Why Masterminds Work When Nothing Else Does: Jeremy Shapiro on Breaking Through Plateaus

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Make sure you check out the show notes for exclusive masterminds, live events, and workshops. All right, let's go ahead and jump into the show. Welcome back to Grow Your Impact, Income and Influence, the number one show helping you reach millions. If you are a solopreneur or one of my entrepreneurs with a small team and you are trying to figure out how you get to seven figures and beyond, what got you here will not get you there. You've probably heard that before.

Today, we are going to dive into the nitty gritty of it. My guest today has been helping entrepreneurs since 1998. You heard that right. That is going on 40 years, 40 years, 30 years, man. He's been running a mastermind in the Bay Area for more than 15 years. He has a wealth of knowledge and he is here to share it with us. Jeremy Shapiro, how are you doing today?

I'm doing outstanding. Thanks for inviting me on the show. It is my pleasure to have you. So let's, let's just jump into it. How does one start a mastermind for entrepreneurs? Did you see a need in the marketplace? Did you go on the journey yourself? How did you get here? Yeah, I was really on the journey myself. You know, I first discovered mastermind groups about 20 years ago and joined them. And there's a ton of different kinds of mastermind groups out there.

And I saw the pros in each of the different formats and styles, but also some of the downsides of the different formats and styles. And at the end of the day, I sort of took the best of the best from the masterminds that I really got value from and, you know, use those best practices here with our Bay Area Mastermind. I love it. Okay. So if people are skeptical, if they're like, you know what, I've done the mastermind thing, I really just need help with

very specific things. What would you say to that person? You know, it's interesting. I find that a lot of the, you know, quote mastermind groups out there are usually just some expert authors ascension ladder, right? You know, you've probably seen this, you, you read a book and the next thing is you take a course and the next thing you go to a live event, and then you buy into some coaching, and then that expert author is selling a mastermind, right?

So you're trying to get around them and those who want to be around them. So that format doesn't always work for everyone. And if you've been in one of those masterminds, that might be why you've got that feeling about maybe masterminds aren't for you, right? So one of the things I think is really important is to make sure that the group is curated correctly, right?

That you've got the right like-minded folks on that same journey of entrepreneurship you're at, but they're getting to that destination in a different way. That's really, really important to look for in a mastermind. And the screening process, whatever you go through as a prospective member is also important. If the screening process says you fog a mirror and you've got a credit card, that might not be the right group for you.

I think that is very sage advice. I'm sure we'll unpack more of this as we jump into it.

I want to dive into what are the things that you have seen tactics and strategy wise? Because I think most people, you're really big on entrepreneurship. Freedom. I think that's what all entrepreneurs get into the game for. They're like, I want no more nine to five. I want to work when I want to work. I want to work with who I want to work with, and I want to make millions of dollars. And they see this vision. And then three years in, they're like, I'm making less money than I made in

my corporate job. I'm working 90 hours, and I'm not happy. I'm miserable. Everybody from Tim Ferriss to Tony Robbins to who everybody that I know has told that story, what have you seen that unlocks entrepreneurial freedom and gets people out of being the solopreneur into building a thriving business that is that vision? So if you look at the difference between like that solopreneur, that self-employed person, and what we call a true business owner, there's a huge chasm between those.

But there's a really simple litmus test I like to use to determine sort of where you are in that spectrum, right? So if you imagine for a moment in your business that you've got today, What would happen if you stepped away for a day? Or a week, or a month, or even a quarter from your business, and then came back. And when I say step away, I mean like off Slack, off text messages, emails, like not in touch with customers, team, and so on, like truly like desert island offline, right?

For most folks, especially earlier on in their business, if they're away from the business for a day, you know, they're coming back to a dumpster fire, right? A week, a month, like that is near impossible for so many business owners. And like that's okay if that's where you're at but to see if you've got a real business. You need to have the right systems and people in place because that's what provides that freedom.

For you to be able to step away and no one's saying you have to right you know it's something for myself i've done a number of times as our family has grown or we've traveled being able to step away from the business for a few months and know coming back online you know after we you know after we had each of our kids are coming back from travels that the business is the same or better is huge. Most folks, you step away for a week and you're coming back to a dumpster fire

or you're out of business. And that's not a sustainable, scalable business.

