"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.

TTLR 797: Jesan Sorrells - How Great Books Can Make You Smarter & Better

"Newsflash, no one is coming to save you. This life of yours is 100% your responsibility."

Brett Lavender had no father from age 6, no mother from age 19, and no family left by the time he was 20. What he built from that — over decades of hard experience, deliberate self-work, and thousands of hours performing in front of crowds across every walk of life — is one of the most honest frameworks for masculine presence and communication you're likely to hear on this show.

Brett created the Persuasive Lion program, built around what he calls the Lost Languages: eye contact, body language, facial expression, tone of voice — the fundamental communication tools that technology has stripped from a generation of men. From there he goes deeper into nervous system regulation, stoicism, and a single contract he asks every client to make with himself: protect your calm nervous system at all costs.

The conversation between Nicky and Brett covers the difference between performance and presence, why aggression is the wrong answer in nearly every situation a man will face, and what it looks like to be the rock in the ocean that the waves crash against — at home, in business, and inside your own head. Brett is also honest about his own floor: suicidal at 22, a bottle of vodka a day, no safety net. His message isn't a pep talk. It's a man who's been there, done the work, and has something real to say about what it takes to come back.

Learn more & connect

Brett Lavender / The Persuasive Lion: https://www.thepersuasivelion.com

Resources mentioned

The Persuasive Lion / The Lost Languages by Brett Lavender — https://www.thepersuasivelion.com

The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday — https://www.amazon.com/Daily-Stoic-Meditations-Wisdom-Perseverance/dp/0735211736

The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida — https://www.amazon.com/Way-Superior-Man-Challenges-Anniversary/dp/1622038320

Sovereign Circle: https://www.sovereignman.ca/sovereign-circle

You're invited to come to a Sovereign Circle meeting to experience it for yourself. To learn more, go to https://www.sovereignman.ca/. While you're there, check out the Battle Ready program and check out the store for Sovereign Man t-shirts, hats, and books.

EP256: Brett Lavender - The Lessons Of Adversity

"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.

EP798: Geanina Popent - How To Build Muscle After 50

"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.

EP795: TL Nuggets #240 - The Power Of Feedback

"A lot of men like us are in hiding out of fear and self-preservation because they are being mislabeled as toxic masculine men. We need to create safe places for these men to feel like they can come and be themselves."

Luis Rivas has not had a soft road. He came to Canada as a child refugee from a civil war in Nicaragua, the son of a father who gave up a deputy minister's career and a comfortable life to get his family out of a country where the government was recruiting thirteen-year-old boys to fight. That kind of origin shapes a man. And that kind of father leaves a son with something most men spend their whole lives searching for: a clear picture of what it means to show up.

Luis is now Head Coach at Wealth Genius, a real estate investment education platform, and a builder of men's communities in Ottawa. In this episode, he and Nicky talk honestly about why men resist men's groups — the cultural wiring that says any sign of emotion makes you weak — and what it actually takes to push past that resistance. Luis was barely sixty days into his involvement with men's groups when three men he knew died by suicide. That kind of thing has a way of clarifying what matters.

This conversation also goes into fatherhood: what it means to model manhood for your sons, how your daughter learns what kind of man to marry by watching you, and what it actually looks like to properly launch a young man into the world. Nicky and Luis finish with their shared vision for expanding men's dinners and communities across Canada and beyond — and the phrase that anchors the whole episode: the quiet revolution of masculinity is already underway.

Learn more and connect: Wealth Genius: https://www.wealthgenius.ca Expand Wealth Fund: https://www.expandwealthfund.ca

Resources mentioned: Wild at Heart by John Eldredge: https://www.wildatheart.org Band of Brothers (John Eldredge men's community): https://www.wildatheart.org/band-of-brothers Sterling Institute of Relationship: https://www.sterlinginstitute.org The Sovereign Man Movement: https://www.sovereignman.ca Sovereign Circle: https://www.sovereignman.ca/sovereign-circle

You're invited to come to a Sovereign Circle meeting to experience it for yourself. To learn more, go to https://www.sovereignman.ca/. While you're there, check out the Battle Ready program and check out the store for Sovereign Man t-shirts, hats, and books.

255: Luis Rivas - Lessons From My Father

"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.

EP796: Roman Bodnarchuk - The Future is Now, And Its AI!

"Arrogance is the ability to recognize you own the decision. You own the idea of what to do. I make the decision — and then when I make it, I own the responsibility, whether it works or it doesn't."

Joseph Riggio has spent 36 years working where decisions carry real weight — with C-suite executives, high-net-worth investors, and special forces operators around the world. What he has found, consistently, is that the quality separating great leaders from well-meaning ones has almost nothing to do with intelligence or strategy. It has to do with ownership.

