"There's a fine line between persistence and failure to accept reality. But if you're going to err on one side or the other, you want to err on being overly persistent rather than giving up too soon." — Tim Leatherman

Tim Leatherman is back for his third conversation with Nicky — and this one comes with a new book. The Leatherman Book releases October 6th, 2026, and it tells the story of how a note scribbled in a travel journal — add pliers to a pocket knife — became one of the most recognized tool brands in American history.

The origin story is almost improbable. Tim and his wife were traveling through Europe and into Asia on a shoestring budget in the early 1970s when Tim kept running into the same problem: his pocket knife could start the job but couldn't finish it without a pair of pliers back in the car. He came home, went into the garage, and spent two years building a prototype. Then seven years trying to sell it. Knife companies said it wasn't a knife. Tool companies said it was a gadget and gadgets don't sell. More than 100 catalogs received a photo and cover letter. Zero wrote back.

What finally moved the needle was a Seattle catalog buyer who did something unusual: instead of saying no and sending them home, he sat Tim and his co-founder Steve Berliner down, looked at the tool, and told them exactly what to remove to make it manufacturable at a price people would pay. Tim simplified the design, drove back to Portland, and six months later returned with the tool that would become the Leatherman Pocket Survival Tool. In their first full year, they hoped to sell 4,000. They sold nearly 30,000. By 1993, Leatherman was shipping more than a million tools a year. Today it's around 2 million — all made in Portland, Oregon.

Tim and Nicky also go deep on persistence, the detail-obsession that made the tool worth carrying, Tim's design philosophy (highest quality, most functionality, smallest space, least weight), and why he considers the company's warranty a profit center rather than a cost.

Learn more and connect: Leatherman Tool Group — https://www.leatherman.com The Leatherman Book (releasing October 6th) — https://www.leatherman.com

Resources mentioned: The Leatherman Book by Tim Leatherman — https://www.leatherman.com John Wooden's Pyramid of Success — https://www.coachwooden.com Leatherman Wave+ Multi-Tool — https://www.leatherman.com/wave-10.html Leatherman Arc Multi-Tool — https://www.leatherman.com/arc-950.html Cabela's — https://www.cabelas.com

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

Listen at thethoughtleaderrevolution.com/episodes/815 [https://www.thethoughtleaderrevolution.com/episodes/815]

EP815: Tim Leatherman - The Leatherman Multitool Story

"He believed so strongly in the product that he just couldn't wrap his mind around anybody saying no. So he just looked at it and took another approach." — Patrick Francey

Patrick Francey — founder of the Real Estate Investment Network, host of The Everyday Millionaire podcast, and a 43-year entrepreneur whose first business still runs without him — brings the kind of grounded, hard-won perspective that only comes from decades of watching businesses succeed and fail.

The conversation opens on sales — specifically the psychological barrier that keeps capable coaches and consultants from ever getting good at it — and quickly moves somewhere more interesting. Patrick tells a true story about a multi-billion-dollar company that spent two years firing its marketing team, its sales team, and most of its management in a cycle of blame and replacement, until a rookie in the back of the room identified the real problem in one sentence: the dogs don't like the food. It is a story about paying attention to the right details, and it lands hard.

From there the conversation shifts to the difference between mindset and self-mastery — a distinction Patrick has come to see as the most important one in his coaching work. Mindset, he argues, is about how we react to the world outside us. Self-mastery is an inside job: knowing your values, operating in integrity with them, and being willing to face the real consequences of genuine change. He introduces the idea of structural integrity — the values at your core as the load-bearing structure of your life — and "own your need," a simple discipline for stating expectations plainly before assumptions and resentment fill the gap.

Learn more & connect: Real Estate Investment Network — https://www.reincanada.com The Everyday Millionaire Podcast — https://www.theeverydaymillionaire.ca

Resources mentioned: John Wooden leadership philosophy — https://www.coachwooden.com Real Estate Investment Network — https://www.reincanada.com The Everyday Millionaire Podcast — https://www.theeverydaymillionaire.ca Mind Shui Way — search Mind Shui Way on your podcast app Xerox Professional Selling Skills — widely referenced in sales training literature

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

EP814: Patrick Francey - How To Build An Unbeatable Mindset

"If you never had a chance to see Leo Messi play, I'm sorry. He's still playing club football, so if you have a chance to see him play now, please continue to see him play — but learn from his example and bring those lessons into your own life." — Nicky Billou

When Lionel Messi announced his retirement from international football, Nicky Billou got teary-eyed. Not out of sentimentality alone — but because men who operate at that level of sustained excellence over two decades do something that goes beyond sport. They hold up a mirror.

