EP823: TL Nuggets #248 - Serve The Decided

Nicky Billou

"Deciding isn't the same as wanting. Everybody in Iran who was in our position wanted to be safe. Wanting's easy. Wanting doesn't cost anything, but deciding — that's a whole different animal." — Nicky Billou

When a Molotov cocktail landed at an eleven-year-old's feet in Tehran, his parents stopped hoping things would improve. They looked at each other and said: that's it. They left behind their business, their friends, their entire world — and built something new in Canada. That single act of decision shaped everything that followed.

The word decide, as coach Marc Von Musser puts it, comes from the Latin root meaning to kill off the alternative. No plan B. No waiting to see. No I'll think about it. That is the difference between a wish and a commitment — and it is also the difference between the clients who transform and the ones who disappear.

After more than twenty years coaching coaches, consultants, speakers, and entrepreneurs, and more than a thousand podcast conversations with people like Brian Tracy, Marie Forleo, and Olympic champions, a pattern keeps surfacing: the people who need your help most are rarely the ones who will take it. The ones who will take it have already decided they need it. Building a practice around convincing the undecided leads to discounted fees, chasing prospects who ghost, and wondering why nothing is converting. There is a better path — finding and serving the decided, and helping the almost-decided cross the line without pressure, without begging, and without manipulation.

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

Learn more & connect:
https://www.TheThoughtLeaderRevolution.com
https://www.eCircleAcademy.com

Resources mentioned:
Marc Von Musser — referenced for his teaching on the Latin root of the word "decide": https://www.marcvonmusser.com
Brian Tracy — https://www.briantracy.com
Marie Forleo — https://www.marieforleo.com

EP822: Adriana Yuno - How To Build A Movement That Changes The World

Nicky Billou

"The branch that holds the most fruit bows the lowest. People who have nothing to hide speak in a very simple language and act very humble."
— Adriana Yuno

What does it take to fix a broken educational system? For Adriana Yuno, the answer started not in a boardroom or a policy meeting — but at a kitchen table, with one child who kept getting the wrong answer for the right reasons.

Born in a working-class family in Slovenia during the chaotic post-independence transition from Yugoslavia, Adriana left home at 10, lived with her grandmother in poverty, and fought her way out of a system that had already decided what she was worth. She built a career in forensic accounting and fraud investigation — learning, as she puts it, to read systems and the people inside them. Then a serious illness forced everything to a stop. What came next changed the direction of her life entirely.

Her son, labeled with Asperger's syndrome, was clearly brilliant — and being steadily broken by school. Adriana watched him return home day after day with his confidence eroded, unable to connect with a system that graded memorization over thinking. So she became his translator. She learned to decode textbooks into his language, tested every available approach, and eventually developed what became the YUNO Method — a framework that started at her kitchen table and scaled across Slovenia's public schools, private schools, hospital schools, and eventually into corporations and university programs. The method works, she discovered, not just for neurodivergent learners but for every kind of learner. The children who aren't struggling don't notice the difference. The ones who are — thrive.

Adriana Yuno is an educator, author, and founder of the YUNO Method, which has been adopted across Slovenia's educational system and is now expanding internationally. Her work sits at the intersection of neurodiversity, systemic educational reform, and the urgent question of what happens when an entire generation of analog teachers retires — and nobody has preserved what they know.

Expert Action Steps:

1. Ask more questions and listen twice as carefully. Connection is the only environment in which real learning — or real anything — can happen, and listening is how you build it.
2. Seek out the humble. The people carrying the most genuine knowledge rarely announce it loudly. Find those who explain complex things simply and act without pretension — and aim to be one of them.
3. Make fun non-negotiable. If your work, your relationships, and your learning feel like punishment, something needs to change. Joy is not a reward for finishing the hard work. It is part of how the hard work gets done well.

Learn more & connect:
https://www.adrianayuno.com

Resources mentioned:
Joe Dispenza retreats — https://www.drjoedispenza.com
Dragon's Den (CBC) — https://www.cbc.ca/dragonsden

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

EP821: TL Nuggets #247 - Nicky's Immigrant Origin Story

Nicky Billou

"My father believed everybody's self-belief wobbles once in a while. All they need when that happens is for someone to remind them who they are, someone to believe in them. That little spark of belief can turn into a roaring fire, and they're off into the races."
— Nicky Billou

When a Molotov cocktail landed at the feet of an eleven-year-old boy in Tehran, his father didn't panic — he acted. He pulled the burning rag from the bottle, poured out the gasoline, and saved his son's life. Then he made a plan. Within a few years, he had moved his family from Iran to Athens to Toronto, leaving behind everything and everyone he had ever known. That act of sacrifice — trading a legacy of tyranny for a legacy of freedom — became the foundation of everything Nicky Billou has built.