In this conversation, Riggio introduces the concept of ontological arrogance — the subject of his recent book — and makes the case that collaborative leadership, as it has been practiced and preached over the last two decades, has inadvertently coached leaders out of the one thing they most need: the willingness to stand in their own authority, make the call, and own what happens next. He draws on his background in NLP, his formative training under Werner Erhard, and years of applied work with the highest-stakes decision-makers in the world to explain where the breakdown happens — and what it looks like when someone gets it right.

Nicky and Joseph also explore the Vince Lombardi story that crystallises the whole idea: the difference between being someone's coach and being their friend, and why the best leaders know how to be both without confusing the two. The conversation covers the parallels between individual leadership accountability and how great national leaders — Trump, Reagan, Roosevelt — have demonstrated the same pattern of gathering broad input and then making the call decisively.

Riggio's path to this work began in architecture in 1980s New York, ran through Werner Erhard's training rooms, and was shaped by years of study under Roy Frazier and alongside John LaValle, Richard Bandler's co-trainer worldwide. His Decision Architecture Correction Methodology is the practical expression of everything that background produced.

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

Resources mentioned: In Praise of the Ontology of Arrogance — Joseph Riggio Sex, Possibility, and Transformation — Marsha Martin The Sterling Men's Weekend — https://www.sterlingmensweekend.com

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

EP793: Joseph Riggio - How To Make Better Decisions

"A mother's job is to make sure her kids don't get hurt. A father's job is to make sure his kids don't get hurt too much." — Nicky Billou

Thomas Pfanner is back, and this conversation goes somewhere real. If you heard his first appearance on the show, you know he's been through the fire with his own son — and that he came out the other side with something hard-won and worth listening to.

This time, the focus is on how a father actually passes masculinity to his son — not through a list of rules or demands, but through the kind of presence and example that shapes a young man from the inside out. Pfanner's framework is clean: mothers care, fathers prepare. It's a father's job to make sure his son gets comfortable being uncomfortable, to let the experience be the teacher, and to lead by letting go — which is harder than it sounds when your ego is tied to your son's results.

Nicky gets honest about his own version of this. His son Kevan walked away from a soccer career that could have gone professional. The anger that followed was real — and so was the reckoning. The men around Nicky told him plainly: this is about you. Pfanner explains why that's almost always true. Anger, he argues, comes from "you owe me" — and "you owe me" always traces back to something you didn't finish for yourself. That's not a comfortable idea. It's a useful one.

There's also a sharp observation about language — why "should" is the language of shame, and why shifting from "you should exercise" to "it would serve me to exercise" changes the entire operating system behind the behavior. Small shift, real difference.

Learn more & connect:

https://dadswholead.com/home

Dads Who Lead: The Ultimate Guide to Stop Parenting and Start Leading by Thomas Pfanner — https://a.co/d/03raXO8v

You're invited to come to a Sovereign Circle meeting to experience it for yourself. To learn more, go to https://www.sovereignman.ca/. While you're there, check out the Battle Ready program and check out the store for Sovereign Man t-shirts, hats, and books.

EP254: Tom Pfanner - Mothers Care, Fathers Prepare

"People who are excited about aging live seven and a half years longer than people who aren't."

JJ Virgin is one of the most recognizable names in health, nutrition, and wellness entrepreneurship — a four-time New York Times bestselling author and the founder of two distinct businesses: one aimed at consumers through her Well Beyond 40 platform, and one aimed at healthcare practitioners through the Health Business Growth Collective. She joins Nicky for a conversation that moves fast and covers a lot of ground.

The central thread running through everything is the belief — supported by research Virgin cites and by decades of watching people age well or poorly — that the story you tell yourself about getting older shapes the biological reality of it. The entrepreneurs and practitioners who stay sharp, vital, and relevant into their sixties and seventies tend to share one thing: it doesn't dawn on them to act old. They keep seeking challenge, keep falling in love with what they are learning, and refuse to accept that the best chapters are behind them.

The conversation goes deep on the emerging science of peptides and regenerative medicine — two fields that Virgin believes are on the verge of becoming mainstream, and two fields that face meaningful resistance from the pharmaceutical industry. She explains what urolithin A, BPC-157, and regenerative biologics like exosomes and PRP actually do, why compounding pharmacies are more rigorously monitored than most people assume, and how this science first came onto her radar when her son was fighting for his life after a near-fatal accident.

There is also a strong thread on sales and business — Virgin's argument that selling is a moral responsibility, not something to avoid, and what happens when healthcare practitioners treat their discomfort with sales as a virtue rather than a liability.

JJ closes with three concrete steps anyone can act on immediately — none of them require a gym membership, a supplement budget, or a complete business overhaul.

Expert Action Steps:

1. Move intentionally every single day. Daily movement is not optional maintenance — it is the most powerful tool available for extending both health span and mental sharpness.