This Thought Leader Nugget is Nicky's reflection on what Messi's retirement means — and what it demands of the rest of us. A World Cup. Three Copa Americas. A goal tally that puts him behind only Cristiano Ronaldo and Pelé in the all-time records. More than 20 years of commitment, humility, and brilliance on the international stage. That is not just a career. It is a study in what full dedication to a gift actually looks like across a lifetime.

Nicky watched Messi play live twice as a Toronto FC season ticket holder — once when he barely played, and once when he was on the pitch for the full 90 minutes in 2026. The second time left a mark. And this episode is his attempt to name why — and to turn that why into something useful for anyone building a life and a practice they can be proud of.

The question at the heart of it: look at what Messi built with what he had. What are you building with what you have?

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

Resources mentioned: Lionel Messi — career highlights and statistics available at https://www.intermiamicf.com

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

EP813: TL Nuggets #244 - Leo Messi Retires From International Football

"The thing about being a musician is once you finish your gig, you're unemployed. So you have to be hustling nonstop to get your next gig." — Terry Donnelly

Terry Donnelly does not look like a man who has reinvented himself six times. He looks like a man who has been doing the same thing in six different industries — which, it turns out, is exactly right.

From touring musician to HR consultant to venture capital partner to tech founder to CMO of a $1.3 billion agency portfolio, Terry has built, exited, and rebuilt businesses across digital advertising, cannabis beverages, and now hotel media technology. The connective tissue is a single skill: seeing how fragmented pieces of a market can be pulled into a unified platform that nobody else has built yet. He did it with digital out-of-home advertising. He did it with alcohol-free craft beer and cannabis-infused drinks. And he's doing it now with Hotel Communication Network — which jumped from 8,000 hotel rooms to 50,000 by giving the tablet away for free and generating revenue from the media on the screen instead.

Nicky and Terry go deep on what it actually means to know your own strengths, the musician's hustle mentality that has driven Terry's entire career, and the urgent vs. important distinction that separates growing businesses from busy ones. Nicky brings in John Wooden's Pyramid of Success — and the famous lesson about socks — to make the case that attention to detail is not perfectionism, it's competitive advantage.

Learn more & connect: Terence Donnelly on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/terencedonnelly Hotel Communication Network — https://www.hcn.com

Resources mentioned: Hotel Communication Network — https://www.hcn.com Adcentricity — digital out-of-home media exchange co-founded by Terry Donnelly Hill Street Beverage Company — world's most award-winning alcohol-free craft beer and Canada's best-selling alcohol-free wine The Pyramid of Success — John Wooden's coaching framework, referenced by Nicky in discussion of detail, work ethic, and enthusiasm Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (widely available)

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

EP812: Terry Donnelly - Always Be Hustling!

"If I'm here 20 years from now doing this exact same thing, is that okay? And I said, absolutely not." — Dr. Ken Keis

Dr. Ken Keis is back — and if you caught his first conversation with Nicky, you already know this is someone who has built a life's work out of helping people find theirs. This time, the conversation goes deeper: into how a dairy farm kid who nearly failed high school and was told he'd never amount to anything became one of the world's leading voices on leadership, purpose, and human potential.

Keis has logged over 3,000 paid presentations, written multiple bestselling books, built 12 proprietary assessments, and led Consulting Resource Group through close to five decades of growth. He's also someone who hired a coach in 1989 — when coaching wasn't a thing — drove five hours round-trip to do it, and has never stopped investing in his own development since.

What makes this conversation worth your time is the specificity. Keis doesn't deal in vague inspiration. He talks about the exact question he asked himself at 5:30 in the morning that made him leave the farm. He describes why he went from B student to PhD candidate and what changed. He draws a clear line between people who have opinions and people who have wisdom — and why most of us are still asking the wrong ones for advice.

