The Power of Masterminds To Rapidly Speed Up Growth

It's said often that entrepreneurship is a very lonely road. How do we fix that, and how do you become active instead of reactive inside of your business? Welcome back to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. In this episode, we get to listen to Lee Miltier once again. Now, Lee Miltier's gonna be talking specifically about how do you spend and recharge your emotional, mental, and physical energy? What are the things you are doing actively in order to pour into yourself so that way you have the most opportunity to be able to give to others and expand your business. Your business relies 100% on the energy that you are able to pour into it, into the people on your team, and all of the different projects that are calling for your attention. So what are you doing? There is one answer, and that is the power of masterminds to rapidly speed up growth. Let's listen in. I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy. The legend of Dan Kennedy should be ignored at your own peril. They're not really lessons, they're kind of laws that you live by. Dan opened my eyes to what small business marketing looks like. Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless.

His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy.

All right, I'm gonna talk about the power of association to facilitate speed. That's a very important thing. By the way, you like my superhero character there? Isn't that cool? She looks like she could scare somebody. I want you all to start to pay attention and use conscious and unconscious triggers to influence. You see, we all connect and associate things on a positive and a negative way. You know, Curt just talked about the power of influence, but each and every one of us all the time are influencing people with everything we do, with our appearance, with our cards, with our advertising, with every single thing you do. And if you know it or not, in 33 seconds when you meet someone, you literally make an impression in their brain that they decide, "I want to do business with you," or, "I don't want to do business with you." And the whole power of association consciously and unconsciously is such an important issue. For example, when all of you got this comic book brochure, whether you know it or not, that affected your childhood memories. How many of you had superheroes as kids? Raise your hand. Did you associate superheroes with something positive in your mind? Not that the Glaser Kennedy doesn't have a lot of wonderful information, but that was incredible brain thought to literally associate superhero with super conference. Because on a level that you're not even aware of, you connected a positive feeling. And what we want to do on a regular basis is figure out how we can utilize our business to create unconscious positive feelings with people. So this was a lot of fun to be a super conference with superheroes. Dan says you're the sum total of the 5 people you associate with because association in our life affects us unconsciously. And what we want to make sure is that we're associating with people with great discernment because you want to make a— pay attention to who you associate with because they're affecting your brain. You want to pay attention to what information is going into your brain all the time. It's affecting how much money you earn. You also want to understand that the caliber of information— because I am a performance coach, I understand how the brain works— the caliber of information that goes in your brain every single day determines how many risks you will take, how excited you are about life, how you scan the landscape of your world and see opportunities. So you have to ask yourself daily, what are you allowing in your world? Do not allow the small-mindedness of the people around you often to keep you from going for what you want for. How many times have you told people in your life you had this great goal and they talked you out of it? Think about that. And how many times have you just, you know, felt bad that you didn't do something, but the people who are small-minded around you convince you you did the right thing by not taking those choices and not making those risks? We have to be very careful and have discernment about that. In this Super Conference, you can learn as much outside in the hallways as you can actually in this room. There is a wealth of information in this Super Conference. And, you know, I'm always amazed when I hear people talking about the weather or things that have nothing to do with business here because you have such a limited time to meet as many people as possible. So make a point that you seek out people so that you can learn from because, by the way, who you're seen with also brands you. Now, this is probably going to be hard to read, but I want to— if you go to milteer.com, M-I-L-T-E-E-R, and you go look at my bio, I want to teach you something very important. I have become famous by association, and you can do this too. For example, in my bio, in her career, she has shared the platform with many well-known famous personalities: the late Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Ug Mandino, Dan Kennedy, Bill Glazer, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Stephen Covey, Brian Tracy, Ted Koppel, Lynn Redgrave, Marlo Thomas, Ivana Trump, Chuck Norris, Harv Eker, Mike Dicker, Les Brown, George Fuhrman, Dr. Phil. Now, do you know that someone who reads that likes some of those people? My name is attached to famous people. That makes me famous. How can you, with association, connect your name to not only positive information but other things that are famous that allows people, they link up in their brain the association whether they're conscious of it or not, and you have to be aware of that. Like in my Millionaire Mindset Do It For You program, I interview famous people like Art Linkletter because then my clients who get my CDs each month, what they— they don't have time to go chase famous people, but because they give those CDs out to their members, what happens is they link themselves with famous