The Business of Thought Leadership Podcast | 10X Y

"If you never had a chance to see Leo Messi play, I'm sorry. He's still playing club football, so if you have a chance to see him play now, please continue to see him play — but learn from his example and bring those lessons into your own life." — Nicky Billou When Lionel Messi announced his retirement from international football, Nicky Billou got teary-eyed. Not out of sentimentality alone — but because men who operate at that level of sustained excellence over two decades do something that goes beyond sport. They hold up a mirror. This Thought Leader Nugget is Nicky's reflection on what Messi's retirement means — and what it demands of the rest of us. A World Cup. Three Copa Americas. A goal tally that puts him behind only Cristiano Ronaldo and Pelé in the all-time records. More than 20 years of commitment, humility, and brilliance on the international stage. That is not just a career. It is a study in what full dedication to a gift actually looks like across a lifetime. Nicky watched Messi play live twice as a Toronto FC season ticket holder — once when he barely played, and once when he was on the pitch for the full 90 minutes in 2026. The second time left a mark. And this episode is his attempt to name why — and to turn that why into something useful for anyone building a life and a practice they can be proud of. The question at the heart of it: look at what Messi built with what he had. What are you building with what you have? Learn more & connect: https://www.eCircleAcademy.com Resources mentioned: Lionel Messi — career highlights and statistics available at https://www.intermiamicf.com Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

"The thing about being a musician is once you finish your gig, you're unemployed. So you have to be hustling nonstop to get your next gig." — Terry Donnelly Terry Donnelly does not look like a man who has reinvented himself six times. He looks like a man who has been doing the same thing in six different industries — which, it turns out, is exactly right. From touring musician to HR consultant to venture capital partner to tech founder to CMO of a $1.3 billion agency portfolio, Terry has built, exited, and rebuilt businesses across digital advertising, cannabis beverages, and now hotel media technology. The connective tissue is a single skill: seeing how fragmented pieces of a market can be pulled into a unified platform that nobody else has built yet. He did it with digital out-of-home advertising. He did it with alcohol-free craft beer and cannabis-infused drinks. And he's doing it now with Hotel Communication Network — which jumped from 8,000 hotel rooms to 50,000 by giving the tablet away for free and generating revenue from the media on the screen instead. Nicky and Terry go deep on what it actually means to know your own strengths, the musician's hustle mentality that has driven Terry's entire career, and the urgent vs. important distinction that separates growing businesses from busy ones. Nicky brings in John Wooden's Pyramid of Success — and the famous lesson about socks — to make the case that attention to detail is not perfectionism, it's competitive advantage. Learn more & connect: Terence Donnelly on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/terencedonnelly Hotel Communication Network — https://www.hcn.com Resources mentioned: Hotel Communication Network — https://www.hcn.com Adcentricity — digital out-of-home media exchange co-founded by Terry Donnelly Hill Street Beverage Company — world's most award-winning alcohol-free craft beer and Canada's best-selling alcohol-free wine The Pyramid of Success — John Wooden's coaching framework, referenced by Nicky in discussion of detail, work ethic, and enthusiasm Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (widely available) Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

"If I'm here 20 years from now doing this exact same thing, is that okay? And I said, absolutely not." — Dr. Ken Keis Dr. Ken Keis is back — and if you caught his first conversation with Nicky, you already know this is someone who has built a life's work out of helping people find theirs. This time, the conversation goes deeper: into how a dairy farm kid who nearly failed high school and was told he'd never amount to anything became one of the world's leading voices on leadership, purpose, and human potential. Keis has logged over 3,000 paid presentations, written multiple bestselling books, built 12 proprietary assessments, and led Consulting Resource Group through close to five decades of growth. He's also someone who hired a coach in 1989 — when coaching wasn't a thing — drove five hours round-trip to do it, and has never stopped investing in his own development since. What makes this conversation worth your time is the specificity. Keis doesn't deal in vague inspiration. He talks about the exact question he asked himself at 5:30 in the morning that made him leave the farm. He describes why he went from B student to PhD candidate and what changed. He draws a clear line between people who have opinions and people who have wisdom — and why most of us are still asking the wrong ones for advice. There's also a practical gift in here: Keis is offering a free e-copy of his book The Quest for Purpose to TTLR listeners — a step-by-step process for getting clear on who you are and what you're built for. Learn more & connect: Dr. Ken Keis — https://www.kenkeis.com Free e-copy of The Quest for Purpose (TTLR exclusive) — https://www.kenkeis.com/ecircle Consulting Resource Group — https://www.crgleader.com Resources mentioned: The Quest for Purpose by Dr. Ken Keis — https://www.kenkeis.com/ecircle The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino (widely available) Brain Energy by Dr. Christopher Palmer — https://www.brainenergybook.com High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard — https://www.brendon.com Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (widely available) Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

