Powerful Lessons On Unlocking Success Through Adversity with Nicky Billou

Transcript

[Mattias]
Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I’m Mattias, an agent and investor.

[Erica]
And I’m Erica, a licensed therapist.

[Mattias]
Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing.

[Erica]
Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors.

[Mattias]
Ready to level up?

[Erica]
Let’s do it. Welcome back to the REI Agent. We recently had a birthday this past weekend.

Happy birthday. Little birthday boy.

[Mattias]
Oh, thank you. Thank you. I wasn’t expecting that at all.

[Erica]
We always have a lot of fun celebrating birthdays at our house. And the girls get very excited. And so you’re saying you happy birthday.

But how was your birthday?

[Mattias]
I was great. I had a lot of fun. I felt very honored and celebrated.

Azra, our oldest, said I was allowed to play guitar all day. And then she made it very clear the next day that I wasn’t allowed to play guitar anymore. You get one day.

I got a day.

[Erica]
I’ll take it.

[Mattias]
To her credit, she didn’t even say anything, didn’t mention it. As I started playing for a while, she didn’t really say anything. And then we had that moment where she was like, you’re allowed to on your birthday.

[Erica]
But you drew the line on playing what music you wanted in the car. That was not allowed.

[Mattias]
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, within reason, we got to keep things.

She can’t be completely different.

[Erica]
You snuck in a little bit of Radiohead there on the way back from the brewery at one point.

[Mattias]
Yeah, got a little Radiohead in. I went down a deep rabbit hole, not related to my birthday. But I don’t know if anybody ever watches their favorite bands get deconstructed.

Their songs get deconstructed on YouTube. And honestly, I don’t really know how many people do that for bands or how many bands have music deconstructed, because I think it takes a little bit. Because Radiohead’s amazing, and their song compositions and structure is just wild.

And so there’s just lots of rabbit holes where I can feel, I guess, just validated for liking them so much, because they’re talking about how crazy and creative and intricate what they write is and how it just comes across. Simple.

[Erica]
Like it confirms for you that you actually do have good taste.

[Mattias]
I’m amazing. Yeah. Anyway, so that’s where some of that Radiohead came in our drive.

Yeah.

[Erica]
So turning another year old… Did we say the year? I mean, I wasn’t gonna…

I was gonna leave that up. Do you want to?

[Mattias]
37, guys. All right.

[Erica]
How’s 37 feeling for you?

[Mattias]
You know… So there was a distinct moment in my life where it just kind of like a starting CrossFit. And this is a few years ago and realizing that I was not a young buck anymore.

Or it was more like… It was more like I wished I would have gotten into it earlier, because if I were younger, I could be better at it. And that’s one of the things about CrossFit is that you get really…

You just… There’s so much to work on, so much to get better at. And having started late in the game, I just felt like I was kind of missing that opportunity.

So there was one time I went to the beach with the guys. And I just, for some reason, got… The guy beach weeks are often like just you get kind of hyper-focused or there’s one phrase that just keeps coming back over and over and over again.

It could be a video, could be all sorts of different things. But it’s just kind of like you latch onto something, you just beat it into the ground.

[Erica]
One year, it was a song.

[Mattias]
Yeah.

[Erica]
Yeah.

[Mattias]
Anyway, go ahead. And so, this year, I just latched on to being peaked. I think it was 34.

I was like, I’m 34, I’ve peaked. And I just said it over and over and over again. And at one point, somebody was like, checked on me like, are you okay?

I had also just like had a really… For the first time ever had like a… My back was tweaked.

And I was like very, very crippled from it hobbling around. Actually, one of the people that was there was masseuse and kind of massaged out that kink for me and felt amazing. But there’s just kind of one of those moments where I just was like, you know, I am not gonna be a CrossFit Games athlete.

I’m gonna accept this. Maybe if I had started when I was younger, I would have had a shot. But, you know, it’s all good.

But all that to say, all that to say is turning 37 is fine. It’s great. I don’t really…

I think 40 will probably hit a little bit different. But at this point, I’m just kind of fired up. And that’s always a good feeling.

Like when you’re excited about what you’re doing, if you’re excited about your trajectory, you don’t feel stuck. You don’t feel, you know, like you’re out there getting it. That’s the feeling that I strive for.

And I think that, you know, if you have that, if you feel like you’re, you know, getting it…

[Erica]
Is that gonna be your phrase? I’m getting it.

