"She's basically my best friend. I've had this horse for 21 years. If we do nothing, she's going to die — so it's one of those decisions you just have to make for them." — Cody Sturgess

Cody Sturgess was shortlisted for the Canadian Olympic team in 3-day eventing — an equestrian triathlon that includes cross-country riding at nearly 600 meters per minute over solid, immovable fences. He broke his back in two places during a fall and spent nine months relearning how to walk. He came back. That same refusal to quit became the foundation for everything he built afterward: a real estate business, a Director of Sales role at a North American SaaS company, and an AI company for real estate agents.

The conversation covers what elite sport teaches you about business that nobody else will — the discipline of doing the unglamorous work when nobody is watching, the absurdity of trying to build a company without a coach, and the honest math behind self-investment. Nicky shares how Robin Sharma challenged him to triple his personal development spending, and how that single decision took his income from $75,000 to $210,000 in one year.

But the emotional center of this episode is Imperial Melody — Melly — the off-the-track thoroughbred Cody bought as a 2-year-old, kept for 21 years, and took to the top of the sport. Melly has now colicked three times in seven months. A large abdominal mass has been found. Cody is taking her to the New Bolton Equine Hospital in Pennsylvania for surgery, and everything raised beyond the $30,000 surgical goal goes directly to equine cancer research — with the goal of building the kind of early screening for horses that already exists for dogs, cats, and humans.

A GoFundMe has been set up. Every contribution helps — and every dollar beyond the target goes toward research that could save thousands of other horses from the same fate.

Learn more & connect: GoFundMe for Imperial Melody's surgery and equine cancer research: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-bring-the-queen-home Follow Cody's documentation of Melly's journey on his social channels

Resources mentioned: New Bolton Center Equine Hospital — https://www.vet.upenn.edu/hospitals/newbolton Horse Sport Magazine — https://www.horsesport.com Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill Robin Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari — https://www.robinsharma.com

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

EP820: Cody Sturgess - Loyalty & Love

"The quality of your life depends on the quality of the questions you ask." — Nicky Billou

Most of us never deliberately choose the questions we ask ourselves. We drift into worry, distraction, and scarcity — not because we're undisciplined, but because we never decided what to ask instead.

Drawing on Tony Robbins' Personal Power 2 course, I walk through a practice I've been using to take control of where my brain goes each day: designing my questions on purpose, before the day designs them for me. In this short episode, I share the full list I've developed — fifteen questions covering client enrollment, peak state, relationships, screen time, joy, gratitude, and pride — and I answer each one live, in real time.

The exercise takes five minutes. The shift in energy is immediate. And the principle behind it is straightforward: your brain moves in the direction of the questions you ask it. Choose better questions, and your focus — and your life — follows.

Come up with your own list. Try it tomorrow morning. See what happens.

Learn more and connect: https://www.eCircleAcademy.com https://www.TheThoughtLeaderRevolution.com

Resources mentioned: Tony Robbins — Personal Power 2: https://www.tonyrobbins.com

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

EP819: TL Nuggets #246 - Your Brain Goes Where Your Questions Lead

"Have the cojones to focus. Be willing to take some things off the table in order to double and triple down on the things that really work. If you want to grow a tree full of fruit, you've got to prune some of those branches." — Mark Organ

Mark Organ has done what very few founders ever manage once, let alone twice. He co-founded Eloqua, built it into the defining marketing automation platform of its era, and watched Oracle acquire it for approximately $1 billion. Then he did it again with Influitive. The strategy behind both exits is not what most entrepreneurs expect — and that's exactly why it's worth paying close attention.

The framework at the centre of this conversation is what Mark calls the "bullseye of the bullseye": the discipline of going so narrow on your target customer, your geography, and your use cases that repeatability becomes almost inevitable. At Eloqua, that meant limiting sales outreach to just two U.S. cities in the early days. At Influitive, it meant owning six of the top nine cybersecurity identity management companies before expanding anywhere else. Mark also walks through how he applied the exact same framework to a Mennonite farmer's compost side business — and it worked there too.

The deeper principle underneath the targeting work is customer intimacy: knowing your market better than any competitor is willing to. Mark traces this to Scott Cook of Intuit, who beat Microsoft in its prime not through technology but by sitting at kitchen tables watching ordinary people manage their finances. That level of understanding, Mark argues, is what makes a founder's instincts reliable — and what separates the companies that scale from the ones that plateau.