"When I walked inside that office, so disappointed, face to face with a man who was joyful in a joyless land — and I heard Jesus say, I am the truth. You've been looking in the wrong places." — Virginia Prodan What would you do if a man came to your office, waited for your assistant to leave, drew a gun, and told you he was there to kill you? Virginia Prodan's answer — share the gospel — is either the most audacious act of faith you have ever heard of, or the most inexplicable. Probably both. Virginia grew up in socialist Romania under Ceaușescu, watching her parents comply in public and whisper dissent at home. She chose a different path: law school, then a legal practice that put her in front of judges defending persecuted Christians, armed with human rights laws she found in a library that the regime never expected anyone to use. Western government representatives sat behind her in those courtrooms, unknown to her, sending her name and her arguments back to their countries. Voice of America broadcast her story across the Berlin Wall. When the dictator had enough, he sent a member of his secret police to finish it. Virginia shared the gospel. The man put the gun down and accepted Christ. President Ronald Reagan called Ceaușescu personally and negotiated her release from Romania. She arrived in America as a single mother, barely speaking English, with three young children. She earned a law degree from SMU, opened her own firm, and wrote the memoir Saving My Assassin — including a chapter written by the man who came to her office with a gun, who twenty years later tracked her down in Dallas to tell her he had become a pastor. Virginia Prodan's story is a reminder that the people working hardest against you may be one conversation away from becoming your greatest allies — and that sometimes, the most powerful person in the world is on your side without your knowledge. Learn more & connect: Virginia Prodan — https://virginiaprodanbooks.com Resources mentioned: Saving My Assassin by Virginia Prodan — https://virginiaprodanbooks.com Voice of America — https://www.voanews.com Congressman Christopher Smith — https://chrissmith.house.gov Frank Wolf (former Congressman, human rights advocate) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Wolf_(politician) Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

"Success is peace of mind, which is the direct result of self-satisfied action in knowing you did your best to become the best you're capable of." — John Wooden, as quoted by Nicky Billou Most people skip the fundamentals because they seem too small. John Wooden built 10 national championships on them anyway. In this Thought Leader Nugget, I walk you through what made Wooden the greatest coach in history — and it wasn't plays or strategy. It was his obsessive attention to the details everyone else considered beneath them. His first lesson for every new UCLA player wasn't about shooting or defense. It was about how to put on a pair of socks. Folds cause blisters, blisters slow you down, and Wooden wasn't willing to leave that to chance. Same principle applied to shoe fit and lace tying. Every small thing had a direct line to performance. The same logic applies to building a coaching or consulting practice. I break down the three fundamentals of selling that most coaches gloss over — and show you how applying Wooden's standard of care to each one changes everything. I close with three concrete actions you can put to work immediately — none of them complicated, all of them the kind of thing most people skip. 1. Time-block a minimum of 4.5 hours each week for prospecting activity. Protect that time absolutely and never let anything replace it. 2. Spend 15 minutes before each sales block deliberately raising your enthusiasm and energy. Treat it as a skill to develop, not a mood to wait for. 3. Enter every prospecting block with a specific action plan: outreach calls, podcast guest pitches, stage applications, direct messages to book discovery calls. Learn more & connect: https://www.eCircleAcademy.com Resources mentioned: John Wooden's Pyramid of Success — https://www.coachwooden.com/pyramid-of-success John Wooden: UCLA Basketball coach, author, and widely regarded as the greatest coach in sports history Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

