Latest / The Thought Leader Revolution Podcast / EP779: Graham Nolan - How Not To Let Others Squash Your Dreams

Transcript

EP779: Graham Nolan - How Not To Let Others Squash Your Dreams · The Thought Leader Revolution Podcast

0:03
Graham Nolan: Be bold. Most people are insecure, especially if you're young. Don't be. Be bold, be daring,
0:09
Graham Nolan: and be different. And don't be afraid to be that way. This is a life dream for me. I'm
0:13
Graham Nolan: not going to have my dream squashed because other people say no. That's entirely up to
0:17
Graham Nolan: me.
0:21
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Thought Leader Revolution with Nicky Billou. Join the revolution. There's
0:30
Speaker 2: your freedom, and make your fortune. Each week, we interview the world's top thought leaders and
0:35
Speaker 2: learn the secrets of how they built a six to seven figure practice. This episode has been
0:40
Speaker 2: brought to you by ecircleacademy.com, the proven system to add six to seven figures a year to your
0:46
Nicky Billou: thought leader practice. Welcome to another exciting episode of the podcast, The Thought
0:51
Nicky Billou: Leader Revolution. I'm your host, Nicky Billou. And we have an exciting guest lined up for you
0:56
Nicky Billou: today. Today's guest is a legendary comic book creator. He's done work for some of the largest
1:07
Nicky Billou: comic book brands in the world in both the DC and the Marvel universe. And when things in the
1:14
Nicky Billou: industry shifted, he decided to chart his own course and create his own brand. And he's created
1:20
Nicky Billou: a fantastic series of comics. I'm speaking, of course, of none other than the one, the only,
1:25
Nicky Billou: the legendary Graham Nolan. Welcome to the show, Graham.
1:29
Nicky Billou: Hello, Nicky. It's nice to be here again.
1:31
Nicky Billou: Good to have you on the show, my man.
1:33
Graham Nolan: Yeah.
1:34
Graham Nolan: So, brother, why don't we start by you telling us your backstory?
1:37
Graham Nolan: My origin story, if we're talking about comics, is my origin story.
1:41
Graham Nolan: Yes, sir.
1:42
Graham Nolan: Your origin story.
1:44
Graham Nolan: My superpowers, yeah.
1:46
Graham Nolan: Well, you know, I started off like a lot of kids that loved, you know, comic books as a child.
1:52
Graham Nolan: I was actually a monster kid first.
1:54
Graham Nolan: I loved monster movies and monster magazines.
1:57
Graham Nolan: And then, you know, got exposed to comics, fell in love with those, started sketching
2:02
Graham Nolan: and drawing them.
2:03
Graham Nolan: And, you know, my sixth grade teacher brought in a stack of comics for kids to read during
2:07
Graham Nolan: recess one time.
2:08
Graham Nolan: And that kind of lit me up right there.
2:10
Graham Nolan: I said, somebody's getting paid to do this and it might as well be me.
2:14
Graham Nolan: So I kind of, from the time I was 12 years old, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and
2:19
Graham Nolan: kind of geared everything towards that.
2:21
Graham Nolan: So I went to the Qbert school for a couple of years.
2:24
Graham Nolan: uh self-taught uh went to community college um uh and then uh started getting work and i've been
2:32
Nicky Billou: at it now 40 uh almost 43 years that's crazy yeah so what was the first significant comic
2:41
Graham Nolan: that you worked on uh it was probably a fill-in issue with the transformers for marvel um that
2:48
Graham Nolan: had brand uh recognition you know my first stuff was stuff that was bought for new talent show
2:54
Graham Nolan: case for DC Comics. And those are two classroom assignments that my teacher bought. He happened to
3:00
Graham Nolan: be the new talent coordinator at DC Comics. So that was my first professional sale was actually
3:06
Graham Nolan: some student projects. But I guess the first one that I got on my own that had some name
3:14
Graham Nolan: recognition would have to be the Transformers. I did a single issue with that. It was a fill-in
3:19
Graham Nolan: issue uh well what they called a um uh they used to keep them in the drawers so that if uh if the
3:27
Graham Nolan: regular artists couldn't make a deadline they would have something here um so that was what it was
3:32
Graham Nolan: supposed to be and it wasn't a couple months later that uh the guy did miss the deadline so they
3:38
Graham Nolan: threw mine in there and it got printed and it was actually the first comic i ever got a royalty on
3:42
Graham Nolan: too those toys were selling like crazy that's awesome yeah i'm like holy cow is is is this what
3:49
Graham Nolan: is really like, you know, all these royalties, but it wasn't. It wasn't. Yeah. No one-off.
3:55
Nicky Billou: So, um, how long, how long did it take for you to be established? Kind of walk us through that
4:01
Nicky Billou: part of your story. That's, you know, that's, that's a slow, well, it used to be a slow process,
4:06
Graham Nolan: uh, back in the day. Now it seems like you can just walk in off the street and they'll hand you
4:11
Graham Nolan: Superman to draw. Um, when I was breaking in, you know, you, you, you didn't touch that for
4:16
Graham Nolan: until you proved yourself you know you started off on crappy titles uh startups new things all that
4:22
Graham Nolan: kind of stuff uh fill-ins um so you know i worked my uh i did work at the eclipse comics for a few
4:30
Graham Nolan: years uh illustrating uh adventure tales uh there that's where i met chuck dixon yeah uh and then
4:38
Graham Nolan: um i started getting some work at dc um again fill-ins you know three four issues here and i
4:44
Graham Nolan: think the first regular gig i was offered was the doom patrol uh and that lasted like four issues
4:50
Graham Nolan: before it was being canceled to be revamped yeah um then i then i went to the power of the atom
4:58
Graham Nolan: so there was a silver age character that i knew um and i took that to the end when i got canceled
5:03
Graham Nolan: issue 18 and then um then hawk world another silver age character that i knew very well
5:10
Graham Nolan: was being revamped. And I started on that with issue one. And that was the turning point for me.
5:16
Graham Nolan: It was Hawk World, I'd have to say. I mean, not only with recognition, but also artistically,
5:22
Graham Nolan: because I can look back at that issue and say, you know, issue six, issue seven is a huge jump.
5:28
Graham Nolan: You know, I can see, you know, where things were finally clicking, you know, artistically.
5:33
Nicky Billou: Right on. And when it comes to what you do in the comic book world,
5:38
Nicky Billou: what's your favorite part of it? Is it putting the whole thing together? Is it doing the writing,
5:44
Nicky Billou: doing the drawings? What is it that lights you up the most?
5:47
Graham Nolan: I would say the writing part. The drawing is the heavy lifting. The writing is the most creative
5:56
Graham Nolan: and fun. Laying out the story is probably the hardest and least favorite, but one of the most
6:04
Graham Nolan: important because you're telling the narrative visually at that point and you got to get that
6:09
Graham Nolan: right you know um otherwise you're gonna it doesn't matter how much you dress up the drawings um
6:17
Graham Nolan: uh you'll you're not gonna really hook your readers if if you haven't told the story clearly
6:22
Graham Nolan: excitingly and and um uh dynamically i guess right on so when did the comic book world start to um
6:34
Nicky Billou: go woke well it started it didn't start woke it started getting more violent and sexualized
6:41
Graham Nolan: uh back in the 90s uh when my daughters were young i couldn't give them i was under contract
6:48
Graham Nolan: with dc comics and they would send me everything they published every month and all this giant box
6:53
Graham Nolan: that would come every month there was only a handful of comics i felt comfortable giving my
6:57
Graham Nolan: girls yeah and i thought that was that was kind of a bad statement there uh so that was the beginning
7:04
Graham Nolan: of that uh and then by the 2000s um i would say mid 2000s you started to see this creep um this
7:14
Graham Nolan: this woke creepness uh into um the stories uh through the creators and uh people getting into
7:21
Graham Nolan: positions of power editorially and in executive positions that were starting to change the
7:28
Graham Nolan: dynamics of comics.