[Mattias]
I’m 37 and I’m getting it.

[Erica]
I’m getting it.

[Mattias]
You know, like I feel like you’re not gonna be feeling old or feeling like… I don’t think it matters as much. Like if you’re out there, like feeling fulfilled from getting it or from, you know, achieving things like, you know, big goal year.

I’ve had a lot of goals where we’ve been doing a lot of things, writing a book, doing this podcast. We just had a lot of things that we’ve been taking on new in addition to everything else we do. And it just…

I get energized. I feel very motivated by these things. And so I feel great.

And I am still in CrossFit. I’ve gotten better since I was 34 and peaked. But I feel like I’m improving there.

I just, I think there’s just an addiction to the grind or the results of the grind. And if you… Like, I think I’ve probably preached this a million times.

But, you know, everything in society is kind of priming us to take comfort. We want to seek what’s easy and comfortable, make our lives easier, etc. Like, you know, we go from our air-conditioned house to our air-conditioned vehicle, drive to work where we sit all day.

And I think that we have to like just put in our lives things that are hard, that we have to like fake our survival like we were evolved to endure, if that makes sense. So, like, we had to hunt. We had to escape predators.

We had to do hard things, right? Oh, no, she’s giving me the eye roll, guys. We might have to re-record this one.

[Erica]
You’re going down a rabbit hole.

[Mattias]
No, but if you think about it, like you had just to survive, just to eat and not die. You had to do… You had to exert yourself physically.

And so I think that if you don’t exert yourself physically, there’s just something missing evolutionarily. And so I think that is something that is a big piece. But also, you know, we get into the cold plunges and the saunas.

I think that we also aren’t used to just being at 70 degrees, you know, constantly all the time. And there’s something to exposing ourselves to more extreme conditions. And then I think just challenging yourself mentally or challenging yourself to grow in new ways and seeing success in it or seeing not even success, but just progress in what you’re setting yourself out.

Like the big goal you set out there and seeing yourself move towards it is super rewarding. And so all I have to say is, like, I think, like, I feel great as a 37-year-old because we, I have been working really hard towards really hard things and been doing consistently, not every day, but almost every day, multiple times a week in various aspects of my life. And that just makes me feel super, super good, super energized, youthful.

I’m a young buck.

[Erica]
So, okay, okay, okay. So we can zoom out for a second.

[Mattias]
Let’s break this down clinically.

[Erica]
When you were in your 20s, or even when you turned 30, none of these things that you just mentioned were happening.

[Mattias]
Yeah, that’s true. Well, yeah. I mean, so I probably was not in 20s, but 30s.

I was working in my real estate sales career pretty hard. And I was pretty focused on that. I mean, there’s good elements, but yeah.

[Erica]
But CrossFit, Cold Plunge, none of this like hunter-gatherer stuff was happening, right? Oh. So I wonder, is it fair to say over the course of your 30s so far, you’ve been finding little bits and pieces of yourself that you hadn’t quite put together yet, but they’re coming together, they’re feeling really good, and you’re getting it.

[Mattias]
Yeah. Yeah, that’s fair. I think that there was…

I’ve had elements of pursuing something big and kind of having not really accepting no as an answer my whole life. I think that’s probably one of the reasons I’m in this entrepreneurial kind of world. Because even as a kid, I just kind of refused to…

I was just like, if I want something, I’m going to work to get it. And just kind of not accepting no as an answer. So when you step out to be an agent, sometimes you just have to have that attitude, like I’m going to be successful.

If I do these six things repeatedly every day for the next five years, I’m going to be successful. You just kind of have to have that attitude a little bit.

[Erica]
Well, it’s like one of our coaches told us, you got to think about it like, I’m going to be really good at this at some point.

[Mattias]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And you can’t get discouraged about what the present is because you are focused on how you understand that what you’re putting in the work now to get where you’re going, you’re building the iceberg, the bottom of the iceberg, and the peak just hasn’t shown up out of the top yet, the ocean.

[Erica]
Yeah. So do you feel like you have a clear direction where you’re heading?

[Mattias]
Oh, yeah, I’m getting it. Okay.

[Erica]
All right. What did you do on your birthday?

[Mattias]
My birthday, my birthday. So we, I mean, we started off celebrating it on the day before. Erica took me to get a manicure.

I’ve never done that before.

