Your Sales, Your Service: Nicky Billou Speaks

00:03 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Welcome to Voices in Leadership, where leaders who connect, inspire and grow come to share their stories live. I'm your host, dr Angela J Buckley. Join us as we explore authentic leadership, gratitude and the power of connection through powerful conversations with inspiring voices. Let's inspire, uplift and elevate leadership that truly makes a difference together. Well, good morning and thank you for joining us in another episode of Voices in Leadership. I'm your host, dr Angela Buckley, and today my guest is Nikki Bailu, and I am so glad to have him here on the show. Nicky, where are you joining us from today?

00:48 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
Toronto, Canada. Good to be here.

00:51 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Well, thank you so much. How's your weather? How is everything treating you guys up there right now?

00:58 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
You know it's a little cooler than normal for August, but it's great normal for August, but it's great, okay.

01:10 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
So I'm glad to hear that, because we've had quite a bit of heat in just the last two days it's been a little more comfortable. So, nikki, let me introduce you really quickly to our listening audience and also invite anybody that's listening to us live on Facebook, youtube or LinkedIn to drop a note and let us know where you're listening in from and how is the weather treating you today. And in the meantime, let's talk about Nikki for a second. So Nikki is an experienced podcaster. He is a traveling, let's say, an immigrant from the Middle East and has been focused on supporting people in business.

01:51
It's not a numbers game for him. It is a people's game, and life is all about the people and the business that supports them. So he is coming here to share his energy, his enthusiasm and laughter in nine years of podcast conversation mastery. The intent here today is to share how individuals become thought leaders and demonstrate their thought leadership through intentional podcasting and authoring, and Nikki has done that very successfully over the past few years, not only sharing his story, but helping CEOs clarify their story and share their stories out into the world. So, nikki, I appreciate how you're helping people position themselves how you're helping people gain the clarity in their messaging and, of course, supporting podcasting. So thank you so much for being here today.

02:51 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
Thanks for having me on the show. It's an honor to be here.

02:56 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Nikki, let's just get started. Can you tell us a little bit about your story? How did you end up in Toronto?

03:03 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
Absolutely. As you said, I'm 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 there were literally gun battles going on in the streets near my home. Now I'm a kid. To me, it's all just wow, this is exciting, this is wild, this is cool. To my mom and dad, it's all just wow, this is exciting, this is wild, this is cool. To my mom and dad, it's holy Toledo, man, we can't have that, this is not great.

03:32
And one day, something just smashed through our living room window. It was just a giant crash and an object landed right next to my feet and it was a bottle with a burning wick. Now I didn't know what it was, but my father, who was there, did. It was a Molotov cocktail, and he rushed and he grabbed it and he pulled out the wick, and then he turned it over and he showed it to me and on it it said die, christian scum. And so my mom and dad thought this is not going to be a place to raise a Christian family going forward. We got to get our kids out of here. So it took them a couple years, but they got us out of Iran and initially we settled in Greece, and then it took a couple more years, but they got us out of Greece, athens, greece and they settled us where I now live, in Toronto, canada.

04:32
Now maybe you can relate to being a kid who's being forced to move or do something that their parents think is absolutely critical. But you didn't want to do, and that was me. I didn't want to leave my home, I didn't want to leave my friends right. But as time went on, I began to appreciate, angela, the absolute nobility of my mom and dad's sacrifice. They left behind everything and everyone they knew for a chance at a better life for me and my two brothers, and I could see the legacy they created for us. They took us from a legacy of tyranny where mom would say, son, be careful what you say out there, otherwise there's going to be a knock on our door after midnight, they're going to drag all of us away to be in prison and we're not coming back In Canada.

05:24
You could say what you wanted to say and it was expected, it was the norm, and I started to see how amazing and beautiful freedom was, you know, and I started to see that the foremost champions for freedom were in business. They were the entrepreneurs. These were the brave women and men who, by going after their dreams, made the world a better place. They drive the human race forward. And without freedom, they don't have freedom of thought to think through the brilliant ideas they have to create their businesses. And without freedom of thought, there's no freedom of expression to speak those into existence. And without freedom of expression, there's no freedom of expression to speak those into existence. And without freedom of expression, there's no free enterprise. And without free enterprise, you're not an entrepreneur, you're someone who's kissing the tyrant's boot in a vicious strain of crony capitalism just to get a few crumbs for yourself. So I just started to see oh my God, I'm so lucky, I'm so grateful that I get to live in freedom, and I want to help these entrepreneurs, these men and women, go out there and create their visions and make them come alive.