people. Do you understand the association? Yes or no? It's very important that you work on this very hard to create a branding image for yourself. Here's my planet, Planet Dan. By the way, I put this picture on my website and we actually can prove that since this picture has been up that my book sales, my CD sales have become better because anybody in this world who is familiar with Bill and Dan, when they go to my website and see that picture, what do I have? Credibility. So you've got to, again, and by the way, there are a lot of people taking pictures You should get those pictures. You should put them on your website. Very important, very powerful. Now another way that we can really benefit from the whole power of association is being into a mastermind group because the mastermind group, the whole concept of the mastermind group is the whole thing that was in the book Think and Grow Rich. Has everybody read Think and Grow Rich? Everybody? Well, if you haven't read Think and Grow Rich, that should be a book that you have to read. Now in the book Think and Grow Rich, it's interesting because the whole theory is very important. Hard-headed pragmatists like Carnegie, Ford, Firestone, Edison all believe that a third mind is created by the association of two or more thinking in a harmonious direction as an entry door as the stored wisdom and the creativity of the entire universe. Now I know that sounds very metaphysical, but that's a very true thing because what we have to understand is that brains are like batteries. The more brains you have in a harmonious direction, the more power you're going to have to be creative. And the other thing is others are always going to see solutions that you won't see. And the reason being is they're not emotionally attached to your problem. They're not blocked. Remember, we're all born to different parents, different social, economic, educational backgrounds. Every single profession has a block that they can't see on opportunities that they could be utilizing every day through associations that could increase their income, increase their power, increase everything about their life. By the way, you're programmed by your thoughts and your associations, and we're all self-fulfilling prophecies. Whatever you think about yourself tends to come true. No matter what your abilities are in life, you can never rise rise above your own degree of confidence in life. And the great thing about associating with successful people is that they can give you new references about yourself. They can see talents and abilities in you that you can't see in yourself. One of the great things I have and had in my life for all these years is being great friends with Dan Kennedy. And Dan has been a fabulous friend to me and he always points out to me blind spots about myself that I wouldn't have never seen. And there's no one else in my life that would have done that. And so you've got to have associations who want you to become successful, who want to give you references. By the way, and I had talked about this a little bit yesterday, but where are you spending your resources? Are you spending them where? Mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and financially. And one of the, one of the places that you always need to be spending your resources is asking yourself How can I link myself to people who will really be there for me? How can I link my energy to those things that are going to move my career so much faster ahead? I think the hardest part of all success in life is finding people to associate with. One of the great things about being here with the Glaser Kennedy Group is, you know, the saying, "Us-ums." You're not gonna find people out in the world like the people in this room. You see, everyone in this room sincerely wants everyone to be successful. We're like a family of sorts because you're not gonna find, you know, how many of you came from the corporate world? The corporate world is kind of totally different from the entrepreneurial world, wouldn't you say? The corporate world is, how can I position myself to get ahead? I don't care about you. We here care about each other in the sense of we freely give information and it helps all of us because we sincerely— we've created a mastermind just by being here. We actually heighten our ability to see solutions just being in the presence of all these people. Now to facilitate speed, because that's one of the most important things that we've talked about the whole conference here is we have to think outside of the box. Now, information, ideas, and new examples always expose you to things hidden inside industries and professions that you wouldn't ordinarily think about or even worry about. Now, being in a group setting, well, the great thing about that is there are a lot of successful business owners and different types of businesses, and this is a very time-efficient way to become successful. Accessible. Now, new knowledge always brings you ahead a lot faster because it's the knowledge— see, as entrepreneurs, we're knowledge seekers. And by being knowledge seekers, we can see new ways to do things, invent things. And by the way, entrepreneurs, you don't have to invent things. All you have to do is see something and grab it and make it your own. One of the things I do teach in life is give yourself permission because most of us have not been brought up with that particular fact in life. No one has to give you permission to be a millionaire. No one has to give you permission to take and go to the next level of your life except for you. And the only thing ever holding anyone back in life is themselves. It's never the economy. It's never the market. It's never any of those things. It's really, it's the ability within yourself to say, I'm willing to do whatever it takes. I'm willing to see I see things that I've never seen before. And the whole thing about being a performance coach is when I deal with people one-on-one is I notice that they're always asking in some way for permission. Well, when can I do this? Well, do it now because, you know, we only have 1,440 minutes of every single