here. Like it's out there. Like it's already in the mainstream. So it's not coming up with an original viewpoint, a way up forward.

Right. And I hate to say this, but the folks that have built these come from a left wing culture primarily. And there are certain topics they go, nope, that's hate speech. And I'm like, no, it's not.

You got.

You can't offend anybody.

And I'm like, well, and if you don't.

Yeah.

Like you and I both know that you gotta see that to know what to do with that.

So listen, and number one is hate speech is something a lot of people use to shut up. Opinions they don't agree with, they go, that's hate speech to shut you up. And I'm like, I don't agree. That's hate speech. That's my speech. And there's something called the First Amendment over here, right? I'm not using the First Amendment to put your life at risk or steal from you. I'm just giving you opinions you don't like, deal with it. And now AI is telling me, oh, no, this opinion. Come on, give me a break. Right? So there's issues that I have with that as well. And I think it's important to understand AI is pretty cool. There's some things about AI that can be really useful in helping you run your business. I think that's great, but you still got to do your own thinking. You can't outsource your thinking. Thinking is the highest paid work in the world. Why? Because so few people engage in it.

And that's why being a thought leader is so revolutionary and so powerful. So, Nikki Blue, thank you for coming on this show and talking thought leadership revolution and putting out two amazing podcasts and being so prolific in it.

Thanks for having me on your show. It was an honor to be here. You're an incredible host. I really enjoyed myself.

So we touched on all kinds of things here, right? I mean, how AI fits into podcasting, tech stuff, tactics, problems, people in profit. Like we just talked about so much here. There's a lot to unpack. So I really hope that you understand why I let that one go on, right? Why I really let that dive in. Because I just think when you've got a podcaster who's been doing this as long as I have, who's got lots of episodes like I have, you have a really deep knowledge of what's going on. And really, at the end of the day, the net worth is his net work of all of the guests that have been on his show. And he's really mined that well and turned that into into amazing community and a connection points of which he can do something with and really create that big value that he's going for. So I'm really looking forward to seeing where he goes with it, how he keeps doing, how he keeps growing it. What's next? The book that's next, right? So thank you. Blue one to follow, one I'm going to be listening to as I go into the future as well. So if you are interested in connecting with Nikki, then you're going to want to go to the bingefactor.com, check out the episode and check out all the links and resources so you can find him easily. Or go to your favorite podcast app and download the Thought Leader Revolution podcast right now. Thanks everyone for listening. I'll be back with another thought leader in the podcasting space next time here on the Binge Factor.

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