Welcome to invest in yourself the digital entrepreneur podcast. Join the podcast mogul Phil Better as he interviews successful entrepreneurs that make their living

in the digital world.

Now let's join your host Phil Better as your special guest today on Invest in Yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Invest in Yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. I'm, of course, your host with the most Phil Better. And today, I am happy to have someone who helps great entrepreneurs scale their business and leave a legacy they can be proud of. I'm happy to introduce Nicky Billier. Mister Nicky Billier, how are you doing today?

Feel better, brother. I am blessed and grateful, but my last name pronounce it Belleau. It's simple.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm I'm pronouncing it like it's a French last name. Baloo. So, Nikki, can you just give us a quick introduction? I know we we had a few minutes to chat beforehand, but just introduce yourself to my audience, please.

Thank you very much. So I'm actually originally an immigrant from The Middle East. I'm a Christian from Iran. And when I was an 11 year old boy, the Islamic revolution was taking place in Iran. It was a time of turmoil and upheaval. And my late father, God rest his soul, he could see the writing on the wall. He could see this was not gonna be a great place for him to raise his Christian family anymore. So what he did is he planned and he eventually hustled us out of Iran, and eventually, we settled in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

I am forever grateful to my father for doing that because he took us out of tyranny and brought us into freedom. I don't know, Phil, if you've been paying attention to the international news coming out of Iran, But a young woman, by the way

heard about a bit of, the upset.

Yeah. There's a young woman. Her name is Masa Amini. She's 22 years old. She went outside with her hair partially uncovered. In Iran, it's a crime for women to be outside with their hair or skin showing. Think about that. Mhmm.

And

she was arrested and beaten to death by the so called morality police. Now the people of Iran, they were just upset by this. They started protesting, and, the regime has killed almost 500 young, young women, even teenage girls who've been protesting. They've arrested 15,000, and they are threatening to execute all 15,000 of them. So think about this that, you know, in the West right now, there's a lot of people that are saying, oh my god. The West, oh, it's so oppressive, so racist, so sexist. And I'm not pretending it's perfect here. Please hear me.

But are you kidding me? Compared to everywhere else in the world, we have it really, really good. And I think it's important that we have an understanding that most of the rest of the world, if you say certain things like that in public, the government will take your life, take your freedom. And, you know, I'm very grateful for the freedom that we have here. And I I push back hard against that kind of talk because I believe we should stand up for what's great about our society. And I've become a champion of freedom all my life. I believe in freedom, in free expression, and free enterprise. Because without those, how can you have a successful business? If you don't have the freedom to pursue your dreams, your vision, you're never gonna be successful. So for me, that's number one.

And my late father, he was a believer in freedom too, but he was also an uplifter of people, Phil. If he knew you and you were looking for work, he'd help you find a job. If you were trying to start a business, he would help you get started. Even if you were gonna compete with him, he didn't care about that. He just loved helping people. And if you worked for him and you needed money to buy a car, a house, or an apartment because you didn't quite have enough, he'd top you up so you could buy that car, that house, or that apartment. Now, Phil, you might think to yourself, wow. Who does that? Well, the late great Napoleon Baloo for one.

And secondly, why would he do that? Well, one is he was a Christian and he believed he'd been blessed by God and it was his duty as a Christian to share those blessings. Secondly, he was successful. He had the the wherewithal to do it. He he could do it. It wasn't just a desire to do it. He had the means to do it. So I looked up to my dad, and I go, oh my god. I wanna be like you, dad.