Nicky Billou – How to Create Success as a Thought Leader

There are many reasons why a person would want to become an entrepreneur, but one stands above all else: to be a success. But what is success? Is it making enough money to support yourself? Making a name for yourself? Giving of yourself in ways you never imagined when you first started off in business?

    My guest, international best-selling author and entrepreneur coach Nicky Billou says the most effective way for an entrepreneur to find success is by being a thought leader. But what exactly is a thought leader and how do you become one? That’s the focus of this insightful episode, where Nicky tells us:

·      The story of how one entrepreneur grew his company expodentially higher by being a thought leader

·      The qualities of being a thought leader

·      The impact of being a thought leader on sales

·      How to be an effective thought leader

·      What type of person makes the best thought leader

·      How to find your niche and why it’s important to do so

   Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or merely interested in how to become a successful one, there’s so much to learn in this jam-packed episode of Dream Power Radio.

   Nicky Billou is the #1 International Best-Selling Author of the books: Finish Line ThinkingTM: 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. He is an in-demand and highly inspirational speaker to corporate audiences such as 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 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. 
      As the host of the #1 podcast in the world on Thought Leadership, The Thought Leader Revolution (www.TheThoughtLeaderRevolution.com ) Nicky has interviewed over 300 of the world’s top Thought Leaders, such as:
•Astronaut Chris Hadfield
•George Ross of the Hit TV Series The Apprentice
•Barbara Corcoran from Shark Tank
•Supermodel & Business Mogul Kathy Ireland
•Ivan Misner — Founder Of BNI
•Graham Weihmiller — CEO of BNI
•John Maxwell — World’s #1 Leadership Author
•NYT #1 Bestselling Author Seth Godin
•Marie Forleo — Oprah’s Coach
•Jack Canfield: Author Of Chicken Soup For The Soul
•Scott Adams: Creator of Dilbert

Website: www.eCircleAcademy.com/appointment

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

Transcript

Nicky Billou

Hello, hello, hello and welcome to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, certified dream life coach, Debbie Spector. Weissman. This is the place where we talk about dreams, both daytime and nighttime dreams. Now you can use them to make the internal shift to a life you love. And rediscover the truth of who you really are and speaking about who you are.

Let's say you're smart, you're educated, you work hard, and yet you haven't achieved the success you dreamed about. Maybe it's difficulty in closing that important deal that you believe is going to make a difference, or maybe it's continually being passed over for a promotion. No matter how hard you try, maybe you find yourself so discouraged that you think it's time to give up.

Go back to school or perhaps seek a different career. Well, it doesn't have to be that way. Heat to success may have nothing to do with your educational level or your years in business, but with a little tweaking, it's possible that you can transform yourself into a moneymaking machine that attracts all the success you want.

We're going to find out how with my guest business advisor, entrepreneur and bestselling author, Nicky Billou. Through his masterminds and other educational programs, Nicky has helped some of the most successful entrepreneurs in his native Canada boost their income levels they never would've imagined. Nicky has written several best-selling books, including Finish Line Thinking, how to Think and Win Like a Champion, and he hosts the Thought Leader Revolution Podcast.

Podcast. Welcome to Dream Power Radio, Nicky. Thank you, Debbie. Great to be here. Real honor. Oh, well I'm excited to be talking about this cause I usually don't talk specifically about business, but I think your take on it will be a really good help to my audience. So I want to start with this though, Nicky.

Why are you so passionate about helping people reach success in their business?  Well, let me tell you my backstory because I think that'll illustrate it very powerfully. I'm originally an immigrant from the Middle East. I'm a Christian from Iran, and when I was 11 years old, my world got turned upside down because the Islamic Revolution took place in Iran and my late father, God rest his solely, could see the writing on the wall that this wasn't going to be a great place for him to raise his Christian family anymore.

So what he did is he made a plan. And he got us out of Iran, and he settled us where I now live, which is in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. And looking back, it was the greatest thing that he did for our family. He changed the trajectory of our family's legacy. But at the time, I, was a kid. I was leaving my home; I was leaving my friends.