[Erica]
Which was kind of originally your idea. You had mentioned it a while ago that maybe that would be something you might want to try. There were a lot of mights and maybes in there.

But anyway, I made it happen. So we went, we got a manicure for the first time.

[Mattias]
Yeah, it’s one of those things where I just feel the tips of my fingers. And if there’s anything bugging me, I want to take care of it. So I thought, maybe if I just get my nails nice and manicured, I can just leave my nails alone then.

But yeah, so that was interesting. Yeah, they did the best they could. And then we went and got a beer, which was a lot of fun.

Then fast forward to the next day, we went to, oh, I got to kind of just chill and relax in the morning. You made cinnamon rolls, which was really nice. I got a gift from my middle child, Isla, of a blanket that I could use to, she had a very specific chair I had to use it in because it matched, sort of.

And she, but she allowed me to use it on the couch and I was able to take a nap. I’ve got some kid cuddles in. That’s always one of my favorite things.

And then we went to an Oktoberfest at a brewery and had fun there. And then I went out with some friends in the evening to, yeah, just to hang out. One of my good buddies is also turning 37 and he hasn’t peaked yet, but one day he will soon.

[Erica]
Yeah. Well, happy birthday.

[Mattias]
Thank you. I guess we should get into the guests a little bit now. Let’s get it.

Our guest this evening, this day, this, what am I even saying? Today is Nikki Billu?

[Erica]
Billu, yeah.

[Mattias]
Yeah. Nikki is a immigrant. Really interesting.

He was, his family was Christian in Iran. And when the revolution happened, it was very clear that they weren’t welcome. They didn’t feel welcome in his home country.

So we get into that a little bit. He came here, his dad was an entrepreneur. He’s a business leader.

He’s an author, a published author. I think he said two New York best, New York Times bestsellers. I think he’s written at least 10 books.

But anyway, so he was getting into what it means to, or how an agent can kind of grow out of just the entrepreneur or the solopreneur mindset if they want to. And giving some great advice as to, you know, I think this is fundamental advice, either if, even if you’re not trying to get out of the solopreneur kind of role, is to find help, to take courses, to do the self-development stuff, to really see the success. You need to invest in yourself to see it.

But yeah, he was a good conversation. Nikki, I don’t know if he’s still in Canada, but that’s where they moved to originally. But yeah, without further ado, Nikki Billu.

Welcome back to the REI Agent. We are here with Nikki Billu. Nikki, thanks so much for joining us.

[Nicky Billou]
Mattias, Erica, it’s an honor to be here. God bless you both. Thanks for having me.

[Mattias]
Now, Nikki, you have kind of an interesting story. Did you want to ask any questions about the background?

[Erica]
Yeah, yeah. I’d love to start there. Can you just tell us a little bit about where you’re from?

And let’s start there. I’m really good at asking questions as we go. So just start us off.

[Nicky Billou]
Great question. So I’m actually originally an immigrant from the Middle East. I’m a Christian from Iran.

When I was 11 years old, the Islamic Revolution took place in Iran. And my late father, God rest his soul, he could see the writing on the wall. This wasn’t going to be a place to raise a Christian family.

So he got together with my mom and they made some plans to take me and my two brothers out of Iran and settle us in a Western Christian country. Now, at the time, I was a kid, right? I was 11 years old.

I didn’t want to leave my friends. I didn’t want to leave my home. But looking back now, connecting the dots backward, as Steve Jobs would say, it 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. I believe inside every human breast beats the living heart of freedom. Every man, every woman on this planet wants to march to the tune of their own drummer.

They want to chart their own course. And without freedom, that’s not possible. And if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re in sales in the world of being a realtor, that applies to you so much.

Because without the freedom to choose this path, you wouldn’t be able to be on this path at all. Without the freedom to go out there and do deals in markets you wanted to do deals with and with individuals you want to do business with, you wouldn’t be able to make your dreams come true. That’s free enterprise.

Entrepreneurship, sales, capitalism, they’re only possible when you live in the context of a free society. I think what we have here in the West is so precious, right? And right now there’s governments that are attempting to take some of our freedoms away.

They say things like, oh no, you can’t put that online. That’s misinformation. That’s misinformation.

It’s anything that don’t like or makes them look bad, basically. And I think it’s important as entrepreneurs and as folks that are in the profession of sales that we stand up strongly for freedom and for free enterprise. Because if we don’t, there’ll be a time where it’ll all be eroded and taken away from us.