2. Keep learning and seek out discomfort. Look specifically for challenges that force you to adapt — whether that is lifting heavier, taking on a new skill, or entering a room where you are the least experienced person.

3. Choose your thoughts about age and possibility with deliberate care. The research suggests that how you feel about aging shapes how you age. Decide who you want to be physically and mentally, and orient your daily choices around that version of yourself.

Learn more & connect: JJVirgin.com [https://jjvirgin.com/] Well Beyond 40 podcast — available on all major platforms Health Business Growth Collective — https://thehbgc.com/ Health Business Growth Show — available on all major platforms

Resources mentioned: The Virgin Diet by JJ Virgin — JJVirgin.com The Sugar Impact Diet by JJ Virgin — JJVirgin.com Understanding Women by Alison Armstrong — allisonarmstrong.com Urolithin A / Timeline — timelinenutrition.com BPC-157 — available through compounding pharmacies; consult a functional medicine practitioner

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

EP792: JJ Virgin - What If Age Was Your Biggest Advantage

"What would be the use of me acquiring all of this for myself if I didn't leave it for somebody else?"

Amanda Johnson has spent 20 years helping thought leaders, coaches, and business owners write books — and she has come to believe that the most important thing a book does has very little to do with authority or speaking engagements. It has to do with legacy. With what gets left behind. With the story that someone, somewhere, is going to need at the exact moment they're ready to lose everything.

She makes that case through the story of Ruben — a business strategist and early client who was diagnosed with cancer, went into remission, and then got the call that it had come back. They gave him 30 days. He had three things left to do: hand over his business, marry his wife in a church, and finish the book he'd been meaning to write. He called Amanda. He wrote it in 30 days. He passed on day 31.

That story isn't the whole conversation — but it's the heart of it. Amanda also gets into her message matrix framework, the retreat model she built after realizing that a clear outline wasn't enough to get accomplished people writing, and the pattern she's seen again and again with high-achievers in the helping professions: there's a part of their story that hasn't been processed, and it's quietly holding them back — from stages, from scaling, from fully showing up. Writing, she says, is the most powerful way to release it.

Amanda closes with three concrete action steps for anyone who's been circling their book:

1. Treat the writing project the way you've treated every other successful thing you've built. Block time, set a schedule, create boundaries around it. The discipline that grew your business will write your book.

2. Find a writing partner, not a ghostwriter. Do as much of the writing yourself as you can — even if it's imperfect — and have someone sharpen it. The energetic ownership of the work matters, and readers feel the difference.

3. Ask yourself honestly whether this book needs more time than you typically give things. If there's a story still calling to be told, sit with it. Find a witness. Then put it into the world.

Learn more & connect:

Saved by Story House: https://www.savedbystory.house

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

EP791: Amanda Johnson - How Books Can Build Your Authority

MAKE THE DIFFERENCE YOU WERE BORN TO MAKE The Business of Thought Leadership podcast is about building your thought leadership around your expertise, your brand and your name. To become well known and highly regarded in the market place for the results you are able to produce for your clients. Our guests are top thought leaders who have done it. They’ve become widely known for their expertise and results they’re able to deliver for their clients. They all love what they do and get paid very well for doing it. You’ll meet entrepreneurs that have leveraged thought leadership in driving business revenue, coaches that were unknown and barely making ends who later became celebrities and took their income into the 7 figures, consultants that transformed into best-selling authors and built multi-million dollar firms and senior executives who followed their passion, left their day jobs and are changing the world. We’ve had interviews with notables such as New Times Best-Selling Author Seth Godin, success and investment coaching icon, Raymond Aaron, a personal coach to billionaires, Alex Charfen & Tony Robbins’ Director of Coaching, Marc Von Musser. Steve Jobs once said “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” Are you crazy enough to join us in making the difference you were born to make. We want you to 10x your impact, your income and your influence every 12 months. Financially successful people with purpose and passion are changing the world and we want to inspire you to be one of them.

The Thought Leader Revolution Podcast

“A real man is sovereign over his own life. He takes full responsibility for becoming a better man, and owns his own successes and failures. But he also understands the value of being a part of a band of brothers, the kind that have his back, and he can call at 3 AM if he’s stuck in a jail cell, because they’ll come and get him. He understands that just like a wolf pack, the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.” — Nicky Billou Welcome to the Sovereign Man Podcast where we have the conversations that matter to you as a man, and inspire you to become the best version of yourself. You’ll learn from the best business, career, financial, relationship, and mans skills experts from around the world. The Sovereign Man Podcast is for motivated men like you who want to win in today’s world. We equip you to become better in every area of your life from establishing mastery over yourself, to defining your purpose, strengthening your family and your relationships, becoming a better leader, and learning man skills. Each week I have real, unscripted conversations with real men, successful men, and men who give a darn.

Nicky Billou

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