Join Zander Sprague for an energizing conversation with New York Times best-selling author and business coach Nicky Billou. In this episode, Nicky shares his inspiring journey from immigrant to successful entrepreneur, offering candid insights on achieving remarkable results. With his no-nonsense approach, Nicky discusses the vital role of coaching, the power of commitment, and strategies for overcoming plateaus in business and life. Prepare to be challenged, inspired, and equipped with practical tools to unlock your full potential and embark on your own epic journey to success.
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Achieving Remarkable Success Through Coaching And Commitment With Nicky Billou
Welcome back to another exciting episode of the show. I am joined by Nicky Billou.
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Nicky, tell us a little about who you are and what you do.
First, thanks for having me on the show. It’s a real honor to be here. Let me tell you my story. I’m originally an immigrant from the Middle East. I’m a Christian from Iran. When I was eleven years old, the Islamic Revolution took place in Iran. My late father, God rest his soul, could see the writing on the wall. This wasn’t going to be a place to raise a Christian family.
He got together with my mom. They talked and made some decisions, and the decision was that they were going to move me and my two brothers out of Iran and settle us eventually. I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I was eleven years old when all this happened. I didn’t want to leave my home. I didn’t want to leave my friends. In retrospect, this was the single greatest thing Mom and Dad could have done for me and my two brothers. They took us from a legacy of tyranny to a legacy of freedom.
That is a compelling story.
Freedom: The Bedrock Of Entrepreneurial Success
Thank you. I believe inside every human breast beats the living heart of freedom. Every man and every woman on this planet wants to march to the tune of their own drum. They want to chart their own course. What they don’t want to be is told what to do, how to do it, and how to live. Here’s what I understood. It’s that freedom is the bedrock of entrepreneurial success or of living an epic life, if you will.
Without freedom. There’s no free expression. Without free expression, there’s no free enterprise. Without free enterprise, there is no entrepreneurship. In entrepreneurship, the people who are entrepreneurs are society’s greatest heroes. They’re the men and women who, because of their dream and their vision, drive all human progress forward. I saw this and realized this. I wanted to be someone who served entrepreneurs.
My late father was an entrepreneur. If you knew him, you’d love this man. If he knew you were looking for work, he’d sit you down in his office and he’d call all his entrepreneur buddies. He’d ethically manipulate him until one of them hired you. If you tried to start a business, he would sit down with you, get you going, and give you ideas. He’d give you access to capital and clients and get you rocking. If you were a friend of his and you were trying to buy a car or a house and you didn’t have quite enough money, my father would top you up with a loan that he’d never let you pay back.
When I share the story on shows, some of the hosts can’t believe it. They go, “What are you talking about? Who does this? This sounds like it’s too good to be true.” I said, “Who does this? The late great Napoleon Billou for one.” They go, “Why would he do that? What’s the percentage in it for him?” I said, “I’ll tell you. First and foremost, he did it because he was a devout Christian. He believed that he’d been blessed by his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It was his duty to share those blessings with his fellow men. He also did this because he was rich and successful and he could.”
I wanted to be like my dad. I wanted to be rich and successful. I wanted people to look up to me. My father is the greatest man I’ve known. He’d come to me when I was a boy and he’d say to me, “Son, life is not about money. It’s about people.” I go, “Okay, Dad.” He said, “It’s business, son. It’s not about money. It’s about people.”
I said, “Dad, come on. Smart out a kid. What are you talking about? Business is about money. Without money, there’s no business.” He said, “That’s true, son, but without people, there’s no need for any money to do business.” All business, imagine a Venn diagram, is people that you solve problems for and then you make a profit. That’s the awe-inspiring purpose of business. Imagine people. Imagine problems. Imagine profit. Where all three intersect, that’s the awe-inspiring purpose of business.
My dad came to me and said to me, “That man standing in front of you is someone’s father, someone’s son, someone’s brother, or someone’s husband. That’s a hero to somebody. They’ve got hopes, got dreams, and got fears. They’ve had disappointments. Maybe even someone like you disappointed them in business. It’s your job to restore their faith in humanity.” My father would always tell me, “Every human being on this planet needs someone to love them and believe in them. That little spark of belief from you can turn into a roaring fire of belief and they’ll never look back.”
Every human being on this planet needs someone to love them and believe in them. That little spark of belief from you can turn into a roaring fire of belief in themselves.
What I do for a living is I’m a 10-time published author. I am about to have my 11th book published on August 26th, 2024. I’ve had two New York Times best-selling books. One of those New York Times best-selling books was endorsed by no less a percentage than former President Donald J. Trump. I am the host of the world’s top-rated podcast for thought leadership. I have helped dozens of people make hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of dollars in extra revenue.