It wasn't the greatest thing in the world. And. Right now, I'm so grateful to live in a free country. You know, a lot of people that have been born in the West don't understand how precious freedom really is and how rare it is. It doesn't exist everywhere. And there's forces that are trying to  reduce our freedom of speech and other freedoms.

And I think we all need to stand up and stand, stand tall for those rights because those rights are what make. This great part of the world. Oh, so special. You know? And my father, he was a champion for freedom, for free expression and free enterprise. And that's why he brought us to Canada and the West, and I've become that as well.

 My dad, he was the greatest man I've ever known. He was an uplifter of human beings. If you knew him and you were looking for work, he'd help you find a job if you knew him. Business. He'd help you get your business off the ground and, and you were trying to buy a car or a house or an apartment, and you didn't quite have enough money, he'd talk you up.

So you could buy that car, that house, that apartment. Who does that? Debbie? Who you know well, the Lake Great. Napoleon Billou for one. And why would he do that? Well, first of all, he was a devout Christian. He believed that he had been blessed by God and it was his duty to share those blessings with others.

But secondly, he did it because he could. He was successful. He had the wherewithal to be able to make a difference for people. And to me, every entrepreneur is potentially someone like my father, an uplifter of humanity, a creator of jobs, somebody who makes our world a better place. I know that Hollywood likes to paint entrepreneurs in a bad light and saying they're all bad, they're all evil, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The entrepreneurs I know. They're the kindest, most loving, most generous people in our society. They're the ones who have the courage to go out there and make their dreams come true. And to me, the bedrock for society is, you know, military first responder types who put their lives on the line to make sure that we get to live in a free and civilized society.

And then the entrepreneurs who take those blessings of liberty, and put 'em into action to create something, to create a vision, to create jobs, to create a beautiful society for the rest of us. And that's what makes me passionate about helping entrepreneurs. I tell you; entrepreneurs are the backbone of business.

I mean, most people in the United States, most businesses in the United States are small businesses and they were started up by individuals, , who were able to make them grow  and you know, grow the economy as well. But just as an aside, before we go further with that, I just wanted to mention that a lot of the most successful entrepreneurs that I know just happen to be Iranian immigrants.

So I'm wondering, is there something, oh, there you go. That  causes that drive in you. Well, you know, I don't know. My, my dad was an entrepreneur, and my dad was somebody who really took the time to impart a lot of lessons to me and was a success plan to the value.

My father was somebody who really. Passed on a lot of, lessons and messages to, to me, and those lessons and messages were about working hard, going after my dreams and being of service to other people.

And there's a lot of great Iranian entrepreneurs that have become famous. Patrick Bet David of Value Taman man, he's built one of the biggest media companies around and I think that's totally fantastic. Well, talking about entrepreneurs, what is the biggest impediment that holds entrepreneurs back?  So it depends on what their phase of business is. If they're a smaller company, and by that, I mean they're under a million dollars a year in sales, while their biggest impediment is making sure that their business is a going concern.

Right? And, and, and that's. One of the things that I'm really keen on helping entrepreneurs in that phase with is because a lot of these folks don't have necessarily a business background. They don't understand things like sales and marketing and balance sheets and income statements. They don't understand hiring and firing.

They don't understand systems and processes. So part of what we do is we give these folks a bit of an M B A and we teach 'em about all that because that'll make it easier for them to actually be able to grow their business. One of the key things a lot of people have issues with is sales. I don't want to be seen as pushy.

I don't want to be one of those guys. I don't want to be one of those gals, you know, one of those, you know, pushy salespeople. No, no, no. They, they've got a horrible attitude towards sales and. As a result, they don't go after business. They should be going after. Like I know so many coaches, for example, who just back away from going after business because of that mentality.

No, no, no. I'm not one of those people. I don't push. Oh, okay. You don't push. Got it. Does that mean that you won't go after business? Is that like an excuse for not going after business, which in a lot of cases it is. And you know what's bad about that is somebody who really could use their help. Won't get their help.

And instead, some charlatan marketer will come in who has no compunction about going after business, scoops up that customer and doesn't deliver for them. Think about that. Think about that. That's bad for everybody. That's bad for the business owner who didn't get the sale because you know their business goes down.