06:33
And it came from my father. My father, angela, is the greatest man I've ever known. He was an entrepreneur and he was the one who went around telling me, son, life is about people, it's not about numbers, not about money. Like I'm eight, nine years, who went around telling me, son, life is about people. It's not about numbers, not about money. Like I'm eight, nine years old, I'm going, yeah, okay, dad, sure. And then he goes, son, even business is about people. It's not about the money. And I'm like dad, but hold on a sec, don't you need money to do business? Smart aleck kid right. So he's like sure, son, but why do you need money? I said I don't know. He said well, money is a way for people to help other people solve problems, because that's all business is. Business is about solving problems for people and that's how you earn the right to make a profit. That's the purpose of business. You solve acute problems for amazing people and you earn an awesome profit. That's the awe-inspiring purpose of business.

07:31
And dad would say to me son, that lady sitting in front of you, that's someone's sister, that's someone's daughter, that's someone's mother, that's a hero to somebody, maybe someone just like you.

07:44
Let her down in business or in life. It's your job to restore her faith in humanity, because everybody needs someone to encourage them, someone to believe in them. We all have moments where our self-belief and our self-concept wobbles Sure, and what gets that wobble to steady is someone else seeing who we really are and standing with us and saying I see you, I hear you, I know who you are, I believe in you, you can do this Go. That encouragement, that belief will take that shrinking element of your soul and turn it into this great, big, roaring fire of belief, and that's what makes beautiful things happen. So I got into doing what I do as a way to honor my father, my mother, for the incredible sacrifice they made for me and my two brothers, and to pay forward this gift of freedom that was given to me so that the people who live in this environment, who decide to go into business, can create the vision of their dreams and that their doubts don't win over and defeat their dreams. That's who I am, that's what I do.

09:03 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
It's powerful, and it's powerful because it's demonstrated also in the results that you share as well. When you are trying to identify what those problems are for an individual, what are the steps, how are you going about identifying the support that they need and how are you going about supporting them?

09:29 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
That's a great question.

09:30 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
What's your?

09:30 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
process. So you know, angela, a lot of the people that I work with are thought leaders or aspiring thought leaders. They've been consultants, they've been coaches and I don't know what's been your experience with people like this, but my experience is most of them are heart-driven people that really want to make a difference. You know what I mean. What they want is they want to make the world better because of their level of caring and their expertise, and they're also, as I say, very good and expert in what they do to help. So that part they got covered. You know what part they don't have covered in my experience nearly as well the business part, the selling part, the marketing part, the branding part, and a lot of them in particular, selling is like a dirty word to them, it's like a four-letter word. You know what I mean. I don't want to be one of those pushy sales people. You know what I mean. I don't want to be one of those people that everyone's running away from.

10:35
You know, like the, the, the fuller brush salesperson I got x, I got y, all of that they don't want to be that, and I can totally appreciate that, because there have been a lot of people in the sales field up until the very recent past that were all about getting the sale, no matter what it took, you know, and it just it just didn't feel good. A lot of people felt like they had to have a shower after dealing with folks like that. Right, but here's a problem for the good people because of of this, they don't go after business they should go after. They're so nervous about how things are going to be. They're wondering I hope that person's going to like me, I hope they're going to want to do business with me, and all that energy, all that angst is in their whole being, it's roiling them. And on the other side, people feel that so they may not want to do business and often they don't even go there because they're thinking well, I don't want to be seen as pushy. So the problem with this is that people that could use their help right, that really need them, don't get it. Don't get it, and instead one of those charlatans I was just talking about comes in because they don't care, they're just going to go, and they're really good at, you know pushing the buttons and the pain points and getting the sale.

11:48
But in in this case, if they deliver a result and outcome, it's a happy accident it's not like they deliberately tried to and the sum total of goodness in the world, angela, goes down. You know what I mean. Who loses? Well, the client loses because their problem doesn't get solved Right and they pay money and their faith in humanity loses because you know they're dealing with a charlatan. Now you lose as the consultant because you know you could have done something, you could have helped these people and you didn't. So your purpose doesn't get fulfilled. That brings your self-belief down. You don't make the money you should make, so that hurts your business as well as your self-belief. And even the charlatan loses because the iron law of what goes around comes around. You know, or, as the people in India say, karma. You can't get around it, right. You keep doing crappy things to people. It's going to bite you in the butt at some point. And so when the sum total of goodness in the world goes down, this isn't good. So this is one of the things I noticed, right, because I didn't have any of those issues with selling Like to me.

