“There is not a person on the face of this earth that gets too much appreciation. We all crave more genuine appreciation.”

— Kevin Thompson

Most people walk into a networking event with a strategy. They scan the room, calculate who’s worth talking to, and spend the next two hours pitching themselves at anyone who makes eye contact. They leave with a stack of business cards and zero real connections. Kevin Thompson has spent decades doing the opposite — and built a business that generated over $16 million in course sales almost entirely through relationships.

Kevin’s path to becoming one of the most respected connectors in entrepreneurial circles is anything but linear. It starts on Alaska’s Bering Sea, where he spent six years as a commercial fisherman after leaving the Army. He nearly lost his life to a rogue wave in 1995, came home, and started a cleaning and restoration business that promptly cost him $300,000 before he found his footing. A mentor named Joe Polish helped him rebuild it into a referral-only operation. A mold-remediation website he built on the side started generating $15,000 a month. One 50-minute talk at an industry event produced $35,000 in course sales. He sold the cleaning business the following year and never looked back. Over the next 12 years, he ran nearly 600 strategic partnerships. The relationships were the business.

What Kevin discovered — and what someone eventually had to point out to him explicitly — is that he had been practicing a distinct approach to human connection his entire life. He calls it the intersection of four things: trust in competence, trust in character, alignment of interests, and alignment of values. When all four are present, business happens easily, effortlessly, and fast. When any one is missing, even a technically good deal tends to fall apart.

The conversation also turns to something Kevin and Nicky are quietly building together: an in-person event they’re calling the Un-AI Conference — a deliberately curated gathering of entrepreneurs who believe that real human connection is not a soft skill but a competitive advantage. No ads, no open registration, no algorithmic targeting. Just two people calling the people they trust and asking: are you in?

Kevin Thompson is a relationship strategist, speaker, and connector. He spent six years commercial fishing on Alaska’s Bering Sea before building a cleaning and restoration company that he transformed through mentorship and eventually sold. His publishing business, built on nearly 600 strategic partnerships over 12 years, generated over $16 million in sales. Today he works with entrepreneurs on the art and strategy of building right relationships — the kind that produce trust, alignment, and business that flows.

Expert Action Steps:

1. Send appreciation texts to 10 people today. Pick family, friends, or business contacts and text each one a single thing you genuinely appreciate about them. Ask for nothing in return — not even a response. Notice what comes back.

2. 2. Ask questions you actually want answered. In every conversation, listen for the real answer and ask a follow-up based on what you heard. The experience of being seen, heard, and understood is rare — and it builds more relationship capital than any pitch.

3. Open yourself to receiving. Being a generous giver is a strength, but closing yourself off to receiving — or refusing to ask for help — limits how much you can ultimately give. The two sides of generosity need each other.

Learn more & connect:

Connect with Kevin Thompson on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kevintheconnector

Resources mentioned:

Joe Polish — marketing mentor and creator of the Piranha Marketing system for the cleaning industry: https://www.joepolish.com

Get Mold Solutions — Kevin’s original content and mold remediation resource site (referenced as the foundation of his online publishing business)

Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

EP798: Kevin 'The Connector' Thompson - The un-AI

The Thought Leader Revolution

“Don’t be lazy. Don’t make excuses. If you want changes, you have to make the change.”

— Geanina (Nina) Popent

Building muscle after 50 is possible. It is not, however, easy — and anyone who tells you otherwise has probably never done it. Nina Popent started her fitness journey in 2017, won a boot camp challenge, and used the prize money to hire a personal trainer. Then COVID closed the gyms, and she built a serious physique in her living room with resistance bands, a bench, and a few dumbbells. When someone at the gym suggested she compete, she almost said no. She said yes instead — and stepped on stage for the first time five years ago, nervous, wearing a mask, without a coach, at a show called Cold Ball. That day changed the direction of her life.

What she has built since is a testament to structure over motivation. Nina wakes at 5:30 a.m., commutes an hour downtown to her job at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Dentistry, packs four meals every day, and is in the gym by 6 p.m. — staying until 9:30 or 10. She eats the same breakfast she has eaten for five years. She does not believe in balance, at least not as most people use the word. She believes in discipline, patience, and a life structured deliberately around the outcome you want.

The through line from her twenty-plus years as a dental assistant to her work as a fitness coach is the same skill: meeting people where they are emotionally, earning their trust, and transferring hard-won expertise. When coach Amor Nikic watched her compete — without him — and then called her the next day, she knew she wanted him as her coach. A few shows later, he hired her onto his team at Hammer Fitness. The standard for that hire, as Nina explains it, is demanding: you need a story, a genuine passion for clients, and a willingness to invest in yourself first.