7:29
Nicky Billou: How did that happen?
7:31
Nicky Billou: I mean, comics were a great American institution.
7:33
Nicky Billou: I know there's been a whole bunch of them that have been infected with this woke ideology
7:38
Nicky Billou: and woke people.
7:39
Nicky Billou: It seems like it must be some sort of a coordinated effort on the part of the forces of wokeness
7:48
Nicky Billou: to start going through all of our institutions.
7:50
Nicky Billou: But how do you think it happened specifically in the form of comics?
7:54
Nicky Billou: How was it that the people that were in charge beforehand didn't see this coming?
7:58
Nicky Billou: That's a good question.
8:00
Graham Nolan: I don't really know the answer to that.
8:03
Graham Nolan: I think it was just a question of similar like-minded ideas.
8:08
Graham Nolan: You know, the creative businesses always attract people that are more liberal than conservative, typically.
8:16
Graham Nolan: Really?
8:17
Graham Nolan: Oh, yeah.
8:18
Graham Nolan: musicians, artists, writers, actors, you know, they all tend to lean more to the left than they do the right.
8:24
Nicky Billou: In North America, perhaps, but I'm from Iran and I can tell you that our artists are all freedom lovers.
8:30
Nicky Billou: Every last one of them, woke lefty among them.
8:34
Nicky Billou: So when you say that, I go, interesting, because that's not my experience in my country.
8:38
Graham Nolan: Yeah. Well, yeah, North America, then I'll put that caveat in there.
8:42
Graham Nolan: But that's because they'll kill you guys.
8:47
Nicky Billou: See, we actually have been through life.
8:50
Nicky Billou: We're not a bunch of dumbasses dealing with some sort of fake version of what life is really like.
8:57
Nicky Billou: We've actually been in a space where our art can end up killing us.
9:02
Nicky Billou: We express it in a particular way.
9:04
Nicky Billou: So we realize that progressivism, wokeism, Islamism, they're the bad guys.
9:10
Nicky Billou: Right.
9:11
Graham Nolan: Yeah, no doubt about it.
9:12
Graham Nolan: No doubt about it.
9:13
Graham Nolan: And the fat, lazy Western civilizations here, you know, they love the freedoms, but they don't understand the price you pay to keep them.
9:24
Graham Nolan: And so they open it up to all these these radicals and then they get in here and they start pushing this ideology.
9:33
Graham Nolan: You know, the comics, you know, even if you were, say, more Democrat leaning than, say, Republican leaning, they always dealt with universal truths.
9:43
Graham Nolan: You know, Superman, you know, they say, oh, Superman was always woke.
9:48
Graham Nolan: Superman wasn't woke. Not at all.
9:50
Graham Nolan: Because he didn't, back in 1939, he punched a wife beater or he went after a business tycoon who was running these mines and wasn't treating the workers right.
10:05
Graham Nolan: I mean, who's for that?
10:07
Graham Nolan: Nobody.
10:07
Graham Nolan: That's a universal truth about treating fellow man properly, in that case, not beating your wife, another one.
10:16
Graham Nolan: Nobody says, yeah, I'm for that.
10:20
Graham Nolan: So, yeah, they seem to think that because they've put conservatism into this box of fascism, which couldn't be anything further from the truth, they're the fascists.
10:32
Graham Nolan: They're liars.
10:33
Graham Nolan: Yeah, and they're the fascists.
10:35
Graham Nolan: They're the ones that are the fascists.
10:41
Nicky Billou: Fascism is a left-wing ideology.
10:43
Nicky Billou: Absolutely it is.
10:44
Nicky Billou: that but fascism in italy in 1922 was a left-wing ideology it was all about taking away freedoms
10:51
Nicky Billou: away from people i mean the government control uh the means of production i you could own the means
11:00
Nicky Billou: of production but they tell you what to do with it that was all fascist ideology and nazi stands
11:05
Nicky Billou: for national socialist, national socialist. It was a left-wing ideology. All the anti-freedom
11:14
Nicky Billou: ideologies tend to be left-wing ideologies from Marxism to Nazism to fascism to progressivism to
11:20
Nicky Billou: wokeism to Islamism. And it's very important for people to be told that and educated with that.
11:25
Nicky Billou: You got to understand I'm from Iran, man. So I don't have a lot of patience for this woke crap
11:29
Nicky Billou: or for Western sensibilities on how to talk to woke people. I'm not here to make them feel good
11:34
Nicky Billou: about themselves or feel that we care about what they have to say. I'm not going to say I'm
11:39
Nicky Billou: judgment-free. No, man, I judge. I judge. I judge greatly. I judge, and I judge fiercely and firmly,
11:47
Nicky Billou: and I want to hurt your tender feelings. You know, it's funny. There was an American school
11:52
Nicky Billou: in Tehran that I attended when I was a kid, and I posted in there, I said, hey,
11:59
Nicky Billou: you know, God bless. I can't wait for the day we can all come together again. And at the end of it,
12:05
Nicky Billou: I said, Javid Shah, which means long live the king. And this woman, this woman who I don't know,
12:11
Nicky Billou: but had a Persian sounding name said, well, you know, these are triggering times and not all of
12:16
Nicky Billou: us believe in the Shah. And I said, well, you're an idiot if you don't believe in the Shah.
12:21
Nicky Billou: And if I triggered you good, I got to say Javid Shah. And I'll say Javid Shah a thousand times.
12:27
Nicky Billou: I mean, I'm not here to make you feel good about yourself.
12:30
Nicky Billou: If you get upset because I stand for truth and I'm against the people that want to take
12:34
Nicky Billou: away everything that has made our type of society great and good, then I know that means you're
12:40
Nicky Billou: the enemy.
12:41
Nicky Billou: So it's time for me to crush you.
12:42
Nicky Billou: And we didn't do it in Iran back in 1978 and 79, which is why the Islamists and the Marxists
12:48
Nicky Billou: were able to take over, you know, the greatest country in the Middle East at that time and
12:54
Nicky Billou: turn it into a hell hole.
12:56
Nicky Billou: And I'll be goddamned if as long as I'm living here that I'm going to sit by quietly and let them do it again here.
13:02
Graham Nolan: I have some National Geographic from the 1950s that were stories about Iran and the progressiveness there.
13:12
Graham Nolan: And I mean that in a good way in that it was one of the most highly educated countries in the Middle East.
13:18
Graham Nolan: Women were college educated.
13:21
Graham Nolan: I saw a video of Frank Sinatra doing a concert there in 1975.
13:24
Graham Nolan: So it's before the Khomeini takeover.
13:28
Graham Nolan: That's right.
13:28
Graham Nolan: And that could have been Las Vegas or it could have been Peoria, Illinois.
13:34
Graham Nolan: Yep.
13:34
Graham Nolan: Just by looking at the crowd, you know.
13:36
Graham Nolan: Yep.
13:38
Graham Nolan: And now, you know, it's a complete shit show because, you know, our presidents in 1979 have kicked the can down the road and haven't dealt with this issue until just now.
13:49
Nicky Billou: Well, Jimmy Carter, actually, he was not a fan of the Shaws.
