How a Molotov Cocktail changed a life's trajectory | Success Redefined

Imagine being eleven years old, a Molotov cocktail crashing through your living room window, landing at your feet — and the only reason you're alive today is because your father grabbed it fast enough. That moment set in motion a life built on one unshakeable belief about the true heroes of freedom, and a passion that every single one of them deserves a champion in their corner.

My guest today is Nicky Billou - an Iranian-born Christian immigrant, bestselling author, speaker, podcast host, and founder of eCircle Academy, known for helping entrepreneurs become recognised thought leaders and grow profitable, purpose-driven businesses.

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About Nicky Billou:

A two-time New York Times bestselling author, he is an in-demand and highly inspirational speaker to business  audiences such as Wealth Genius, Entrepreneurs Organization (EO), TEC/Vistage, RBC, Lululemon, Royal LePage,  and TorStar Media. He is an advisor and confidante to some of the most successful and dynamic entrepreneurs in Canada. He is the founder of eCircle Academy (www.eCircleAcademy.com ) where he runs a yearlong Mastermind & Educational program working with heart-driven 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 LeaderTM Designation.

http://Www.eCircleAcademy.com/appointment

The link is to a complimentary breakthrough call, to get clear on why you are stuck in your business and have a roadmap to get you unstuck and to the next level. 

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MS BELLA ST JOHN

✨ AI Literacy and Mindset Strategist | Professional Artist

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~~~ Success Redefined ~~~

PS:  No animals were harmed in the creation of this video.  Made with recycled data. 🌼 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Hello.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

There he is. Hello, my friend.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

How are you?

SPEAKER_02 3:49

I'm very well, and you?

SPEAKER_00 3:52

When I get to speak with the great dollars, I'm fantastic and amazing.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

Back at you, Nikki. Back at you. So the way that we'll do this is I'll pre-record the intro so we don't have to go, he did this and he did this and he did that, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we basically will pick up and we'll just go straight in as though like a fly in the walls just entered part way through our conversation.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Sounds good.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Any any questions, sir, before we kick off? Two.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

How long are we going for?

SPEAKER_02 4:27

The whole thing is like I'm I have a hard stop at half past.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

At half past. Okay, can we make sure we leave like three minutes at the end just so we can get to connect a little bit more?

SPEAKER_02 4:38

But by all means, yeah. Because the interview itself is usually only between 10 to 25 minutes max. Most I for a lot of them I attempt to make it around about the 15 to 18 minute mark. Um, unless you get caught in a conversation where it just and you're going, I need to wrap now because I can be on my next my next interview. Most definitely.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Right. All right, let's roll.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

Alrighty. So this is just my note to myself visually, so I know where to pick up from an editing perspective.

unknown 5:09

All right.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

So Nikki, something that I ask a lot of my guests, when you were growing up, what was your what was it like for you growing up? What sorts of role models did you have? And what did success look like for you when you were when you were young?