This is Nicky's origin story: the immigrant journey that shaped his understanding of entrepreneurship, service, and what it actually means to believe in people. The thread runs from Tehran to Ayn Rand to his father's philosophy of business — a man who quietly cleared his calendar for friends in need, wrote personal checks without calling them loans, and told his son that all business is simply solving problems for people for a profit. Nicky's life's work is an extension of that teaching. The credential he is most proud of has nothing to do with revenue or accolades. He calls himself a professional believer in people.

Nicky Billou is the host of The Thought Leader Revolution podcast, founder of eCircle Academy, and a leading coach to entrepreneurs and thought leaders. He helps coaches, consultants, and experts build practices that create both income and impact — rooted in the conviction that financially successful people with purpose are among the greatest forces for good in the world.

Learn more & connect:
https://www.eCircleAcademy.com

Resources mentioned:
Ayn Rand — author and philosopher; works include The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged: https://www.aynrand.org

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

EP820: Cody Sturgess - Loyalty & Love

Nicky Billou

"She's basically my best friend. I've had this horse for 21 years. If we do nothing, she's going to die — so it's one of those decisions you just have to make for them."
— Cody Sturgess

What does it take to compete at the top of any field — sport, business, or both? For Cody Sturgess, the answer is the same in every arena: do the work nobody sees, get back up one more time, and never mistake luck for the thing that actually got you there.

Cody was shortlisted for the Olympics in the discipline of 3-day eventing — an equestrian triathlon combining dressage, show jumping, and cross-country, the latter done at nearly 600 meters per minute over immovable solid obstacles. He broke his back in two places during a fall and spent nine months relearning how to walk. He came back. That same refusal to stay down carried him into real estate, a North American Director of Sales role at a SaaS company, and eventually into building an AI company for real estate agents — each pivot driven by the same discipline he built in the saddle before dawn, day after day, year after year.

Now Cody faces a different kind of high-stakes decision. Imperial Melody — Melly — the off-the-track thoroughbred he bought as a 2-year-old and kept for 21 years, the mare who carried him to Rolex Five Star and onto the cover of Horse Sport magazine, has been diagnosed with a large abdominal mass after colicking three times in seven months. He is taking her to the New Bolton Equine Hospital in Pennsylvania for surgery, and every dollar raised beyond her $30,000 surgical goal goes directly to equine cancer research.

Cody Sturgess is an entrepreneur, equestrian coach, real estate investor, and AI company founder based in Canada. He was shortlisted for the Canadian Olympic team in 3-day eventing and has spent over two decades competing and coaching at the highest levels of the sport alongside his mare Imperial Melody.

Learn more & connect:
GoFundMe for Imperial Melody's surgery and equine cancer research: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-bring-the-queen-home
Follow Cody's documentation of Melly's journey on his social channels

Resources mentioned:
New Bolton Center Equine Hospital — https://www.vet.upenn.edu/hospitals/newbolton
Horse Sport Magazine — https://www.horsesport.com
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Robin Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari — https://www.robinsharma.com

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

EP819: TL Nuggets #246 - Your Brain Goes Where Your Questions Lead

Nicky Billou

"The quality of your life depends on the quality of the questions you ask." — Nicky Billou

Most of us never deliberately choose the questions we ask ourselves. We drift into worry, distraction, and scarcity — not because we're undisciplined, but because we never decided what to ask instead.

Drawing on Tony Robbins' Personal Power 2 course, I walk through a practice I've been using to take control of where my brain goes each day: designing my questions on purpose, before the day designs them for me. In this short episode, I share the full list I've developed — fifteen questions covering client enrollment, peak state, relationships, screen time, joy, gratitude, and pride — and I answer each one live, in real time.

The exercise takes five minutes. The shift in energy is immediate. And the principle behind it is straightforward: your brain moves in the direction of the questions you ask it. Choose better questions, and your focus — and your life — follows.

Come up with your own list. Try it tomorrow morning. See what happens.

Learn more & connect
https://www.eCircleAcademy.com
https://www.TheThoughtLeaderRevolution.com

Resources mentioned:
Tony Robbins — Personal Power 2: https://www.tonyrobbins.com

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

EP818: Mark Organ - The Key To Scaling A Billion Dollar Business

Nicky Billou

"Have the cojones to focus. Be willing to take some things off the table in order to double and triple down on the things that really work. If you want to grow a tree full of fruit, you've got to prune some of those branches." — Mark Organ

Most entrepreneurs think scaling is about doing more. Mark Organ built two companies — one sold to Oracle for $1 billion — by doing exactly the opposite: relentlessly narrowing until the business had nowhere to go but up.

