EP783: TL Nuggets #237 – Love Tough

EP798: Kevin 'The Connector' Thompson - The un-AI

"There is not a person on the face of this earth that gets too much appreciation. We all crave more genuine appreciation." — Kevin Thompson Kevin Thompson is back — and this conversation goes places his previous appearance didn't. Kevin is known in entrepreneurial circles as a connector in the truest sense: someone who has spent decades building relationships not as a tactic but as a way of being. The results speak for themselves — nearly 600 strategic partnerships and over $16 million in course sales over 12 years, built without a single ad campaign. His story starts on Alaska's Bering Sea, where he spent six years as a commercial fisherman after leaving the Army. He nearly lost his life to a rogue wave in 1995, came home, and started a cleaning and restoration business that promptly cost him $300,000 before he found his footing. A mentor named Joe Polish helped him rebuild it into a referral-only operation. A mold-remediation website he built on the side started generating $15,000 a month. One 50-minute talk at an industry event produced $35,000 in course sales. He sold the cleaning business the following year and never looked back. What emerges in this conversation is the framework Kevin has been running on instinctively his whole life — and only recently been able to articulate: trust in competence, trust in character, alignment of interests, alignment of values. When those four things converge, business becomes easy. Nicky and Kevin also explore what they're now calling the Un-AI Conference — a deliberately curated in-person gathering for entrepreneurs who believe human connection is not a soft skill but a strategic edge. Kevin closes with three concrete steps anyone can put into practice today — starting with a challenge involving your phone, 10 contacts, and zero expectation of anything in return. 1. Send appreciation texts to 10 people today. Pick family, friends, or business contacts and text each one a single thing you genuinely appreciate about them. Ask for nothing in return — not even a response. Notice what comes back. 2. Ask questions you actually want answered. In every conversation, listen for the real answer and ask a follow-up based on what you heard. The experience of being seen, heard, and understood is rare — and it builds more relationship capital than any pitch. 3. Open yourself to receiving. Being a generous giver is a strength, but closing yourself off to receiving — or refusing to ask for help — limits how much you can ultimately give. The two sides of generosity need each other. Learn more & connect: Connect with Kevin Thompson on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kevintheconnector [https://www.facebook.com/kevintheconnector] Resources mentioned: Joe Polish — marketing mentor and creator of the Piranha Marketing system for the cleaning industry: https://www.joepolish.com [https://www.joepolish.com] Get Mold Solutions — Kevin's original mold remediation content site (the foundation of his publishing business) Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com [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

"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.

EP796: Geanina Popent - How To Build Muscle After 50

"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.

EP795: TL Nuggets #240 - The Power Of Feedback

"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.

EP794: Roman Bodnarchuk - The Future is Now, And Its AI!

"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 [https://www.N5R.AI] Resources mentioned: ChatGPT — https://www.chatgpt.com [https://www.chatgpt.com] Claude (Anthropic) — https://www.claude.ai [https://www.claude.ai] Gemini (Google) — https://gemini.google.com [https://gemini.google.com] HeyGen (AI video and avatar creation) — https://www.heygen.com [https://www.heygen.com] Super Whisper (voice-to-text app) — https://superwhisper.com [https://superwhisper.com] Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com [https://www.eCircleAcademy.com] and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.