I’m proud of all of those things, but if you ask me what I’m most proud of, I’m most proud that I’m Napoleon Billou’s son, that his blood flows through my veins, and that I believe in people. I believe in you. I believe in all my fellow men and women because they are God’s wonderful, awesome children. They deserve someone to believe in them and help them become the best version of themselves.
I, too, believe that we all have epic things not only that we’ve already done and, for some reason, we downplay. That’s one of those mysteries for me. There are all these epic things that you’ve done, I’ve done, and everyone’s done and we downplay it or we don’t say, “I have done great things.” More importantly, there are those things that we say, “It’d be great to do that,” be it to write a book, run a marathon, or enter a bodybuilding contest at 57. You go, “I’d love to do that someday.” My simple question to everyone is, why not now? Why not take that first step forward?
It has been my experience that the credible things that I’ve been able to do all started by me saying, “Let me start this journey.” Some journeys weren’t successful. That’s life. Not everything we do we’re successful at, but we do learn from them. You shared with me right before we came on that you did something epic. You entered a bodybuilding contest and came in third. I’m interested to know. Was that a lifelong dream? Was that something that came later? How was that contest?
In February 2023, I looked at myself in the mirror with my shirt off and my gut was hanging out over my belt. I was disgusted with myself. I used to be a top fitness coach. Over a 12-year period when I got out of fitness coaching and got into business, I gained over 50 pounds. Every year. I tell myself, “This is the year I’m going to get in shape,” but every year, I get a little bit fatter.
When I saw myself on February 2nd, 2023, I was so disgusted with myself. I reached what’s called the point of disgust. That point of disgust made me make a decision to do something about it. I realized that I was not going to get this done on my own. I needed a coach. I used to be a coach, but I needed a coach. I found a guy that I’d been checking out for years. He’d helped a lot of people my age get on bodybuilding stages. I said, “Okay.” That wasn’t my goal at first. My goal was to lose some weight.
I called him up and said, “First of all, can you help people my age?” He said, “Absolutely.” I said, “How long will it take?” He said, “Probably 6 months to 1 year.” I said, “That’s great. Let’s get started.” I didn’t even ask him how much he charged. Within 6 months, I went from 227 to 169. I then told him, “This is great but I need to reshape my body. I’d like to have my body be symmetrical and look muscular and beautiful.” He said, “Okay.”
We decided to enter a competition. I trained from October to August 2023 for that competition. I went on stage at 168 chiseled and ripped. I was 57. My competitors were twenty years younger than me. It was a heck of an experience. I got into peak condition. People ask me, “Why’d you do it?” I was like, “It’s because I want the second half of my life to be the best half of my life.”
Breaking Through Business Plateaus
If someone’s in business here and they’re going, “How do I get my business to get off this plateau?” Do you know what I say to that? First and foremost, you have to make a decision if that’s what you want to do. No tire kicking. You have to commit to it. You have to be willing to suck at something before you’re mediocre at it, average at it, good at it, and great at it. You got to do that. You then have to invest in a coach or a mentor and be coachable.
To get off a business plateau, first and foremost, you’ve got to make a decision. You’ve got to commit to it and be willing to suck at something before you’re mediocre, then average, then good at it.
The Importance Of Investing In A Coach
The great Robin Sharma, who was a client of mine back when I was a fitness coach, once told me, “If you want to double your income this year, triple your investment in personal and professional development. Hire the coaches, join the masterminds, attend the conferences, do the courses, and read the books.” You think about that. You are the most important asset in your business and in your life. Therefore, you should get the most investment of time, energy, money, and care. You have to hire a great coach.
If you want to double your income this year, triple your investment in personal and professional development. Hire coaches, join masterminds, attend conferences, do courses, and read books.
You also have to be resourceful. You have to come up with the time, the energy, and the money to make it happen. These people that go, “I can’t afford it. I can’t afford to hire somebody,” you’re crazy. You can’t afford not to hire somebody. Most of the people I work with are amazing, hard-driven human beings but they suck at marketing and sales. Suck is a technical business term. The reason is they’re scared. They don’t want to be seen as pushy or salesy.
The problem is that people who need their help don’t go after that business because they don’t want to be seen as pushy and salesy, so they miss out on the business. They suffer. The client suffers because they don’t get a good person to help them. Some charlatan marketer comes in and scoops up the business because they’re good at sales and marketing, but they have no ethics and morals, so everybody loses. Even the charlatan loses because karma comes and bites him in the butt.