So I think that’s super, super important. Now my late father, he was an entrepreneur. In fact, dad was in real estate.

He would buy properties all the time and he would grow them and improve them and he’d sell them. He’d buy some properties. He’d rent them out.

He had other businesses as well, but real estate was a big place in which he held his wealth. My mom was a real estate agent. So it worked out really well.

Dad would buy properties that she’d go find for him. And back in Iran, dad would always come and say to me, hey, son, life’s about people, not about money. And I go, okay, dad.

I remember I was eight years old and he said, business also is about people. It’s not about money. Now as an eight-year-old, I’m like, come on, dad, what are you talking about?

Of course, business is about money. You know, you can’t do any business without money. I was a smart aleck, right?

And he said, that’s true, son. But without people, there’s no need for money to do business because all business is, is solving problems for people for profit. Imagine that Venn diagram that I just drew with my fingers.

You solve acute problems for amazing people at an awesome profit. That’s the awe-inspiring purpose of business. And you know, that landed for me and I started to realize that you got to focus on people.

If you’re in business, if you’re in sales and you’re thinking about yourself, am I going to this commission? Am I going to make this sale? People are going to feel that and it’s going to feel bad even for you, right?

You got to be thinking, who is this person? Is that someone’s daughter? Is that someone’s wife?

Is that someone’s sister? You know, is that somebody who maybe has been disappointed in an interaction with someone just like me? And if that’s the case, my dad would say it’s your job to restore her faith in humanity, right?

It’s your job to show her that good people exist. And this was the thing that really, really blew me away, you know, because my dad was this kind of man. Like if you guys knew him, you’d love him.

If you were looking for work, he’d sit you down in his office, he’d pick up the phone, call all his business owner buddies until one of them gave you a job. If you’re trying to start a business, he’d sit you down, he’d give you his best advice to help you start the business. He’d even connect you with people who had capital, customers, all of that.

And if you’re trying to buy a car or a house and you didn’t have quite enough money, the bank would only give you so much. He’d top you up with a loan that he’d never allow you to pay back. And people always, when I share this story, come to me with a little bit of cynicism.

And they go, what are you talking about, Nicky? Come on, that’s not real. That’s like a Hollywood thing, man.

Nobody’s actually like that. And I said, no, no, no, my dad really was like that. And they’d go, come on, what was in it for him?

Cynicism is just reeking from that question. And I go, okay, I’ll tell you what was in it for him. He was a devout and committed Christian.

He believed that he’d been blessed by his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And it was his duty to share those blessings with his fellow man and woman. But secondly, he was rich and successful.

And that’s why he did it. He said, only rich and successful people can help other people. And man, I wanted to be like dad so bad.

I wanted to be just like him, you know? And people today still come to me that knew him and go, are you Napoleon Ballou’s son? And I go, yeah.

And they’ll go, I need to tell you a story about your dad and what he did for me. And always, they’re crying, they’re shaking. Me too, by the end of it, we’re hugging.

It’s just wild. And dad would say to me when I was growing up, son, you need to believe in people. Everybody needs someone to believe in them.

Matthias, there are days when your belief in yourself isn’t the highest, right? There’s days when my belief in myself isn’t the highest. Erica, same for you.

So on those days, we need somebody who believes in us more than we believe in ourselves to tell us, hey, I believe in you. I have faith in you. Because that little spark of belief can just catch fire and turn into this roaring fire of belief.

And that’s what will take your life from tragic to magic. And people ask me all the time, so Nicky, man, you’ve written all these books, two New York Times bestsellers. You’ve got these two podcasts.

You’ve worked with all these people. Come on, man, what is it about you? And I go, those are all great.

But you know what I’m most proud of? I’m Napoleon Ballou’s son and that I took the torch of loving and caring and believing in my fellow man from his hands when he passed. And I say this to people, I believe in you.

Because you need someone to believe in you all the time. And today, that’s going to be me.

[Mattias]
I love it. Yeah, well, there’s a lot to unpack. One of the things that I think that is obvious is that your father operated out of abundance.

And I think that’s one of the key things that I find. Well, it’s one of the things I noticed the more and more I get into the investor world community, the business world, it seems that the people that I’m attracted to that are succeeding often are coming from that mindset. And I think it’s often a trap that agents can get into is to be scarce, to be fiercely competitive with one another, or even with their clients.