Okay. So let's dive into the first thing I think that people have a problem with around that. I want to come back to the masterminds. Don't worry, we're getting the masterminds, but starting with, okay, I'm building this business. I do the marketing. I'm the content person. I'm putting all the content out into the world. I'm also the person doing sales and I'm also the person helping the people do the thing. I can't step away. Like if I step away, I hear what you're saying.

Yeah, that would be great. But then who's going to do the things? Yeah, it's so funny. You know, we often talk about the difference between working in your business versus working on your business, right? Most everything you just described there is all working in your business. It's the stuff you've got to do just to keep the business, right? The work we do on our business is that bigger picture work. It's the visionary work.

It's the strategic planning, right? It's the creation of systems and key hiring and doing all the things that allow you to grow. So for folks who are like, I'm so busy working in the business, I don't have time to work on the business. My question is, how is continuing that going to fix that? We have to make the time on our calendar to do the work on the business.

And even if that means to get started, you carve out one hour a week to do the work on the business, not looking at emails or working with your team, but to do the bigger picture stuff, right? And then grow that, get to the point where you're doing an hour a day on the business, one day a month on the business, and so on. And next thing you know, you're doing more of that work on the business. For any of our listeners who've done a time audit, you know how valuable that

is. For those of you who haven't, it's as simple as this. You can set a timer. Every 10 minutes, it goes off and you write down what it is you're doing at that moment. Maybe it's emails. Maybe it's social media. Maybe it's, you know, planning and meetings, whatever it is. And as you look back at this, it becomes pretty evident really quickly where you spend your time.

And you might find yourself surprised that you're probably spending a fair amount of your time doing like, you know, $1 an hour tasks or $10 an hour tasks when you can hire for those. And then you can hire folks to be doing your $100 an hour tasks and so on. Until we move you up that ladder so that the time you're spending in your business is more valuable to you and the business than you doing that entry-level stuff. Okay. So you just laid out a couple of things.

The first thing I want to just speak directly to the person that is like, I hear what you're saying and I don't have enough money to hire somebody because I'm still stuck at 80 grand a year or a hundred grand a year. And if I'm not the person doing the content and then doing the sales, and then that person expects me to do the delivery, I can't hire anybody. Yeah. So how do you get out of that? Maybe a story can help.

So we had a gentleman in our group who had a business and he was a solopreneur. He was building it. He was doing the sales, the product development, the customer service, all of it. And he was at this, you know, this stuck point. I, you know, people come to me when they get stuck and they're like, how do I get unstuck in my business? I hit a plateau. Right. And, you know, for him, it was, you know, heading towards burnout. Right. This is a guy who loved to go mountain biking, love the outdoors.

Right. That recharged him, you know, recharged his soul. It was good for his body, his mental health, everything. It was a passion and a hobby, but he needed to be there on the front lines in cases, his customers and clients needed him. Well, this meant that he was not getting to the mountains where there wasn't a cell phone coverage, right? So he was sort of stuck in this business doing all the things of the business, including that frontline customer service.

So, you know, working together, we got him to the point where he was able to hire a frontline customer service rep to field phone calls and emails. This was outsourced part-time overseas, right? That freed him up to do a few really important things. One, he could focus on new customer sales to grow the business, right? Product development, marketing, all these things that can help the business to grow, while the maintaining current customer base he had a team member helping out with.

This also meant he could take some time back and get back to the mountains, which was good for him and helped prevent that burnout and brought more energy back into the business to work on the sales, development, and so on. So there's something you're doing in your business, whether it's the bookkeeping that you can have a bookkeeper help out with, right?

Whether it's your social media, whether it's some of your content, whether it's any of these things, your podcast editing and production, there is something in your business that would be better to pay some of those to do, even though it looks like an expense. Because what you really get from that is not just ideally a higher quality output, but you get your time back that you can reinvest at least earlier on in the business doing higher value work.

Awesome. I love that answer. And I think that it is correct. It is really just as simple as carving out one or two hours to start with.