"People have no idea how capable they are. They might think they're good — they might even be right that they're great — but they really have no idea what they're capable of until they start to realize it." Norm Gordon built a portfolio of over 1,000 apartment units in Canada. But the most interesting thing about his story isn't the scale — it's the method. He didn't grind his way there. He planted his way there. The son of two Holocaust survivors who arrived in Canada with nothing, Norm grew up watching his father turn ingenuity and a handshake into a real estate foothold. He filed the lesson away and spent the next several decades applying one core principle with increasing precision: find the highest-ROI use of whatever capital you have, deploy it, and iterate. A Sunday drive turns into $80,000 in distressed computer paper. A $25,000 stake in a 36-unit apartment building becomes $400,000 in 30 months. A year with a behavioral psychologist produces not a strategy, but presence — and six months later, his first million. Norm tells these stories not as a how-to but as a way of stoking your own thinking. His book, Out of the Norm, works the same way — it doesn't hand you a formula. It shows you what's possible when someone keeps asking: what's the highest use of what I already have? This is one of those conversations that rewards a second listen. Norm is sharp, specific, and genuinely funny — and the ideas compound the more you sit with them. Learn more & connect: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/norm-gordon-1b743014/ Montcom Group: http://montcom.com Out of the Norm by Norm Gordon — search the title on https://www.amazon.ca Resources mentioned: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle — https://www.eckharttolle.com Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill — https://www.naphill.org Entrepreneur Magazine — https://www.entrepreneur.com Financial Freedom Report — historical publication, no active URL Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

"Are you ready to confront your sales hesitancy head-on so that you can overcome it once and for all and make all the sales you've ever dreamed of making?" — Nicky Billou Sales hesitancy is one of the most common — and most quietly destructive — patterns in coaching and consulting practices. It does not always look like fear. More often it looks like productivity: researching content strategies, posting on social media, optimizing a funnel, doing anything that feels like business-building without requiring an actual sales conversation. Nicky names eight specific behaviors that signal sales hesitancy, then walks through a four-step path for overcoming it. The framework is direct and demands honesty at every stage — starting with the recognition that your perception of selling is the problem, not the market, not the timing, not the economy. The path forward involves a genuine decision to change, a commitment to developing real selling skill, and getting a coach who has actually helped others make this shift. Nicky draws on Tony Robbins' principle that resourcefulness matters more than resources — and makes the case that nowhere is that truer than in learning to sell. Learn more & connect: https://www.eCircleAcademy.com Resources mentioned: Tony Robbins — https://www.tonyrobbins.com Jocko Willink — https://www.jockowillink.com Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

"However much discomfort you can tolerate is going to equal how much success you achieve, and there's not really any way around that." Keyvan Billou is 20 years old. He skipped university, works 14-hour days at Hammer Fitness in Toronto, and has built a coaching practice from scratch — in person and online — that gets people into exceptional shape. He is also Nicky's son, which makes this one of the more candid and personal conversations the show has produced. What Keyvan has figured out about discipline and discomfort at 20 is worth paying attention to regardless of your age. His central point: tolerance for discomfort is not a personality trait — it is a trainable capacity. He built it slowly and deliberately, a little more each month, until what once felt impossible just felt like his life. He once struggled to get through an 8-hour restaurant shift. Now he logs 14-plus hours at the gym and comes home to answer client messages. He also speaks honestly about why so many young men are adrift right now. Not as a sermon — as someone who has watched it happen up close. Comfort was never challenged. Reality was deferred as long as possible. When it finally arrives, the gap feels uncrossable and many just stop trying. His coaching philosophy carries the same logic into his work with clients. The program is not the hard part. Anyone can write a program. The real job is understanding how to deliver it to a specific human being in a way they will actually follow — and that takes patience, observation, and a willingness to look inward when something is not working. Learn more & connect: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kvon.bilou Resources mentioned: Peterson Academy — https://www.petersonacademy.com Hammer Fitness — search Hammer Fitness Toronto Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