And I think that if you focus only on the short term deal, you’re going to have problems. You’re not going to do well long term. I think that what you were talking about and adding to it is if you are focused on the next sale, so you get this one done, but you want them to refer you to other people because they had such a great experience with you because you treated them better or however, like what you were saying.

And it’s bigger than just that one sale. So don’t get lost in focusing just on earning that money for that one time because you’re wanting that deal to turn into seven.

[Erica]
Yeah, I wanted to go back real quick too. I was curious what it was like for you. I don’t know how old you were when you were living in Iran before you moved away, but I was curious what it was like for you and your family living as a Christian family in the Middle East.

[Nicky Billou]
Well, up until the revolution, honestly, it was not even an issue. When the revolution took place, it became an issue. There were all kinds of rules and laws that got passed by the new government that discriminated against non-Muslims.

And there was a lot of actual bigotry and discrimination and prejudice that we experienced. People were just free to be open with it once the revolution happened. But my family…

Sorry, go ahead.

[Erica]
I was just curious if your family experienced that shift as a very rapid change or was that pretty gradual?

[Nicky Billou]
You know, for me, like I said, I was a kid and I wasn’t super focused on that sort of thing. But within six months from the regime turnover, it was very obvious. Wow.

Very obvious, yeah.

[Erica]
Was that one of the main reasons for leaving, for coming to the States or what drove them here?

[Nicky Billou]
Yeah, absolutely. That was the driver. This wasn’t going to be a place to raise a Christian family anymore.

Not at all. So they wanted to bring their kids to the free West, to live in a Christian country, and to be in a place where they wouldn’t have to worry about their background or their ethnicity, where if they were good people and they worked hard, they could be successful.

[Erica]
Wow. And at that time, what was that process like for relocating, just even in terms of where do we go? The United States is huge.

Where do we take our family? What jobs will there be? Did your parents talk about that?

[Nicky Billou]
Well, my dad was an entrepreneur, right? So he wasn’t really looking for jobs per se. Where do we go was something that the two of them sat and they figured out.

They actually took us to Toronto in Canada, and that’s where we ended up. But they were looking at this and thinking this is going to be a good place for us to go. In the late 70s and early 80s, there had been a fair amount of animosity at a governmental level between Iran and the United States.

So mom and dad were thinking it’ll be easier to go to Canada than go to the States. For the family at the time, I would have been happy if they had come to the States. I mean, in retrospect, that would have been amazing if we’d have done that.

But that’s not what ended up happening. They came to Canada and Canada demanded that they start a business and hire some people. That was the price of admission.

So mom and dad agreed to that and that’s what they did. They started a business and they hired some people.

[Mattias]
I’ve got a question about how you were brought up. So obviously, your father, your parents were both very entrepreneurial minded. So how were you taught to do in school, the importance of school, the importance of university, the importance of education?

Those can often seem like two different worlds. So what was stressed as important to you in your upbringing?

[Nicky Billou]
Well, you know, great question. If you are around Iranian families of that generation, you know that school was everything. I mean, my mom wanted me to be a doctor.

That was kind of her big dream. Oh, yeah, you can be a doctor. You’re smart enough.

I didn’t want to be a doctor, but that was it. Get good grade in school. Get straight A’s.

That was what they pushed us to do. So we did. We were expected to get straight A’s and we did.

That’s what it was like. I happen to enjoy learning. So, you know, it wasn’t a stretch.

Heck, even now, I read 100 books a year and I just signed up for Peterson Academy, Jordan Peterson’s new answer to the traditional university. So I’ve already taken a course in it. Yeah, it’s good for $449 a year.

Basically, one one hundredth the price of a year’s tuition at a major university. Peterson Academy lets you have access to courses. There’s 18 courses.

I’ve already completed one. I’m into my second one. And it’s my goal to do five courses between now and the end of the year.

So it’s going to be fun. I like to learn. I like to give my brain a workout.

And I think everybody should like to learn. I think it’s one of the reasons we’re here on Earth is to learn, to grow.

[Mattias]
Yeah, no, absolutely. And a lifelong pursuit of knowledge. I mean, that’s I think that’s like such a key to being successful.

I mean, I think like constantly learning to improve your craft is so vital. One of the things I know a lot of agents get stuck in when they are trying to… First, they’re just trying to hustle to get successful, to get consistent business.