And actually, I think the thing that most people have a problem with here is what do I do for those one or two hours? When you say work on the business versus working in the business, what do you think the first thing that somebody should do during that hour or two is? because the first thing is actually time blocking it. The second is sticking to it. And the third is knowing what to do and not just watching YouTube videos or reading a book or taking a nap.

You know, and it's funny because, you know, watching the right YouTube video, right, reading the right book and taking a restorative nap actually are valuable things that can, you know, that can help us out. So, you know, be mindful of how we do that. Obviously, you can't do those things all day, but the growth many of us find from a book or the right course or video, you know, or even just stepping away and getting some rest is actually really valuable.

So how do you spend that time if it's your first hour you've gotten back? Well, there's something fun, you know, I still enjoy doing from time to time that I did a lot more of earlier on too. And that is I take my laptop without the charger, charging cable, right? With a little sticky note with like one to three things that I want to get done. And I'd head off to a cafe, knock it on the wifi if I could help it and get done the thing I need to get done.

Or if I got on the wifi, turn your notifications off, right? And have that focused time so that you don't leave till those are done. And the reality is we have other obligations in life. And worst case, your laptop battery dies, right? But you've got to get certain things done before you leave that time block. Now, there's a few key things there that might not be obvious to our listeners.

One is defining success and what needs to get done. So it's not this idea of, let me just go get some work done. It's no, there are these actionable, well-defined tasks that I know I need to get done, right? And that can get done in that time that you're offline. Two is, you notice I shared, I changed my location there. It wasn't in the same office and the same place and the same things around me, right?

It's out of the home office. It's away from the team. It's wherever, it's somewhere different, right? So like those few little pieces can help you to get a focused chunk of work done that ideally the work on your business. Now, if you haven't done work on your business in terms of your mission, vision, purpose, those sorts of things, if you haven't fully roughed out what your product is or what your marketing campaign is, those are all good things to work on.

You're looking at what do I do that sets the direction for my company and helps me to move the company in that direction. It's not the tactical day-to-day stuff of the business, right? You have plenty of time to do that. Got it. Okay. So you touched on a couple of things and where my mind is going, you talked about time blocking, you talked about getting out. I love all of that.

One of the challenges I had when I started my business 12 years ago was I had a to-do list that had a hundred plus things on it. I would sit down to try to do one or two and I would get wrapped up in what I heard referred to as the whirlwind, right? You have like notifications coming in, you have emails, you have something that is urgent, urgent, urgent flashing at you.

How do you prioritize what gets done? So this is a topic that comes up so often at our mastermind groups, because look, as entrepreneurs, we have an ever growing list of, you know, can do's ahead of us. It's actually really easy to lose sight of how much you actually do get done. Because we see what is still in front of us. Right. So one nice thing is to acknowledge what you actually are accomplishing because we forget that really quickly, right?

So that's a good practice. And that's something we do in the mastermind, right? But in terms of prioritizing, that topic comes up a lot because we hear an idea, we get inspired, we write it in our notes. The next thing that the to-do list becomes gigantic. So one of the frameworks, we've got a bunch of strategies we use, but one of them, if you're not familiar with the Eisenhower matrix, that is a great tool that you can use.

Essentially, you break down an item and put it in one of four quadrants, right? You draw your little X and Y axes. And you have a task that needs to get done, can be important or not important, and it can be urgent or not urgent. And it's going to fall into one of those four categories. Now, depending on where it lands determines what you do with it. The urgent and important things, those are the fires of the day.

Ideally, you're growing your business so that you are doing less and less firefighting, but especially early on, you've got fires that come up. Those are urgent and important. You got to just get them done. Okay. That's fine. Our goal is to minimize those over time. You also have tasks that they are important, but they're not urgent. These are the things that you probably keep kicking down the road. These are your shoulds. Oh, I really should do this. Oh, I got to do that. Right.

Those are really where the biggest opportunities are to grow your business. And so you want to time block those. Those are the things you put in your calendar. You say, all right, tomorrow from, you know, 1030 to 12, I'm getting this not urgent, but important task done. Okay. The things that are important, that are not urgent, but are important. Those are the things you can delegate, right? So this is what you hire for.