"They put a bullet mark on my husband's head as a traitor to this country. Our Department of Justice put our lives in danger. We're American." Martha Byrne is best known for two Emmy Awards and more than two decades on As the World Turns. But for the past five and a half years, she has been doing something entirely different: fighting the United States federal government to prove that her husband — retired NYPD Sergeant and 9/11 first responder Michael McMahon — was framed. In 2020, the FBI arrested Michael over a 2016 private investigation job. Routine surveillance. Notified local police every day. A subject who turned out to be a former Wuhan official living in the United States illegally — and who, it emerged, had been in regular communication with FBI agents. There was no video evidence, no photos, no police reports from the alleged victims, and witnesses at trial who could not identify Michael McMahon. The jury convicted him anyway. He was classified as a terrorist threat and sent to a general population prison 600 miles from his family. Martha took the case to Congress, secured support from Congressman Michael Lawler, and had her husband's case cited in a full GOP Oversight Committee investigation as a leading example of DOJ failure in handling CCP-related matters. When President Trump was elected, she pressed further. He received a full and unconditional pardon. The Second Circuit Appellate Court then vacated the entire case. Less than 0.1% of federal convictions end that way. In this conversation, Martha and Nicky go deep on how federal prosecutors operate when they lack evidence, what it means that FBI agents were communicating with a Wuhan official against an American family, why cameras in federal courtrooms could fundamentally change accountability in the justice system, and how faith carried her family through years of documented institutional betrayal. She also shares what she hopes her book, In the Interest of Justice, does for families currently living through similar ordeals. Learn more & connect: In the Interest of Justice by Martha Byrne — available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com Resources mentioned: In the Interest of Justice by Martha Byrne — https://www.amazon.com GOP Oversight Committee Report on CCP and DOJ — https://www.congress.gov Congressman Michael Lawler (NY-17) — https://www.lawler.house.gov Phelim McAleer (filmmaker, Gosnell, My Son Hunter) — https://www.phelimmcaleer.com Post Hill Press — https://www.posthillpress.com Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

"You think you've won today? You haven't won nothing. Your country will burn from the inside, and we will have victory." That's what a flex-cuffed Taliban fighter said to Kris Hregdovic's face in Afghanistan in 2012. He still thinks about it, fourteen years later. Kris spent two decades as a Navy SEAL — the latest in a family line that answered the call every time the country asked. A great-uncle survived a POW camp in Korea. An uncle was killed in Vietnam. A brother deployed to Iraq. Kris lost his own father to cancer right after high school graduation, and lost his mentor and his direction along with him — until service gave him both back. Now transitioning into speaking and executive coaching, Kris lays out the operating principle that's carried him through two decades of hard places: before you point the finger at a broken system, point the thumb at yourself. He's not interested in outsourcing responsibility to the news cycle or to politics. What actually changed his life was narrowing his focus to what he can control — his home, his community, his own choices — and building outward from there. Learn more & connect: Instagram and Facebook — Pushing Back Chaos: https://www.instagram.com/pushingbackchaos Resources mentioned: Pushing Back Chaos (Kris's speaking, coaching, and consulting practice): https://www.instagram.com/pushingbackchaos Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

"He picked meaning over transactional maximization. And because of this, Francesco Totti has become the stuff of legend." — Nicky Billou Francesco Totti could have left for Real Madrid. He could have taken the money from AC Milan or Manchester United. He chose Rome instead — every time, for 25 years — and became something no amount of trophy-chasing could have made him: a legend inseparable from the city itself. Nicky draws on Totti's story to make a case that runs deeper than football. In an era that rewards mobility — in sport, in business, in life — choosing full, permanent commitment to one thing is rare. Rarer still is doing it when the alternatives are genuinely better by most measures. Totti had those alternatives. He said no. And the Stadio Olimpico wept when he played his final match. The lesson Nicky draws is clean and direct: the best of you is the most loyal part of you. That is not an argument against opportunity — it's an argument for knowing what you stand for and refusing to let transactionality make that decision for you. Learn more & connect: https://www.eCircleAcademy.com https://www.TheThoughtLeaderRevolution.com Resources mentioned: Francesco Totti — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Totti AS Roma — https://www.asroma.com Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