What I do is help these good people reframe selling. Nobody wants to be sold. You don’t want to be sold. I don’t want to be sold. Don’t you want to be served by carrying an advocate by somebody who’s there for you? You want to give them your money. You want to work with them. Help people shift from sales to service. Sales to love has helped my clients double, triple, quadruple, fivefold, tenfold, or hundredfold their business.
Another thing that I talk about sometimes is to not be afraid to invest in the people to help you do the things that you don’t do as well. As this individual person, I can only do so much in a day. What I should do is focus my time on the areas that I am strongest in and hire other people whose strength is not mine.
For example, I’ve had a virtual assistant for a couple of years. That has freed up my time from doing the stuff that I need to do, like creating social media posts and stuff like that, to be able to do stuff like my show, which is more in my area of strength. In working with people, I’ve heard people go, “Once I make it, I’ll be able to hire someone.” I’m like, “You got to figure out if you can get whatever help you need today because that frees you up to then have the success that you would like to have for you to go on that epic journey.” If we’re constantly trying to pack our bags and figure out what we need for our epic journey, we never leave. That’s a shame.
Don’t wait until you ‘make it’ to get help. Find ways to get the help you need today. It frees you up to have the success you want and go on that epic journey.
One of the things you said is you have to fully commit to what it is that you want and that you have to decide that that’s what you want. That’s so true. It’s much easier to commit yourself 100% to something than to do it 90% or 80%. Let’s take a look at your journey of transforming your body. If you’re like, “I really want this but I’m only going to work out twice a week.” You’re probably not going to be too successful in trying to change your body. If you commit and say, “Here’s what I’m doing, and it is now part of my schedule. I know that every day, I’m going to go to the gym at X time. It’s going to take me this long,” your day’s easier because you know when you’re doing it. It’s not like, “Sometime this afternoon.” Too many things get in the way.
A Client’s Success Story: From $1,200 To $120,000 A Month
100%. I’ll tell you a story of a client of mine. I had this client who was a health and fitness coach himself. He was a young guy full of piss and vinegar, eager to get his business going. He had seven clients. He made $1,200 a month on a good month. He lived in Toronto where I live. Toronto is the New York of Canada. $1,200 a month isn’t going to cut it here.
He came to me because one of my other clients had said, “This guy can help you.” I said, “All right. That’s great.” I talked to him and said, “Tell me a bit about you and who you help.” He said, “I can help anybody with any health and fitness issue.” That was his first mistake. He was trying to be all things to all people. I told him that. I said, “Let’s narrow your focus.”
He said, “What if I work with doctors?” I go, “Why do you say doctors?” He said, “My dad’s a doctor and I love my dad.” I said, “That’s a promising start.” He said, “Also, doctors make a lot of money so they can afford to pay me a lot of money.” I said, “That is not a good point of difference.” He didn’t care. He wanted to go for it. In 6 months, he got 2 clients. I told him, “It’s not working for you. We need to change this.” He said, “I’m going to do cardiologists.” I said, “Why cardiologists?” He said, “They make more money than doctors.” I said, “You’re not getting it.” He tried it and got zero clients.
During the same time though, the good Lord saw fit to send him a Paralympian as a client with a missing leg from a childhood accident. That worked out really well. He did great work with this guy. He came to me and said, “I want to work with people with missing limbs. You were right. I shouldn’t have been going after the money.” I go, “I was right.” He said, “I’ll work with people with missing limbs.” I said, “That’s a great idea.” He said, “I know how to help him.” In 6 weeks, he signed up 400 clients. He could no longer do one-on-one coaching. He had to create some sort of online methodology. He went from making $1,200 a month to making $120,000 a month.
That’s a great story.
If someone’s reading this and they’re thinking, “How can I get off my plateau? How can I do something epic like this guy and make $120,000 a month?” I haven’t even made that much in a year,” some people are thinking. First of all, you have to make a decision. That’s what you want to do. You got to commit to getting good at what you need to get good at to do it. You have to get a coach and be coachable. Invest in yourself.
You then have to be resourceful and do whatever it takes. Put in the time, the energy, and the money to win. That’s how you win. You don’t win by wishing, dreaming, and hoping. Hope and change sounds like a good slogan, at least it did back in 2008 when Barack Obama brought it. It didn’t say anything. It didn’t mean anything. It still doesn’t mean anything. Hope and change aren’t going to get you anything. What’s going to get you something is a decision, a commitment, getting the right coach, and being resourceful and dedicated enough to do whatever it takes.
Also, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. All too often, people think, “I’ve got to get it all perfect.” We don’t get our day perfect. I don’t have all the answers to all the questions that may come up, but it didn’t prevent me from getting up and going through my day. As I run my business and as I’m helping people, I say, “We all make mistakes.”