12:52
My view of selling is. Selling is great, selling is love, selling is service and I realized that was the problem for a lot of people. They don't look at it as service. So one of the parts of my process when I see someone who's really good at what they do but they're just stuck not getting traction, is we got to work on their sales belief stack. So we got to help them reframe selling from I hope they like me, I hope they love me, which is all me-focused, negative attention Right and take all the attention off me and myself and I and put it on the other person, the person you're looking to help. So instead of I hope they like me, I hope they love me, I hope they're going to do business with me. It's I hope I can really understand what they're dealing with to the point where I can understand if I'm the right person to be of service. And if I am the right person to be of service, I'm absolutely going to be of service and in that case, that alone for a lot of good, heart-driven thought leaders, aspiring thought leaders, coaches, consultants, that mind shift.

14:00
Now I'm not telling you, angela, this happens in a five-minute or 10-minute conversation. This takes time to get going and people right. But when it hits and we got a process, we take people through to help them get there and it takes. It takes a minimum 30 days for it to really land. And 30 days is like somebody who's on it every day. Okay, there's people that it takes longer for, but when that click happens in their being, they double, triple, quadruple, tenfold their sales. Nothing else has changed, not a thing, not their marketing, not, you know, ads Nothing. That attitude attracts. That attitude makes them feel good about going out and finding people that need them.

14:46
I had a mentor of mine. His name is Mark von Muser. He was Tony Robbins' director of sales training and coaching for five years. He helped Tony add over $150 million to his business through heart-driven sales. Mark said he used to be in real estate sales in San Diego County and there were days he just did not want to go out and knock on doors, call people, et cetera, to go out and have sales conversations and what motivated him on those days was he knew if he didn't go and talk to those people and help them, this other fellow, who I'm not going to mention the name, but was a well-known person in San Diego County who didn't care would get that listing and they wouldn't do a good job for these people, and that motivated him to go out there and become the number one realtor in San Diego County.

15:36 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Nice, so I'll. I'll say there was a time that I fell into this category right Of didn't trust sales, didn't like sales, didn't feel comfortable with sales, had definitely experienced the poor sales. I've been on the receiving end right Of poor sales tactics. But also, I think, like we grew up Always not trusting sales, everyone was sure and so it wasn't even if there was a good or bad sales experience, because that was the pervade opinion in the household. We literally never trusted any salesperson and the sad part of that is that there's overall lack of trust.

16:36
And then also getting out of your own way, and I'll just say that it took me more than 30 days to start unpacking decades of a belief system. So how do you help people go from here to there? My girlfriend said to me one time and you know again, this has been years going right, so trying to get myself together she's like sales is a gift because you're providing that. And then you just said now sales is a service and of course I'm always thinking and talking about servant leadership and transformational leadership and then how does that build the trust that is the foundation of the likable leadership model that you hear me talk about? But you're talking about sales as a service. How do you help people get there or unpack decades of belief training?

17:39 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
That is a great question and, as I said, it's, it's, it's. I'll. I'll describe it and then I'll tell a story of someone that we did this for, because I think that's powerful and we'll get it going. So, first and foremost, we have to help them identify their existing beliefs around sales. Like you know, sales is bad. I don't want to be one of those pushy salespeople. I don't want to reek of commission breath, you name it. I've heard them all Okay. So we got to identify those beliefs and then what we have to do is we've got to work together with them to annihilate each of those beliefs, because if those beliefs stay in place, we're not going to help them get anywhere. So I had one person come to me once and say, look, I don't want to be one of those pushy salespeople. So you know, I just don't want to be like the energy and intensity. And I just said okay. I said we're going to unpack this belief. And they go okay. And I said so, are you a pushy salesperson? They go. What do you mean? I go, I'm asking you and I want you to be brutally honest Are you in the way that you do sales, are you a pushy salesperson, yes or no. You said, well, of course, not horrified, I go. Then I want you to write down I am not a pushy salesperson, I am the opposite of a push. I want you to write this down. Do you believe this congruently right now? Yes, I believe it.

19:13
Then I said you have no longer have a permission to say I don't want to be one of those people, because you are not one of those people, it is not in your DNA, do you understand? And they're like what I said. Do you understand what I just said? You just agreed with me that you are not that person. You've never been that person. Correct? Yes, you are not allowed to talk about. I don't want to be one of those people, because that's not. It's not like you're a drug addict who's doing drugs every day. You know, someone who's never done drugs doesn't need to go. I don't want to be one of those drug addicts. Well, you've never done drugs. It's impossible that you're going to be one of those drug addicts. Do you understand that it's impossible? And they're like oh yeah, it's impossible for me to be a pushy salesperson. It's not in my DNA, it's not in my makeup. I go great, great and they go okay. So, all right, great, that's a relief. I'm like good, so let's talk about it.