But at a certain point, I think it gets to a point where if they are successful, they might struggle to break through and start delegating or get stuck kind of doing everything themselves and frankly get burnt out. I think right now we’re seeing, at least in my market, I could say anecdotally, there’s a lot of people that are showing signs of wanting things to change, to be different. And they’re switching firms or they’re starting their own thing.

There’s a lot of movement happening in the space. And I’m just curious if you have any suggestions for that trap for entrepreneurs in relation to real estate or in general?

[Nicky Billou]
Yeah. So, good points. So, here’s the thing, right?

I found in the work I’ve done with people in the real estate field, as well as in other businesses, there is a step that you got to make a decision on is do I want to stay a very successful solopreneur, which basically means do I want to not grow past myself and keep most of the money I make myself or do I have a bigger vision for myself and I want to actually build something that employs people. I want to build something that can potentially be really, really big and that’s a decision people have to make. And the first step in success in business is you got to be decisive.

You got to be a person who can make a decision. So, if your decision is I want to stay a solopreneur, there’s nothing wrong with that. No problem at all.

But your growth is going to be capped. You are not going to grow past a certain level. It’s just not possible.

But if your decision is I want to see how I can be all that I can be to quote that old army commercial from back in the 80s and the 90s, be all that you can be in the army, then you’re going to have to make a decision that yes, I am not going to just be a solo agent anymore. And the first thing that you need to do is say, well what’s the first type of help I need? I’d say you probably need some good admin help, right?

Gary Keller in his book, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent talks about that. That the first thing a realtor ought to do is hire excellent admin help that can take things off your plate that really other people can do at a much lower price point. So, all that admin type stuff’s got to go off your plate.

Once you’ve done that successfully, you got to take a look and see what are you really, really good at? Well, you need to be a really good leader so you can motivate the people that are on your team and they’re going to want to stay with you. And you also need to be really, really good at sales, at bringing in leads, bringing in business.

So, I’d say focus on growing yourself as a leader, right? And there’s a lot of ways to do that. You can hire coaches, you can do training and coaching programs that will help you do that.

You can read books, you can attend conferences. And then secondly, you need to make sure that you commit to this and take action toward it daily, weekly, monthly and ongoingly, right? So, Gary Keller’s book is a really good one, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, but there’s programs that are out there that will show you how you can go beyond being a solopreneur agent, right?

There’s programs that are out there that will show you how you can develop yourself as a leader so that people want to follow you and it’s your job to invest in yourself. So, the first thing you got to be is decisive. I’m going to do this.

Secondly, you got to commit and you got to know you’re going to be bad at it at first. You’re not going to be a great leader at first. You’re going to probably suck.

Suck is a technical term in the business that we use. So, you’re going to have to get past that and then you’re going to have to be bad and then average and then okay and then good and then great. So, you got to be able to go through the continuum.

And then thirdly, you got to invest in yourself and be coachable. Who’s the most important asset in a real estate agent’s organization? Well, it’s that agent, right?

He or she needs to invest in themselves. You know, Robin Sharma who wrote the book, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, he used to be a client of mine back in the day and one day he told me, Nicky, if you ever want to double your income in a given year, triple your investment in personal and professional development. So, if you spent $3,000 last year, this year spend $9,000.

If you spent $10,000 last year, this year spend $30,000 and you know what? I did what he suggested. I tripled my investment in personal and professional development and you know what?

Gosh darn it, I more than doubled my income. So, it’s absolutely true. You got to invest in yourself and you’ve also got to be resourceful.

So, there’s people listening to this and going, oh my God, I don’t have the money to hire an admin. I don’t have the money to invest in myself. Okay, I’ll tell you a story from my life.

So, many, many years ago I was married and my then wife at the time decided she didn’t want to be married to me anymore and it shocked me. Maybe I should have seen it coming but I totally didn’t and she kicked me out of the house, hadn’t seen my kids and I was sleeping on my mother’s couch and for a year I made no money. Grown ass man, sleeping on his mother’s couch, making no money, wasn’t good.

A friend of mine took pity on me and took me to a conference. He invested in me because I wasn’t investing in myself and I saw a man do a talk and it spoke to my soul and I walked up to this man after the talk was over and I said, hey, I’m Nicky Billu, here’s my story and when I was done telling my story, I said, I think I need to hire you. He said, okay.

