What Keeps You Going In A High Intensity Mastermind?

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories. It's about the grit it takes to get there. Hey, everyone, this is Julie. I'm not sure it's such a good idea for me to pop onto the mic for a podcast episode when I have literally done no planning, but we're gonna give it a try. And this episode is inspired by a sales call I had yesterday with a woman named Sarah. Lovely lady. And she actually asked a question that sparked this entire thought process. And I was like, wow, she's so insightful and thoughtful. It was also kind of strange because in a sales call, I'm usually the one asking the questions, right? And she turned it around on me and asked me this question about Digital Insiders, which the program that she's applying for. And I was telling her some of the statistics of how the program has been around. We're in our seventh year. I have, I think, three or four members that are on year seven. And I made some sort of joke about what kind of, you know, award I would give to those who make it to the 10 year anniversary and how crazy it would be if we even made it 10 years, because that's like millennia in Internet marketing world. And she says to me, you know, that's a really long time to be running such a high intensity program where you have one on one access to over 75, 80 people. She said, what keeps you going? Why have you done this for so long? You know, a lot of people would have probably quit after a couple of years. And a lot has changed since 2017 when you started. So what keeps you going? And so that's the question I kind of want to answer today. Because I think sometimes people can look from outside looking in and they can say, all right, Julie, you know, she has this mastermind. It's a well established mastermind. It makes her a good amount of money. She's got whatever, 75, 80 members. She's, you know, helping them. She's got a great reputation. Everything's like amazing and hunky dory, and I would love a business like that. And they don't see some of the sacrifice or some of the hard nights or days or weeks or months running a program like this. And so I thought I would kind of pull back the curtain a little bit on how this journey has been running a Mastermind and try to answer this question. So I started Digital Insiders in the fall of 2017. Prior to running a mastermind, I was doing one on one client work where I was either helping them build funnels and then I had transition to coaching where I was just coaching them one on one. I was using the typical traditional coaching model where you meet with someone once a week on Zoom for an hour. And I found it very, very draining. There was a lot of pressure on that call. If people didn't get their homework done, it felt like a waste of time. And if you know me, there's nothing I hate more than wasting time. And so I transitioned to what I call a flexible voice cadence. If you've never heard me use that term, it' actually inside a program called Scalable Coach Method. If you go to scalablecoach method.com you can get on the wait list. And it's how I coach so many people at once. And the flexible voice cadence is simply that people can use their voice so it's all audio based and they can message me flexibly. So maybe that's five days a week, maybe it's once a month, maybe it's once every two weeks, maybe it's in spurts. But I recognize that people aren't gonna need my help every single day for an entire year. So they are going to be able to reach me when they need me and then go do the things they need to do when they need to do them. And so there's a lot of nuance to this, which is why I built an entire course around how I do it. But what this allowed me to do was create more time in my schedule and serve more clients. So the Mastermind Digital Insiders, it took probably three to get close to capacity. So we started in 2017 and by 2020 I think I hit a hundred members. I haven't been at 100 members for a while. I lost a lot of members as the COVID mania started to fade and people found that income was drying up and the economy was changing. So I think I'm at like 83 members right now. I also don't do a fantastic job of marketing it consistently because my primary business is funnel gorgeous. I just, I just don't market it and so there'll be dry spells. So something really funny happened. About two to three years in to running Digital Insiders, I became aware that there was a group dynamic, a sense of place, if you will, forming that was outside of just me as a Coach. So even though I started the Mastermind to coach people and also to, you know, create this cool community and, you know, get together and all that kind of kind of thing, the. This. The dynamic that is the group now is bigger than me. So when people ask me the question, like, why did. What keeps you going? I feel more like a steward of a group than I do the owner of a group. And if you have ever been in any sort of community, whether it's, I don't know, it could be a. It could be a country club, it could be a church, it could be a neighborhood, it could be a college, like a sorority, there is that group dynamic and that group energy that sort of takes on a life of its own. And so now it feels to me like if I were to ever just stop Digital Insiders, there's a sense of, like, an entire community, a town would be closing down, you know, and that's like a really big decision for one