Her message to women who look at her physique and want what she has is direct: she has been where they are. The difference is not genetics or youth. It is that she showed up, repeatedly, when she did not feel like it. At 51 — turning 52 — she is still building, still competing, still proving that the work compounds if you let it.

Guest Bio:

Geanina (Nina) Popent is a competitive fitness athlete and personal trainer based in Toronto, where she coaches clients under the umbrella of Hammer Fitness alongside coach Amor Nikic. She immigrated from Romania to Canada in 1996 and spent over twenty years as a dental assistant, including a significant tenure at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Dentistry, before transitioning into fitness coaching full time. She began competing in bodybuilding five years ago and has built a reputation for helping women — particularly those over 40 — develop strength, muscle, and physical confidence through disciplined training and nutrition.

Expert Action Steps:

1. Stop being lazy. Show up to the gym even when you do not feel like it — treat your training time as a non-negotiable second job, not an optional activity.

2. Stop making excuses. Every obstacle has a workaround; the decision to change has to come first, before the circumstances become convenient.

3. If you want changes, make the change. Waiting for the right moment, the right season, or the right motivation is the strategy that keeps people stuck.

4. Be patient. Muscle at this stage of life builds slowly and compounds over years — the results are real, but they require time that most people are not willing to give.

Learn more & connect:

Hammer Fitness: https://www.hammerfitness.ca

Nina on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coach_janina

Resources mentioned:

Hammer Fitness (Toronto gym and coaching): https://www.hammerfitness.ca

Amor Nikic (head coach, Hammer Fitness): https://www.hammerfitness.ca

University of Toronto Faculty of Dentistry: https://www.dentistry.utoronto.ca

Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

EP796: Geanina Popent - How To Build Muscle After 50

The Thought Leader Revolution

EP797: Jesan Sorrells - How Great Books Can Make You Smarter & Better

Nicky Billou

“You are made in the glorious image of Jesus Christ and the Son of God — you have that in you, so don’t hide your light under a bushel. Tell people what you have learned through the process.”

— Jesan Sorrells

Jesan Sorrells has been reading great books and drawing leadership lessons from them for five seasons now. His podcast, Leadership Lessons from the Great Books, covers the full spectrum — Augustine, Homer, Jane Austen, Joan Didion, Carl Hiaasen — because his view is that you can learn something from almost everything, and that the books business culture tends to dismiss often contain the most honest insights about how human beings actually behave.

In this conversation, Sorrells and Nicky go deep on why fiction matters for leaders, what reading biographies of McKinley and Kennedy reveals about the present moment, and how the long game in jiu-jitsu rhymes with the long game in business. There’s a recurring thread: real progress takes time, optimization can be the enemy of meaning, and the people most ready to receive help are rarely the ones who seem to need it most.

Nicky brings his own journey into the room — 58 pounds lost, a bodybuilding competition at 57, and a four-year commitment to earn his IFBB pro card at 60. Sorrells brings a 15-year jiu-jitsu plan and a grandmother who had no patience for poor thinking. The result is a conversation that is warm, honest, and genuinely hard to skim.

Jesan closes with three concrete steps anyone can start today — none of them require a library card, though one will probably lead you to get one.

Expert Action Steps:

1. Turn off Netflix and stop doom-scrolling. Put the phone down and redirect that attention toward the people and things in your household that actually matter.

2. 2. Engage with discipline in the small things. Do one hard thing every day — start small, then build. You do not need to be an athlete to practice this; you just need to be consistent.

3. 3. Stop hiding your light. Share what you have learned through the process — first with your family, then with your community. You were made to contribute, not to quietly accumulate.

Learn more & connect:
Connect with Jesan Sorrells on LinkedIn — search Jesan Sorrells and mention you heard him on this show.
Leadership Lessons from the Great Books — Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube
https://www.leadershiptoolbox.net

Resources mentioned:
Slouching Towards Bethlehem — Joan Didion
The Optimist’s Daughter — Eudora Welty
Emotional Intelligence — Daniel Goleman
The Dip — Seth Godin
Undisputed Truth (autobiography) — Mike Tyson
Kennedy — Ted Sorensen

Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

EP795: TL Nuggets #240 - The Power Of Feedback

Nicky Billou

"Between stimulus and response is a space. And in that space lies the opportunity for growth and freedom." — Viktor Frankl

Most people who struggle to take feedback don't think of themselves as defensive. They think of themselves as discerning. There's a difference, and it matters — and Nicky Billou spent decades on the wrong side of it.