13:54
Nicky Billou: because Jimmy Carter was a leftist and he thought that, oh my God, look at the Shah. He's put all
13:59
Nicky Billou: these people in jail. Well, they were Marxist and Islamist. They belonged in jail. Frankly,
14:02
Nicky Billou: he should have killed them. That's what I would have done if I were an Asian. I'd have killed
14:06
Nicky Billou: every last one of them. And he wanted to basically create a religious belt to oppose the Soviet Union.
14:14
Nicky Billou: I'm like, how dumb are you? The Shah of Iran was America's most reliable ally that basically did
14:20
Nicky Billou: America's dirty work in the Middle East and kept stability there for decades. And he got rid of
14:26
Nicky Billou: them to bring someone in who hates America, hates Western civilization. And honestly, the Middle
14:33
Nicky Billou: East and frankly, the world have been a complete shitshow. And this is all Carter's fault. 9-11
14:38
Nicky Billou: is because of Jimmy Carter. You can thank Jimmy Carter for letting 9-11 happen in the United
14:42
Nicky Billou: States and the 3,000 people that got killed as a result of that. And the truth of the matter is
14:47
Nicky Billou: that, you know, if you believe in freedom, if you believe in everything that made America the
14:53
Nicky Billou: greatest country in the world, you've got to take a strong stand against these leftists, these
14:59
Nicky Billou: Islamists, these Marxists. And I can see, you know, that they've gone through a lot of institutions,
15:05
Nicky Billou: but it'd be nice to see the forces of freedom start to march back through those institutions
15:10
Nicky Billou: and take them back. I'm glad to see someone like you put together your business, Compass Comics.
15:16
Nicky Billou: I've read a bunch of your comics.
15:17
Nicky Billou: I think they're a lot of fun.
15:19
Nicky Billou: But boy, would it be great to have somebody take over DC and Marvel and all those characters
15:23
Nicky Billou: and bring them back to good old-fashioned American universal truth story time.
15:27
Graham Nolan: Yeah.
15:28
Graham Nolan: You know, Superman doesn't even stand for truth, justice in the American way.
15:32
Graham Nolan: It's truth, justice, and I think truth, justice in a better world.
15:37
Nicky Billou: That's ridiculous.
15:38
Graham Nolan: Yeah.
15:39
Nicky Billou: It's ridiculous.
15:40
Nicky Billou: Yeah.
15:41
Nicky Billou: I have some of the old Superman comics.
15:44
Nicky Billou: Those are great for now.
15:46
Nicky Billou: But, you know, I got a vision that in the United States, you know, after the Trump administration concludes that there'll be another 16 straight years of Republican dominance.
15:57
Nicky Billou: And they're going to go after these guys and crush them and destroy them.
16:00
Nicky Billou: So I think J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio can both end up being two term presidents.
16:04
Nicky Billou: Those guys are amazing. They're really great.
16:07
Nicky Billou: Yeah. Two terms of five terms of Republican.
16:12
Nicky Billou: That would be awesome.
16:13
Nicky Billou: that. It would make their heads explode too. Oh God, that's just a bonus. That's just a bonus.
16:21
Nicky Billou: That's just a bonus. So what had you see the writing on the wall and go, I got to get out of
16:27
Graham Nolan: here? Well, there was a few things and I got out before the wokeism started because around 2000,
16:36
Graham Nolan: the industry was starting to implode. We'd come off the nineties with a lot of speculator dollars
16:42
Graham Nolan: in there. There's a lot of money flying around, a lot of stuff being published, a lot of crap.
16:48
Graham Nolan: And people are getting more judicious in their purchases and stuff. So sales were down. The
16:54
Graham Nolan: speculators got out, you know, those people buying, you know, multiple copies of The Death of
16:59
Graham Nolan: Superman. You know, it sold like 6 million copies. Nothing is going to be of value if there's 6
17:03
Graham Nolan: million copies out there, you know? For real. But they thought they were going to pay for their
17:08
Graham Nolan: kids college with it. So the bottom dropped out. Some of my editors and contacts were leaving,
17:14
Graham Nolan: were fired or retiring. And so I was losing connection in there. And I got offered a chance
17:22
Graham Nolan: to get into newspaper strips, a much more conservative business and audience and clientele.
17:30
Graham Nolan: And I thought, well, why don't I try that for a while? I've always been a big fan of the newspaper
17:35
Graham Nolan: cartoonists you know I thought I would give that a shot and I I did that for about 13 years
17:41
Graham Nolan: yeah I stayed in there about 13 years I would do an occasional freelance now and then but it was
17:47
Graham Nolan: soul-sucking it was it was just it was not fun and after a while I'm like I got to get out of
17:53
Graham Nolan: here I can't I I needed to you know put food on the plates and all that so I stuck with it but at
17:59
Graham Nolan: At some point, I said, I can't do it anymore.
18:01
Graham Nolan: I got to do something else.
18:02
Graham Nolan: So struck out back on my own, picked up a few freelance things.
18:06
Graham Nolan: And that's when I started to discover this thing called crowdfunding.
18:11
Graham Nolan: I'd done a project with Chuck and Sylvester Stallone called The Expendables Go to Hell.
18:16
Graham Nolan: Oh, nice.
18:18
Graham Nolan: And that was crowdfunded by a guy named Richard Meyer.
18:22
Graham Nolan: And it was very successful.
18:23
Graham Nolan: And I was like, wow, this is an interesting platform to explore.
18:28
Graham Nolan: And so I decided I would try to get my own properties out that way, as opposed to trying to sell them to publishers where they're going to take half of it.
18:38
Graham Nolan: You know, I would go directly to the consumer with the crowdfunding platforms, you know, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, that type of thing.
18:45
Graham Nolan: And that's worked out great.
18:47
Graham Nolan: I've been doing that since 2020.
18:49
Graham Nolan: So what was it like to work with Sly Sly?
18:52
Graham Nolan: Well, I had no, Chuck was the only one who had any contact with Sly.
18:57
Graham Nolan: So I have no story.
18:59
Nicky Billou: You never met them?
18:59
Nicky Billou: Nothing?
19:00
Nicky Billou: Yeah.
19:01
Nicky Billou: Wow.
19:01
Nicky Billou: All right.
19:02
Nicky Billou: That's wild.
19:03
Nicky Billou: That's wild.
19:04
Nicky Billou: So Expendables go to hell, eh?
19:06
Nicky Billou: Is that still around?
19:08
Graham Nolan: Yeah.
19:08
Graham Nolan: I don't know where you could get it because it wasn't sold in stores.
19:13
Graham Nolan: It was crowdfunded.
19:14
Graham Nolan: So backers got the copies.
19:16
Graham Nolan: Yeah.
19:17
Graham Nolan: That's it, eh?
19:17
Graham Nolan: I should go look it up on Amazon.
19:19
Graham Nolan: See if it's-
19:20
Graham Nolan: Yeah.
19:20
Nicky Billou: I think if you look at Amazon or on eBay, you could probably get copies.
19:24
Nicky Billou: I think that would be a good thing to do.
19:27
Nicky Billou: Expendables Go to Hell, it's called, eh?
19:29
Nicky Billou: Yep.
19:29
Nicky Billou: Okay.
19:30
Nicky Billou: I love it, man.
19:31
Nicky Billou: I think that's fantastic.
19:31
Graham Nolan: It was something he wanted to do as a movie, and he knew he couldn't because it was just
19:35
Graham Nolan: be too expensive.
19:36
Graham Nolan: Really, eh?