SPEAKER_00 5:26

That's a great question. Actually, I was originally an immigrant from the Middle East, a Christian from Iran. And when I was 11 years old, the Islamic revolution took place in Iran. And the moderate, progressive, awesome government of uh the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Razapadabi, was overthrown by a repressive Nazi-like regime of the mullahs. And there were literally gun battles going on in the streets near my home. Um, my mom and dad were freaking out, but one day their freak out factor went up a thousandfold because there was this big crash through our living room window. Glass shards flew everywhere, and this object landed next to my feet. Now I'm 11, I don't know what it is. It was a bottle full of some liquid with a rag in top that was burning. It was a molot cocktail. My dad saw what it was, grabbed it, pulled out the burning rag. And that's the only reason that I'm alive today to speak to you. And they got us out of Iran super quick. They said this isn't a place to raise a Christian family. And at first, I'm 11, right? Maybe you can relate. I didn't want to leave my buddies, my friends. But as time goes on, I started to realize what an incredible sacrifice mom and dad made because they left behind everything and everyone they knew for a chance at a better life for me and my two younger brothers. And I saw that they had taken us from a legacy of tyranny to a legacy of freedom. And I believe inside every human breast beats the living heart of freedom. Every woman and man on this earth yearns to breathe free, to chart their own course, to march to the tune of their own drummer. And as I'm growing up, I'm seeing these two incredible role models showing me the way on how to be a good and righteous human being. My father in particular was an entrepreneur, and he would tell me every day, son, life is about people, not money. And I go, okay, dad. He said, son, even business is about people, not money. And I go, come on, dad, what are you talking about? How's that possible? You need money to do business, right? He said, That's true, son, but you need people to need money because all business is, is you solve problems for people for a profit. That is the purpose of business. And my father would tell me, son, that woman in front of you is someone's daughter. She's someone's wife, she's someone's sister. She is someone's mother. She's a hero to somebody, and maybe someone just like you let her down in life or business. It is your job, son, to restore her faith in humanity. And how do you do that? By believing in her and believing in people. We all need someone to believe in us because there are days where our self-belief wobbles and that little spark of belief can turn into a roaring fire, and you're off into the races. And I got into entrepreneurship because I saw that the heroes of freedom were entrepreneurs, the heroes of the world were entrepreneurs, and the ones with the guts, with the vision to go out there and make their dreams come alive, and nobody's on their side. The governments are against them, they crap on them all day long. 24-7, 365. They need champions. And I decided I was gonna be one of those champions. I was gonna be one of those people who'd find the good, big-hearted humans that move the human race forward, and I was gonna take a stand for them. I was gonna show them how to be more visible, I was gonna show them how to market better, I was gonna show them how to sell better because a lot of people go into business and they're like, I know what I'm doing, but I don't know the business, especially sales. They don't want to be one of those pushy people, one of those people with commission breath. And I'm thinking, my God, I know how to be a good salesperson and be none of those things. And I'm gonna teach people this because you gotta learn how to sell. If you don't sell, you don't have a business. And most people get into business and they want to avoid selling, they want to market, they want to do social media, they want to do videos, they want to run ads, they want to do everything but have a conversation with another human being and ask him for money. And I'm here to look him in the eye and say, that's not gonna work. It's like going to the gym. You're only gonna get muscles if you do the reps, and the reps in sales is talking to people, prospecting, having conversations, getting good at getting into people's problems, getting good at overcoming fear and objections, and getting good and asking them to take a stand to solve their problems and make their dreams come alive by your help through your offerings. And that, my dear lady, is who I am and what I'm all about.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

I love that. And one of the things that I find with my clients when they're talking about the whole selling thing, you know, is just make your make your offer, make your service, make the way you present so good. They want to buy it, then you don't have to sell anything. And that speaks exactly to what you were just talking about.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Exactly. Beautifully said.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

So tell me a little bit more about the work that you're doing today.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

So let me give you a brilliant and beautiful example of a client of mine that is a real estate investor. Now, this guy is going against the grain because these days in the world of real estate investors, the buzzword is multi-family. Have you heard this? Multifamily, this, multi-family that, multi-family, multi-family. I invest in multi-family. But he doesn't invest in multi-family, he's going against the grain. He invests in R V parks. Who knew that was a thing? Who knew that was a thing? But it's a thing. And this guy had a program he wanted to put out there. But as good as he was at doing RV park investing, he and I'm going to use the technical business term, he sucked. That's the technical business term at selling his expertise to other people. And he's like, Nikki, I want to learn how to sell coaching. I don't know how to sell, I don't know how to raise money, but it's not the same. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I looked at him and I said, I can help you. And so this guy had been trying for four years to sell, and he was unable to sell. Within four weeks of us getting together, I made him do all the things that turn into results in sales. I made him listen to my sales training and the structure of a sales call, made him listen to objection handling. I made him do mock calls with other people in the room. I'd watch those mock calls and give him real-time feedback, and I'd have him record his calls and bring him to me, and I'd dissect those calls, give him real-time feedback, and make him go out there and do it again. Imagine a great personal trainer in a gym, the kind of person that pushes you past your pain points and gets you out of feeling sluggish and fat and not attractive to feeling good and fabulous and strong and beautiful. That's what we did for him in sales. And in just four weeks, he made eight sales. He made $30,000. But the story doesn't end there. He rested on his laurels for two and a half months. He made bupkiss in sales. And I sat with him and I said, We can't have this anymore. Let's roll. And I made him do all this again. I listened to his sales calls and they sucked. Technical business term again. They sucked. I sat with him and I made him learn how to do it right. And he did. He took the coaching. And within 31 days, he made $80,000 in coaching sales. $80,000. What I did for him is I gave him some belief. What I did for him is I made him do the reps. You need to do the reps. You have to embrace selling. Selling is your best friend. That's the long and the short of it.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