At 58, after two people he deeply respects told him the same thing within two weeks — most recently at a men's overnight retreat in the Muskokas — Nicky finally sat with the message instead of deflecting it. The insight that unlocked it came from Viktor Frankl: that between a stimulus and our response exists a space, and what we do in that space determines whether we grow or stay stuck.

The point isn't to accept every piece of criticism wholesale. Blindly agreeing with feedback is as problematic as reflexively dismissing it. The practice is to pause, listen, and evaluate honestly — to let the message land before deciding what to do with it. For driven, success-oriented people, that pause can be the hardest thing in the world. It can also be the most consequential.

Learn more & connect:

https://www.eCircleAcademy.com

Resources mentioned:

Man's Search for Meaning — Viktor Frankl (available at most booksellers and libraries)

Viktor Frankl Institute: https://www.viktorfrankl.org

Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

EP794: Roman Bodnarchuk - The Future is Now, And Its AI!

Nicky Billou

"The excuses are over. More millionaires and billionaires have been created through AI in the last 40 months than through any other industry we've ever seen — and this is just the beginning."

Two brothers. Twenty thousand dollars. No employees. Using twelve AI tools that cost roughly twenty dollars each per month — tools any of us could be running right now — they built a business selling GLP-1 medication online and generated $400 million in revenue in their first calendar year. This year, they are on track for $1.8 billion. No investors. No staff. Just two people who understood something most executives, entrepreneurs, and technology leaders are still missing: AI is not a buzzword you manage from a distance. It is a tool you pick up and use.

Roman Bodnarčuk has been obsessed with artificial intelligence since 2017, when a meeting with Dr. Geoffrey Hinton at the University of Toronto showed him what was coming. He started an AI company that year, got outbid on talent by Google and Facebook, eventually sold what he had built, and spent the next four decades going deeper than almost anyone outside the major labs. What he has found at every conference, in every boardroom, and with every senior executive whose phone he has asked to see is the same thing: people know the vocabulary but are not actually using the tools.

The gap, he argues, is not about intelligence or access. It is about setup. Most people open ChatGPT, type a vague question, get a generic answer, and conclude the technology is overhyped. What they have not done is tell the AI anything meaningful about who they are, what they are building, or what they want. They have not personalized their settings, connected their email and calendar and documents, or given the system the context it needs to produce genuinely useful output. Fix those three things, Roman says, and the experience changes entirely.

In this conversation, Roman walks through the exact steps live — including a real-time demonstration with Nicky setting up his own ChatGPT personalizations on camera — and explains why connecting your AI to your existing apps, files, and data is the single most important thing most users have never done. He also describes using AI to navigate the Canadian healthcare system in real time, arriving at Toronto General, getting through triage in minutes, and receiving a diagnosis that matched exactly what the AI had suggested hours earlier.

The picture Roman paints is not science fiction. It is already happening, and the people who understand it are moving very fast.

Roman Bodnarčuk is a Toronto-based AI strategist, founder, and CEO of N5R.AI — one of Canada's leading AI agencies. He began working in artificial intelligence in 2017 following a conversation with Dr. Geoffrey Hinton at the University of Toronto, and now advises and educates businesses on practical AI implementation. He's a sought-after speaker and trainer who works with executives and entrepreneurs to help them move from AI awareness to genuine AI capability.

Expert action steps:

1. Personalize your AI immediately. Go into the settings of whichever AI you use — ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini — and fill in the custom instructions, occupation, and "more about you" fields. Ask the AI itself to generate optimized versions of all three based on everything it knows about you; each section should be around 1,350 characters.

2. Connect your data. Link your email, calendar, Google Drive, and any other apps you use regularly. The AI is only as useful as the context it has access to; connecting your real data transforms generic responses into genuinely relevant ones.

3. Talk to your AI every day. Speak rather than type — it is three times faster and more natural. Use it as a thinking partner, a coach, a strategist. The more you engage with it and ask it to remember what matters to you, the more useful it becomes over time.

Learn more & connect:

https://www.N5R.AI

Resources mentioned:

ChatGPT — https://www.chatgpt.com

Claude (Anthropic) — https://www.claude.ai

Gemini (Google) — https://gemini.google.com

HeyGen (AI video and avatar creation) — https://www.heygen.com

Super Whisper (voice-to-text app) — https://superwhisper.com

Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

EP793: Joseph Riggio - How To Make Better Decisions

Nicky Billou

"Arrogance is the ability to recognize you own the decision. You own the idea of what to do. I make the decision — and then when I make it, I own the responsibility, whether it works or it doesn't."