This is what you outsource for. This is what you have someone else take care of, right? So filing your taxes, right? That is important. You've got to do that. That's important in the business. Maybe you shouldn't be the one doing that, right? So you have someone else take care of that for you. Same like the bookkeeping or frontline customer service, right? So that's fine. Now, what about that last category, the not urgent and not important?

It'd be surprising how many of your items might just fit in that category. And here is where we get to do some cleanup. You can just go ahead and take those items off your list. They're not going to move the business forward. They're not going to change anything. They don't have to get done today. They can get done a different time. Free up that mental clutter and that to-do list and just get rid of those entirely. I like that answer. The way that it was shared with me to take those things,

because we all have things that we want to do in the business. It sounds good to do. X, Y, Z, but that's usually what's cluttering up your list. What I was told to do is either put them on a post-it note and have them live on a wall somewhere or put them on. I use Apple notes. So I'll put stuff in an Apple notes folder that is like, Hey, look at this. And I'll look at it once a month and I'll go through and I'll be like, you know what? I really did want to do X, Y, Z.

Let's put that on the list. Let's time block that somewhere. That way you don't feel like you're forgetting about things. I know I love going to events. I love consuming content. I love reading. I have a mess of ideas. And all of those ideas, I tend to, they used to take up a lot of space. And I wasn't very good at prioritizing until I learned what you just shared, which is a great framework. It's very easy. In the beginning, a lot of things for me all fell in the urgent and important.

How can I determine what maybe is urgent or not urgent? And you just put your hands together. You're excited about this. It's such a good question. This is a recent insight I had, right? So there's actually this interesting fuzzy line, that determines sort of, you know, what that importance is, right? And how you can figure out which quadru something goes into comes down to how clear your goals and your vision and your mission, vision, purpose, and all that are, right?

When you know what those are, you can figure out like what is in support and alignment with that versus what's not. Otherwise, you can get pulled in all these different directions, right? Much like you, you know, and our listeners, I'm a lifelong learner. I love reading and taking courses and going to events and meeting people and being behind the closed doors of a mastermind group. What you hear are people sharing what's going on in their business, what's working, what's not, and so on.

And that's where we get a lot of really good ideas. I've launched multiple multi-million dollar businesses just from ideas that came up behind the closed doors of a mastermind, just from a back of the envelope idea that got scribbled out and then discussed. Those can turn into things. So you've got to figure out like, you know, is there urgency or importance to it? And sometimes the ooshininess that we experience so often as entrepreneurs is a double-edged sword, right?

I think to the outside world, they feel our ooshiny attitude is a big negative because it seems like we're distractible as entrepreneurs, right? Well, yeah, the danger is if we're distracted from what we're trying to get done, then we're not going to accomplish the goals we set out to accomplish, right? The flip side to that, however, is the reason we are all successful entrepreneurs, is because of three things that wouldn't happen if we didn't have that Ushini syndrome. One, we saw a problem.

We saw a gap in the marketplace. We saw something that wasn't being done how we want it done in the world. And we recognize it as an issue, right? So we saw that gap. Other folks just accepted how it is. But we, dear listeners, right? We are like, no, it could be better, right? Two, we see a solution to that problem. We realize what can be done to do something about it. Where the rest of the world might just pass on by or complain about it or talk

about the idea and say, I wish someone would do that. we entrepreneurs do that third thing. And that is that we action it, we get it done, right? We actually launch that product. We'd launch that business. Most of the world doesn't see the problem. If they see the problem, they don't know the solution. If they know the solution, they don't do anything about it. And we're different because we have that ooh shininess, you know, mentality to us.

And so that could be an okay thing. We just need to, again, make sure we stay the path and that the idea supports what it is we're actually trying to accomplish. We'll get back to the show in just a second. Now, we know that you become the sum of the people that you surround yourself with. Are you looking for a great group of people that will take you and your business to the next level? Make sure to check out the show notes for access to our exclusive 12-person mastermind and workshops.

All right, let's go ahead and jump back into the show. Well, we get excited about something. I think entrepreneurs, this is something thing that I love talking about. I think we get excited, whereas most people see a problem and they complain about it and they point to somebody else. Oh, it's their responsibility. It's their fault. And entrepreneurs are like, Ooh, I like fixing things. Let me figure this out. And then we get excited.