It's bad for the customer because they don't get a good, honorable person helping them. It seemed bad for the charlatan because what goes around comes around and they're going to get their comeuppance. The sum total of goodness in the world goes down. So one of the things I really got excited about doing is helping people reframe, selling to service.

Nobody wants to be sold, Debbie, you don't want to be sold. I don't want to be sold. But don't you love being served by a caring human being? So that's one of the things that we've really helped focus on. For smaller business owners, and these are folks under a million dollars a year in sales, and we've been able to help 'em double, triple, quadruple fivefold their business just from reframing, selling to service.

One of the things when I first, became a dream life coach  I had to deal with that because I was one of those people. I didn't consider myself a salesperson, but I was taught,  heart-based marketing. Is that something that you.  Ascribe to, yeah, we created a designation called, heart Leadership, which is leading from the heart in business.

You know, I'm really big on thought leadership. I think that one of the things that allows you to stand out is being seen as the go-to authority, the thought leader, the industry thought leader in your area. But that's not enough. You, you got to also be known for being somebody who cares about your fellow man and woman, and.

That's what heart leadership is all about. It's leading from the heart. Okay. Could, could you,  go into being a thought leader a little bit more and explain exactly what you mean by being a thought leader? Well, you know, there's a really neat way to do that in business by drawing a contrast between two iconic American computer companies.

One is called Dell Computer. And the other is Apple computers. And in 1998, they were both,  successful companies. Apple was doing 5.9 billion a year in business at that time, and Dell was doing 12.6 billion a year in business at that time. And that was the year Steve Jobs came back to Apple. Now Michael Dell, who founded Dell, He led Dell.

Now Steve Jobs put himself out there, started speaking about issues that didn't always necessarily have to do with Apple and selling Apple products, but had to do about creating a vision for, a better, world, a better business community. And Michael Dell didn't. Michael Dell just sold computers. Flash fast forward 25 years and.

2023. Today, Dell has grown tremendously. It's $101 billion a year company, but Apple has become the most valuable company in the world, and it's a $394 billion a year company. It's almost four times the size of Dell, and it was less than half the size of Dell back in 1998. So the amount of growth that Apple has experienced is absolutely mind blowing.

Why? Well, it's in large part because Steve Jobs made a conscious decision to put himself out there as an industry thought leader, an innovator, a thinker about issues that matter when it comes to innovation in the technology space. And Michael Dell didn't. Michael Dell was content to create computers.

That were great and did good work, and to sell them in the way that Dell sold them. You know, they had a nice sales strategy for selling them. That's the difference between an industry thought leader, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell, which most people would go Who? Who's Michael Dell? They've heard of Dell Computers, but they've never heard of Michael Dell.

But tell me how many people have heard of Steve Jobs? Yeah, almost everybody, and he's been dead for almost 12 years. You think about this, this strategy of thought leadership was so successful for him that he's been dead for almost 12 years now. Let's bring it over to our coach as an example. I was going to ask you about that because not everybody has, you would also say that Steve Jobs was a visionary, and not everybody who is successful could also be defined as a visionary.

So tell me,  yeah, but he wanted to be a visionary. God said. So let's say you're a coach and let's say that. You're one of these folks who calls himself or herself a life coach. So you're a life coach. I'll coach you on anything to do with your life. And let's say that you can help people with relationships, with business, with, health issues, with mindset issues.

And let's say you're really good at it, you get results. The average life coach in America makes $52,000 a year. That's the average life coach in America now. Let's say there's another person who is also a coach, and maybe they started off as a life coach, but that person, she says, no, I'm not. I'm not going to be a life coach.

I'm super interested in anything and everything to do with relationships. I'm. Keen on speaking about relationships and relationships between men and women in particular that are romantically involved. And I'm going to talk about relationships and I'm going to talk about what makes for a successful relationship, what makes for a relationship that's in crisis.

And I'm going to just talk about, write about, speak about, create videos, do books, all of this. I am the relationship gal.

Who do you think's going to do better as a coach? Well, the relationship coach is because she's going to be seen as somebody who has authority, thought leadership, industry level expertise in the arena of relationships. And so when people are dealing with relationship issues, they're going to want to listen to this person.