Most leadership training of the last two decades has sold leaders on a particular version of themselves: collaborative, humble, peer-level with their teams. On the surface, there's nothing wrong with that picture. The problem, according to Joseph Riggio, is what it quietly does to accountability. When leaders come to believe that decisions are collective, they also stop owning the outcomes — and that's where organizations quietly start to rot.

Riggio spent 36 years working at the sharp end of decision-making: with C-suite executives, high-net-worth investors, and special forces operators for whom bad decisions carried consequences far beyond a missed quarter. What he found, across all of those contexts, is a consistent pattern he calls ontological arrogance — not arrogance in the pejorative sense, but in the original one. The willingness to stand in your own authority, gather input from the people around you, and then own the call. Completely. His book, In Praise of the Ontology of Arrogance, makes the case that this quality — unfashionable as it has become — is precisely what distinguishes leaders worth following from those who manage by consensus and wonder why nothing moves.

The conversation ranges across the territory that shaped Riggio's thinking: his years as a practicing architect in 1980s New York, his encounter with Werner Erhard's training and the transformation he witnessed from the front of that room, his years studying NLP under Roy Frazier and training alongside John LaValle, and the eventual synthesis that became his Decision Architecture Correction Methodology. He and Nicky also dig into what good decision-making looks like at the level of national leadership — using Trump, Lombardi, and Hoover as case studies — and why the capacity to change your mind when new information arrives is a mark of strategic intelligence, not weakness.

Joseph Riggio is a master trainer in neuro-linguistic programming and the creator of the Decision Architecture Correction Methodology. Over a 36-year career, he has worked with senior executives, C-suite leaders, high-net-worth investors, and special forces personnel — wherever the quality of a decision carries serious weight. He trained under Roy Frazier, a trainer personally endorsed by NLP co-founder Richard Bandler, and later built close professional relationships with John LaValle, Bandler's longtime co-trainer. His recent book, In Praise of the Ontology of Arrogance, offers a framework for restoring genuine leadership accountability in an era of collaborative drift.

Learn more & connect:

https://www.josephriggio.com

Resources mentioned:

In Praise of the Ontology of Arrogance

Sex, Possibility, and Transformation — Marsha Martin

NLP training with Roy Frazier — referenced as formative; find via https://www.josephriggio.com

The Sterling Men's Weekend — https://www.sterlingmensweekend.com

Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

EP792: JJ Virgin - What If Age Was Your Biggest Advantage

Nicky Billou

"People who are excited about aging live seven and a half years longer than people who aren't."

Most people treat declining energy, slower recovery, and creeping weight gain as the inevitable price of getting older. JJ Virgin thinks that framing is both wrong and dangerous — not because aging isn't real, but because the belief itself accelerates the decline. When you decide that slowing down is what people your age do, you stop fighting it. And then it becomes true.

Virgin has spent decades at the intersection of exercise science, nutrition, and functional medicine — long enough to watch the culture around aging shift from acceptance to optimization. What she's seen consistently is that the people who stay vibrant into their sixties, seventies, and beyond aren't doing anything mystical. They're moving hard, staying curious, refusing to act their age, and surrounding themselves with people who expect more of them.

That same mindset applies directly to business. Virgin argues that the people most likely to fade are the ones who get too comfortable — and that the antidote, whether in the gym or the boardroom, is constant challenge. Age, she contends, can actually be an advantage for entrepreneurs willing to keep showing up: you have the reps, the pattern recognition, and the credibility that no amount of raw intelligence can replicate.

The conversation ranges from the emerging science of peptides and regenerative medicine to the psychology of sales, the moral responsibility of knowing you can help someone and staying silent, and the unconventional family she has built — one that includes her ex-husband, her current husband, and a Sunday dinner tradition that most people assume is impossible after divorce.

JJ Virgin is a four-time New York Times bestselling author whose books include The Virgin Diet and The Sugar Impact Diet. She is the host of the Well Beyond 40 podcast and founder of the Health Business Growth Collective, a company dedicated to helping healthcare practitioners build financially successful practices. She has built a multi-million dollar personal brand at the intersection of health, nutrition, and entrepreneurship.

Expert Action Steps:

1. Move intentionally every single day. Daily movement is not optional maintenance — it is the most powerful tool available for extending both health span and mental sharpness.