Our brains turn around on it. So we read a book and we come away from the book with 18 different ideas that we're all excited about. Right. Yep. And I think the, the matrix that we're talking about bringing back to the matrix is we end up with okay everything is urgent and important because i'm excited about it and where i have found the biggest thing is.

It sucks to say, but what am I least excited about is usually the thing that needs to be in the urgent important category because I've done all the other things or it's, well, it's eat the frog, right? What's the hardest thing that you have to do? That's probably the thing that's going to move you forward the most. But to your point, you can hire for the things in your business that are repetitive and that you don't want to do.

There's a difference between not wanting to do it because it's going to take a lot of effort and not going to do something because it's outside of your core competencies. And I think as entrepreneurs, like, you know, I like to say we do the hard thing, right? You know, I love cycling. And, you know, oftentimes in road biking, you're climbing steep, hard things. And sometimes you're on like a one or two hour onslaught of a climb.

Right. And I'm not going out there doing that because it's the easy thing. right? We go out and do hard things because we're better for doing hard things. And as entrepreneurs, we started a business. How many folks can get out there and do that? That's hard stuff.

So we don't avoid what's difficult. I think we do take that head on, but it is good to recognize the difference between doing something hard for the sake of saying we did something hard and doing something hard because there's a benefit to us doing that difficult thing. Yeah, that's a very, very good point. If you guys are enjoying this conversation. Jeremy has a wealth of information on his website.

We're listing it down below. If you're interested in the mastermind, we also are linking some information on that down below. It'll all be in the show notes. I want to kind of pivot the conversation. Now we've talked around like some of the things that you've seen. How does your mastermind help people? Cause I think some people think about like, well, I just need to go read another book or I just need to go to another event or just need to consume more content.

And in my, I'm a big fan of masterminds. I started joining masterminds when I started my business in 2013. And I can look back and tell you, I've been part of six different masterminds at this point. And each one had a season that helped me.

I guess, summit a skill set or a pivot in my business to get where I was going. Let's talk a little bit about how the mastermind helps, whereas reading a book, coaching, all these other things might not help. Yeah, it's a really interesting distinction, right? Because when we have a problem or when we feel stuck or we have a question, we can go in and seek out answers, right? And the sources can provide different kinds of help to you.

So when people find me, again, they're typically feeling stuck or plateaued in their business and they want to get unstuck, right? They got some big block, some big challenge, like many of us do, right? And so, you know, when they join us and test drive our mastermind group, they bring two things into the room. We all do, right? One is the things they know they know. This is their superpower, the thing they're really good at, right? Maybe they're super good at pay-per-click advertising, right?

Maybe they're phenomenal at hiring, right? There's some skill set you've got in your business that's gotten you where you are that you're really good at. You find it easy and others find it really challenging. That's the stuff you know you know. People found me and end up test driving the mastermind group because there's something they know they don't know.

They've got that big burning question, that thing that's keeping you up at night, that thing that you felt, if only I got an answer to this, my world would be different. But see, when you have a question like that, you can seek out and find books. You can take courses. You can talk to a coach. You can ask a mentor, right? You can join a mastermind group. You can seek answers to your question.

But the real value that I see come up again and again in the room is not actually during an individual person's hot seat where they dive into their business and what's going on in their question. All the notes getting scribbled down, all those big aha moments actually happen during everyone else's hot seat. And what's interesting is what's happening during everyone else's hot seat is you're getting that exposure to actually this really huge third area of knowledge.

And that's the stuff you didn't know you didn't know. Right. So when people are sharing what's really going on in their business, what's really working, what's really not, the challenges they're facing, that's opening your eyes to opportunities, ahead of you that you didn't know were coming, as well as prospective pitfalls and challenges that you might not see that are right around the corner.

Right. And so you get the insights on how to handle those. And you get to have this interactive conversation you don't get in a book or a course. It's a two-way conversation. People aren't just presenting, right? It's a two-way conversation. So when someone's sharing a strategy for the sales channel that's really doing fantastic for them, you get to pause them and ask like, well, which vendor did you use?