20:09
Um, have you made a sale ever in your life? Yes, were you pushy when you made those sales? No, I was not. Did you try to sell someone a service of yours that they didn't need? Absolutely not. Are you kidding me? They were like offended that I said that. Right, I'm like great.

20:23
So I want you to write down that I am the kind of person who only sells people when I am a thousand percent convinced that I'm the right person to help them and I'm like is that the truth? They go, absolutely, that's the truth. I go. I want you to like create like a like a meditation kind of CD where you read this to yourself and you listen to it every day. And I want you to go I sell from love. Is that true? Do you sell from love? Do you want to help people? Yeah, yeah. So sales is love. When I do sales, it's love.

20:57
This was a session and they had to go do this a whole bunch of times to like start to get the DNA going in their head. But and then there was a couple of trainings we had around how to sell, like the structure of a sales conversation and how to overcome objections, and I'm an absolute beast on both of those like I, when I'm having a sales call and if I'm convinced and someone needs me, I take that stand and I don't stop until they tell me no, like otherwise. There's no stopping and that scares some people and I've had people say to me nikki, stop pressuring me and I go me pressuring you. I said I want you to be really clear. I'm good whether we work together or not. I'm good and I even go. My last three months of sales let me just tell you it I did good july. We had a quarter million dollars in sales come through the door. I'm good. I don't need to hunt to eat for a while.

21:50
But you need this problem solved and the pressure you're feeling in this conversation isn't from me. The pressure you're feeling is from this problem that has been unsolved for five years, crushing your self-belief, crushing your sense of self-worth and making it impossible for you to take care of your family the way that you really want to. That's the only pressure you're feeling. When I said that to that person, they're like oh my god, you're right, how'd you do that? How'd you do that? You said. Nobody else has ever got past that statement before I. Well, I'm taking a stand for you. I'm not going to let your fear your fear, because that's what's going on here. You're scared. Get in the way of me taking a stand for you and, by the way, what I'm doing for you, I'm going to teach you to do for the people that are scared, and standing in front of you. So this fellow, he's a client of ours.

22:56 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
He's out of the.

22:57 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
Azores, in Europe. He works with people with land development, gardening and beautiful spaces and that sort of thing Fun land development, gardening and beautiful spaces and that sort of thing fun, you know, but not, uh, not exactly a necessity, let's be honest. Not exactly a necessity. Right, it's a nice to have, but for some people it's a necessity, and that's what he started to get is. I'm looking for the people for whom beauty, um, and aesthetics are important for spiritual reasons, heart reasons as well as head reasons, to get their property to be worth more and all that. And this guy is selling like nobody's business right now, like he is enrolling people. He's overcoming objections. In 90 days. We helped this guy have his best 90 days ever 124,000 euros, actually, in 84 days, to be exact, you know, and euros are worth more than US dollars. 124,000 euros is probably around 160K USD.

23:57 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Right now, yeah, yeah, that's about right.

23:59 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
That's about right, right. So you know, taking a stand for your fellow man and woman is something that will allow a relationship to be built, a connection to happen, and allow business to be done, Allow you to have sales. Many of the people who are afraid of selling I hate to say this what they don't understand is they are unconsciously creating a sales prevention department in their business, right, and a sales prevention department is the death knell of your dreams. Do not create a sales prevention department in your business, okay. And if you'll have one in place, be honest with yourself. Get rid of it.

24:54 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Absolutely Love it. So I have a question here. We have an engaged listener today. Nigel Smart is asking a little bit more about objections. So you started down that path and he said you know it's a really tricky matter to master. So do you have any tips on how that works and is there a way that? Is it different from industry to industry or is there? Is it more mindset and then learning how to do that? What does it look like for you?

25:31 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
that's a great question. So the greatest um heart-driven sales uh thought leader in the world is my friend, mark vom user. Um, mark, um, mark brings to sales the ethos of a Navy SEAL and of Jesus Christ. So there's love, there's caring, but there's an absolute laser-like focus on making sure that you move forward with the sales conversations and with asking for business from people that you can help. And his training on objection handling, which I have adopted and I teach in fact, I teach it with him to our people he helps me with that is the best in the world. The best in the world.