day. There's no guarantee about, you know, what your life is gonna look like. All of us have experienced failure. You know, that's just part of it. And being an entrepreneur, we understand it's, you know, failure is just information. It gives you information on, you know, don't do that anymore, do something else, create a new strategy. But one of the things about speed and association is you can be in a group with people who can share their failures and share their successes and share what they've had, which will prevent you from having to experience that. One of the great things that I love about being in mastermind groups, and I've run a lot of mastermind groups, I'm always in mastermind groups personally, is the speed to market because simply leveraging other people's experiences always cuts years off your particular time. The other thing is one of the most important things I think about association is forced thinking. How many of you will admit that you will rarely take the time to sit down and just You know why? Because we are so busy all the time. If you are an actor to life versus a reactor to life, and a lot of entrepreneurs, their big problem in life is that literally they're reacting to every little thing. When you belong to an association mastermind group where you're forced to cut off the cell phone, get out of the— by the way, how many of you agree that email has now become a huge energy drain. Okay, well, do something about it, folks. I mean, literally, you know, every once in a while you got to just not touch the email, get off that cell phone, stop being accessible to everybody, be in a group where you force yourself to really pay attention to all the information going on around you, have an acute awareness of how powerful your energy is to create create what you want. We're manifestors in life, folks. We are the providers. We have big trains behind us, you know, families, staff, all kinds of things. We have to take the time to literally give ourselves permission to isolate ourselves away from the busy thinking and literally immerse ourselves in genius. Every person in this room has It's a matter of are you allowing that genius to come out or are you reacting to all the things around you? The other thing is thought in isolation versus thought in creative, idea-charged, dramatic environments by other thinkers is a huge difference. Because you know what happens in isolation a lot? You get depressed. You start thinking everybody else is doing more than you, making more money than you. You get frustrated, you get tired because entrepreneurs really rarely take a day off. We never stop thinking about our business. We don't really take a lot of time for resting. And so what happens is, is you get very frustrated. Your worldview starts to narrow down. So when you become isolated, you really cut down on the amount that you can create in life. So you got to be around other people. The other thing I like about being in mastermind groups is that we're really truly motivated to be our best, to acquire new knowledge. And it's not easy to search out and assemble new information when you're in isolation. And groups where others are contributing to new information, new resources, people tend to be motivated. Always when you come to these meetings, everybody wants to show new stuff. They want to come to the meetings and give new information because we're givers. We want other people to be successful. Now to get maximum information in minimum time and speed, for example, suppose you were in a group of just 12 people and if one person reads a new business book a month for a year, that's simply 12 books. You have 12 books of information. What if, if a group of 12 each read and report on a different book each month, now you have the benefit of 144 books. That is the power of being around other people—speed. For instance, I'm in a group. Not everybody likes to read the USA Today or Wall Street Journal, all these different types of newspapers. So we have a deal. Each person takes a different newspaper, then we clip out for each other those things that are viable for each business. Dan and I each week send each other mail. He sends me a big packet of information that's that's important for my business, I always send him a big packet of information. And Bill Glazer always jokes that Dan Kennedy is his clipping service. And one of the great things about the Peak Performers group that I'm in with Bill is that we have a commitment that when we know somebody's in a certain business that we're looking for information to give them. That's the kind of support that you need. Now, the ability to form actual working alliances, JVs, when you're in a group,. It's an important thing to understand that serious, serious money can be made by aligning yourself with other people, doing business with people in your group. And I have always found that in any group I've been with, my JVs, my alliances with other people have always paid 10 times over whatever I invested to be in a group. And by the way, there are two sides to every business equation, the product and the buyer. Every time you JV with somebody or associate with someone, you save time in advertising, finding customers, and both parties benefit. Motivating accountability. When you're in a mastermind group, high achievers and entrepreneurs, have you noticed, do not respond well to authority. How many of you agree with that? Is this why we're self-employed? We— by the way, how many of you are unemployable? Are we proud of this? Absolutely, yes. We're proud of this. We don't want jobs. Job is a bad word for us, yes? So, by the way, we don't like to be held accountable by staff, clients, spouses. As a matter of fact, when people try to hold us accountable, we become unmotivated. Have you noticed? Now, when you're in a mastermind alliance, it's very motivational because it It brings out the competitive nature of all of us. We are curious about other people's intentions. We're very curious about their systems, their resources, and we want to shine in this environment. And every single one of you, when you are surrounded by people who don't