2. Keep learning and seek out discomfort. Look specifically for challenges that force you to adapt — whether that is lifting heavier, taking on a new skill, or entering a room where you are the least experienced person.

3. Choose your thoughts about age and possibility with deliberate care. The research is clear that how you feel about aging shapes how you age. Decide who you want to be physically and mentally, and orient your daily choices around that version of yourself.

Learn more & connect:
JJVirgin.com
Well Beyond 40 podcast — available on all major platforms
Health Business Growth Collective — https://thehbgc.com/
Health Business Growth Show — available on all major platforms

Resources mentioned:
The Virgin Diet by JJ Virgin — JJVirgin.com
The Sugar Impact Diet by JJ Virgin — JJVirgin.com
Understanding Women by Alison Armstrong — allisonarmstrong.com
Urolithin A / Timeline — timelinenutrition.com
BPC-157 — available through compounding pharmacies; consult a functional medicine practitioner

Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

EP791: Amanda Johnson - How Books Can Build Your Authority

Nicky Billou

"What would be the use of me acquiring all of this for myself if I didn't leave it for somebody else?"

Most conversations about writing a book start in the same place: authority, credibility, speaking engagements, the business card that never gets thrown away. Amanda Johnson has spent 20 years in that conversation. But the insight that changed her work — and that shapes everything she does now — didn't come from a client who wanted to grow their brand. It came from a client who had 30 days to live.

Ruben was a business strategist, an empire builder, a man who had coached dozens of people in his image. When he was first diagnosed with cancer, he told Amanda he'd write his book after he beat it. He went into remission. Then the cancer came back, and they gave him a month. He called Amanda not to grieve but to get to work. He had three things left to do: hand over his business, marry his wife in a church, and finish the book. He wrote it in 30 days. He passed on day 31.

That story recalibrated what Amanda believes writing is actually for. Yes, a book puts a coach or consultant into a different tier of credibility — opens stages, closes clients, builds the kind of authority that a bio alone can't create. But beyond the business case, Amanda has found something else happening when accomplished people sit down to write. The blank page, unlike a live audience, gives nothing back. There's no room energy to read, no real-time feedback to ride. It's just the writer and their ideas — and that confrontation often reveals gaps in a framework the author didn't know were there, or stories they've been quietly carrying for years that still haven't been fully processed.

That's why giving clients a detailed chapter-by-chapter blueprint — what Amanda calls the message matrix — turned out not to be enough. The structure unlocked something, but many writers still couldn't move. They'd stall, miss emails, let the project drift. Amanda's answer was to kidnap them with consent. She created a retreat model, bringing clients together to write in community, with a witness. And that's when she saw it: for a certain type of high-achieving professional, especially those in the helping fields, there's often a piece of their story they've sealed off. They overcame something hard, moved on, and built something successful. But that sealed-off part is using energy — quietly holding them back from where they could go on stages, in their practice, in scaling. Writing, Amanda says, is one of the most powerful ways to release it. You let it come out through your hands, you look at it, and it no longer has the same grip.

Amanda Johnson is a writing coach and publisher known as The Story Oracle. She has spent over two decades helping thought leaders, coaches, and business owners find their core message, write with clarity, and bring books into the world that actually carry their voice. She founded Saved by Story House, a writing and publishing house for experts who are ready to leave something behind.

Amanda closes with three action steps for anyone who's been putting off the book:

1. Approach writing the way you've approached every other successful project in your business. You did not build what you've built without blocking time, developing a schedule, and putting protective boundaries around your work. The book deserves the same discipline. Treat it like a business priority, not a creative project you'll get to when things slow down.

2. Find a writing partner rather than a ghostwriter. A ghostwriter produces something efficient and often polished — but the energetic ownership of the work stays thin. When you write it yourself, even imperfectly, and have someone sharpen it, the book carries your fingerprints in a way that readers feel. Do as much of the writing as you can. Let someone else refine it.

3. Ask yourself honestly whether this book needs more time than you're used to giving a project. If there's a story calling to be told that still has weight when you think about it — sit with it. Find someone to witness it with you. Then put it into the world. Rushing past that story doesn't make it disappear. Processing it is often what makes the book powerful.

Learn more & connect:

Saved by Story House: https://www.savedbystory.house

Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

How To Have An Unbeatable Mind with Navy SEAL Commander Mark Divine

Nicky Billou

"You really have zero control over external circumstances. But when things are happening at super volatility and super fast, the bloom is off the rose that you have any control. So if you haven't learned to develop internal control and the calm abiding that allows you to be confident in spite of the VUCA — because you know that you'll be able to respond appropriately regardless of what happens externally — you're in trouble."