26:22
So you got to look up Mark Von Muser, right, and check out what he has to say about this subject. But what he says is there are only three big objections in the world. The first is around money it's too expensive. Somewhere around that, the money objection. The second is I need to think about it or time delay. And the third is I got to talk to my partner in business or my partner in life, my spouse. Those are the big three objections. Everything else is a derivative of one of those three.

26:57
Okay, so you don't need to go memorize 190 different objections. Like you know, certain folks say you need to know these three 90 different objections, like certain folks say. You need to know these three and these three only have one objection at their core and that objection is will this work for me? That's the only real objection. Will this work for me? And the reason people have an objection is because they lack clarity in what you're sharing with them. They lack clarity, they don't understand how it helps, they lack certainty that it will help, right, or they don't believe you really care. Okay, so it's one of those.

27:45
The big three objections, which is really all of them, are really one objections will it work for me? And the reason these objections exist is because of a lack of one of these three things clarity, certainty and caring. Okay, so if you understand that, if you understand that, then your job in objection handling effectively becomes helping to convey clarity, certainty and caring and all three of those to the person that you're talking to who's giving you an objection, and if you do that effectively nine times out of 10, you can overcome the objection. Okay, and it has to all come from bringing the individual out of their head and into their heart, because if they're in their head and you're arguing with them in their head, you're going to lose. You'll never win that. But if they're in their heart and you're arguing with them in their heart, they're going to win and you're going to win. And I say they're going to win deliberately, because when they work with you, they win.

29:02 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Right.

29:03 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
Right, and so there's a client of ours right now and she is tremendous. She helps um kids wean themselves off of tech and screens. Now she's going to start to do it for adults too, because it's becoming a massive adult problem. But I'm sure, angela, you would agree that kids are on their screens.

29:31 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
I have a 17 year old preaching to the choir.

29:35 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
Um, he's on his screen probably 75% of the time. Her goal is to have him be on a screen 25% of the time and off of it 75% of the time. Okay, so if you have a 17 year old, you're going to want to find out about this lady. Her name's Shannon Coulter. She's actually doing a pilot program both for kids and parents of kids, so you may want to look up Shannon Coulter and reach out to Shannon how do you spell Shannon's name?

30:01
S-H-A-N-N-O-N and then Coulter C-O-U-L-T-E-R. I think professionally she goes by S-S Coulter. But I'll tell you what. I'm going to drop you my cell number in one of the messages that you got. Send me a note. I'll connect you guys by text. That's the best way to do it.

30:21
She's amazing, like flat out amazing, like this is God's work. As far as I'm concerned, it's, it's bigger than a business. It should be, it's a movement and should become one, right? So Shannon and I were talking about her coming to work with us in our thought leader program and, um, she threw the objection at me. She threw them all at me. I have my, I talked to you know the money, um, and I need to think about it, and all that jazz. And um, I went through the process of overcoming those objections and I asked her. I said, shannon, um, other than you know the fact that you need to think about it, other than the fact that you, you know, taught your spouse on the fact that you know a lot of money, is there any reason you would not want to take action immediately to help get this calling of yours to get kids off, tech to explode and scale, so that you get to fulfill your purpose in the world. Now did you hear what I just did?

31:30 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
You highlighted her purpose and you gave her a reason to want to do what she doesn't want to do. Did you mention?

31:38 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
what I didn't mention. Did you notice what I didn't mention? Excuse me, mention what I didn't mention. Did you notice what I didn't mention?

31:44 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Excuse me, you didn't mention all of the objections, you went straight to the heart with the energy.

31:53 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
But the other thing I didn't mention is my program, Because it's not about my program. When people try to come objections, they go. Is there any reason why you wouldn't want to get started with us and do our program right now?

32:05 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
That's true. I got news for you folks.

32:08 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
I got news for you. They don't care about your damn program. They don't care about your damn program. They don't care, it's not about your program. And if you mentioned that in the objection handling process, you've lost. And they've lost, okay, you have to mention them their dream, their purpose, what has brought them to the call now, and you've got to make them really be clear that if they don't take action, all the reasons they're on this call to solve this problem are still going to be there. They're still going to be there. They're still going to be there.