I joke that as an entrepreneur, I’ve been very generous in buying lots of different tools that I thought might help me but it turns out that they don’t. They’re not necessarily bad, but it’s not the right tool for me. In the same way as a runner, I tried different running shoes until I found the brand and the type that fit me.
People don’t think about that. I’m like, “That is what happens.” You are going to put an investment into something and maybe it doesn’t quite work. Maybe you hire a coach but it’s not quite the right coach for you. You don’t know because you haven’t had coaching. You don’t know, “What kind of coach do I want? Do I want someone who’s barking at me all the time or do I want someone who’s firm but encouraging?” That’s what’s important.
I’m going to push back on that.
Go ahead.
I don’t think most people are qualified to decide what kind of coach they need. It’s like going to a doctor and saying, “I need to decide what kind of doctor I need.” If your arm’s broken, you need to find a doctor who can fix the bone. That’s what you need. You don’t want to argue with him about how he’s going to fix the bone. You want to let him fix the bone.
If you’re being coached, the job of the coach is to get you the result. Your job is to listen and take the coaching. If the coach has a track record of getting results for people or the coach is somebody who knows what they’re talking about, it’s a cop-out for somebody to say, “I don’t like his style.” He’s not there to be your best friend. Honestly, a coach who is there to be your best friend is probably not being hard enough on you to make sure you do what you need to do.
When I coached this client that I told you about earlier, the fitness coach, I was too easy on him. I was too nice to him at the beginning. I gave him six months to not listen to me before I put down my foot. I should have given him two days and said, “I’m the coach. Listen to what I’m saying or you’re fired.” That would’ve been the smarter thing to do.
He suffered $1,200 in a month for another 9 months because I didn’t put my foot down hard enough. When I finally put my foot down with him, it was to say, “You do what you want. You paid me for a year.” That was not a good way to approach it. He listened to me coming to that decision on his own. He should have listened to me.
When I hired the guy to coach me for my bodybuilding, I made a decision that I was going to do whatever he told me. I was a fitness coach, so I knew a lot about working out and nutrition. It was very easy for me to start to argue with his coaching in my mind. When he gave me this first plan, I was about to send him an email, but I said, “I don’t give a crap what you think. You paid this man money. Do what he says.” That was the best decision. I made sure to listen to what he had to say and not argue with it. As a client of a coach, your job is to be coachable. Take the coaching. It’s not the coach’s job to conform to how you like to be coached.
I will push back a little and say that we all went to school for at least twelve years and a lot of us longer than that. When you look back, you remember certain teachers. There’s a reason that you remember them. It’s because they were really good teachers. There was a way in which they were teaching that was relatable to you. You can also remember the teachers that you’re like, “I didn’t really like that person for whatever reason.”
I do agree with what you’re saying. You have to be coachable. If you’re in there, you do have to listen. I also believe that there are people who are not the right person for you. You’re going to try really hard to do what they’re saying, but if it’s not in your DNA or it’s not within your integrity, you may say, “I can’t do that.”
I’m going to push back a little. I do agree. You have to be coachable. You’ve hired someone. Yeah. You hired them because they’re going to help you. You’re right. Like going to a doctor, you go find an orthopedist because you have a broken arm. If you went to a doctor because you’re having a health issue and the doctor isn’t listening to you when you’re like, “I keep having these headaches and I don’t understand why,” and they don’t order any tests, you perhaps don’t want to keep seeing that doctor. It’s not because they’re a doctor or because you ask for their help that it means that they’re the right doctor for you. That’s all.
The only caveat I gave you is that they need to know what they’re doing and they need to have a track record of success. If they don’t know what they’re doing, you shouldn’t hire them in the first place. If they know what they’re doing and your tender feelings are hurt because they’re telling you to do something that’s out of your comfort zone, you need to get over that.
I agree.
Too many people come and say, “I don’t like how this guy coaches.” Honestly, I’m going to be straight up. I don’t give a crap if you like how the guy coaches. I want to know if his coaching is the right coaching. If he’s telling you what to do and it’s the right thing to do and you are having a personality conflict with him, get over the personality conflict. He’s not there to be your friend. He’s not there to make you feel good about yourself.
It’s your money. It’s my money. If I’m not getting what I need out of it, then like a product that isn’t working, I’m not going to use it anymore.
It’s up to you. You can do whatever you want. It is your money, but I’m telling you this. In the world of coaching, when a client comes to me and says to me, and I had a client like this, “I don’t like how you coach me. You’re too direct,” I said, “I’m not going to stop being direct. We have a choice here. Either you’re going to take my coaching or we’re going to end our coaching relationship.” When we ended our coaching relationship. That has happened once to me in 22 years but I had no problem doing it.