The world is moving faster than most human nervous systems were built to handle. Artificial intelligence is compressing decades of technological change into months. Old institutions are cracking. The social and political fabric feels like it's being stress-tested all at once. And according to Mark Divine — former Navy SEAL commander, martial artist, and one of the world's foremost teachers of mental toughness — none of this is an accident. It's the pressure that comes before a breakthrough.

Divine's framework for navigating chaos begins not with strategy or tactics, but with a deceptively simple premise: external control is an illusion, and it always was. The difference is that when the world moves slowly, you can maintain that illusion comfortably. When volatility accelerates, the illusion collapses — and the only people who remain effective are the ones who have done the inner work to build what he calls an *unbeatable mind*.

That framework spans five domains: the physical (a strong, durable body built through outdoor movement and natural discipline), the mental (developing whole-mind thinking that integrates left and right hemisphere, head and heart), the emotional (acknowledging that most adults are carrying unexamined trauma that clouds perception and decision-making), the intuitive (the signal that becomes clear once the noise in the first three domains is reduced), and the spiritual (the stillness required to discern your actual calling — not just what you're good at, but what you're here to do).

The conversation moves wide and fast — from David Hawkins' scale of consciousness to the future of human-AI integration to the possibility of longevity technology that could meaningfully extend human life. Divine doesn't shy away from the speculative edge of any of it, but his core message remains grounded: the outer world will always be beyond your control. The only leverage point is internal. Build that, and the rest becomes navigable.

**Mark Divine** is a former U.S. Navy SEAL Commander, the founder of SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind, and a bestselling author of multiple books including *The Way of the SEAL*, *Unbeatable Mind*, and *Kokoro Yoga*. He holds a black belt in multiple martial arts disciplines and has trained thousands of people — from elite military operators to corporate executives — in mental resilience, physical performance, and leadership. He is also a certified yoga and meditation teacher who has studied under masters in the Zen and Tibetan Buddhist traditions. His work sits at the intersection of Western performance science and Eastern contemplative practice.

Get outside and move. Walking, hiking, rucking, gardening — let nature be your gym. It naturally regulates sleep, improves eating habits, and unwinds the chronic tension that keeps most people in low-grade fight-or-flight.

Practice box breathing daily: inhale for five counts, hold for five, exhale for five, hold for five. Twenty minutes morning and afternoon gradually retrains the nervous system away from overdrive toward calm and steadiness.

Do nothing. Not meditation with a technique — just sit quietly without producing anything. Most driven people are almost entirely action-oriented. Stillness is the counterpart, and without it, clarity rarely surfaces.

Learn more & connect:

https://markdivine.com/

You can find all of Mark's books at https://markdivine.com/.

*Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.*

Roger Simon's New Book - EMET, One Man's Search For Meaning

Nicky Billou

“You don’t even have to succeed because it’s the process that makes you a man.”

Truth, purpose, faith, and the battle between good and evil take center stage in this episode of The Thought Leader Revolution. Through the lens of Roger Simon’s new book, EMET: One Man’s Search For Meaning, this conversation explores the Hebrew word for truth, the ancient golem myth, and the timeless human search for meaning. It’s a powerful discussion about confronting doubt, choosing purpose over comfort, and understanding why storytelling can reveal deeper spiritual realities.

Roger Simon shares how EMET blends thriller, mythology, modern Middle East events, and spiritual inquiry into one compelling story. He discusses the influence of faith on his writing, why every person has a purpose, and how his own journey from secular politics toward deeper religious reflection shaped the book. He also offers practical wisdom on aging, discipline, exercise, and living in service to something greater than yourself.

Roger Simon is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, bestselling novelist, journalist, and founder of PJ Media. Known for his Moses Wine mystery novels, political commentary, and decades of cultural insight, Roger continues to challenge readers with stories that combine suspense, philosophy, faith, and truth.

Expert action steps:

1. Develop a daily spiritual practice that keeps you connected to a higher purpose.

2. Exercise consistently and make movement part of your everyday routine.

3. Be intentional about nutrition and avoid excessive eating later in the day.

Learn more & connect:

Check out this article written about Roger’s book, EMET:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/bright/author-roger-l-simons-emet-conjures-a-protector-6003135

You can find EMET on Amazon.

https://a.co/d/015WTqn2

Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.