"Individualism without a sense of unity is just as dangerous as the hive mind." This one's a little different. Nicky Billou hands his longtime energy-healing mentor Lisa Kavanagh a copy of Ayn Rand's Anthem, no priming, and the two of them just talk through it — what it says, what it gets right, and where it goes too far. Lisa had never read Rand before. She found the story of a man raised in a collective so total it abolished mirrors and the word "I" genuinely unsettling in how current it feels — but she isn't shy about pushing back on the ending, where Rand's hero swings from one extreme to another. Nicky fills in the rest: who Rand was, what she escaped, and why Anthem still sells alongside The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged decades after her death. If you've ever wondered whether a short, decades-old novella is worth your time, this is basically two friends talking you into reading it. Learn more & connect: Lisa Kavanagh — Natural Healing Reiki: https://www.naturalhealingreiki.ca Anthem by Ayn Rand — available on Amazon for under $10: https://www.amazon.com/Anthem-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191137 Resources mentioned: Anthem by Ayn Rand: https://www.amazon.com/Anthem-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191137 The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand: https://www.amazon.com/Fountainhead-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191153 Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand: https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191145 Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

"It's not the concept that got us there. We were blessed to have created barbecue chicken pizza. But if we didn't know how to trust and empower and manage people, we would have died with one restaurant." Most people who know California Pizza Kitchen know the barbecue chicken pizza. Fewer know that the two men who built it were federal prosecutors who had never run a restaurant, borrowed a quarter million dollars, mortgaged their homes, and lost their first chef after one month. Rick Rosenfield, co-founder of California Pizza Kitchen, joins Nicky to tell the full story — from a single Beverly Hills location in 1985 to a 14,000-employee national brand sold in 2011. What he describes is less a business story than a people story: how two lawyers with no industry experience figured out, on the fly, that culture was the actual product. The barbecue chicken pizza brought people in the door. The R.O.C.K. values — Respect, Opportunity, Communication, Kindness — brought them back, and kept 32 regional directors on board for an average of 14 years each. Rick and Nicky get into the mechanics of a 40-year partnership that worked, including the one rule Rick credits most: they never said "I told you so." They dig into high standards as a hiring filter, the decision to go non-smoking before any other national chain, what it means to be a work-with company instead of a work-for company, and why a great concept is not enough without the people to carry it. Rick closes with three pieces of advice drawn from four decades of building something real — all of them applicable well beyond the restaurant business. Live by R.O.C.K. — Respect, Opportunity, Communication, Kindness. Let these four values guide your hiring, your culture, and your daily decisions, not just your mission statement. 2. Commit to perseverance over momentum. The path is rarely a straight line — it stalls, crashes, and restarts. Stay true to your vision through the cycles rather than abandoning it when circumstances get hard. 3. Do the right thing. It is not always easy to do, but it is almost always easy to identify. Build the habit of acting on that knowledge even when it is costly. Learn more & connect: Rick Rosenfield: https://www.rickrosenfield.com The California Pizza Kitchen Story (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com Resources mentioned: The California Pizza Kitchen Story by Rick Rosenfield — https://www.rickrosenfield.com The War of Art by Steven Pressfield — https://www.stevenpressfield.com The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield — https://www.stevenpressfield.com Jack Carr (foreword author) — https://www.jackcarrusa.com R.O.C.K. culture framework — discussed in The California Pizza Kitchen Story Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

"I would have to say that at least 30 of those years, my success was fueled by my underlying belief that I wasn't good enough. And that's a really dysfunctional way to live a career." — Susan Winchester Susan Winchester built one of the most decorated HR careers in corporate America — 36 years in the field, 16 and a half of them as a chief HR officer at Fortune 150 and Fortune 500 companies. She did it while quietly believing, for most of those decades, that she was not good enough. That contradiction is the foundation of her book Healing at Work, co-authored with Martha Finney, and it is what makes her perspective so unusual: she has seen this dynamic from the inside of the C-suite, from the coaching chair, and from her own life. The conversation moves from the ACEs research — a landmark Kaiser Permanente and CDC study showing that nearly two-thirds of adults experienced at least one adverse childhood event — to the practical reality of what that means in professional settings. Winchester introduces the concept of "bumper car crashes" at work: those jarring moments of conflict or upset that feel disproportionate, because they often are. They are old wounds being activated by present circumstances, and most people going through them have no idea that is what is happening. Nicky brings his own experience to this one, sharing a moment from a recent men's overnight retreat where a trusted peer offered him Viktor Frankl's insight on the space between stimulus and response — and what it meant to actually sit with it. It is a candid exchange, and Winchester handles it with both precision and grace. Susan closes with three concrete steps anyone can start this week — including one deceptively simple question that can interrupt a reactive spiral before it takes hold. 1. Ask yourself "Am I sure?" the next time you feel upset at work. When a colleague seems cold or critical and the story starts building in your head, stop and question whether you actually know that to be true. 2. Start a journal and track your own bumper car reactions. Note your limiting beliefs, your behavioral patterns under stress, and where you tend to land — fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Awareness of your hardwiring is the first step to changing it. 3. Practice self-compassion over the next five days. Choose one concrete act of kindness toward yourself each day — not as a reward, but as a discipline. Learn more & connect: https://www.susanwinchester.com Resources mentioned: Healing at Work — Susan Winchester and Martha Finney A Changed Mind — David Bayer The Language of Letting Go — Melody Beattie Man's Search for Meaning — Viktor Frankl The ACEs Study (Kaiser Permanente and CDC) — https://www.cdc.gov/aces Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