I will say this again. If you’re getting coached, your number one job is to find a coach who can deliver the result for you. If that is your number one criterion, then all you have to look for is a coach who knows what they’re doing and can deliver results. If you’re interested in making sure that the coach speaks to you in a gentle or kind manner, maybe coaching isn’t for you.
I’m not saying gentle and kind. What I’m saying is there are many different communication styles. We learn about what is going to work for us. I know that at 56, I understand what I need because I’ve had coaching. I choose a coach who I say, “I’ve interviewed. I can work with that person.” Other people may have a much greater success record but maybe that’s not the right person for me. That’s all.
As I told you at the beginning of the show, I’m a big believer in freedom. It’s a free country, the United States. Canada’s a free country too, still despite the best efforts of some. You get to choose how you’re going to live your life, where you spend your money, and what you do it on. I feel very strongly that a person choosing their coach needs to have the right criteria for choosing the coach. The number one criterion is they got to know what they’re doing and they got to have a track record of success.
When I went to go lose all that weight, I was 58 pounds overweight. That’s a lot to be overweight. I didn’t feel good. I didn’t look good. I wasn’t happy with myself. Honestly, I was not at all interested in how this guy spoke to me. He was a nice guy. I’m not telling you he was a prick because he wasn’t. He was a very nice guy. That was not a criterion that was in my mind.
If he had been yelling at me and saying, “I need you to work harder. You’re not working hard enough,” I would’ve been fine with it. I’d have had no issues with it because the only thing I wanted was I wanted to look different than I looked. I wanted to not feel tired. I wanted to not have a problem urinating. The fat around my urinary tract was making it difficult to urinate.
I wanted to look good in front of my lady who’s a beautiful woman. I didn’t feel that I deserved her anymore because she was way better looking than me and way better shape than I was. I wanted my sons to be proud of me. Those were the things that were important to me. How this guy delivered his communication to me was not even a remote consideration for me.
The Power Of “Not Yet” In Business
I hear you. Here’s a question for you. I talk about the power of two words, which are not yet. In business, not yet is really important. Sometimes, it takes us time to get to where we want to go, be it writing a book or something. Someone asks, “Has your book come out?” You’re like, “Not yet.” That doesn’t mean it’s not coming out. It means maybe your editing took a little longer. You thought it was going to take you 1 month and it’s taking you 5 weeks. It’s still coming out. What are 1 or 2 of your not-yets?
For twelve years, it was not yet to hire a coach and get myself in shape. That was twelve years. I have a book coming out soon, and I have two other books that are in various stages of writing and development. They’re not-yets. I don’t have an exact date for either 1 of them, although 1 of them I need to get moving on faster than the other.
Everybody’s got to have not-yets. There are times you’re not ready yet. That’s why it’s important the whole coaching conversation that we had. As an individual, I need to be ready to take action. I don’t want a client who’s not ready to act. I don’t want a client who’s going to sit down and go, “Let’s think about it. Let’s talk about it.” I want a client who wants a result yesterday.
That’s how I am when I go and I decide to hire a coach, see a doctor, see a nutritionist, or whatever. I want someone who is going to give me an action plan I can jump on immediately. When I’m not ready, I say, “Not yet.” I don’t even really engage in the discussion to move forward with those things. I got a book coming out soon. There are two other books that are on the drawing boards. It’s not time for me to look at those books yet. Not yet.
I want to thank you so much for taking the time. This has been a really epic conversation. How can people get a hold of you?
I am @NickyBillou on any social media platform. Connect with me. If you’re a business owner who is stuck on a plateau and you’re done with not yet and you’re like, “Time is now. I want to get off this plateau,” I offer something called a Success Vision Call. It’s a complimentary coaching call. What we do is take a look at your success vision and map out a blueprint for you. The blueprint is free. You should take advantage of it. It’s a good thing if you’re done with not yet.
Thank you so much for your time. I want to remind everyone that you can go to EpicBegins.com to find out how you can begin your epic journey. If you go there, you can get a free copy of my eBook, EPIC Begins with 1 Step Forward. As always, I want to remind people that epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
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About Nicky Billou
Nicky Billou has been called THE WORLD’S GREATEST PODCAST GUEST. Why? Because he has been a guest on over 600 shows, and always brings power, passion, and actionable tips to every appearance. He is the #1 International Best Selling Author of the book: 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. A two-time New York Times bestselling author, 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 500 of the world’s top Thought Leaders,