Well, how did you choose this one? Why did you go that way? And why this tool? And why that? And you end up with those best of the best tried and true tools, experts, resources, contacts that you would never have found on your own, because that's the kind of conversation happening behind closed doors in a mastermind where people really share what's actually going on in the business.

Well, that's, I think, I mean, my, my experience as well, joining the right mastermind versus the wrong, which is the next question we're going to get into joining the right mastermind. It's usually a small group of people that are very similar in where they're at. And to your point, each one kind of has something that they're doing really well, and they have a piece that's not, not doing so well. And it's a puzzle that comes together and it gets solved as a group. And it's, It sounds silly.

Like, could you just meet this person somewhere? Sure. But seeing them week after week, month after month, the first, we, we actually joke, my friend of mine named Mark, and I have an ongoing joke. The first meeting in a mastermind is like, you're shaking hands. The second meeting is a hug. And the third meeting is you guys are family. Like you're staying at each other's houses. You're going on vacations together.

And when you meet people like that, that are solving the problems that you need help with, and you have the solution to their problem, we all want to help each other. If you're in a mastermind, if you're in an entrepreneurship mode, like you're going to help each other. So my question now is you said that you saw, you joined a lot of masterminds. You saw ones that were good and ones that were bad.

What did you see that didn't work? And what did you see that did that you set up in your mastermind to make it work? Yeah, I think the key thing here is like looking for that fit, right? So like there are groups that are successful and work for other folks, but that, you know, I found, you know, challenge with. So there's sort of three styles of masterminds, broad categories we can look at, right? One are what I call like your high-end destination groups.

I mean, I've been in these. You're writing a five to six figure check once a year just to stay within one of these groups, right? And you're hopping on a plane, flying somewhere exotic for a few days. So, you know, all in, you're out of office, away from the family for like a week, right? You're spending a few days with good size group, maybe 20-ish people, and really getting to dive deep on stuff.

There's a lot of value in those, right? But that's a lot of time and financial investment to hang out with folks that you only see a few times a year. If you miss one of those meetings, because life, right, you're talking about six to nine months between meetings. In that time, you could have sold your business, launched the new business, drastically pivoted, completely moved to a different area in your entrepreneurial journey, right? So that's kind of like too infrequent meeting format as well,

right? The other end of the spectrum of what I call like your coffee shop, you know, or Zoom accountability groups. These you're hopping on, you know, a call or meeting at the coffee shop, often like once a week, sometimes for 30, maybe up to 90 minutes. Yeah. And that's great, but like over the course of a week, not a ton, like not enough has changed in the business to really be having a fresh conversation about that next step, right? You're still sort of in the middle of it, right?

Two, you know, it's usually low to no cost, right? So the turnover and show rate is not that great, right? And three, in that little time, you don't really get a chance to dive deep into what's going on in each person's business. You're talking superficial, right? Maybe just bare bones accountability. You don't actually get to get into the issues, right? So those are some of the downsides, you know, to that style of group. The sweet spot that I found is what we use at the Bay Area Mastermind.

And this is where we meet once a month for a full day meeting to work on the business. This gives every person there a chance to get a dedicated hot seat where we do get to deep dive into your business and what's going on and where you need help, right? We get to dive in deep enough that everyone can have conversations about what's going on, where we're sharing what's working, what's not working, and where we need help.

And then we get that peer accountability that us entrepreneurs don't generally have outside of a mastermind setting, of others who are going to hold you accountable to the things you said you want to get done that are going to help to move your business forward over the course of the next month. And then you get to implement and action those items over the course of the next month.

Nice. I like it. So a couple of things that you touched on. The first thing is it's got to have enough of a price point that people take it seriously and show up, but it doesn't need to be exorbitant. I don't think, I mean, I've seen, I'm honestly, I was part of a mastermind that was a hundred K and that was too, I, it was sold to me. I don't regret doing it, but I don't think that I would ever spend that much on a mastermind again. I don't think the value of it. similar experience, right?