And I love what you mentioned as well about being there as his coach for that. So so often people will go, oh, I don't know about that. But then they will perfectly accept that an elite golfer needs a coach or an elite tennis player needs a coach, or you but they balk at the idea of somebody in business for themselves or somebody in senior leadership or whatever it happens to be as needing a coach. And so it's like, oh, people, it just you need to realize that this is somebody who knows, knows the what and the when and the how and can help you spot it within yourself. And that's really important because if you're looking at you might say, okay, well, I have a mirror, I can see within myself this. No, but you're only seeing through your filter, you're seeing through your lens. That's the benefit of having that coach to point those things out for you.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

And in the mirror, all you can see is the image in the mirror. You can't see what's behind you, you can't see what's in your blind spot. And the beauty of having someone who cares, who truly cares, cares enough to not care whether you're going to get mad at them for pushing you out of your comfort zone, is that that person is going to make sure that you get better, that you improve. Because that's the job of a great guide, a great mentor, a great coach, is to get you from this level person to this level person. Because this level person is not gonna win. They're gonna continue to flail about to struggle in mediocrity. And in the most uncommon of hours, they're gonna see their dreams fritter away into the ether. But this level person is the kind of person that sees and understands that growth happens through adversity. Growth happens through pain. Have you never heard the phrase growing pains? They're a real thing. The pain has to be there for growth to be real. If your business is struggling, if you're not getting in the revenue that you need, if you don't have enough clients, you've got to learn how to serve people to their dream. And to ask them to work with you with a price tag attached.

SPEAKER_02 15:46

My tagline for that is that success is no longer just about doing more, to be more and to have more and to have more and to have more. It's to do what makes your heart sing in a way that makes your bank account happy. And that means that means showing up. You know, the bank account needs to be happy as well. And that's the part where with what Nikki's talking about with regard to the sales piece in the middle. Or as I said to my other client, if they have a visceral reaction to sales, and a lot of people do, it's a lot of people, you know, particularly older people, they they have remnants of the old Tom Hopkins way of things. And there are some wonderful, wonderful lessons from that. But it's you know, a lot of people go, oh, the sales. Look at it from the buyer. Look at it from the fact that you need to be so passionate about what you do, you need to be so good at what you do, you need to be reaching out to so many people about what you do that they feel they have no other option but to buy from you, and then you don't have to sell a thing.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Amen. Amen. You've got to be out there doing what you do well, but you've got to be out there with the point of view that you're gonna do whatever it takes in order to get your business to work, and to for your business to work, you've got to embrace selling, you've got to stop treating sales as a four-letter word. There is there are two types of four-letter words. There's the one that starts with F and ends with K, and there's the one that starts with L and ends with E. So approach it from the point of view of the latter. Because to me, sales is an act of love, first and foremost, for yourself, because you love yourself enough to want to do what you got to do to have your dreams, the best version of you, come alive. And you can't do that by avoiding the one thing that makes that happen. It's like going to the gym and staring at the weights, going, I'm gonna get fit. No, you're not. No, you're not. You're gonna get fit when you lift the weight, when you jump on a stationary bike, when you do a yoga class, when you change your diet, when you get proper sleep, when you control the thoughts that go into your head, that's how you're gonna get fit. Your business is gonna grow when you learn how to sell, when you go out there and sell, when you learn how to be visible in the marketplace, when you learn how to value yourself and not undercharge, which so many people do. Things take time for you to learn and implement. And I'm sorry, but going on social media and posting all day long is not gonna get you any clients. I'm sorry to tell you this. All those big Instagram followers you see with a million, two million, ten million followers, that's not how they make their money.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And look at it from the perspective as well. Something that I often say to my clients. If if we're in this conversation about, oh, I don't know if I should launch this or if I should go to this and and promote my my offer or my my business or whatever it is. Do you believe in what you do? Well, yeah, of course I do. Then do you want nobody else to have an opportunity to see it or do it or whatever? Or if it's the flip side, do you believe in what you do? Well, kind of, well, kind of isn't good enough. If you don't believe it, why the heck should I?