understand you, you actually demotivate yourself. Another thing about speed, Bill Glazer's term, swipe and deploy. One of the great things I love about being with people like you folks is that with permission you can grab and use everything from ads to contract language, web technology, resources from other people. It's always there for you. It's just you have to be aware of it. Entrepreneur isolation is unhealthy. Overwhelm— by the way, at lunchtime today I must have had 10 people who came up to to me and they basically said everything on this. They feel overwhelmed, overworked, stressed, diminished energy, negative emotion, it slows you down, it blocks your creativity. Curious, truth, how many of you feel overwhelmed a lot? Okay, this is a real problem with entrepreneurs because we're doing too many jobs. How many of you have assistants? Okay, everybody didn't raise your hand who had an assistant. You need to get an assistant because if you're doing busy work, you're not making money work. You always have to have someone to do the unnecessary things around you. I have 4 assistants. I love delegating. I love to walk in in the morning and say, "Do this, do this, do this, do this, do this," because I can manifest so much more. I am happy to pay them. I don't want to do all the busy work stuff because Because you need to be scanning the landscape of your life, looking at other people going, "What is she doing? How can I utilize that? What is he doing? What is his advertisement?" You need to be looking around your world to figure out how can I swipe that, make it my own, and become more successful. By the way, Dan talks about this a great deal and many of you are very guilty of it. It's called reinventing the wheel. Folks, the purpose of being an entrepreneur is never to invent anything. It is to recognize an opportunity, put your signature on it, grab it, market it, and go for it. You don't have to invent anything. All you have to do is make it your own person. You know, if you'll— if you go to lots and lots of seminars, you know, a lot of people teach the same thing, but The difference is that person's different take on it. You read books, people are saying the same things, but what makes it popular is the person's take on it. It's the personality, and that's what you want to put in your stuff, your personality. By the way, how many of you have friends and family and neighbors who have no clue what you do? Don't understand you. Look around, look around, keep your hands up, look around. You're not alone. By the way, my father passed away about 6 years ago, and he was a farmer. I grew up a mile and a half from the nearest secondary road in Chuckytuck, Virginia. And by the way, farmers are the original entrepreneurs. You have to create everything. And my father never understood— my family, by the way, my entire family never understood, you know, being a professional speaker, what that meant. And one day there was an article in the paper about me. My father called me up and he said, "Let me get this straight. They pay you to talk?" Now, all of you can relate to that, yes? Now, I've written 3 books. I have 27 CD audio programs. Do you think that my family has ever read any of my books? Do you think they've ever listened to any of my CDs or DVDs? No. Do you think they're ever going to do that? No. I had to get over that a long time ago. It used to hurt my feelings. It's like, "Well, they don't love me." It's just they don't understand. It's a different mindset. They come from a different world. We have our world. We appreciate each other. Yes? They can't get it. And you know what? I no longer feel hurt by that. And the most important thing—write this down—expectation is the source of all suffering, right? Expectation is the source of all suffering. When you expect your friends and your families to understand your creative nature, your ability to create money out of thin air, they're not. Not only are they not going to understand, they're going to be jealous. How many of your friends and family just think you're lucky? You were at the right place at the right time. How little do they know how many hours you work, how much you invest in yourself? And so you know what? You've got to really pay attention to who you associate with because if you associate with people who don't understand you, you're going to diminish yourself. You have got to expand into the world, associate with people who really appreciate you. So that means that most of you need new friends, yes? And family? Particularly new family. By the way, you must align yourself with like-minded people. You always have to do that. By the way, another great thing about being in a great mastermind group is the valid devil's advocacy because when you are with people who have sound marketing business knowledge and common philosophy, it gives you the opportunity to have brand new ideas, plans, assumptions, all of those things that you are doing challenged. You see, you gotta have people who go, "Why are you doing that? Why do you think that will work? I don't get it," or, "Why don't you do it this way?" You gotta have people who will challenge you. You've gotta have people who will question you, who actually take you seriously, who have no agendas of their own whatsoever, and they're not jealous of you, they're simply curious. Because when you have those people who will do that for you, they will create speed in your life from making any kind of mistakes and replicating mistakes that they have made. It encourages faster creation in your life, and I don't think you can read this, but Dan Kennedy always says, If everyone around you agrees with you, either you or they are unnecessary. I'm sure you've heard him say that. Resources. By the way, Dan and I talk about this all the time. He is the most brilliant person I've ever known. He's got like a mind like a computer. When he meets people, he has an ability to focus in on people who are resources. And that's how as entrepreneurs you've got to think. Everybody knows people. So if you think of it, there's almost 1,000 of us in this room. Can you say that just conservatively