19:37
Graham Nolan: Yeah, it was going to be just way too expensive.
19:39
Graham Nolan: When you see all the shit that goes on in that thing, you're like, there's no way you
19:43
Graham Nolan: can see a billion dollar movie.
19:47
Nicky Billou: Expendables Go to Hell.
19:48
Nicky Billou: Let me just put it in Amazon and see if it's there.
19:50
Nicky Billou: No, it's Expendables 1, 2, 3, 4.
19:53
Nicky Billou: Oh, Expendables?
19:54
Nicky Billou: Nope.
19:55
Nicky Billou: No, that's not it.
19:55
Nicky Billou: No, that's not it.
19:56
Nicky Billou: All right. Maybe I'll have to look it up, like you said, on eBay.
19:59
Nicky Billou: Yeah.
20:01
Nicky Billou: Because that sounds like it'd be a fun story.
20:05
Nicky Billou: Oh, it is. It's a fun ride. We had a lot of fun with that.
20:09
Nicky Billou: All right. So that made you think, okay, I can do my own version of this.
20:14
Graham Nolan: Yeah. I wanted to do stories that were monster stories, horror stories, supernatural, science fiction, that kind of stuff.
20:23
Graham Nolan: I didn't want to jump back into the superhero sandbox.
20:29
Graham Nolan: So that's what I did.
20:30
Graham Nolan: I had two properties that I had pitched to...
20:33
Graham Nolan: Actually, I had three properties that I pitched to publishers that they turned down.
20:39
Graham Nolan: They turned two of them down.
20:40
Graham Nolan: One publisher bought one of them, the Girls of Dimension 13.
20:44
Graham Nolan: And then the other two, the Chinoo and Alien Alamo.
20:48
Graham Nolan: Oh, fun.
20:50
Graham Nolan: Yeah, those are the ones that I just say, well, I'm going to do those myself.
20:53
Graham Nolan: because I think they're good.
20:55
Graham Nolan: And evidently they are because they funded really well
20:59
Graham Nolan: with the crowdfunding platform.
21:01
Nicky Billou: Well, I'll tell you, I really enjoyed the stuff
21:05
Nicky Billou: that I bought from you myself.
21:08
Nicky Billou: And that's why I ordered a bunch more.
21:10
Nicky Billou: I think they're a lot of fun.
21:12
Nicky Billou: You're right in a very old fashioned storyteller way.
21:18
Nicky Billou: The themes you explore are all universal.
21:21
Nicky Billou: And I say this to people.
21:23
Nicky Billou: You know, I'm in the speaking and coaching business, right?
21:28
Nicky Billou: I'm a professional speaker.
21:29
Nicky Billou: I do coaching.
21:30
Nicky Billou: I do workshops, blah, blah, blah.
21:33
Nicky Billou: Yet I like to read fiction.
21:34
Nicky Billou: I read a lot of fiction, a ton of it.
21:37
Nicky Billou: And a lot of people in my industry have this badge of honor they wear saying, no, no, no,
21:42
Nicky Billou: I don't read any fiction.
21:43
Nicky Billou: I only read nonfiction.
21:45
Nicky Billou: Look at how cool I am.
21:46
Nicky Billou: I'm like, you're an idiot.
21:47
Nicky Billou: Yeah.
21:47
Nicky Billou: You're a complete idiot.
21:49
Nicky Billou: First of all, it's fun reading fiction.
21:51
Nicky Billou: It's actually enjoyable.
21:52
Nicky Billou: You know, secondly, I believe as human beings, we learn through story, right?
21:57
Nicky Billou: And a good story can teach you more about the human condition than any how-to book ever
22:03
Nicky Billou: will.
22:04
Nicky Billou: Sure.
22:05
Graham Nolan: And please speak to that.
22:07
Graham Nolan: I was just going to say that, you know, in fiction, the writer is either writing about
22:12
Graham Nolan: something that he's experienced or something he's dreamed of experiencing.
22:17
Graham Nolan: And so that makes it universal.
22:19
Graham Nolan: It's a human experience.
22:21
Graham Nolan: And even if he made the whole damn thing off, you can still connect with it.
22:27
Graham Nolan: You know, it may touch you directly as opposed to, you know, something to happen in real life because you know it happened in real life.
22:36
Graham Nolan: You don't have a really sort of a disconnect.
22:39
Graham Nolan: Whereas like in fiction, you can connect with a character that you might see yourself in, you know.
22:45
Graham Nolan: Yeah.
22:45
Nicky Billou: You know, the movies that I watched, especially when I was quite a bit younger, were all about
22:53
Nicky Billou: the type of man I wanted to be.
22:56
Nicky Billou: You know what I mean?
22:57
Nicky Billou: Like I'd watch, I don't know, Rocky.
23:00
Nicky Billou: Did I want to go and like be a boxer?
23:01
Nicky Billou: I don't know if I necessarily wanted to be a boxer, but I wanted to be somebody who'd
23:05
Nicky Billou: go after his dreams against all odds.
23:08
Nicky Billou: You know?
23:09
Nicky Billou: So that's why I'd go watch Rocky and go see Rocky II and Rocky III and Rocky IV and all
23:14
Nicky Billou: that stuff.
23:14
Nicky Billou: Sure.
23:15
Nicky Billou: The Dirty Harry movies.
23:16
Nicky Billou: Did I want to go be a cop who blew away bad guys?
23:18
Nicky Billou: I don't know if I wanted to do that.
23:20
Nicky Billou: But again, I wanted to be a guy that could be counted upon by people to do what needed
23:27
Nicky Billou: to be done.
23:27
Nicky Billou: Like that really appealed to me.
23:31
Nicky Billou: Every one of these movies that were made in that fashion were appealing to me.
23:35
Nicky Billou: And same with books and comic books.
23:38
Nicky Billou: You know, your friend Chuck Dixon, who introduced this, he told me about his LaVon Cade books.
23:43
Nicky Billou: Well, I bought one.
23:44
Nicky Billou: I liked it so much.
23:45
Nicky Billou: I ended up buying all 12.
23:46
Nicky Billou: Nice.
23:47
Nicky Billou: And I read them and they're,
23:49
Nicky Billou: they're terrific.
23:50
Nicky Billou: And then he had a made into a movie with Jason Staten.
23:52
Nicky Billou: I thought,
23:53
Nicky Billou: Hey,
23:53
Nicky Billou: that's pretty cool.
23:53
Nicky Billou: I watched the movie.
23:54
Nicky Billou: I thought,
23:54
Nicky Billou: this is good.
23:56
Nicky Billou: You know,
23:57
Nicky Billou: and the types of characters in,
23:59
Nicky Billou: in,
24:00
Nicky Billou: uh,
24:00
Nicky Billou: in the comics and the books that I am most attracted to are those that are
24:08
Nicky Billou: the type of characters that I see a bit of myself inside of.
24:12
Nicky Billou: And it uplifts me seeing them.
24:14
Nicky Billou: struggle and win uplifts me. These comic books that are mostly about, how can I put it? Really
24:22
Nicky Billou: not so great people with not so great morals. I mean, they may be good stories, but I'm less
24:28
Nicky Billou: interested in reading them and going through them again and again and again. And one of the reasons
24:33
Nicky Billou: I like your stories is because they're like that. They're all about regular folks or maybe not so
24:39
Nicky Billou: regular in the case of some of your stories, but people that are going up against some big odds.