SPEAKER_00 19:06

Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

So if you believe in what you have to offer, let people know about it. And the more you let people know about it, the more they're going to be able to engage with you. And engaging with you, if you present yourself well, if you look at it from the other person's perspective as to what do they really need? What can I do to be of service? How can whatever it is that I do or that I have or that I've built or whatever be of service to this individual to make their life better? Then that's going to lead to them buying whatever it is that you have on offer.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Amazing. I had this other individual that I worked with many years ago, and this was a woman who was a coach and she was very, very good at what she did. But her business markers were terrible. On a good month, she'd make $2,000. On a bad month, she'd make $500. Okay. And she was trying everything to grow her business. She hired mentors, she invested in programs, she invested in ads. $125,000. Zero, zero return. Her husband, who's a good guy, said to her, You know what? I love you, sweetheart, but you're spending us into the poor house. I need your credit card. And she gave it to him. But she was really upset because she said, I know I can help people. I know I need to help people. Well, someone told her about us. She met me and I saw what she was doing. The problem is, all these programs were not designed to help her. They were designed to make the people that sold them rich. They're charlatan marketers. Right? If they deliver for you, it's a happy accident. And I told her, I know what to do to help you. And I showed her. She said, okay, she signed up with me, but she said, I'm trusting you, this better work. No, straight up she said that this better work. And I looked her in the eye and I said, Look, I can't guarantee anything, but I can guarantee you this that I will do everything in my power to help you make this work. You take one step, I'll take three. You take two steps, I'll take ten. We started working together. And I realized that this woman's superpower and magic was in person and not ads. And I told her, go to events and do events. People love you when they meet you. They can't get that over an ad, they can't get that over a website. And call people. Have coffee with them. Speak to them. In her first month with me, she did twenty grand. Six months into our work together, she showed me her sales dashboard. Year over year. It was over fifty-two thousand dollars that month. And a year ago, it was just over five hundred. She had one hundred-folded her results. Am I a magician? I'm not a magician. But I care. And I know what she needed to do. What she needed to do was she needed to stop spending money on these goddamn charlatan marketers. And she needed to get in front of people and talk to them. And she needed to focus on one offer at a time and not I can do X, Y, and Z, be like the Swiss Army knife of coaching. That doesn't work. And that's how she made her sales happen. By the way, when I met her, she was 56. She was a grandma. So this wasn't some young thing with no responsibilities, all the time and energy in the world. This was a woman who was at a stage in her life where she had plenty of other responsibilities, but she absolutely wanted to make her mark in the world. And she knew she was the right person to serve these people. And that's what made it work. That's what made it work. A lot of people say to me, So, Nikki, man, what makes you special? You know? And I go, listen. Table stakes. I've written, published 11 books. I got two more that are, you know, in the offing coming out. I do two podcasts. I've been a guest on over a thousand podcasts. I've had hundreds of clients. You know, I've gotten great results for people. I'm the world's foremost expert on podcast guesting, yada yada, yada, yada. But a lot of people say crap like that. Let's be honest. Everybody puts their best foot forward with their credentials and everything they've done. And that's fair. That's what you ought to do. Put your best foot forward. I had a client of mine say something to me, and this isn't even in my main area of business. So I write books and I've collaborated with a few people. So every couple of years I find a guy who's really rich, has a great idea for a book, doesn't want to write it by himself, and I kind of ghostwrite it with him. So this guy, he's a Montrealer, right? He built a real estate empire, 1068 apartment units. Okay. That's a lot of apartments, right? A lot of apartments. And do the math on those. If each apartment's worth 400,000, which is conservative, we're talking close to $500 million, $450 million.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

A few pennies, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he said I want to write a mic book. So we started writing a book in February, end of February. Last week, Friday. We finished the first draft.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

Well done.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

For 21 years before he met me, he'd been talking about writing a book. He teamed up with people, he'd taken steps, but he got nothing and nowhere. And he said to me at the end, he said, I want to pay you a compliment, bro. Pay me a compliment. Who doesn't like compliments? He said to me, Nikki. You know all these things, all your credentials, they don't really mean that much. Because there's a lot of people have credentials. So what's special about you is you sit with someone and you show them the actual things they have to do to achieve success. And you sat with me three times a week for an hour and a half, and we wrote together. And that's how we finished the book. And you cared enough. There were days I didn't want to come, but I knew you were gonna be there, so I never blew it off. And I thought about that, and I go, you know what makes me special? That I care enough to do whatever it takes. Now I got programs and structures and whatnot, and I normally don't do one-on-one coaching with our clients. My my girlfriend who works with me, she does that. She's better at it than I am, and all of that. But this guy was struggling and he needed a kick in the pants. And I told him I was gonna do a coaching call with him every day to hold him accountable until his sales got up. That was April 12th. It's May 28th today. My ex-wife's birthday.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