The principle he calls "bullseye of the bullseye" isn't a metaphor about focus in the abstract. It's a repeatable discipline of micro-targeting: going so narrow on your customer profile, your geography, and your use cases that repeatability becomes inevitable. At Eloqua, that meant serving only two U.S. cities until word-of-mouth created momentum. At Influitive, it meant owning six of the top nine cybersecurity identity management companies before expanding anywhere else. The pattern held even when Mark applied it to a Mennonite farmer selling compost — sharpen the positioning, identify the underserved customer who already appreciates your advantage, and scale from there.

Underneath all of it is one discipline most founders skip: deep, almost obsessive understanding of the target customer. Mark traces this to watching Scott Cook — the only entrepreneur to beat Microsoft in its prime — sit at kitchen tables studying how ordinary people actually did their taxes. That level of customer intimacy, he argues, is what separates the few who scale from the many who plateau.

Mark Organ is the founder of Eloqua (acquired by Oracle for approximately $1 billion) and Influitive, a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and the founder of Category Knots, where he works with technology and high-tech manufacturing companies on category design, product-market-message fit, and CEO coaching.

Expert Action Steps:

1. Study your target customer in more depth than your competitors are willing to. Understand how they think about the problem you solve — their mental models, motivations, and environment. That knowledge compounds into every advantage you build.

2. Have the courage to cut. Take things off the table — markets, use cases, features — so your energy concentrates where it matters most. A tree produces more fruit when you prune the branches.

3. Build a business that lets you keep the rest of your life intact. Scaling exists partly so you can sustain yourself — your health, your relationships, your presence. The people around you, customers and team alike, respond to a leader who looks genuinely well.

Learn more & connect:
Category Knots: https://www.categoryknots.com
Mark Organ on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markorgan

Resources mentioned:
Category Knots — Mark Organ's advisory and coaching firm: https://www.categoryknots.com
Eloqua — marketing automation company co-founded by Mark Organ, acquired by Oracle: https://www.oracle.com/marketingcloud/
Influitive — customer advocacy platform co-founded by Mark Organ: https://www.influitive.com
Intuit — software company whose customer-intimacy strategy Mark cites as a model: https://www.intuit.com
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill — the success philosophy underlying much of the entrepreneurial mindset discussed

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

EP817: TL Nuggets #245 - An Objection Is Just the Soul Saying Yes

Nicky Billou

“When I get an objection, I know that the soul is saying yes to moving forward with me. It’s just that the brain is scared, and all I’ve got to do is reach the soul.” — Nicky Billou

Most coaches and consultants dread objections. They feel like rejection — a door closing, a prospect slipping away. But a client inside eCircle Academy recently reframed objections in a way that changes everything about how you show up in a sales conversation.

The insight: an objection is not a no. It is the soul saying yes while the brain panics. The moment someone says “I need to think about it” or “I need to talk to my spouse” or “it costs too much,” they have already decided — at some deeper level — that their problem is real, that it can be solved, and that you might be the one to solve it. The objection is not resistance to the offer. It is fear asking a single question: “Will this work for me?”

That shift in interpretation changes everything. Instead of bracing for rejection, you can meet the objection with curiosity and warmth — because you know you are not being pushed away. You are being asked for reassurance. Your job is not to overcome the objection. It is to walk the person past their fear and back to what their soul already knows.

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

EP816: Rick Rosenfield - How To Scale to 9 Figures

Nicky Billou

"The minimum standard is excellence. If you have to ask me whether you should serve a burnt pizza, you've already answered the question." — Rick Rosenfield

Two federal prosecutors walked into Beverly Hills in 1985 with zero restaurant experience, a mortgaged home, and a conviction that pizza didn't need tomato sauce. What they built — California Pizza Kitchen, 285 locations, 14,000 employees — turned out to be less about barbecue chicken pizza and more about what happens when you put people above everything else, including the CEO.

Rick Rosenfield's account of building CPK cuts against the mythology of the lone visionary. The concept got them in the door. Culture kept them there. Before he and co-founder Larry Flax knew the word "culture," they made a decision: anyone who could commit to quality, get along with their colleagues, and treat people with kindness was welcome to grow. Anyone who couldn't was gone — not out of cruelty, but because leaving the wrong person in place always costs more than the discomfort of letting them go. That insight crystallized into ROCK: Respect, Opportunity, Communication, Kindness. It became their hiring floor, their promotion standard, and the reason people who started as dishwashers stayed for 38 years.

The other lesson Rick carries: growth has a speed limit. When PepsiCo pushed them to open 50 to 100 locations a year, they sipped their own Kool-Aid and stepped further than their infrastructure could support. The win was already there — they just needed to build toward it at a pace that preserved what made it work.

Rick Rosenfield spent years as a federal prosecutor before co-founding California Pizza Kitchen in 1985. CPK grew to 285 locations and pioneered the polished casual dining category in America. He is the author of The California Pizza Kitchen Story: How 2 Federal Prosecutors Changed the Way America Eats Pizza.