person to make. And so during the hard times, which there have been plenty of hard times in Digital Insiders, I have felt sort of that stewardship of, like, this is mine to cultivate and take care of, even though I'm not having fun right now. And I think a lot of people idealize masterminds. They fantasize about them, and they fantasize about the, you know, the luxury vacations and a group where they can, you know, teach their people anything they want. And they don't visualize or fantasize about all the hard times and all the painful parts of running a group. And so when that happens, they get burned out and they just shut it down. So that is probably a pretty significant reason that I have stood the test of time. I also recognize that there are a lot of people who would say that the relationships and the community that they have found in Digital Insiders quite literally have saved their lives in businesses. And that's a pretty powerful testimonial and something that I don't take lightly. And so that's kind of related to this idea of the group dynamic. The third reason why I think I have stood the test of time is because I realized that in order to be a good teacher over at Funnel Gorgeous, to be able to get on stages and talk coherently and intelligently about funnels and marketing in businesses, I need to be in it, and I am in it. Over at Funnel Gorgeous, I mean, we obviously do all our own marketing and all our own funnel building, but there is a value that comes from being able to coach Wende, who does Chair upholstery. And Julia, who teaches women how to code and do tech skills. And Nicole, who is a coach for team dynamics and leadership. Being able to touch all those different businesses and see what's working and what's not working, it makes me a better teacher. I don't know how I would teach what I teach if I wasn't also practicing as a coach. And so that is another big reason why I continue to do what I do is because of the value that it brings to my, you know, to my life. Okay, so here's another reason, and this is kind of funny, and I. I don't know that I would. I don't know that I would recommend this, but it. It happened. So here we are. I don't really have a social life because I run this Mastermind. Part of the reason I don't have a social life, it didn't start that way. When I started the Mastermind, it was all in tandem with, you know, starting. I was working at ClickFunnels. I also had a really bad marriage, and there was not a lot of time, and so I had to make a choice. And I really didn't cultivate friendships in my hometown. I didn't cultivate, you know, relationships outside of my family, because between talking to people every day in Voxer for Digital Insiders and then working at ClickFunnels, and then I was building Funnel Gorgeous, and then my family, I just decided that a social life wasn't in the cards for me. And then even. Even after I left ClickFunnels in 2019, even after I filed for divorce in 2022, the realization that my prim community fabric is this community. Yes, they're clients. Yes, they are paying me. Yes, I need to hold the. The line and the boundary of client and provider, but they also are my friends, too. And again, I don't know that that makes a whole lot of business sense. I don't know that I would necessarily recommend it. I would also say this one bajillion percent gets me in trouble, but this is my. This is my community. I. I don't know. Like, I don't know what I would do if I. I stopped it, you know? So as she was asking me that question, I was like, these are my people, you know, and when I started dating A.C. you know, after about six, nine months of dating, I had introduced him to everyone in my family. He hadn't yet come to a Digital Insiders event because, you know, they only happen twice a year, and he had invited me to picnics and friends parties and stuff. And he's like, so do you have friends? I was like, well, so about that. And I said, I don't really have friends. So, you know, we don't have any issues now as a couple. If we want to have a social life, we go out with his friends. His friends are great. So I'm totally cool with that. But, like, I don't have. I don't have friends. I have a mastermind, though, and it's really awesome, and I can't wait for you to meet them all. So we were, you know, trying to. We're getting married next year. And so we were working on the guest list, and I was like, I don't think I can invite the entire mastermind. Like, that seems like a financial, financially irresponsible thing to do. So I'm not going to invite the mastermind. But I also feel like they're all the people. If I were to, like, try to drum up friends, they are the people that I would want at my wedding. So there is a level of investment that I have at this point with the people in the group that would make it very, very difficult for me to just be like, you know what? I'm closing that program and let's move on. So I think that another reason why I have stood the test of time is because I think I came to the understanding that this was not going to be fun all the time, and it wasn't just going to be about the luxury vacations. And there have been dry spells, really bad dry spells in digital insiders. Even last year, 2023, I lost way more people than I gained. It was very hard because not only did I lose more people than I gained, but I also watched some of my clients really struggle with their profit and loss