"One deeply connected conversation can change the trajectory of a life and the world forever." — Terri Lonowski Most frameworks for communication tell you to speak more clearly, ask better questions, or manage your body language. Terri Lonowski's Soulful Listening does something different — it starts with how you listen, not how you talk. And after 14 years of developing, testing, and teaching it, the results she can point to are hard to dismiss. Terri traces the framework back to her grandmother Helga, who had a rare quality — a quiet, solid presence that made everyone around her feel completely seen. Growing up above a chaotic family restaurant, with a high school guidance counselor who told her she'd never leave her small Nebraska town, that presence was a lifeline. It became a model. After coaching human-centered design teams whose work was presented at the White House, and after months of sequestering herself to understand what made deep connection work, Terri arrived at five elements: self-care, full presence, quantum listening, inspired action, and circling back. The framework is grounded in neuroscience as much as intuition. Gallup's most recent global engagement data shows 80% of employees feel disengaged at work — a $10 trillion annual problem that Terri argues traces directly to the breakdown of genuine listening. What happens in the body when you don't feel heard isn't just emotional. It's physiological. Her TEDx talk, "Nobody's Listening and It's Killing Us," names the stakes directly. The most vivid proof point is her son Jacob — raised inside the culture of Soulful Listening as a single mother, who at fifteen stood in a cornfield and articulated a vision. Terri listened. She took inspired action. Before the end of his junior year, he had earned a full scholarship to Georgia Tech as an offensive lineman. He is now a doctor of physical therapy working exclusively with Navy SEALs. Terri closes with three concrete steps anyone can begin this week — no prior training required. Expert Action Steps: Take a breath and listen. Before entering any conversation, take a few intentional breaths — in through the nose, out through the mouth — to arrive present rather than distracted. Get quiet and listen to yourself. There is a wisdom within you that can guide you toward your next step and your highest path. Give it silence to speak. Be there for others. Show up fully for the people in your life. Human connection isn't a luxury — it is foundational to who we are and how we thrive. Learn more & connect: Terri's website: https://www.soulfullistening.com Connect with Terri on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terrilonowski Terri's TEDx Talk — "Nobody's Listening and It's Killing Us": search "Terri Lonowski TEDx" on YouTube Resources mentioned: Gallup Global Workforce Engagement Study — https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx TEDx Talk: "Nobody's Listening and It's Killing Us" by Terri Lonowski — search YouTube Soulful Listening framework — https://www.soulfullistening.com Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

"There is not a person on the face of this earth that gets too much appreciation. We all crave more genuine appreciation." — Kevin Thompson Kevin Thompson is back — and this conversation goes places his previous appearance didn't. Kevin is known in entrepreneurial circles as a connector in the truest sense: someone who has spent decades building relationships not as a tactic but as a way of being. The results speak for themselves — nearly 600 strategic partnerships and over $16 million in course sales over 12 years, built without a single ad campaign. His story 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. What emerges in this conversation is the framework Kevin has been running on instinctively his whole life — and only recently been able to articulate: trust in competence, trust in character, alignment of interests, alignment of values. When those four things converge, business becomes easy. Nicky and Kevin also explore what they're now calling the Un-AI Conference — a deliberately curated in-person gathering for entrepreneurs who believe human connection is not a soft skill but a strategic edge. Kevin closes with three concrete steps anyone can put into practice today — starting with a challenge involving your phone, 10 contacts, and zero expectation of anything in return. 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. 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 mold remediation content site (the foundation of his publishing business) Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.