32:47
Think about that and imagine, angela, I was speaking to you and let's just say you know you're an accomplished thought leader, vista chair, all that. But let's just say you want to be 10 times better known, with 10 times the income you have today, whatever that happens to be. And you've done a lot of things to get there and you've made some progress, but you haven't 10X'd it gosh, darn it. And you're like looking at some people around you going these people are not nearly as good or as smart as me. They don't care as much as I do. How come they're 10X'd? And I was talking to you and I'm going. Angela, this is what we do, and you go, nikki, that sounds great, but I need to think about this. You tell me that, right, and I go. Angela, I can appreciate it. I understand you need to think about this. Other than the fact that you need to think about this, angela, is there any reason you would not want to take immediate action to have you finally 10X your impact, finally 10X the level of fulfillment you feel and finally 10X the size of your business, so that you, and not people that don't care as much and are inferior to you in their expertise, get to live that life? Is there any reason you wouldn't want to take that action? Angela, if I said that to you, what are you gonna say to me? No, nikki, yeah, that's I. I. I want to keep things the way they are. Of course not. You're gonna go well, yeah, no, and if I say that to you, then that opens up the opportunity for me to help you get past your fear and to overcome the objection you have, because the objection you have is a fear-based objection that says I'm too scared to take this step I know I got to take to make my fondest dreams come true and my job is to say hey, it's okay, let me walk you past your fear. You deserve this. You got this. I'll help you do it Now. You got to be for real. Okay, I'm talking, you got to be for real. You cannot be one of these charlatans using this as a freaking technique. If you do, I'd disown you right now, all right. But if you are for real and you do stand with people and honestly I was talking to my beloved theresa and um, as you should interview theresa. She's incredible. But what, what?

35:12
In our company we work together. What sets us apart is we are there when our people need us. Like there is a certain number of calls that officially, people get and um, but if one of our people stuck, we don't say, hey, you've had your calls allotment for the week. Sorry, we're there, we'll make the call. We'll make 10 calls that week, if that's what it takes to get them.

35:39
Um, because we want them to feel loved, believed in and encouraged, and that's our superpower is that's what we make people feel loved, believed and encouraged, and you know a lot of people say that kind of stuff, but then we back it up. We back it up. All our people will tell you this man, these guys are great. So let me tell you something Teresa did for our people and Angela. This is gonna blow you away, okay, and I know it's difficult to blow you away. Okay, and I know it's difficult to blow you away because you're a lady who's experienced a few things in her life. But we had our four day thought leader immersion event. Normally it's three days, but we hired a guy he was a Hollywood acting coach to come and teach our thought leaders how to be amazing on camera because, let's face it, most people aren't all right. They're just not.

36:25 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
It takes some practice, right yeah.

36:28 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
He spent eight hours in day one to train them to do a one minute video shoot the next day, eight hours to get them ready for that. Okay, and it was intense, and so they did that. They shot the videos the next day, went there and then I did my thought leader training on. You know a whole bunch of thought leadership stuff around positioning, around creating your ip, blah, blah, blah, and it's like four o'clock and everybody's like zonked. It's day three. Right, everybody's zonked. They're like, oh my god, it's been intense, it's been great, but it's been intense.

36:58
I want to go to my hotel room, so there's 10 people going in the room. I want to go to my hotel room, so there's 10 people going in the room. I want to go to my hotel room, let's get out of here. And Teresa goes no, no, no, you got to wait, you got to give me another 45 minutes. Everyone's grumbling what do you mean? I can give you another 45 minutes. She says I've created something for you that you need to see. And so Teresa gets the screen ready, put the speakers up. And so teresa gets the screen ready, put the speakers up, and then there's a video playing in a song and what she had done is prior to the event. She had gotten everybody to give them her uh, give her their origin story. She had used a combination of three ai tools ChatGPT, songer and Lumen5.

37:46 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Okay.

37:47 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
Write a song.

37:50 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Yep.

37:51 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
Create a video with pictures and video of them. She spent five hours per individual, for 10 people each. She plays the song for the first person and she's this this this lady is watching the song, her name's jennifer and the. The chorus goes something like this oh, jennifer, you rise like the sun and then she's bawling. I'm bowling, everybody's bawling. She plays ten of these.

38:29
By the end of the tenth song, all these people wanted to go to the hotel room. They're grumbling why aren't you letting me go? I'm tired. Nobody wants to leave. Nobody wants to leave. They're all talking to us. We have to finally kick them out because we got to prep for the next day. We still have a day four to deliver, right? Nobody wants to leave.

38:51
I had 10 people in the room. Six of them were potential buyers for our program. A year-long right, um, high ticket, mastermind, year long right, not cheap. Two of these 10, two of these six. It said to me hey, listen, nikki, it's been great, but I'm not buying. I'm not buying, just want you to know. Anyways, the next day comes, we do our thing, we make the offer and I start going and sitting with all these six people individually, right, because that's what I do. And um, the first two were like yep, we're in, we're great. But you know, I felt pretty good about those. The third person was if he but then said yeah, I'm in. Then I got to the two that said no, we're not buying. And I sat with them and I said so, no, we're not buying and.

