Mentors and Masterminds Made Me Millions

If you need to be personally motivated, if you want to take your life and your business to the next level, I would highly recommend the goat himself, Mr. Tony Robbins. You can just read his books, spend time listening to him on the Internet. You can go to these events, I'm warning you, they're intense. Unleash the power within. There's a bunch of them, but you know, I highly, highly recommend, spend more time. You don't have to meet the guy, but listen to him. He will rewire your brain in all the right freaking ways. Accelerators, mentorships, and masterminds, these have all created some of the most memorable experiences I have throughout my entrepreneurial career and still do to this day. They've also helped me find some of my favorite friendships. So let's dive right in. When I first moved to Kelowna, after leaving Edmonton and leaving the advertising company I was working at, I started my business here. I was doing my own advertising agency and I noticed that there was a little tech startup. They did drinks on Fridays and they had little get togethers once a month. And it was called Accelerate Okanagan. And I went and joined that. It was free. And it led to so many cool relationships that I had today. I met the straw House Labs guys, Jason and Naveed, who at the time were the fastest growing Facebook marketers in Canada. I met Corey, who was building Banana Tag and had maybe a couple million dollars in revenue. And right around the time that we sold estated, Corey sold Banana Tag for multiple eight figures, did really well for himself. And some of my favorite memories were just within our community of startups that we had. And I met them all through Accelerate Okanagan. On top of that, they introduced us to several fairly successful men and women within the region that we could reach out to and talk to. And I have many fond conversations and lessons that I learned from that. Some of the mini lessons come from that within the other courses that we have in everyday entrepreneur. But it was really good. And I want to tell you one other thing that Accelerate Okanagan did for me. There were grants, Canadian grants that you can get for your business. And one of the cool ones that I ended up getting was entrepreneurs could apply to go to events anywhere in the world, entrepreneurship and business events to experience them on Canadians dime, on taxpayers money, the taxes that I pay for today. And so I took advantage of this and I went to two of them. And in particular my favorite one was web summit. Over 100,000 people gathered in Lisbon, Portugal. I spent two weeks down there and I Have never seen anything like it. It was seven straight days of content. Hundreds of thousands of people throughout the week are there. And the keynotes were like, Gary Vaynerchuk. I think Christian Ronaldo was on one of them. There were a bunch of football players. It was really freaking cool and completely paid for and written off to the Canadian government. The second one was Startup Week in Denver. And that was how I was introduced to techstars. This was my techstars class. So we go to Startup Week in Denver again on the Canadian taxpayer dollars, or a grant, they call it. And I meet Julie and Natty. They are in this photo. And they run the Boulder program of techstars where it all started with Brad Feld and David Brown. And I was really excited about this because I told them that I got to meet them. And they were looking for companies to apply for their next cohort, which was gonna be, I think in September, but they had one starting in January. And I was like, guys, I'm ready to go right freaking now. Like, I have this really cool B2C Carfax for Homes business, but I have this B2B idea where I wanna go and sell to big businesses. I have three or four case studies of exactly why it will work, but I have no clue how to build a business. I just have this little marketing agency that runs arbitrage. And they were like, you're perfect for the program. It's 6% equity. If we get all the paperwork done, we can have you in the program in January. We did it before we left. And I was only there for three days, so that was how quickly I executed on that. And when you see good opportunities like a techstars or a Y Combinator, that opportunity, if you can get into it, grab that bull by the horns. I'm telling you, best experience ever. I have so many good friends from this. And not many of these companies survived, to be frank. But most companies don't. And that's why you're here, to make sure that your company does. And so I have incredible memories. Techstars was one of my favorite experiences ever. I want to share the key lessons that I got from techstars as well. Not only did they finalize it with pitching your business in front of 1300 people in an auditorium that morning, you pitch 100 plus investors your business in case you want to raise venture capital, which at the time we weren't, we did end up raising like six to eight, eight months after the program ended. But most people are raising. Most of those companies are ready to raise money at the very, very end, and they get access to tons of venture capitalists. But the big things that I learned there were creating the business plans, doing OKRs, how to pitch, and then how to raise capital. Moving into mentorship. This was one of the first entrepreneurial events that I ever went to. I went to Traffic and Conversion, which was an event that two guys that are in this photo. Dan Matoshak, great friend of mine and Nolan recommended that I go and check out. And it was an incredible. I remember I got to meet Neil Patel. I met another good friend, Brett Tons of Willow Brian in this photo. Uncle pk. This is just amazing. And I could not afford this trip at the time. I think it was like 15 grand or something. And PK was like, since you're young and you've