24:45
Nicky Billou: And as a result of going against those big odds, there's some sort of a transformational arc that
24:50
Nicky Billou: happens in them. And I think being a human being, being alive, that's what life's all about. You
24:56
Nicky Billou: want to constantly be going up against things in your life and they don't need to be, uh, you know,
25:02
Nicky Billou: dangerous things like heroes in comic books and stories and movies, but they, they need to be
25:07
Nicky Billou: relevant to your own life. And that's why reading about them, I find it uplifting and enlivening.
25:12
Graham Nolan: You know what I'm trying to say? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's that aspect. There's also
25:17
Graham Nolan: the wish fulfillment when you're reading any kind of heroic adventure is, you know, you, you,
25:24
Graham Nolan: you want to be that guy, you want to be, you know, that superhero or you want to be that guy,
25:31
Graham Nolan: as you said, that does the right thing when it needs being done, you know,
25:36
Graham Nolan: because it takes courage to do that, you know?
25:40
Graham Nolan: So there's definitely a lot of wish fulfillment and dreaming in heroic fiction,
25:45
Graham Nolan: you know, and this goes all the way back to, you know, Edgar Rice Burroughs.
25:49
Graham Nolan: Yeah.
25:51
Graham Nolan: And the John Carter and the Tarzan novels.
25:55
Graham Nolan: Those are awesome, man.
25:56
Graham Nolan: Oh, I'm a huge Tarzan fan.
25:59
Graham Nolan: The Tarzan novels are just, I just reread the first one.
26:04
Graham Nolan: I seem to reread it every 10 years.
26:07
Graham Nolan: I just freaking love that book, Tarzan of the Apes, you know?
26:10
Nicky Billou: Yeah, Tarzan of the Apes, great story.
26:13
Nicky Billou: You know, when I was a kid in Iran, they used to show the movies, the Tarzan movies, starring Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan.
26:22
Nicky Billou: Sure.
26:22
Nicky Billou: And they were fabulous.
26:24
Nicky Billou: You know?
26:25
Graham Nolan: See, I hated those movies.
26:26
Graham Nolan: Did you?
26:27
Graham Nolan: I did.
26:28
Graham Nolan: I couldn't stand them.
26:29
Graham Nolan: I mean, he was such a dummy, me, Tarzan, you Jane type stuff.
26:35
Graham Nolan: As you know, in the books, Tarzan is a very, very educated man.
26:41
Graham Nolan: Once he gets out of the jungle, he learns French and he can speak the language of the apes.
26:46
Graham Nolan: He learns English.
26:47
Graham Nolan: He first learns to read and write in English, but not speak it.
26:50
Graham Nolan: He learns to speak in French.
26:55
Graham Nolan: he's very bright and he's not a dummy.
26:59
Graham Nolan: And can he speak, like I said,
27:00
Graham Nolan: he can converse in all these different languages.
27:02
Graham Nolan: I think even German too.
27:03
Graham Nolan: Yeah.
27:04
Graham Nolan: Well, I saw the movies before I read the books.
27:07
Graham Nolan: Me too.
27:07
Graham Nolan: And that's why I was like,
27:08
Graham Nolan: I didn't want to read the books
27:10
Graham Nolan: because I thought that's what it was about.
27:11
Graham Nolan: And then somebody said, no, no, no,
27:12
Graham Nolan: they're not like that at all.
27:13
Graham Nolan: I'm like, yeah, yeah.
27:14
Graham Nolan: All right.
27:15
Graham Nolan: Eventually I finally got down to it
27:17
Graham Nolan: and I started reading like, oh man, oh man,
27:19
Graham Nolan: look at this.
27:20
Graham Nolan: What a badass, you know?
27:21
Graham Nolan: Yeah, total.
27:22
Graham Nolan: You know, it starts biting guys' throats out.
27:28
Nicky Billou: No, it's awesome, man.
27:29
Nicky Billou: Yeah, great stuff.
27:30
Nicky Billou: So tell us about some of your latest projects that you've got going on right now.
27:35
Nicky Billou: What are some things you're going to be coming out with and about your company, Compass Comics?
27:39
Nicky Billou: Sure.
27:41
Graham Nolan: The one that I have funding right now is the sequel or prequel, I should say, to the Chinoo called Chinoo 77.
27:48
Graham Nolan: And it takes place in the storm of 1977 that hit Buffalo, New York.
27:54
Graham Nolan: that one is currently funding on kickstarter and indiegogo both the kickstarter one's coming down
28:01
Graham Nolan: on friday um okay so if any of your listeners are interested you know you should get over there
28:08
Graham Nolan: before friday because there's some exclusives there that aren't on any other platforms um
28:13
Graham Nolan: and then on the 25th i'll be launching giant size two-fisted manly tales number two oh i love that
28:19
Graham Nolan: That was my favorite of your books.
28:20
Graham Nolan: I got to say this.
28:21
Graham Nolan: This one is 144 page World War Two story written by Chuck and illustrated by Butch Geis.
28:28
Graham Nolan: And it's sort of a what if it's like, what if the Manhattan Project blew up and killed all the scientists and we didn't have the atom bomb?
28:36
Graham Nolan: We had to go into Japan.
28:38
Graham Nolan: Oh, hand to hand fighting on island hopping.
28:41
Graham Nolan: We lose a million at least.
28:43
Graham Nolan: Exactly.
28:44
Graham Nolan: Exactly.
28:45
Graham Nolan: So it's a it's a true two fisted manly tale.
28:49
Graham Nolan: you know, knuckle busting, teeth spitting, lip splitting action adventure stuff.
28:56
Nicky Billou: Man, that sounds great.
28:57
Nicky Billou: I really liked the first one.
29:00
Nicky Billou: And I'm looking forward to ordering the second one.
29:03
Nicky Billou: This sounds really fantastic.
29:05
Nicky Billou: Yeah, it's going to be really cool.
29:07
Nicky Billou: You know, you're doing some great things there, man.
29:11
Nicky Billou: And I hope that you keep it up.
29:15
Nicky Billou: And I hope that you bring some other artists under your banner in Compass Comics.
29:20
Nicky Billou: It'd be good to see you create your own little empire.
29:25
Nicky Billou: Not so much because maybe you don't want an empire.
29:27
Nicky Billou: I don't know.
29:28
Nicky Billou: But I just think it's good to build institutions.
29:31
Nicky Billou: It's good to build institutions in the right way.
29:34
Nicky Billou: Yeah.
29:35
Nicky Billou: And, you know, long may you live, but there'll be a day when you won't be around anymore.
29:40
Nicky Billou: It'll be good to have other people that are carrying on your work.
29:42
Graham Nolan: Oh, absolutely.
29:43
Graham Nolan: Absolutely.
29:44
Graham Nolan: at least carrying on the spirit of it, you know,
29:48
Graham Nolan: the kind of stories that I like to tell and that my reader base likes to read,
29:55
Graham Nolan: you know?
29:56
Graham Nolan: So, yeah.
29:56
Nicky Billou: Yeah.
29:57
Nicky Billou: And, you know, how I found out about you was through Chuck.
30:00
Nicky Billou: And how I found out about Chuck was, you know, I just started getting into comics again.
30:07
Nicky Billou: I hadn't in the longest time, you know, I just, after I became an animal,
30:10
Nicky Billou: I'm like, oh, comics and blah, blah, blah, leave it alone.
30:12
Nicky Billou: But then there was just some, a friend of mine would just get me comics from time to time.
30:17
Nicky Billou: And I just, dude, then I read a few of them.
30:19
Nicky Billou: These are actually pretty good.
30:21
Nicky Billou: And he was a big fan of Wolverine and the X-Men in particular.
30:26
Nicky Billou: So I ended up buying a bunch of them.