There's also a practical gift in here: Keis is offering a free e-copy of his book The Quest for Purpose to TTLR listeners — a step-by-step process for getting clear on who you are and what you're built for.

Learn more & connect: Dr. Ken Keis — https://www.kenkeis.com Free e-copy of The Quest for Purpose (TTLR exclusive) — https://www.kenkeis.com/ecircle Consulting Resource Group — https://www.crgleader.com

Resources mentioned: The Quest for Purpose by Dr. Ken Keis — https://www.kenkeis.com/ecircle The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino (widely available) Brain Energy by Dr. Christopher Palmer — https://www.brainenergybook.com High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard — https://www.brendon.com Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (widely available)

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

EP811: Dr. Ken Keis - Building Your Thought Leadership

"When I walked inside that office, so disappointed, face to face with a man who was joyful in a joyless land — and I heard Jesus say, I am the truth. You've been looking in the wrong places." — Virginia Prodan

What would you do if a man came to your office, waited for your assistant to leave, drew a gun, and told you he was there to kill you? Virginia Prodan's answer — share the gospel — is either the most audacious act of faith you have ever heard of, or the most inexplicable. Probably both.

Virginia grew up in socialist Romania under Ceaușescu, watching her parents comply in public and whisper dissent at home. She chose a different path: law school, then a legal practice that put her in front of judges defending persecuted Christians, armed with human rights laws she found in a library that the regime never expected anyone to use. Western government representatives sat behind her in those courtrooms, unknown to her, sending her name and her arguments back to their countries. Voice of America broadcast her story across the Berlin Wall. When the dictator had enough, he sent a member of his secret police to finish it. Virginia shared the gospel. The man put the gun down and accepted Christ. President Ronald Reagan called Ceaușescu personally and negotiated her release from Romania.

She arrived in America as a single mother, barely speaking English, with three young children. She earned a law degree from SMU, opened her own firm, and wrote the memoir Saving My Assassin — including a chapter written by the man who came to her office with a gun, who twenty years later tracked her down in Dallas to tell her he had become a pastor.

Virginia Prodan's story is a reminder that the people working hardest against you may be one conversation away from becoming your greatest allies — and that sometimes, the most powerful person in the world is on your side without your knowledge.

Learn more & connect: Virginia Prodan — https://virginiaprodanbooks.com

Resources mentioned: Saving My Assassin by Virginia Prodan — https://virginiaprodanbooks.com Voice of America — https://www.voanews.com Congressman Christopher Smith — https://chrissmith.house.gov Frank Wolf (former Congressman, human rights advocate) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Wolf_(politician)

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

EP810: Virginia Prodan - Prayers For My Assassin

"Success is peace of mind, which is the direct result of self-satisfied action in knowing you did your best to become the best you're capable of." — John Wooden, as quoted by Nicky Billou

Most people skip the fundamentals because they seem too small. John Wooden built 10 national championships on them anyway.

In this Thought Leader Nugget, I walk you through what made Wooden the greatest coach in history — and it wasn't plays or strategy. It was his obsessive attention to the details everyone else considered beneath them. His first lesson for every new UCLA player wasn't about shooting or defense. It was about how to put on a pair of socks. Folds cause blisters, blisters slow you down, and Wooden wasn't willing to leave that to chance. Same principle applied to shoe fit and lace tying. Every small thing had a direct line to performance.

The same logic applies to building a coaching or consulting practice. I break down the three fundamentals of selling that most coaches gloss over — and show you how applying Wooden's standard of care to each one changes everything.

I close with three concrete actions you can put to work immediately — none of them complicated, all of them the kind of thing most people skip.

1. Time-block a minimum of 4.5 hours each week for prospecting activity. Protect that time absolutely and never let anything replace it. 2. Spend 15 minutes before each sales block deliberately raising your enthusiasm and energy. Treat it as a skill to develop, not a mood to wait for. 3. Enter every prospecting block with a specific action plan: outreach calls, podcast guest pitches, stage applications, direct messages to book discovery calls.

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

Resources mentioned: John Wooden's Pyramid of Success — https://www.coachwooden.com/pyramid-of-success John Wooden: UCLA Basketball coach, author, and widely regarded as the greatest coach in sports history

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

EP809: TL Nuggets #243 - Details Matter

"People have no idea how capable they are. They might think they're good — they might even be right that they're great — but they really have no idea what they're capable of until they start to realize it."