39:48
I sat with them and I said so I want to know what you guys want to do. And you know. They said to me you know what? We're going to stay with you, we're going to, we're going to re you, we're going to re-up, we're going to re-up. And why did they re-up? Because we didn't tell them we love you, we believe in you, we encourage you, we show them that song. Each of those songs showed those people that they were seen, they were heard, that their greatness in the nuances was understood and reflected back at them. Now there's been people in the group and this was a month ago that we played the song every day.

40:40
Good, like Angela, who does this? You ever heard of people? Do things like this before. Get your own personal song, custom-tailored to you, with the most heartfelt, amazing moments of your life woven in there. Who does this, angela? Not too many people. In fact, I'd venture to guess that we're the only people in the world that have done something like this for our people. You've got to make your. You want to be great at objection, handling your heart and soul to help that person. Needs to be that evident to them. Never argue up here, always argue in here and heart to heart. Show that you, you care and you understand, and give them the confidence that you can solve the problem and they will buy. That's it.

41:34 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
So, nikki, perfect segue. Thank you so much because we have arrived at the magic time of the spirit of gratitude, and so what we do during the spirit of gratitude is we identify one person who has helped you along your journey that you would like to publicly acknowledge, and we're going to walk through the spirit method.

42:05 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
Sounds great.

42:05 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Are you ready?

42:07 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
I'm ready.

42:08 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Okay, who has? And it can be, we'll just say one person right now who's had a positive impact on your development. It can be your entrepreneurial journey, leadership, development, who helped kind of form you. Who's that person?

42:32 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
So my mentor, mark Von Muser, really helped me understand how to show my heart and still be a warrior, and I got to tell you Vulnerability. It's not a word I like to use about myself. I prefer a different word myself which is.

43:02
I don't want to be vulnerable, because vulnerability in my world is when someone's got the ability to use a sword to cut you to pieces. I don't want to be vulnerable, but real, authentic and open and showing that I care. Showing that I care about my fellow man and woman, about my fellow man and woman, yet still be a warrior and go out there and do what I got to do in order to grow the business and in order to be of service. Mark is amazing, simply amazing. You want Mark as a guest on your show. That's how good he is.

43:40 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Thank you, I'll reach out. So when we do the spirit, we talk about the specific. So you just demonstrated for us what he's specifically done for you helping you find find your authentic voice and working with that. The p stands for personal. The question is reflecting back on him what did it cost him? What did he put into you? How does his specific activity reflect personal characteristics of himself?

44:21 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
Mark cares to an unbelievable extent. I mean, um, we've been doing, you know, near weekly calls with mark since 2013. Um, he just pours and pours and pours and we become friends. Started off just doing business together, but I've gone and visited him in his home. Started off just doing business together, but I'd gone and visited him in his home in California about a half a dozen times as his guest, like on vacation.

44:52 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
That's incredible. Okay, and what does that reflect on?

45:02 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
him on his character. He's a man who believes in loyalty and friendship. I believe loyalty is the first virtue. It's what makes all the other virtues possible, and Mark is the most loyal man I know.

45:22 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Okay, okay, um, and then how did his mentorship that turned to friendship impact your career, your career journey?

45:32 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
and when we talk about impact, we're looking for metrics um sure, um, he took me from five figures to seven figures. Perfect.

45:45 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Perfect, measurable, absolutely. And then the R stands for relevance, and the relevance is how does his activity and how he supported you, reflect back on the values of your, of your career, the values of your business?

46:10 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
values of your, of your career, the values of your business. Mark believes, um, like I believe that life is a people game, not a numbers game. That's really important to me, and having someone like him in my corner, um it's, it's a beautiful thing. Being around like-minded mentors matters a great deal, in my view.

46:29 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Thank you for that perspective. Yes, and then the final I and T stand for inclusive, which is making this public or including others when you offer up these things. And then T is timely, right, so you can use this on a, I'll say, smaller method. Today's a little more global because it's retrospective, but you can use this in a day-to-day or week-to-week part. And then, timely you often want to think people as close to the event as possible right that acknowledgement. You often want to thank people as close to the event as possible right that acknowledgement.

47:04 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
So I thanked Mark with a gift from an organization called Giftology. I don't know if you've heard of Giftology. I don't.

47:14 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
I haven't heard of Giftology. There are organizations that have reached out to me that do certain things, so tell me about Giftology.