"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. 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. 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.

"Don't be lazy. Don't make excuses. If you want changes, you have to make the change." Nina Popent started her fitness journey in 2017, won a boot camp challenge, used the prize money on a personal trainer, and then built a serious physique at home during COVID with resistance bands and a few dumbbells. Her first bodybuilding competition was five years ago — she walked on stage without a coach, wearing a mask, with only her daughter beside her. What happened backstage that day led directly to a coaching career she is still building today, at 51. This conversation is for anyone who has ever thought that serious physical transformation belongs to the young. Nina is turning 52. She wakes at 5:30, packs four meals every morning, commutes an hour to her day job, and is in the gym by 6 p.m. — staying until 9:30 or 10. She has eaten the same breakfast for five years. She does not believe motivation is the variable most people think it is. She believes in structure, patience, and the willingness to protect your training time the same way you protect a shift at work. Nicky joins in with his own training updates — targeting a pro card at 60, currently building toward a heavier stage weight than his last competition — and the two compare notes on what building muscle in the second half of life actually requires. The aesthetic results are real, but both agree the deeper payoff is energy, cognitive clarity, and the confidence that compounds with every year of consistent work. Nina closes with four concrete action steps for anyone ready to stop waiting for motivation and start building something. Don't be lazy. Don't make excuses. If you want changes, make the change. And above all, be patient — because the work compounds if you let it. Expert Action Steps: 1. Stop being lazy. Treat your training time as a second job — non-negotiable, scheduled, and protected from excuses. 2. Stop making excuses. Every obstacle has a workaround; the decision to change must come before circumstances become convenient. 3. If you want changes, make the change. Waiting for motivation or the right moment is the strategy that keeps most people exactly where they are. 4. Be patient. Muscle at this stage of life builds slowly — 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.

"Between stimulus and response is a space. And in that space lies the opportunity for growth and freedom." — Viktor Frankl Nicky Billou is a high-achiever who, by his own admission, spent decades being bad at one of the most important skills in personal development: receiving feedback. Not ignoring it exactly — but going defensive, dismissing it, finding reasons it didn't apply. Sound familiar? Recording from his car during a rare day off on World Cup week, Nicky shares what shifted after two people he genuinely respects told him the same thing within two weeks — the second time at a men's overnight retreat in the Muskokas. Instead of deflecting, he finally sat with it. And in doing so, he found his way to one of Viktor Frankl's most powerful ideas: that between stimulus and response there is a space, and that space is where growth and freedom actually live. The practice Nicky lands on isn't passive acceptance. He's equally direct about the trap of agreeing with every piece of feedback you receive. The real skill is the pause — listening without immediately reacting, evaluating honestly, and then deciding what actually applies. It's harder than it sounds for driven people. It's also more valuable. Resources mentioned: Man's Search for Meaning — Viktor Frankl 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.

"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." Most people using AI are getting about 2% of what it can actually do. Not because the technology is too complicated, but because they have never set it up properly — and nobody has shown them how. Roman Bodnarczuk has been working in artificial intelligence since 2017, when a conversation with Dr. Geoffrey Hinton at the University of Toronto changed his view of what was coming. He is now one of Canada's leading AI strategists and the founder of N5R.AI, and what he finds everywhere he goes — in boardrooms, at conferences, on executives' phones — is the same gap: people know the buzzwords, but they have not done the setup. They have not personalized their AI. They have not connected it to their data. They have never had the moment where it stops feeling like a search engine and starts feeling like a co-founder. In this conversation, Roman walks through the setup live, in real time, with Nicky working through his own ChatGPT configuration on screen. He explains why personalization is not optional, how connecting your email, calendar, and documents changes everything the AI produces, and why speaking to your AI — rather than typing at it — is the fastest way to close the gap between where you are and what you want to build. He also shares the story of two brothers who took a $20,000 investment, used twelve off-the-shelf AI tools, and built a business to $400 million in revenue in a single year — with no employees and no outside investors. Roman closes with three concrete steps anyone can take today — none of them require technical expertise, and the most important one takes about ten minutes. 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.