He said, I need to let you know my minimum fee is $5,000 for five hours of my time and I expect to be paid upfront, in full, in advance. I offer no guarantees and I give no refunds and I went like, whoa, okay. I don’t have that kind of money right now.

I made no money for like a year and I told him that and he said, okay, I’ll give you some free coaching. I said, man, free coaching, goody, I’ll take it. He said, it doesn’t matter how much money you have and I went, hold up, hold up, hold up.

You just told me you want $5,000 from me. Of course, it matters how much money you have. He said, son, I got 20 people lining up to work with me.

I don’t need your business. You need me. What can I say?

He was right and he said, let me repeat. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. What matters is how bad do you want change?

I said, come again. He said, well, your wife kicked you out of the house. You’re sleeping on your mother’s couch.

You haven’t seen your kids and you haven’t made any money in over a year. How am I doing so far? I said, you’re right on.

He said, how much longer do you want to put up with this sad story state of affairs? A day, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime. Now, when he said a lifetime, that went right in and I’m like, no.

I said, give me a couple of days. I’ll be right back. I was a fitness trainer then, so I made a couple of calls to people that had said neither yes nor no to me with a lot of urgency.

I said, hey guys, I got good news. They said, what’s the good news? I said, you’re fat and you need to lose weight and they were like taking it back.

This is true. They said, yeah, you’re right. And I said, and I’m broke and I need money, so I’ll be allowed to see my kids.

I said, so I’m gonna make you a proposition, half price, but there’s one catch. They said, what’s the catch? I said, you say yes right now and you pay me right now or the deal’s off the table.

Two guys said yes, they gave me a thousand bucks each. I was ecstatic. I took the two grand to this fellow, his name was Bill.

I said, Bill, here you go. And Bill said, that’s great, but I said five, not two. And my heart sank.

I’m like, oh my God. And then I said, Bill, can I ask you something? He said, sure.

He said, how many people have you shared this story with over the years? He said, 30 or 40. I said, that’s a lot of people.

He goes, yeah. I said, besides me, who else came back with any money? He said, nobody, you’re the first.

I’m like, oh wow, I’m the first. He goes, yeah. I said, well, listen then, take this money.

I’m going to sign a contract saying that I’ll pay you the balance within 30, 60 days, whatever the case may be. I want change bad. And I guess he must have seen something in me.

He believed in me. He agreed. And the rest is history.

Within six months, I made over six figures. I paid him back a day early. And the question I’m going to ask for Realtors listening to this, I don’t know your situation, and nor do Mattias and Erica necessarily, but how bad do you want change?

Are you okay with your current situation? Are you willing to put up with it for a day, a week, a month, a year, or even a lifetime? Or are you done with it because you want change bad?

Wow.

[Erica]
Yeah. And I guess I was just sitting here thinking it highlights how it’s really hard. I think I’d probably say impossible to do this alone.

Like even as a solopreneur, if you’re going to do your own thing, even if you’re doing self-investment, you’re going to these conferences or you’re trying to surround yourself by like-minded people or finding mentors, man, you got to find your people somewhere.

[Nicky Billou]
You do. Hashtag don’t do it alone. Hashtag don’t do it alone.

Hire people. Hire people. You got to do it.

Last year, whatever you invested in your personal professional development, I double-dog dare you, triple it this year. I know there’s only four months left in the year, three and a half months. Do it anyways.

[Mattias]
There are so many people that have done things before you and their knowledge is easy. You can skip so many headaches. You don’t have to figure everything out yourself.

And 100%, you definitely need to invest in yourself and take advantage of all the wealth of knowledge out there.

[Erica]
Yeah. Well, I mean, Matthias, you went to a professional conference in personal development. When was that?

April, May?

[Mattias]
May.

[Erica]
Yeah. And you came home with plans to write a book?

[Mattias]
Yeah. Yep. Yep.

I joined a mastermind, started this podcast, went to a conference and decided to write a book. And yeah, so it gets you motivated, gets you going.

[Nicky Billou]
It does. 100%.

[Mattias]
I love it. You had mentioned reading 100 books a year, which is incredible. Is there any fundamental books that you think everybody should read or something that you’re currently really enjoying that you want to share with the guests?

[Nicky Billou]
Well, I’m currently reading Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life. I’ve done the first seven rules. It is a fantastic book.

I recommend that you pick it up, you read it, you take notes. Because if you really imbibe what he has to say in that book, it can change your life.

[Mattias]
Another Canadian.