Mark closes with three concrete steps any entrepreneur can put to work — and the third one, on building a business that doesn't cost you your health and relationships, may be the one most founders need to hear.

Expert Action Steps:

1. Study your target customer in more depth than your competitors are willing to. Understand how they think about the problem you solve — their mental models, motivations, and environment. That knowledge compounds into every advantage you build.

2. Have the courage to cut. Take things off the table — markets, use cases, features — so your energy concentrates where it matters most. A tree produces more fruit when you prune the branches.

3. Build a business that lets you keep the rest of your life intact. Scaling exists partly so you can sustain yourself — your health, your relationships, your presence. The people around you, customers and team alike, respond to a leader who looks genuinely well.

Learn more & connect: Category Knots: https://www.categoryknots.com Mark Organ on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markorgan

Resources mentioned: Category Knots — Mark Organ's advisory and coaching firm: https://www.categoryknots.com Eloqua — marketing automation company co-founded by Mark Organ, acquired by Oracle: https://www.oracle.com/marketingcloud/ Influitive — customer advocacy platform co-founded by Mark Organ: https://www.influitive.com Intuit — software company whose customer-intimacy strategy Mark cites as a model: https://www.intuit.com

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

EP818: Mark Organ - The Key To Scaling A Billion Dollar Business

"When I get an objection, I know that the soul is saying yes to moving forward with me. It's just that the brain is scared, and all I've got to do is reach the soul." — Nicky Billou

There is a reframe in this episode that will change how you feel the next time a prospect pushes back in a sales conversation.

It came from Matthieu Mehuys, a client inside eCircle Academy's weekly mastermind, and it is as simple as it is powerful: an objection is not a no. It is the soul saying yes while the brain panics. The moment someone says "I need to think about it," they have already decided — somewhere deeper than logic — that their problem is real, that it can be solved, and that you might be the one to do it.

The objection is fear. And underneath every version of it — "it costs too much," "I need to talk to my spouse," "I need more time" — is a single question: Will this work for me? That is not resistance. That is someone asking you to help them past their fear.

Once you see objections that way, you stop bracing and start engaging. Your job in the conversation is not to win an argument. It is to walk the person back to what their soul already knows.

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

Resources mentioned: eCircle Academy — https://www.eCircleAcademy.com

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

EP817: TL Nuggets #245 - An Objection Is Just the Soul Saying Yes

"The minimum standard is excellence. If you have to ask me whether you should serve a burnt pizza, you've already answered the question." — Rick Rosenfield

Rick Rosenfield didn't set out to build a restaurant empire. He was a federal prosecutor who put mob bosses in prison, then left the Department of Justice to open a pizza restaurant in Beverly Hills with his law partner — no restaurant experience, a mortgaged home, and a business plan written on a word processor that declared California-style pizza would become the third great pizza tradition in America.

It happened. California Pizza Kitchen grew to 285 locations, over 14,000 employees, and pioneered what the industry came to call polished casual dining. But Rick's telling of that story is not about barbecue chicken pizza or real estate strategy. It's about a culture framework called ROCK — Respect, Opportunity, Communication, Kindness — and why the minimum standard for staying in the organization was excellence, not effort.

In this conversation, Rick and Nicky dig into the specific mechanics of building a people-first business: how CPK set written standards before it was fashionable, why they required every server to pass a menu test before being hired, what Ray Kroc's autobiography taught two lawyers about letting the wrong people go, and the moment they fired their star chef one month into opening — and cried on the office floor — before empowering someone from the kitchen who stayed for 12 years.

Rick also shares the expensive lesson of growing too fast when PepsiCo pushed them to open 50 to 100 restaurants a year, and why Navy SEAL sniper and bestselling author Jack Carr's advice — trust your instincts, slow is smooth, smooth is fast — turns out to apply just as well to building a business as it does to a combat mission.

Learn more and connect: Find Rick Rosenfield on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-rosenfield-9185933a9/

Resources mentioned: The California Pizza Kitchen Story — Rick Rosenfield (available wherever books are sold) Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's — Ray Kroc Terminal List series (Amazon) — Jack Carr Chez Panisse — https://www.chezpanisse.com Spago Beverly Hills — https://www.wolfgangpuck.com/dining/spago

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

https://www.thethoughtleaderrevolution.com/episodes/816

EP816: Rick Rosenfield - How To Scale to 9 Figures

"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

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

The Thought Leader Revolution Podcast · Zencastr

The Thought Leader Revolution Podcast

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.