30:28
Nicky Billou: And then I saw the Sin City movies.
30:32
Nicky Billou: You remember those two movies?
30:34
Nicky Billou: And man, those were really good movies.
30:35
Nicky Billou: They were excellent.
30:37
Nicky Billou: And I felt, okay, oh, they're based on comic books.
30:39
Nicky Billou: I'm like, all right, let me order the comic books.
30:42
Nicky Billou: So I ordered some of Frank Miller's Sin City comics, and I loved them.
30:46
Nicky Billou: I loved every single one of them.
30:47
Nicky Billou: I thought they were really great stories.
30:50
Nicky Billou: Doesn't seem like Frank's one of us, unfortunately, but, you know, that was a good series of comics.
30:54
Nicky Billou: And then I went to some of his older comics that he did for Marvel and DC, some of his old Batman and Daredevil and Wolverine, et cetera, et cetera.
31:06
Nicky Billou: It's just terrific.
31:07
Nicky Billou: They were just really great stories.
31:09
Nicky Billou: And then all of a sudden I came across, you know, I just said, okay, Frank Miller, sure.
31:13
Nicky Billou: He's got something published in 2018 or 2019.
31:15
Nicky Billou: I bought it.
31:16
Nicky Billou: And it was a woke piece of crap.
31:18
Nicky Billou: I mean, it was a woke piece.
31:20
Nicky Billou: Which one was it?
31:21
Nicky Billou: I forget right now, brother.
31:22
Nicky Billou: But it was, it was, you know, I'm reading this and I'm like, and so I've got this, this
31:27
Nicky Billou: person who was coaching me.
31:28
Nicky Billou: Cause yeah, I'm a coach.
31:29
Nicky Billou: I have coaches.
31:30
Nicky Billou: I got four or five coaches and she's someone that I've been working with actually ever
31:34
Nicky Billou: since I was 21 years old, I've been doing our courses and taking coaching from her.
31:37
Nicky Billou: And I, she, she said, what's on your mind?
31:40
Nicky Billou: You know, cause all the time I tell her what's on my mind, good, bad, ugly.
31:43
Nicky Billou: And I said, I'm really bummed out because it seems like all the comics today are woke.
31:47
Nicky Billou: I've all these great comics from the past are fantastic.
31:50
Nicky Billou: And then these new ones seem to be woke pieces of crap, but I'm really pissed.
31:53
Nicky Billou: She said, oh, didn't you know?
31:55
Nicky Billou: But there's some conservative comic book writers that used to write for DC and Marvel that
32:00
Nicky Billou: they're creating some good old fashioned stories and they're not woke at all.
32:04
Nicky Billou: And I'm like, really?
32:05
Nicky Billou: That's a thing.
32:06
Nicky Billou: She said, that's a thing.
32:07
Nicky Billou: And I'm like, okay, so who's one of them?
32:10
Nicky Billou: She said, well, Chuck Dixon.
32:12
Nicky Billou: I'm like, that name sounds familiar.
32:13
Nicky Billou: She says, go look him up.
32:14
Nicky Billou: I looked him up and I go, holy shit, this dude's legit.
32:17
Nicky Billou: She says, yeah, you should go approach him.
32:19
Nicky Billou: So I got my podcast and I didn't know Chuck.
32:23
Nicky Billou: I knew nothing, but I'm fearless.
32:25
Nicky Billou: Like, I'll tell you how fearless I am in a minute.
32:27
Nicky Billou: After I tell you the story, it'll blow you away.
32:29
Nicky Billou: So I'm like, all right, let me find Chuck on social media.
32:32
Nicky Billou: So I go look him up and he's on X.
32:34
Nicky Billou: It was Twitter at the time.
32:36
Nicky Billou: And I said, hey, Chuck, my name is Nicky Ballou.
32:40
Nicky Billou: I'm the host of XYZ podcast, you know, Thought Leader Revolution.
32:44
Nicky Billou: Here's some of my past guests.
32:45
Nicky Billou: And I've interviewed some big names in various fields, right?
32:49
Nicky Billou: Not in comics at all.
32:50
Nicky Billou: But, you know, the guys who created the chicken soup for the soul books, both been guests of mine.
32:56
Nicky Billou: Dr. John Maxwell, the pastor who's the number one leadership author in the world.
33:00
Nicky Billou: He sold like 80 million copies of his books.
33:02
Nicky Billou: So I started name dropping like mad, right?
33:04
Nicky Billou: just to get his attention, you know?
33:07
Nicky Billou: But you know, God works in mysterious ways.
33:10
Nicky Billou: There's some people who are big names like Chuck,
33:13
Nicky Billou: who when they feel like the energy's right or whatever,
33:16
Nicky Billou: they go, yeah, I'm in.
33:17
Nicky Billou: And Chuck was like, instant.
33:19
Nicky Billou: The second I sent him the note, he's like, I'm in.
33:22
Nicky Billou: I'm like, all right.
33:23
Nicky Billou: So I interviewed Chuck and we had a great time.
33:26
Nicky Billou: And then he said, there's other guys that are like me.
33:28
Nicky Billou: I go, really?
33:29
Nicky Billou: Who are they?
33:30
Nicky Billou: And you were the first name he dropped.
33:32
Nicky Billou: He said, Graham Nolan.
33:33
Nicky Billou: He's a good buddy of mine.
33:35
Nicky Billou: I'll introduce you to him.
33:36
Nicky Billou: So he did.
33:36
Nicky Billou: And that's how I got to know you and bought some of your comics and all of that stuff.
33:41
Nicky Billou: And for myself, you know, I've gone and ordered some of the older comic books from the pre-woke era from some of the classic writers and artists, including some of yours and a bunch of chucks and even Frank's before, you know, he went into the woke space and all that stuff.
33:57
Nicky Billou: And they are terrific.
33:59
Nicky Billou: But I like to see new stories come out.
34:02
Nicky Billou: And it's just, I'm sure you're doing this, man.
34:04
Nicky Billou: I really appreciate it.
34:05
Nicky Billou: Thank you so much.
34:05
Graham Nolan: Yeah.
34:06
Graham Nolan: Oh, this is a life dream for me.
34:08
Graham Nolan: I'm not going to have my dream squashed because other people say no.
34:13
Graham Nolan: You know, that's, that's entirely up to me.
34:17
Graham Nolan: You know, I'll do it as long as I feel like doing it.
34:19
Graham Nolan: Not because they tell me I can't.
34:20
Graham Nolan: Amen.
34:21
Nicky Billou: You know, that's a good line.
34:23
Nicky Billou: I got to write that down.
34:24
Nicky Billou: I'm not going to have my dream squashed because of other people.
34:26
Nicky Billou: I love it.
34:28
Nicky Billou: That's actually really good.
34:31
Nicky Billou: So, Graham, we end off each episode here by asking you, our guest expert, what are your top three expert action steps?
34:43
Nicky Billou: These are your three best pieces of advice that you want to impart to my listener to help them take their life success to the next level.
34:54
Nicky Billou: What say you?
34:56
Graham Nolan: Be bold is the first one.
34:59
Graham Nolan: Most people are insecure with themselves, especially if you're young.
35:04
Graham Nolan: Don't be.
35:05
Graham Nolan: Be bold, be daring, and be different.
35:08
Graham Nolan: And don't be afraid to be that way.
35:10
Graham Nolan: I started out not being that.
35:15
Graham Nolan: And it made my work suffer and it made it take a longer time to evolve because I was chasing somebody else.