[Nicky Billou]
Yeah, he’s one of the foremost intellectuals and thought leaders of our time. And one of the things he says is, stand up straight with your shoulders back. That’s one of his rules for life.

And you think to yourself, okay, why? Why does it matter if I do that? Because it’ll physiologically immediately give you a boost.

It’ll also present you better out there in the world. How you present matters, right? It matters a great deal.

If you’re slouching, and you’re like this, and you’re looking that way, nobody’s going to think you’re somebody worth knowing. Somebody worth investing their time into. If you’re standing up straight, or even sitting up straight, and shoulders are back, you’re going to come across as someone with confidence.

And that’s super, super important.

[Erica]
Yeah, it’s funny. I just had this conversation with someone in session the other day about depression, and your body language when you’re depressed. And how a lot of times you tend to feed into the depression by sitting hunched over, or crossing your legs, or coming across as real defensive, and not wanting to be approached by somebody.

And talking about how even if the mood necessarily doesn’t change, you can sit back with your shoulders back and your head up. And it creates this air of openness around you, which then can create all kinds of different chain reactions, and can help you feel better in the long run, for sure.

[Nicky Billou]
100%.

[Erica]
Yeah, that’s cool.

[Mattias]
Yeah, I guess I have questions about how people could reach out to you. I mean, you offer a coaching program. Is that correct?

[Nicky Billou]
Yeah, we offer some programs. Typically, the kinds of folks we work with are folks who are mostly business executive coaches, consultants. We have worked with other service providers.

I’ve had some real estate folks that have been clients of ours, some mortgage people, some insurance people. But most of the folks we work with want to use what’s between their ears to make money. And the types of programs we offer to them help them with sales, sales accountability.

What I’m super excited about is a program that we offer that I’ve launched a book to support. It’s called Get Booked and Get Paid, how to generate six figures plus a year through podcast guesting. So through the miracle of Podmatch, where we met, I’ve been on over 630 shows as a guest just over two years.

And I’ve generated over $410,000 in sales. So I’ve generated lead sales and clients. And I thought to myself, I need to codify this and teach it to other people because nobody was doing this.

Most of the people who talk about going on shows talk about getting likes, followers, having great conversations. I’m very much coming at it from the point of view of this can be a blue ocean. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with the book Blue Ocean Strategy.

No, I’m not. So it’s a book written by two professors at a European business school called INSEAD, Kim Chan and Rene Marberjon. And the theory behind that book is that most businesses are in the red ocean of competition.

They’re going after similar business. It’s like sharks all feeding off of the same kind of bit of food and they bite each other and the ocean’s bloody and red. It’s a little bit of a gory allegory over here.

But what you want to do is you want to go in a blue ocean where there’s no competition, where there’s nobody else because when you go and you fish in that ocean, there’s lots of fish, there’s no competition and you do well. So in the world of podcast guesting, it’s a blue ocean because folks are doing paid advertising in order to get leads and clients. Folks are doing launches to get leads and clients.

Folks are even doing books and hey, I still do books in order to get leads and clients. But podcasting and podcast guesting is an amazing way to get leads and clients. This book, just out on Amazon right now as a Kindle, as a hard copy and as a paperback, it’s a fantastic blueprint for exactly how to do that and I love for people to go pick up a copy of this for themselves and read it and start to use it to go be a guest on shows.

And I want to give them the 100 podcast challenge. So over the next 12 months, go on 100 shows. That’s just two a week.

You go on 100 shows, you should be able to generate at least 55 discovery sales calls and out of those 55 discovery sales calls, you should get between 15 and 30 new clients. So that’s my challenge.

[Mattias]
Wow, that’s great. Yeah, no, that’s definitely check that out. Is there a good website as well to visit or just check that book out on Amazon?

[Nicky Billou]
That’s on Amazon. But if you want to find out about me, go to ecircleacademy.com. You want to jump on a call just to say hello.

There’s ecircleacademy.com forward slash appointment. Love to hear from you.

[Mattias]
Great. Awesome.

[Nicky Billou]
Well, thanks so much, Nicky, for being on the show. Mattias, Erica, thank you for having me. You guys are great.

[Erica]
Thank you. Thanks for listening to the REI Agent.

[Mattias]
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week.

[Erica]
Visit reiagent.com for more content.

[Mattias]
Until next time, keep building the life you want.

[Erica]
All content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.