What, what was sold to me, like on the bill of sale, as it were of, as I handed over the largest check I'd ever handed over, you know, to join a group, I never got what was actually promised to me when I joined that group. It's, I think it is really hard to get that deliverable. The, I mean, the, because they, they have to promise the moon and it just, it doesn't, I don't really think that that exists.

I also think to your point, I was part of one that was a hundred bucks a month and that's like, I feel like I've got other things that I want to do today, like go read a book or take a nap. Yeah. And there's a lot of churn. What's interesting, though, is in that destination high-end group style that you and I were talking about, I didn't get what I was sold, as it were. What I got was way more valuable.

That's a group that spun out from just an idea, was able to MVP something and launch a multimillion-dollar business just for my conversations and ideas that came up in that room, right? I got connections and clients that were outstanding. Like when my phone rings, I see those faces. Those are people whose calls I take and I don't really answer my phone, right? So, you know, and those relationships have led to significantly more than I could ever have ever imagined.

And none of that is what I was looking for when I joined the group. So that's one of those things where like, you know, I knew what I knew and I knew what I didn't know, But what I got was so much value from that third category of what I didn't know, I didn't know. And I wouldn't have known if I hadn't, you know, taken that leap of faith and jumped in. So there can be value there, but, you know, it might not be what you think it is. Got it. So is your mastermind in person or is it virtual?

Yeah. So we historically were always in person. And with the pandemic, we like switched to Zoom overnight. Right. And suddenly, like, you know, we found that that, you know, there is there is pluses to that, surprisingly. And so when we came back from that, we went back to in person, but we had some members who stayed, you know, virtual and joined us, you know, in a hybrid setting. We also had folks who were finding us around the country and around the world to join us virtually.

And so our modern day version of this now is we have, you know, virtual format is available. We also have hybrid. We have some folks who live far away that like join us by Zoom, but then we'll fly in occasionally for meetings, too. It's really, you know, whatever model works, works, works best. I love the value of being in person in a room with folks, but I also have gotten and seen the value of being part of a group, even, you know, even on a screen.

So question with that, then the second question, the follow-up is what size is the right number? I've been in masterminds that were five people and I've been in masterminds all the way to 500. Yeah. What do you think is the right size? Oh my gosh. So, you know, it's funny. Sometimes I see the term, you know, mastermind used, and I'm using quotes there for our listeners to describe these like 500 person groups. I'm like, that is not a mastermind.

You know, even if you're putting people at round top tables where they're in a smaller group and you're having them snowball every once in a while, like that is not a mastermind. Right. Like this whole idea of a mastermind goes back to Napoleon Hill in the 30s when he published Think and Grow Rich.

The idea there, and this touches on your numbers question, was when you get two or more minds together in the same place, working together in harmony in pursuit of a goal and so on, you have the creation of this third mastermind. So on one end, the smallest size can be two people. You can have a successful mastermind with two, and there's value in that. Now, I like there to be more perspective, right? So I find that ideal sweet spot is at that five to 10.

Beyond 10 people in the room, you don't get enough time to get into each person's business over the course of the day. So I like to cap a group at 12 because that usually means we'll end up with 10 actually there because we've got travel conferences, life, and so on. Eight to 10 is a full meeting. Cool. I actually like that as well. I think 12, my favorite one that I was ever a part of, we were in small groups of 12 and And they, I think they called them cohorts.

And then once a month we would meet. So we met twice a month as the cohort. And then I think maybe it was every other month. This was a 2017. We met as a larger group, which was like a hundred people in the room. And it was more networking and getting to know people. And then they would shake up the cohorts every year and it kept things really fresh. I liked that one a lot. I thought that was a very good, well-run, well-run group. I do want to go back to price.

How much do you charge for your mastermind and what do you think was the sweet spot? If it's not a hundred and it's not a hundred grand, is it 20? Is it 10? Is it monthly? Is it yearly? What do you think is the right place there? So the short answer is it varies, but we do have some folks who go with an annual membership, right? You end up saving that way. A lot of folks just cashflow and do monthly. It really comes down to finance is what makes the most sense, right?