Norm Gordon built a portfolio of over 1,000 apartment units in Canada. But the most interesting thing about his story isn't the scale — it's the method. He didn't grind his way there. He planted his way there.

The son of two Holocaust survivors who arrived in Canada with nothing, Norm grew up watching his father turn ingenuity and a handshake into a real estate foothold. He filed the lesson away and spent the next several decades applying one core principle with increasing precision: find the highest-ROI use of whatever capital you have, deploy it, and iterate. A Sunday drive turns into $80,000 in distressed computer paper. A $25,000 stake in a 36-unit apartment building becomes $400,000 in 30 months. A year with a behavioral psychologist produces not a strategy, but presence — and six months later, his first million.

Norm tells these stories not as a how-to but as a way of stoking your own thinking. His book, Out of the Norm, works the same way — it doesn't hand you a formula. It shows you what's possible when someone keeps asking: what's the highest use of what I already have?

This is one of those conversations that rewards a second listen. Norm is sharp, specific, and genuinely funny — and the ideas compound the more you sit with them.

Learn more & connect: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/norm-gordon-1b743014/ Montcom Group: http://montcom.com Out of the Norm by Norm Gordon — search the title on https://www.amazon.ca

Resources mentioned: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle — https://www.eckharttolle.com Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill — https://www.naphill.org Entrepreneur Magazine — https://www.entrepreneur.com Financial Freedom Report — historical publication, no active URL

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

EP808: Norm Gordon - Out Of The Norm

"Are you ready to confront your sales hesitancy head-on so that you can overcome it once and for all and make all the sales you've ever dreamed of making?" — Nicky Billou

Sales hesitancy is one of the most common — and most quietly destructive — patterns in coaching and consulting practices. It does not always look like fear. More often it looks like productivity: researching content strategies, posting on social media, optimizing a funnel, doing anything that feels like business-building without requiring an actual sales conversation.

Nicky names eight specific behaviors that signal sales hesitancy, then walks through a four-step path for overcoming it. The framework is direct and demands honesty at every stage — starting with the recognition that your perception of selling is the problem, not the market, not the timing, not the economy.

The path forward involves a genuine decision to change, a commitment to developing real selling skill, and getting a coach who has actually helped others make this shift. Nicky draws on Tony Robbins' principle that resourcefulness matters more than resources — and makes the case that nowhere is that truer than in learning to sell.

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

Resources mentioned: Tony Robbins — https://www.tonyrobbins.com Jocko Willink — https://www.jockowillink.com

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

EP807: TL Nuggets #242 - Sales Hesitancy

"However much discomfort you can tolerate is going to equal how much success you achieve, and there's not really any way around that."

Keyvan Billou is 20 years old. He skipped university, works 14-hour days at Hammer Fitness in Toronto, and has built a coaching practice from scratch — in person and online — that gets people into exceptional shape. He is also Nicky's son, which makes this one of the more candid and personal conversations the show has produced.

What Keyvan has figured out about discipline and discomfort at 20 is worth paying attention to regardless of your age. His central point: tolerance for discomfort is not a personality trait — it is a trainable capacity. He built it slowly and deliberately, a little more each month, until what once felt impossible just felt like his life. He once struggled to get through an 8-hour restaurant shift. Now he logs 14-plus hours at the gym and comes home to answer client messages.

He also speaks honestly about why so many young men are adrift right now. Not as a sermon — as someone who has watched it happen up close. Comfort was never challenged. Reality was deferred as long as possible. When it finally arrives, the gap feels uncrossable and many just stop trying.

His coaching philosophy carries the same logic into his work with clients. The program is not the hard part. Anyone can write a program. The real job is understanding how to deliver it to a specific human being in a way they will actually follow — and that takes patience, observation, and a willingness to look inward when something is not working.

Learn more & connect: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kvon.bilou

Resources mentioned: Peterson Academy — https://www.petersonacademy.com Hammer Fitness — search Hammer Fitness Toronto

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

EP806: Keyvan Billou - Building Success In Your Teens

Nicky Billou (@nickybillou) · Zencastr

Nicky Billou (@nickybillou)

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.