35:22
Graham Nolan: I was trying to be somebody else.
35:25
Graham Nolan: I was trying to be what I thought they wanted to see.
35:28
Graham Nolan: So I felt like if I could go back and talk to 21-year-old Graham, I'd tell him to be bold.
35:38
Graham Nolan: Three of them?
35:38
Graham Nolan: Yeah, yeah.
35:39
Graham Nolan: Okay.
35:41
Graham Nolan: Let's see.
35:41
Graham Nolan: The next one would be be sincere.
35:45
Graham Nolan: Yeah.
35:46
Graham Nolan: Be sincere with the people you deal with so that they can learn to trust you.
35:52
Graham Nolan: In my business, if somebody says, can you get this thing done in two weeks, you know, and you can't, and there's no way you can, don't say you can.
36:03
Graham Nolan: Yeah.
36:04
Graham Nolan: And I'll say, you know, I could probably do it in 10 days, you know, and be sure, you know.
36:10
Graham Nolan: So, yeah, definitely be sincere.
36:14
Graham Nolan: And I guess the third one I guess I'd say is don't give in to groupthink.
36:21
Graham Nolan: Yeah.
36:22
Graham Nolan: Be an individual.
36:22
Graham Nolan: You know, when you're working with a bunch of people, whether you're in a company or something like that, it's very easy to follow along when people are, let's say, having a conference meeting and somebody maybe who's more experienced than you throws something out.
36:40
Graham Nolan: Okay, if you don't think it's good, then you can explain why, then speak up.
36:47
Nicky Billou: Yeah.
36:47
Graham Nolan: You know, I remember doing that.
36:49
Graham Nolan: We had a bat conference one time and one of the writers threw out something and nobody said anything.
36:54
Graham Nolan: And I said, well, if we do that, it's going to make Batman look weak.
36:59
Graham Nolan: It's going to make him look like such and such or whatever the situation was.
37:03
Graham Nolan: And Denny O'Neill, the Batman guru and the editor in chief, you know, he said, you're right.
37:10
Graham Nolan: You're right.
37:10
Graham Nolan: So that was a live instance of where I had to do that and it was the right thing to do.
37:21
Graham Nolan: So that's what I would say would be the third one.
37:25
Nicky Billou: Man, these are really awesome expert action steps.
37:28
Nicky Billou: I love the first one the best.
37:30
Nicky Billou: Be bold, be daring, be different.
37:32
Nicky Billou: Most people are insecure.
37:33
Nicky Billou: Don't be.
37:34
Nicky Billou: That's just like straight up advice, right?
37:36
Nicky Billou: Yeah.
37:37
Nicky Billou: Yeah.
37:37
Nicky Billou: And be sincere with the people who deal with so they can learn to trust you.
37:40
Nicky Billou: people in business, the people they know I can trust. Right. And being individual,
37:45
Nicky Billou: don't give in the group think. Right. So important, man. These are like truth,
37:49
Nicky Billou: justice in the American way, brother. And I learned them all from comic books.
37:54
Nicky Billou: I learned them all. Oh, that's a good title for the episode. I learned everything I learned. I
37:59
Nicky Billou: learned from comic books. There you go. There you go. Life lessons in four colors. I love it, man.
38:07
Nicky Billou: So I'll tell you my bold story because I think it's a good way to wrap up.
38:15
Nicky Billou: Okay.
38:15
Nicky Billou: I'm just writing this down.
38:17
Nicky Billou: Everything I learned, I learned from comic books.
38:18
Nicky Billou: That's good.
38:19
Nicky Billou: That's good.
38:20
Nicky Billou: So I'm from Iran, like I told you, and I'm sure you've been following what's happening
38:25
Nicky Billou: in my homeland in the last few months.
38:27
Nicky Billou: So in December, when my people started to demonstrate against the evil Islamic Republic,
38:33
Nicky Billou: Um, I, um, did something that I'm very proud of.
38:38
Nicky Billou: I have a friend that I, that I've co-written two of my books.
38:41
Nicky Billou: I've written 11 books.
38:43
Nicky Billou: Um, and he is a conservative radio talk show host.
38:46
Nicky Billou: His name is Wayne Allen Root.
38:48
Nicky Billou: Uh, he, uh, is based in Vegas and he's a personal friend of Donald Trump's.
38:53
Nicky Billou: Uh, he has Donald Trump's cell phone number on his phone.
38:57
Nicky Billou: Wow.
38:58
Nicky Billou: So yeah, um, one person removed from the president relationship wise.
39:02
Nicky Billou: That's a big deal.
39:05
Nicky Billou: Yeah, man, that's a big deal.
39:06
Nicky Billou: So, and Donald Trump personally endorsed one of the two books we wrote together on True Social on May 7th, 2023.
39:14
Nicky Billou: I have the post, man.
39:15
Nicky Billou: It's good.
39:15
Nicky Billou: All right.
39:16
Nicky Billou: It's good.
39:17
Nicky Billou: It's good.
39:17
Nicky Billou: I'm proud of that.
39:18
Nicky Billou: So I reached out to him and I said, by text, I go, Wayne, people in Iran are pouring into the streets protesting for their freedoms.
39:29
Nicky Billou: And this happened in 2009 and in 2022.
39:33
Nicky Billou: And they asked America to support them.
39:37
Nicky Billou: And Obama and Biden ignored them.
39:39
Nicky Billou: And I said, would you ask the president to not ignore them and to make some statement of support to the brave people of Iran?
39:48
Nicky Billou: And this could give them the encouragement they need to continue, you know?
39:54
Nicky Billou: And I then laid out why a non-Islamic republic ruled Iran is good for America.
40:00
Nicky Billou: Right?
40:00
Nicky Billou: Yeah.
40:02
Nicky Billou: And Wayne doesn't normally respond to me very quickly.
40:05
Nicky Billou: I just got to tell you, like it takes a day, two, whatever.
40:08
Nicky Billou: Right?
40:08
Nicky Billou: He responded to me in less than a second.
40:11
Nicky Billou: So, you know, I'm a Christian.
40:13
Nicky Billou: I believe in God and certain things are divinely inspired.
40:16
Nicky Billou: So this was divinely inspired.
40:17
Nicky Billou: He instantly said yes.
40:19
Nicky Billou: And then he copied and pasted a big chunk of my text.
40:22
Nicky Billou: And he said, this is what I sent to President Trump.
40:25
Nicky Billou: And then he said, I'm also sending this to his personal assistant to make sure he reads
40:30
Nicky Billou: it because he gets hundreds of texts a day.
40:31
Nicky Billou: Sure.
40:32
Nicky Billou: So I'm like, okay, thank you.
40:35
Nicky Billou: This was awesome.
40:37
Nicky Billou: So dude, eight hours goes by.
40:39
Nicky Billou: Next morning, I wake up to a true social post from Donald Trump saying that I'm supporting
40:46
Nicky Billou: the brave people of Iran in the battle for freedom.
40:48
Nicky Billou: And I'm like, holy shit.
40:50
Nicky Billou: like damn i'm like damn like little old me just got my buddy like and and i'm like thank you god
40:57
Nicky Billou: bless you you're a righteous dude and he said yeah sure he says look i i um he says i don't post you
41:03
Nicky Billou: know text the president often but he he trusts me he respects me he's interviewed trump like 19 times
41:10
Nicky Billou: on his on a show i don't think anyone's interviewed him as much as often as this guy has so a couple
41:15
Nicky Billou: more days go by and i go listen they're about to cut off the internet and that means they're
41:20
Nicky Billou: to start killing people. Could you ask the president to ask Elon Musk to drop, um, Starlink
41:26
Nicky Billou: units into Iran, just like he did in Venezuela, right? Yeah. And he goes, yeah, I'll do it. So
41:31
Nicky Billou: he sends Trump a note going, Mr. President, could you please ask Elon Musk to drop these units?