been. But I'd been bugging PK to go on one of these cool trips for so long because he just was. Seemed like the coolest guy I'd ever seen on the Internet. It's like a modern day James Bond. And I'm like, dude, I just want to come on one. I don't think I can afford it. He's like, you know what? Just because you've asked like 15 times, I'll give it to you for like cost. And it was like 50% of the. I think it was like 7,500 bucks to go on this trip to Cuba with a bunch like 40 incredible entrepreneurs. It was amazing. Another really good one. I have a good friend, Mike Christiansen, maybe one of the most successful guys I know. Humble. Look up to him as a father, a husband, entrepreneur, businessman, all the things. Decent golfer, honestly. Lives a wicked adventure lifestyle too. But he's a big fan of EO and ypo, so I wanted to share those with you as well. I think you need to have a million dollars minimum of revenue with or something and you need to pay some sort of annual fee. But also amazing way to network within your community. Another mentorship that I've been absolutely freaking blessed with is Dan Martell. Five years ago, that guy just showed up in my town one day and I was like, oh, he's doing some really cool things, business wise. And I just DMed him on Instagram, I think. And I was like, hey man, you want to go for a run? And we went for a run one morning at like 5am I was like, who the heck is this guy? He wants to get up so freaking early. But he is the most driven badass I've ever met. If you are following him on the Internet, which you probably are now. He's been the best mentor ever for me. He's been a guiding light in my life. His kids, his wife, his businesses, his business partners. This guy is just at an elite, elite level and now he's taking fitness on. It's been an incredible journey to watch. I love having him as a friend and I have so many good memories and I know that there's a hell of a lot more to come. So another one of my best mentors ever would be Dan. So, masterminds, this is something I am a big fan of, but at the same time, I want you to be very, very careful of. So the first mastermind I ever joined was Thrive, Make Money Matter with Cole Hatter. I went to an event after a trafficking conversion, which I talk about after this, and I literally put 25 grand down. I had never spent that much money on myself in my life. But Cole and I ended up becoming very good friends and he put me on a lot of stages. He introduced me to people like Grant Cardone, Tai Lopez. That list is really long. Honestly, there's so many people he's introduced me to that I've had the pleasure of spending time with and learning from. Jen Gottlieb, Bradley, there's so many cool ones, and even Neil de Hingra, who's now a good friend. So joining masterminds is really good. Now, I will throw out a word of caution that there are some masterminds out there, that they don't exist anymore for good reason, but they also have a pitch on the back end of them. So it's like you'll pay 30 to 50 to 100 grand to go and join them. And then within that, whenever they throw their big fancy events for you, they're going to try and raise money for some business. I would be very, very careful with that. You usually have your guard a little bit further down because you've already paid this person a pretty serious sum of money to invest in the Mastermind, but you're there to network and meet cool people and see if there's more business opportunities for you. I would highly encourage you to continue investing in yourself because the way that those models work, if you raise money for another company, that person makes money off the top and they don't really care about the results of that company that often, from what I've seen. So just a word of caution there. Industry events are really good. For estated, we would always go to Inman with like five or six people. It was one of the funnest events. Not only did I get to see what our competitors were up to and, and you know, what they were doing with their booths, how they were communicating their new products, what they were communicating as well. I got to talk to a lot of clients which I really, really enjoyed. Great place to generate leads as well. You wear some company swag, you can pay a thousand bucks for a booth somewhere and it can just be a lot of fun because you'll meet lots and lots of people and it's just a great experience with your team. Entrepreneurial events trafficking version was the first one I went to. I don't think it's still happening anymore, but they do have some sort of spin off of it. Make money matter. I hope Cole Hader brings it back one day. Good friend. And those are some of my favorite events ever. The the newest one. This summer, July 12th and 13th, I will be there for Neil Dehingra and I am bringing 10 entrepreneurs in this course with me there. So shoot me a message if you're going to be there. I would love to meet you. Aspire has a star studded lineup. Kind of the same group of people all doing these things together, but I really enjoyed that one. And then last but not least, the goat himself, Mr. Tony Robbins. If you need to be personally motivated if you want to take your life and your business to the next level, I would highly recommend you can just read his books, spend time listening to him on the Internet. You can go to these events, I'm warning you, they're intense. Unleash the power within. There's a bunch of them but you know, I highly, highly recommend spend more time. You don't have to meet the guy, but listen to him. He will rewire your brain in all the right freaking ways. And that's it for that one. Thank you for tuning in. Please subscribe to the channel, leave a comment below and if you guys have any questions within the everyday entrepreneur course course, just shoot me a message and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.