So it's interesting. There was somebody I was in a mastermind group with a long time ago who had like a financial services company. And he wanted to do an event for all of his clients. So he got the idea of like, oh, we'll go to do like a destination conference for a few days, bring in some good speakers. You know what? Maybe we'll do it on a cruise ship. And so he got the idea to

do this cruise for all of his clients. And he's trying to figure out like what the speaker lineup should be in all this. And, you know, he already worked with folks with, you know, a million dollar net worth and higher. And afterwards, the feedback from everyone was like, oh, that was so much fun. It was great to meet everyone and have a good time. Like the speakers and content they couldn't have cared less about. It was about who they got to be in the same room with. Right.

Yeah. But the feedback was a number of folks like, hey, this was great. But like, I don't know. There's a lot of these like sub five million dollar, you know, net worth folks that like, you know, I don't want to hang out with that riffraff. Like, you know, I want to hire an event that's people like me. Right. So the next year is like, all right, fine, I'll do the second tier, a different event just for the $5 million net worth and higher folks.

So that was good. And then what do you know? He got feedback from that of these folks saying, you know, like this was a really cool event, but this riffraff of these like $5 million net worth folks, like I want to be with people like me at the $20 million net worth and higher. Right. And like this happened at a few different tiers. And he realized this is like the golf club, you know, mentality.

Right. It's about membership being cost prohibitive enough that there's skin in the game, that people feel a need to, okay, I paid for this, I need to go to this thing, versus the free to $100 thing, you're like, I got anything else to do. And it helps right size to similar size businesses who see it as an investment and not an expense. And so, you know, that, you know, that's, you know, that mark has moved over the years.

And actually one thing that about a year and a half ago we did is we realized that we were getting folks who were much earlier stage in their business and they found the group, you know, prohibitive from a cost standpoint and a time standpoint. And they weren't going to be a fit for the group because they were so early stage. They had less to share about what was working in their business and they had more how do I quest.

And so we ended up actually spinning up a community for our founders, right? These are earlier stage businesses, pre-launch, early stage, right? They want to know how to do things. And so they have more of those questions. And so that group meets for a shorter period of time and a lower investment. And it gets folks sort of the more tactical guidance of getting that business off the ground versus the mastermind format of sharing, you know, the best practices.

I like it. I think that's very true. And it's people will self-select if you give them the opportunity. That is, that is one of the best, best ways I've seen, like, just to your point, I've seen masterminds at different tiers and it is always exactly what you said. The people that are the wrong fit will find their way out of it and the right fit stay there and they get a lot out of it. I mean, we had one business owner come to us, you know, he had 130 employees, right?

Multiple locations, had a whole C-suite, you know, working for him. And so the, the, the challenges we're talking about for the size businesses we typically work with, you know, he's sort of like, oh yeah, I got a guy who runs a department that does that. Like I don't, I don't, yeah.

Right. And like the challenges he was facing at the size business he had weren't applicable to most of the folks in the room in the same way that that early stage founders questions and experience wouldn't be applicable to the room. So this is why like when looking for a group, you want to make sure it's right sized for businesses, not exactly like yours.

Like I actually intentionally seek out diversity in our members in terms of business models, industries, and all that kind of stuff, but you want them to be on that same journey as you are. Yeah. That's being on the same journey, being in a similar place that you can support is really one of the biggest keys.

Yeah. Jeremy, I want to say thank you so much for coming on. If you guys have found this podcast episode helpful, click the links in the description. Jeremy, you've been a phenomenal guest. You have a wealth of knowledge to share with people. Thanks for sharing some time with us today. Thanks for inviting me on. This was a ton of fun. It is my pleasure. To everybody else out there, we will see you next time.

And remember to take action, change lives, make money, and live free. We'll see you soon. Thanks for tuning into today's show. If you're looking for support to grow your business, we have the best small group mastermind on the market. Mastermind focuses specifically on one-to-many sales and visibility, how to build your own workshops, live events, and virtual events, as well as how to market to the affluent.

How do you bypass all the people who say we don't have enough money for that and really market to the top 10% who has money and is ready to spend it? Last but not least, how do you do all of this without Facebook ads? That is the focus of our small group mastermind. It's led by me along with 12 other people. We're there to give you support, surround you, and take your business to the next level. You can click in the show notes down below for more information.

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