Learn more and connect:
Rick Rosenfield and the CPK story — search The California Pizza Kitchen Story wherever books are sold, or find Rick on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-rosenfield-9185933a9/

Resources mentioned:
The California Pizza Kitchen Story — Rick Rosenfield
Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's — Ray Kroc
Terminal List series (Amazon) — Jack Carr (author of the foreword to Rick's book)
Chez Panisse — https://www.chezpanisse.com
Spago Beverly Hills — https://www.wolfgangpuck.com/dining/spago

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

EP815: Tim Leatherman - The Leatherman Multitool Story

Nicky Billou

"There's a fine line between persistence and failure to accept reality. But if you're going to err on one side or the other, you want to err on being overly persistent rather than giving up too soon." — Tim Leatherman

Tim Leatherman is back for his third conversation with Nicky — and this one comes with a new book. The Leatherman Book releases October 6th, 2026, and it tells the story of how a note scribbled in a travel journal — add pliers to a pocket knife — became one of the most recognized tool brands in American history.

The origin story is almost improbable. Tim and his wife were traveling through Europe and into Asia on a shoestring budget in the early 1970s when Tim kept running into the same problem: his pocket knife could start the job but couldn't finish it without a pair of pliers back in the car. He came home, went into the garage, and spent two years building a prototype. Then seven years trying to sell it. Knife companies said it wasn't a knife. Tool companies said it was a gadget and gadgets don't sell. More than 100 catalogs received a photo and cover letter. Zero wrote back.

What finally moved the needle was a Seattle catalog buyer who did something unusual: instead of saying no and sending them home, he sat Tim and his co-founder Steve Berliner down, looked at the tool, and told them exactly what to remove to make it manufacturable at a price people would pay. Tim simplified the design, drove back to Portland, and six months later returned with the tool that would become the Leatherman Pocket Survival Tool. In their first full year, they hoped to sell 4,000. They sold nearly 30,000. By 1993, Leatherman was shipping more than a million tools a year. Today it's around 2 million — all made in Portland, Oregon.

Tim and Nicky also go deep on persistence, the detail-obsession that made the tool worth carrying, Tim's design philosophy (highest quality, most functionality, smallest space, least weight), and why he considers the company's warranty a profit center rather than a cost.

Learn more and connect:
Leatherman Tool Group — https://www.leatherman.com
The Leatherman Book (releasing October 6th) — https://www.leatherman.com

Resources mentioned:
The Leatherman Book by Tim Leatherman — https://www.leatherman.com
John Wooden's Pyramid of Success — https://www.coachwooden.com
Leatherman Wave+ Multi-Tool — https://www.leatherman.com/wave-10.html
Leatherman Arc Multi-Tool — https://www.leatherman.com/arc-950.html
Cabela's — https://www.cabelas.com

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

EP814: Patrick Francey - How To Build An Unbeatable Mindset

Nicky Billou

“He believed so strongly in the product that he just couldn’t wrap his mind around anybody saying no. So he just looked at it and took another approach.” — Patrick Francey

Most business owners who struggle with sales aren’t lacking tactics — they’re lacking conviction. Patrick Francey, founder of the Real Estate Investment Network and host of The Everyday Millionaire podcast, makes a case that the details separating mediocre salespeople from exceptional ones are less about technique and more about belief, values, and self-awareness.

The conversation ranges from a deceptively simple story about a dog food company — where a rookie in the back of the room solved a multi-year sales crisis by observing that “the dogs don’t like the food” — to a sharp distinction between mindset work and self-mastery. Patrick argues that mindset, a term he’s largely walked away from, describes how people react to the world outside them, while self-mastery is an inside job: understanding your values, living in integrity with them, and being willing to accept the consequences when you do. Many people want their lives to change, he notes, but aren’t prepared for what that change will actually cost them — the relationships, the careers, the identities that have to go.

The thread running through all of it is a concept he calls “own your need” — the discipline of stating your expectations plainly rather than thinking them loudly and waiting for resentment to follow.

Patrick Francey is a serial entrepreneur whose first business, launched in 1982, is now in its 43rd year of operation — running without him. As CEO of the Real Estate Investment Network, one of Canada’s leading investment education communities, and co-host of the Mindset Matters and Mind Shui Way podcasts alongside his wife Stephanie, an Olympic mental performance coach, Patrick coaches business owners on the intersection of operational excellence and personal leadership.

Learn more & connect:

Real Estate Investment Network: https://www.reincanada.com

The Everyday Millionaire Podcast: https://www.theeverydaymillionaire.ca

Resources mentioned:

Real Estate Investment Network — https://www.reincanada.com

The Everyday Millionaire Podcast — https://www.theeverydaymillionaire.ca

John Wooden — leadership philosophy referenced throughout: https://www.coachwooden.com

Mind Shui Way — podcast co-hosted with Stephanie Francey

Xerox Professional Selling Skills — the sales training methodology referenced in the conversation

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