47:22 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
So Giftology was founded by the late, great John Rulon, who unfortunately passed away just a short while ago, but the organization's still going strong and basically they're all about using gifts as a meaningful way to cement relationships and connections. And they've got this gift is a mug in this mug I I went and I invested in this mug for mark and I called them and they asked me what are some things that are incredible about mark? What are some mark isms, some sayings of his? And they made a video and they created this unbelievably gorgeous, ornate mug and they sent it to him along with the video. And this was my acknowledgement of the impact that market had on me. And when he finally got it it took a long time he called me mark does not call me often, it's usually me calling him and he said I just got the mug and he he was. You know he didn't cry but man, his voice was breaking. He said that's the single greatest acknowledgement anyone's ever given me and I want to thank you for that. Um, and we did that for him for that reason, you know, because of what he's done for us and honestly for us. Acknowledging people, making them feel seen, is big like, as you can tell from the songs we did for all our clients and I saw a note from one of your people saying she created that for her grandmother and I think that's great that people are able to do that with Songer and create songs.

49:03
But I want to just talk about the difference between just going on Song or and doing a one minute song, which anybody can do, and what theresa did. Theresa spent time to get everybody's origin story, invested like hours in that. She went and she took pictures and video footage and painstakingly put all that together along with the song. She spent five hours per song to get that ready for people. And you and I can go on Songer right now and say I got a song One minute, no big deal.

49:35
But that's a very different level of intensity and effort than I'm going to get to know Angela. I'm going to spend half an hour with her, truly understanding her story. I'm going to go on the internet and find a whole bunch of pictures and videos of her. I'm going to go and go and do and redo using, you know, ai to be sure but the lyrics for the song until I feel they're like on point. I'm going to put it all together and then I'm going to do the video. That's at a whole different level. That's at a whole different level for people and and when you want to acknowledge somebody I I'm not trying to say that, you know acknowledgements small or big, it doesn't matter, they're, they're all great. But if you really want to get to the level of acknowledging somebody and you put a level of time, energy and of yourself into it, it shines through, it does, and that's what really makes the difference versus a drive by acknowledgement. You know what I mean.

50:32 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Absolutely, and that's what we're trying to do in helping people get started, by creating the spirit of method. Because method, because they're taught to say please and thank you, but they aren't always taught those next steps, right? And so the point of having the spirit and clearly you know this and you can easily answer these questions but being specific and tying it back to that personal, you have to know them, they have to be seen and you have to take the time to see them in order for that personal part of it to be right and to really hit and to land. And I've had many people not be able to clearly answer those questions and it took time for them to go back and find those answers before we could move forward with a powerful acknowledgement statement. And so you're already in, so it's easier, right? But for people who aren't just like you're saying, just like you're saying like undo that sales belief that they came in with, and build the correct sales belief stack.

51:51 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
Yes.

51:52 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
We help people believe that the thanks and how you tie that thanks back to that person is so critical 100%, 100%, 100%. So thank you for sharing about Mark von Musser today. I'm sure everybody's going to go Google him and take a look, and we'll have to reach out and have some further conversations as well. What else, how can people get a hold of you, nicky?

52:22 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
I'm the only Nicky Baloo on planet Earth, okay.

52:25 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
Lucky you, thank you.

52:28 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
On any social media is relatively easy. Just type in Nicky Baloo and say hi, if you are interested in a deeper connection, a conversation, and jump on my calendar. I? Um offer something I call a success call, which is really a conversation about you, um, and I offer it for free. Go to e-circleacademycom, forward, slash appointment and have a conversation.

52:57 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
I will make sure to get all of the links to for you um in the blog. So at the end of each one of these episodes this is live, but then it comes out in a formal podcast format and everything ties to voices and leadershiplive. The episodes are available there and there's always a supporting blog post as well. So, nikki, I have greatly enjoyed talking to to you. Thank you for sharing your sales belief stack. Thank you for talking about your sales prevention department and really supporting your clients and your members as they can feel loved, believed in, encouraged so they can go out and do good in the world as well.

53:42 - Nicky Billou (Guest)
Thank you so much. That's fantastic.

53:45 - Dr. Anglea J. Buckley (Host)
This is Dr Angela Buckley signing off, and until next time. Thank you for joining us on Voices in Leadership, where leaders who connect, inspire and grow share their stories. I look forward to welcoming you back to our next conversation. In the meantime, visit wwwvoicesinleadershiplive to access show notes, links and to subscribe and stay connected. And in the spirit of gratitude, let's remember to thank one person near you. Until next time. This is Dr Angela J Buckley signing off.