Should You Start a Mastermind Group? (Neil Patel and Eric Siu)

Gentlemen, Edward Sanchez, Brass Ring Multimedia. I've thanked both of you individually for putting this thing together and, and for Marketing School. It's probably one of my favorite parts of my day.

Well, thank you very much. And for all of you guys, Eric and I both appreciate you guys taking time out of your Saturday, your busy weekends, to come here. We know many of you guys have spouses, family members, children, Right? So thank you guys for taking the time to come on a Saturday. We really do appreciate it.

Absolutely. And I kind of wanted to piggyback on Mersha's question about— I've gotten very fortunate in mentorship. Social is amazing for connecting with people like yourselves. One area that is kind of a struggle for me in moving from freelancehood, if you will, towards more of an agency or team model is putting together a mastermind. Have you any tips or suggestions that have served you guys on putting that sort of thing together?

Eric is probably better suited for this, but quick question before I even go there. Why do you want to create a mastermind?

Well, The idea, for one thing, well, one of the catalysts right now is my daughter just moved out. So I am really, whereas I've been a freelancer working on my own for 20 years, with a child, now it's really me alone. And I find the idea of getting together, not necessarily within related fields, But with other people of like mind and being able to influence and motivate each other is something that I seek. And I've been parts of it. I've tasted it over the years, but in the marketing realm, not so much. So, what served you guys?

Eric has a mastermind. You want to go for it?

Yeah. So, I can take this one. And I could even go before that too. I'll talk about the one right now. So Syed's in it, Yaniv's in it, Walter was here earlier. Neil now all of a sudden wants to join because we talk about good deals in there.

No, no, he saved— Syed saved me $100 grand on my AWS bill.

That was from our mastermind, by the way.

He's like, if you give $80 to this site, you'll save $100 grand on your bill.

I'm like, sounds good. Anyway, so we meet like every 6 months out of the year and we go somewhere that we normally wouldn't go to, right? And nobody makes a profit on it, it's just to have good people So before that, what I was doing was I would have these monthly dinners at my place when I lived around LAX. And people would show up. And one of the mistakes I made when putting together these groups was I didn't make sure that everyone was at the same level. So if you have someone that's coming out of school versus like a CMO-level person, that's gonna piss a CMO-level person off. Like, people need to be at the same level. And then I would have an agenda. So what I would do is I would Google, Jason Gagnard, just Mastermind Talks PDF. Just Google that, Mastermind Talks PDF, and you'll have a template, an agenda that you can follow. And we would follow that agenda. Every month, one person might be in the hot seat. People would be sharing their business wins, things like that. I also learned a lot from Entrepreneurs Organization. And actually, Eric here in front was in EO as well. That's not bothering you guys, right?

That's okay. No.

Cool. So yeah, EO's been huge. That's been my other kind of mastermind because we talk about the 5% of personal things and business things. Someone's wife might be cheating on them or someone's cheating on somebody else, stuff like that, really deep. People are crying. And I think that's the level of, or I guess, closeness that you want. You want that bond with people.

I'm gone. Okay. With more of a business.

Yeah.

Oh, the business.

Yeah, that happens too. So the business stuff, that is There are business requirements to join.

Yeah, and that is the majority.

I guess I'm seeking with other business owners and entrepreneurs more than just—

Eel is probably the easiest thing to join. I look at masterminds as 2 ways. One, you can join existing ones to get feedback, education, training, knowledge. Or you can throw your own. And I opted to not join Eric's. And, you know, he has an amazing group. I know a lot of the people in there. And there's nothing wrong with that mastermind. And what they're doing is, I think, amazing. I have this different thesis in my life in which instead of meeting up to discuss certain things, I live my life and I try to surround myself with those kinds of people every single day. Now that's hard to do. I don't think that's easy. It's taken me a long time. I did this much more when I was in Seattle and I would hang out with these people literally every single day, like meetings, phone calls, whatever it may be. So instead of having to schedule masterminds or doing something formal or traveling somewhere, which is great as well, but for me it was more so, hey, Let me just— a lot of these people are entrepreneurs, we're like-minded. We just naturally became friends. It wasn't really awkward. Just over time, you hang around with people who are similar with you. And then you just pick each other's brain for advice here and there. And I found that that was the most easiest thing because then it doesn't get you out of your normal life flow, right? Like saying, hey, I want to spend once every 3 months or once every year, once every— twice every year, whatever it may be. I do believe that provides a lot of feedback and value. I just try to do that day in and day out. It is hard, at least since I've been living in LA. But when I was in Seattle, at least because my core friends group was very strong, most of them were successful entrepreneurs that already had exits. It was really easy and we just hang out. And funny enough, a lot of us, it was incestuous because we were in each other's deal. Like I invested in some of their deals, they invested in some of my deals. But try to hang out with people who are like-minded because even Eric or Yaniv or Syed, yeah, they may have this group and they hang out with each other a few times a year. But more importantly than that, if you look at all of them and a lot of the people who are successful, they continually hang around with others who bring them up. You know, my mom used to always tell me when I was a little kid, don't bring home any dumb kids. That was my mom's number one thing. Don't bring home any dumb kids. Like, that was her only requirement of a friend. Guy, girl, different races, she did not care. Just don't bring home any dumb kids. She assumed that if they were smart, they wouldn't get in any trouble. She was probably accurate because we were all wimps. But the same goes in business, and it's not all about financial. You know, but you take your 5 closest friends, you average out their income, they say that's going to be your income. Always try to be around other people who can make you better, and it doesn't have to be in the same industry. For example, a lot of my friends that I hang around with do a lot of nonprofit stuff. Forget how much money they make, they're trying to give back, make the world a better place. They're much better people than I am. And I look at this and I'm like, I learned so much from them. Like, I learned from one of them that that one of the number one causes for people not getting better with AIDS in Africa isn't medication. Medication is given for free, but it's the nutrients in your body. Like, so they do these programs called Growing Gardens. And they start doing cool things where they travel around the world. Yeah, they do business, but they'll help people out, like set up schools, you know, do wells, whatever it may be. But just hang around with like-minded people where you want to go. And you'll notice that they'll help bring you up and you'll get there.

I like what you added there because I have found that most people who have reached a level of expertise and mastery, if it were, get to that point where giving back is the absolute next step. And that's a, that's a nice inclusion. So thank you. Thank you.