Happy birthday.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

Absolutely. And um you know what? We're still doing those calls. And from April 12th to today, he's done 130,000 in sales.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

Perfect. Love it.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

130,000. That's what it's all about. For me, that's what makes me special is I sit there with you, I care, and I push you. And in this day and age, especially when it comes to selling, I think people need to not be afraid, learn how to not be afraid of sales. And I don't think they're gonna do it by themselves. You tell someone who's afraid of something, hey, get over your fear, watch how well that works, right? It doesn't work at all. They need to be with somebody who'll hold their hand and push them a little bit until their fear leeches out of them.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

Exactly. And my friend, I think that's a perfect place for us to wrap. Thank you so much for your time today.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

Pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 27:56

So I will have all of Nikki's details in the show notes, and I strongly suggest that you reach out to him. And yeah, for anything that we've discussed on this podcast, or even if you're going, hey, I wonder if he, then reach out and find out. Make that contact. So until next time, I'm Bella St. John. This is Success Redefined, and thank you. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

And we're out. And I've just realized because that we've taken the curtains down and the sun's just come in at this time of the day. And I'm doing my best to move out of its way, Nikki, and it's following me.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

You got you got a little bit of a halo going on. That's all good.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

Yeah, exactly. And it's just like, okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

So, Bella, what do you do besides the podcast?

SPEAKER_02 28:46

Well, actually, the podcast is quite recent. So, what do I do? I pretty much have two areas. Well, in addition to, I'm also a professional artist, but so as a separate, separate entity. Um, and I've just recently moved to Prague. So I'm still surrounded by boxes. So if I move this camera a little, you're going to see stacks of boxes. Um, but it's it's glorious. It's an amazing city. So, what do I do? I probably primarily have two avenues. One is an AI perspective, but it's human-centered AI. It's the learning and development for the people in organizations with regard to AI. I don't touch tools. Um, I am a geek, I am a technology girl, but I don't touch tools on that. It's all about how do we educate and bring the people along for the journey. And the other is to do with mindset. So I'm essentially an achievement strategist with regard to doing mindset coaching with people. So, what do you want to achieve? What do you want and how do we get there? And in most instances for me, I focus on my lifelong passion has been what makes people tick. And so it's looking at what's getting in your way from that and what do we need to do otherwise. But I'm very much like you, I don't sugarcoat anything. People know that I'm going to tell them, tell them exactly straight what it is and how it is. So that's essentially what I do from a professional standpoint.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

And what's the biggest challenge you're facing in terms of your business right now?

SPEAKER_02 30:12

Actually, I'm not really because I'm I'm semi-retired. So for me, um, yeah, for me, it's it's a different phase than than most people. I turned 60 this year. Um, and yeah, but thank you. But thank you. You can you can come and get me. Um, but when I like when I left the States, I I basically retired at 50, and that was when I left the US. And I spent almost 10 years, I have some fairly significant uh health and mobility challenges. And I knew that I'd only been able to travel solo for so long until my body just started going, you know, like yeah. And so I spent almost 10 years basically being a luxurious nomad through, you know, staying three months in some place in Europe and six months in the UK, etc. And continue. And so now I've actually decided to put down roots in Prague. And I'm living in a beautiful in the UNESCO World Heritage part of Prague, um, in a lovely historic building. I've got 12-foot ceilings and I look out over the Joffin Palace and stuff. So so it there isn't really significant challenges for me at this moment. It's more just adapting to unpacking with you, because I need some physical assistance with the boys coming in on a weekend to unpack and juggling that with making sure that I, you know, because don't over exert myself from so it's not the normal challenges that people have, Nikki. It's it's a it's a different, different phase. And I'm actually really enjoying it.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

Good for you. You got fabulous energy, it comes across through uh the ether here. Thank you, man. Thank you very much. I really enjoyed our our uh our reparte. I thought it was fabulous, and um God bless you. Stay in touch.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

Thank you. I will do, and I I need to scoot off to my next meeting, but I'll send you an email, darling, and we'll I'll let you know when this goes live and all that sort of stuff. And yeah, by all means, I'd love to stay in touch. And I've got a possible ex client that might do with your services, so uh yeah. So that it that probably won't manifest for a couple of months yet, but we'll we'll see how that goes.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

I'd love to have another conversation with you another time just to hear your story. It seems sounds fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

Love, love to, Dellin. Okay, child. Bye. Sorry, I didn't I've got a scoot. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

Cheers, bye bye.