They're not going to want to listen to the other person who's just a general life coach. So the average thought leader in our experience, when we work with a thought leader who's a coach for a consultant, they're able to earn close to half a million dollars a year as a thought leader versus just a general life coach.

You think about that, the average coach. Makes 52,000 a year. The average thought leader who does coaching earns a half a million dollars a year. Which would you rather be if you're in business as a coach? Oh, there's no question. There's no question about that. But on that note, we are going to take a short break.

 We are speaking about success in entrepreneurship with Nicky Billou, and we'll be right back.

Yes. Welcome back to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Debbie Spector Weisman, and we're think talking about success in business with Nicky Billou. Well, Nicky, you were talking right before the break about being a thought leader and how that leads to success, but it also raises the basic question. Let's say you are somebody who hears, oh, it's better for me to turn my attention.

An example of a coach, for instance, not just being a general coach, but being a thought leader in my field. How does one become a thought leader? Well, that's a great question. Let me illustrate it with a story, if I may, of, , of a couple of folks that we worked with. So there was a gentleman, unfortunately he passed away last summer.

He was such a cool fellow. His name was Carl Kramer. And Carl had been a, , Senior vice president in a corporation. And about three, four years ago, he decided he was done with that, and he got into the world of becoming a business coach. So, , he called himself a peak performance business coach, so nice fancy title.

And Carl as a senior vice president, made $300,000 a year plus bonuses as a coach. He was making. Between six and $8,000 a month. So somewhere between 70 2090 6,000 a year. Let's just say he made 80 grand a year as a coach, right? So it was a significant comedown for him. And he came to us because he knew a fella, we'd worked with that we had done incredible work for, and it just made seven figures I in his field.

And so he said, look, I've heard about you. I want to talk to you. And you know, he, he started to work with us, and I said to him, okay, Carl, what do you do for people in business coaching? He says, well, you know, I can help 'em deal with any business problem. And I was like, okay, Carl, you're trying to be all things to all people.

It's not going to work. And I said, what are you really good at? And we, we really had to take him through an exercise. But the exercise was to help him see what types of problems he'd had some skill in solving. Because what is business after all? It's about solving problems for people, and that allows you to have the right to earn a profit, right?

Problems, people, profit. That's the purpose of business. So the three Ps and a fourth period purpose. So Carl said, okay, I'm really good at. Taking like near startups and helping 'em scale. That's kind of my shtick, my thing. I go, okay, that's great. I said, all right, so who do you want to work with? Some, you know, business units and corporations.

He said, God, no. Don't want to do that ever again. I go, all right. So we started to look at it. Who are some of the folks he'd worked with it. So there's a little process I took him through to discover his ideal client. So the first of all, who are the people that you enjoyed working with the most? Like you really enjoyed their, their company, and the way the working relationship went.

So we got clear on who some of those folks were. Who are the people that you got the best results for? So you really got good results for them. So we got a little clear on that. And then who are the people who pay you the best and are the easiest to transact with? Because you don't want to be dealing with people who are nickel and dime your own business.

Right? So we got clear on that and what became clear is that the intersection of all three of those was lawyers who owned their own firm. So they were not partners and part of a larger firm. These were folks with a half a million to $2 million a year law practice who wanted to scale. So Carl took all of his messaging.

And said, I work with lawyers who own their own firms that are between this amount and this amount of revenue. And my brand promise to you is we'll double to tenfold the size of your practice. Pretty nice brand promise, right? Yes. So anyways, we also noticed that he was undercharging clients and he was charging everybody monthly.

So we said, we want you to start selling year-long coaching programs. So he is like, okay, I can do that. So he started to do that. He went from making six to 8,000 a month to $40,000 a month, and he was working less. So he was working 40 hours a week before. Now he is working 22 hours a week and he was making 40 grand a month.

So just shy of a half a million dollars a year. That's incredibly. Well, that's how he became a thought leader. He started to look at his past experience, understand what he was able to, to do, to be of service to people today.