41:36
Nicky Billou: Cause they're about to cut off the internet. And that means they're going to, they're going to
41:40
Nicky Billou: start killing a lot of Iranian people. And, um, and a couple of days later comes out that Elon is
41:46
Nicky Billou: airdrop in these units in in tehran and like holy shit like this is good like and then then comes the
41:54
Nicky Billou: um the killing you know and they were like in two days over 50 000 people were killed the single
42:01
Nicky Billou: biggest genocide in the shortest period of time in world history uh insanity like little little
42:09
Nicky Billou: kids two-year-olds three-year-olds 10 year 11 year olds just being murdered murdered right this was
42:14
Nicky Billou: accidental this is deliberate so sure and this is like so i go to wayne i go wayne um there's a big
42:21
Nicky Billou: ask but um would you ask the president to step in to do more than this and um wayne goes look i can't
42:30
Nicky Billou: tell the guy what to do with foreign policy or whatnot but i'll make the case and i'll make the
42:37
Nicky Billou: case for for why iran not under the hands of these guys is a good thing and i would i'll i'll urge
42:44
Nicky Billou: him to say you you should you should do whatever you got to do to support these guys to the people
42:49
Graham Nolan: to be able to overthrow this government yeah which you know we all thought would mean some sort of
42:53
Nicky Billou: intervention right right so he did it nothing happened for days weeks trump made a few posts
43:00
Nicky Billou: saying yeah you know i'm i'm with you help is on the way all that stuff but no military at that
43:05
Nicky Billou: point had been sent in. And people are still getting killed by the tens of thousands. I mean,
43:11
Nicky Billou: the death toll is over 100,000 now. Is that confirmed?
43:16
Nicky Billou: It's confirmed. I mean, the official government sources say it's 33,000, but they're lying. It's
43:22
Nicky Billou: way higher than that. The Islamic Republic sources. And from people in Iran, the numbers are 100,000
43:29
Nicky Billou: plus 500,000 wounded. It's horrific, horrific, man. Yeah. Think about that. Um, so he's saying,
43:38
Nicky Billou: look, I think Trump's going to do it. And then how many posts that, you know, threatens Trump.
43:43
Nicky Billou: I saw that kill Trump. And then Wayne texts me and he said, look, I know you're anxious,
43:49
Nicky Billou: nervous, impatient. He said, but I know my friend, they just threatened to kill him. It's over for
43:54
Nicky Billou: them. He said, Donald Trump is going to take these bastards out and he's not going to back down. He
44:00
Nicky Billou: told me that they're all going to die. He's not going to back down and the Islamic regime is going
44:05
Nicky Billou: to be gone. He said, you got to understand and trust me on this. They made a big mistake in
44:10
Nicky Billou: personally threatening him. He said that was like not a cool move. Yeah. And lo and behold, it took
44:16
Nicky Billou: three weeks, but then it happened. Yeah. And then last night I see a note saying the Iranian women's
44:23
Nicky Billou: soccer team didn't sing the islamic republic national anthem so officials there are threatening
44:28
Nicky Billou: them threatening to have them killed and so these women go back they're going to be you know tortured
44:35
Nicky Billou: raped killed right the australian government though where the the championships are being held
44:41
Nicky Billou: refused to um give them asylum so i i wrote yeah like this was straight up and i'm like what the
44:48
Nicky Billou: I go, Wayne, would you ask the president?
44:51
Nicky Billou: Wayne must be pissed with me right now, right?
44:53
Nicky Billou: Just kidding.
44:55
Nicky Billou: Would you ask the president to pressure the Australian government to take these girls?
45:00
Nicky Billou: Dude, the next morning, Trump is saying, this is not a good look for you guys, Australians.
45:06
Nicky Billou: Take these women, or we will.
45:09
Nicky Billou: And then I'm like, what the hell?
45:12
Nicky Billou: Wayne, dude, because he texted him.
45:14
Nicky Billou: He showed me the text he sent him.
45:15
Nicky Billou: And then like two hours later, Trump puts another note up saying, yeah, I spoke with the prime minister of Australia.
45:22
Nicky Billou: He's taking them in.
45:23
Nicky Billou: Some of the women have decided they're going to go back because they feel that if they don't go back, they've been told family members of theirs are going to be hurt, et cetera.
45:30
Nicky Billou: But all the women who want to stay get to stay, which before was not the case.
45:35
Nicky Billou: Right.
45:35
Nicky Billou: The Australian, check them out of the country.
45:38
Nicky Billou: And I feel for those women that are going back, I still think they might get killed or worse.
45:44
Nicky Billou: But brother, that's me being bold, man.
45:46
Nicky Billou: And not for myself, but for my people.
45:48
Nicky Billou: Yeah.
45:49
Nicky Billou: You got to do what's right.
45:50
Nicky Billou: And, you know, after I saw my people walk into those bullets with their bare bodies,
45:56
Nicky Billou: asking for their freedoms, I just, I just, I just promised God that I was going to go
46:02
Nicky Billou: hard through the enemy after the people that are trying to take our freedoms away.
46:06
Nicky Billou: And for anything else I want in life, I'm just going to go for it.
46:09
Nicky Billou: But I'm going to put on the spirit of an Iranian protester and then go ask.
46:15
Graham Nolan: Well, if you've got that guy's ear, you should tell him to tell the president to drop weapons for these guys.
46:22
Graham Nolan: You know, now they've got everything in the history, right?
46:25
Graham Nolan: You know, because the first thing every dictatorship does is disarm the populace.
46:30
Graham Nolan: So these people don't have weapons.
46:32
Graham Nolan: So it's very hard for them to be able to take over their government if they can't enforce it.
46:37
Graham Nolan: And it wouldn't be the first time that this happened where you've, you know, we've got hundreds of thousands of older guns and stuff, you know, to drop, you know, you can have secret drop points and stuff and drop that shit down in there and start arming these people.
46:53
Graham Nolan: I mean, if the guard ends up getting them, it's no big deal.
46:57
Graham Nolan: They already got the guns.
46:58
Graham Nolan: It's just, you know, but you just keep doing it until these people are armed up and ready to roll, you know.
47:05
Graham Nolan: That's a great idea.
47:06
Graham Nolan: I've done that in the past.
47:07
Nicky Billou: I think I'll do it again.
47:09
Nicky Billou: I think I'll do it in the next couple of days.
47:10
Nicky Billou: That's a great idea.
47:12
Nicky Billou: Yeah.
47:12
Nicky Billou: Shit, dude.
47:13
Nicky Billou: I had a lot of fun today.
47:14
Nicky Billou: This was even better than our last interview, man.
47:16
Nicky Billou: It was great.
47:17
Nicky Billou: Thank you so much.
47:17
Nicky Billou: God bless you, brother.
47:18
Nicky Billou: All right, man.
47:19
Nicky Billou: Have a great one.
47:20
Nicky Billou: Thanks.
47:20
Nicky Billou: You too, man.
47:21
Nicky Billou: God bless.
47:21
Nicky Billou: Take care.
47:22
Nicky Billou: Bye-bye.
47:24
Speaker 2: This episode has been brought to you by eCircleAcademy.com,
47:28
Speaker 2: the proven system to add six to seven figures a year to your thought leader practice.