all of us have 10 great resources? So let's say you're in a mastermind group of 100 people. You now have 1,000 people at your disposal who can share with you anything from here's a great printer— by the way, Pete the printer is here— here is a great advertising person, here is a great copywriter. Because they've used them. You don't have to go into the world blind. To facilitate speed in your life, you've got to know who to go to. Connections become your connections and you can get what you want when you need faster with no hunting. You can save time, speed. You know, as Dan said yesterday, the 6-degree of separation, only he always calls it the 9-degree of separation. By the way, how to get the most out of associations. You've got to bring something to the table. You cannot just take because see entrepreneurs, we pay attention. I am a big believer in what you sow you shall reap. I wrote a book called Spiritual Power Tools for Successful Selling. I'm very aware of the fact that what we give in life we invite back. And so you always want to be giving to people from your heart and how you can help people. You've got to value gems when you hear things. Don't be obsessed with that everything has to affect you right now. Think 5 years in advance. Think, "Well, maybe I'm not in the information business right now, but how could I use that information with other things?" Or maybe I want to be an author, or maybe I want to be a professional speaker, or maybe I want to do something and I'm not doing it now. So always pay attention. Make yourself the student. The central connector, putting others together because it creates future obligations. Think about it. All of us keep in our head a set of books. Whenever someone does something good for you, you're aware of it. You have to find a way to discharge that obligation. And so when you're in a mastermind group or an association, affiliation with other people and everybody's helping you, it's this great synergy that happens with everybody. By the way, there's some barriers that hold you back from maximizing benefits of association. One of them is not participating because you think your business is different. Being there physically but not mentally, you know the old saying, "The lights are on, nobody's home." And we can all tell those people. Intellectually lazy and by the way physically lazy. Resistant, defensive, and argumentative, ego in the way. Not implementing something and quickly. By the way, when you get home from this super conference, you should have a set of notes of priority that you instantly start to implement because you know if you don't, what happens? Life gets in the way. There's the fire. There's, you know, alligators biting you in the butt for 18 different things. You've got to be very clear, very focused mentally, physically, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and financially. Where do you want to go? Who was the most important person you met at this convention, at this conference that you need to instantly, you know, write a letter to, get a fax to? And then I tell everybody, don't email me. If you want my attention, fax me. But, you know, find a way that you instantly do things. And the other thing is in groups, if you feel superior, you won't learn anything. We all, by the way, there's a kid within all of us and that child within you is this part of you that makes you successful because the child in you is the part of you that's that possibility thinker. Remember, how many of you have kids and you bought your kids big presents and they play with the boxes? Because they are the possibility thinkers and we're as entrepreneurs, you know, by the way, The more serious you become in life, the more old you think. The more old you think, the more limited abilities you have to scan the landscape of your life, look at other people, and see opportunities. So always, always let the child come out. That's the fun part about life. Kennedy says there are 4 types of inputs: data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. So here's the question. Where are you currently gathering your 4 types of input? By the way, what systems do you have in place to support you, to take the stress off of you, to ensure new business, to ensure new customers walking in your door whether that's physical or not? All of us, you have to, by the way, you can't just focus in or work all the time, you've got to figure out where is your support system. If you go out there all by yourself, you're only a limb by yourself. You cannot always be by yourself. Isolation is death to the entrepreneur. So the biggest secret of success is always belonging to a mastermind group because it creates speed, it helps you overcome challenges, it helps you create systems on being successful, and it gives you mentors who understand your world. We have within us an ability to do things that is mind-boggling if you allow yourself that opportunity to step up to the plate, get yourself in an environment that will be totally supportive of you and appreciate who you are. Your point of power in this lifetime is this very second. To change your life, all you have to do is change your mind and go for it. Thank you, folks.

Thank you for listening to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with Dan Kennedy. If you love hearing in on these lost Dan Kennedy talks and speeches and calls, then please let someone else know about this podcast. That's how you can help it to grow, and the more it grows, the more free Dan Kennedy we can bring to you. Also, Dan would love to give you the most incredible free gift ever, designed to help you make maximum money in minimum time. Now this free gift comes with almost $20,000 in pure money-making information for free just for saying maybe. You can get this gift from Dan right now at NoBSLetter.com. Not only do you get the $20,000 gift, you also get a subscription to 2 marketing newsletters that will be hand-delivered by the mailman to your mailbox each and every month, one from Dan Kennedy and one from me, Russell Brunson. To get this gift and your subscription, go to NoBSLetter.com right now.