So in, in other words, it's finding your niche and really drilling down to discover what that is, and then using that as the basis to become the thought leader in that niche. Is that right? Well, yes. And here's the other thing. He discovered he could do this with lawyers right now. Right. And he discovered that he had a propensity to work with people who were interested in scaling near startups, smallish businesses, to a higher level.

But a funny little thing happened for Carl. He discovered there were other groups of people that had similar problems to these lawyers, so he could actually create a whole different set of offerings. This is part of what makes you a thought leader. It's not about doing one particular thing for one particular group of people, that's just being a specialist.

Okay? I want you as a thought leader to be somewhat of a generalist, but not in your marketing messaging. Your marketing messaging needs to be specialized. You follow me? Mm-hmm. But your ability to take what you do. And do it for multiple groups of people. No, it doesn't need to be. So as an example, for myself, I've done a lot of work with coaches and consultants.

You know, we work with a couple hundred of them and we've done really, really good things for them to help them be seen as thought leaders and grow their practices. What a funny thing happened, we realized that there's a lot of founders of companies that really could benefit from being seen as a thought leader because that would allow them.

To attract more clients, it would allow them to attract better employees who would like beg to work with them, and it would allow them to attract investment if they're seen as the Steve Jobs or the Elon Musk of their space. So we started to do that and last week we did a program for a small, Austin, Texas based,  software.

Recruitment firm, 17 million a year company. So you know, definitely a different market than coaches and consultants, but man, was it fun to work with her? And we really want to do a lot more of these. So we've signed up a couple more people like this, but ideally, I'd love to have a hundred clients like her.

You know,  it would be fantastic. A hundred clients, clients like her, first of all, would be a million dollars just from the basic work that we do with them. And then from the, our ability to do other work for them, upsells and so forth, we can turn that into probably another three to 5 million a year.

And for, two men company or one man and one-woman company, that's a great thing. Oh, it certainly is. So would you say then that your techniques would work for, for pretty much any kind of entrepreneur out there? As long as they have some level of expertise and they have had some level of, , longevity in their business.

So if you're absolutely brand new to everything, you can't call yourself a thought leader. There's no integrity in that. You know what I mean? But, you know, Debbie, you and I as an example, we've been around the block. We weren't born yesterday. We've done what we've been doing for a while. You could absolutely be a thought leader a hundred percent, but if you were a, you know, 23 year old, , kid outta college and going, I'm going to be a thought leader in an area, well, maybe possible, depending on what you've been focusing your first 23 years in life in, but a 23 year old who says,  to adults that are twice their age, Hey, I'm going to become a marriage counselor.

 Maybe not, you know, maybe you're not quite there yet. You're going to have to win some experience the hard way through life. But, but do you have any advice for the person who is just starting out and, you know, wants to, to grow their business? Absolutely I do. So first and foremost is you. You ought to like to do some deep inner work on why you're in business.

You ought to do some deep inner work on who are the people you want to help in your business. Because as we said, business is about helping people and solving problems for them. And then you ought to get out there and start doing that work. You know, I, I wrote a book about it called The Thought Leaders Journey.

It's for people getting started in business newly, and it goes through a lot of these points that we talk about. But you're not going to become a thought leader overnight. If you have no experience, you're going to need some experience. Mm-hmm. And then go from there. Well, Nicky, is there a final thought you'd like to leave for our audience?

Yes. Last three years have been tough on all of us. And you might be in a place in your life right now where you're thinking to yourself, well, I, I don't know if I can thrive. I just want to survive. And I'm here to tell you, you absolutely can thrive. And if you are in a space where you want a path forward to thriving, reach out to me, go to my website, circle academy.com/appointment.

 I'll offer a free coaching call with anybody who says they came from this podcast, and we'll have a chat about how you can thrive even in crazy times like today. Oh, that is wonderful, wonderful advice. Thank you for that. Well, thank you for speaking to us on Dream Power Radio today, Nicky. Debbie, thanks for having me on the show.

God bless your heart. You're amazing. Oh, well, thank you. So are you. We even speaking with entrepreneur and business motivator, Nicky Billou. I hope you've enjoyed today's program. If so, please hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any future episodes. Until next time, this is Debbie Spector Weisman saying sweet dreams, everybody.