statements. And they were looking to me for like, hey, how do I make this better? And I'm like, it's not better right now. Like, everybody across the board, myself included, are suffering from really bad income drops. And I couldn't quite explain exactly why it was happening, but it was happening everywhere, across every industry. And I remember Emily at the time saying to me, hey, for the first time since it's probably 2017, 2018, she said, you did not make six figures a month in digital insiders. And I was like, ooh, okay. She said, yeah, that's a pretty. It's a pretty big dip, you know, and you wrestle so much with, is it not working anymore? Is it? Nobody cares. Nobody. You know, I hear people say, nobody can afford high ticket anymore. All that kind of stuff, and choosing instead to believe that, nope, this is my mission. This is my. This is the group that I steward. I am not going to back down. I am not going. I might have to tread water for a little while, you know, and. But I'm not losing. I'm not taking my eye off the ball. Really, really helped get me through that dry spell. It probably started, like, spring of 2023 and lasted through September. So it was like six or seven months where I was just, like, losing people more than I was gaining. And I just remember telling myself, this isn't always about growth. It's just as much about survival. And in the book the Psychology of Money, which Kathy is reading right now, my business partner, she said that she found a quote where, you know, this idea of wealth, it's just as much about survival as it is about, like, growing. And so I just stopped expecting to grow for a time. And I just said, okay, how do I survive? Like, what do I do to keep everything on? You know, the movie It's a Wonderful Life, right? George Bailey, brilliant movie. Love the movie. And he is in charge of the building and loan, and it's the Great Depression and there's the run on the banks, and he's got all those people in the bank, and he's trying to convince them to only take out exactly what they need because he needs to keep the lights on so that the bank doesn't shut her down. And then everyone is left with Potter, right, who's a scammer. And in that moment, at 6:00pm, he has, like, $2 left, right? And they're dancing around the office like, we stayed open, we stayed. And when things get really tough financially or I feel like, man, my profit is tanking. I mean, there were a couple months where digital insiders didn't make any profit. And I. I was like, okay, I just need. I need enough to pay my coaches. I need enough to pay for the events. And, you know, I need to make sure I'm not spending any extra money. I don't need to, because I'm envisioning George Bailey. It's like, it's so important to keep. To keep the lights on in this because this is bigger than me. This is more than just what I do. And that really, really helped me to celebrate survival and celebrate sustaining rather than beating myself up that I wasn't growing. And so, I mean, that goes for. It doesn't just have to be about a mastermind. That could be for any. Anyone listening who's trying to keep their business afloat. There's gotta be a reason bigger than money. There's gotta be a reason bigger than status or, you know, pleasure that keeps you going, because there's just. There's gonna be hard times. When I think back over the last, you know, seven years of digital insiders, you know, when I started it, 2018, 2019, those were sort of heyday years, right? So there was a lot of growth. I was in the clickfunnels world, so people, you know, were getting to know the One Funnel Away challenge. I was on the funnel hacking live stage, so I didn't have to do any marketing, Right. People just came in droves to me. I did have some issues where there were always opportunists trying to, you know, get a piece of the pie, if you will. So that was a struggle, and I made some mistakes there and learned some hard lessons. That was really difficult. 2020 came, and obviously, you know, we all know what happened in 2020. And I was really nervous that year before we knew that money coming from the government was going to cause this sort of, like, economic micro boom, if you will, there was this panic that everybody was gonna lose all their clients, right? I remember, like, for example, Stephanie, she runs a Facebook ad agency for chiropractors. Well, all the chiropractors had to close their doors, so they weren't going to run ads anymore. So Stephanie was going to lose all her clients, which mean. Which meant Stephanie would close her doors, which means Stephanie would feel like she has to leave Di because she's not making any money. And that was played out over and over and over in the Mastermind. So, thankfully, I had the long game in mind, and I had saved a lot of money. I put together a $50,000 scholarship fund and told anybody that they were having trouble making their monthly payment for the Mastermind to let me know. And I drained all of that money and covered over $50,000 of mastermind payments in 2020 to keep people in the Mastermind who really didn't want to leave, but didn't really know what to do. Then 2020 kind of took a turn. It got super crazy out there. People, you know, who were ndi saw a major uptick in income, and a lot of new businesses started in 2020 and, like, took off, right? So I had a bunch of people join in 2020 and 2021 who only knew business in the micro boom. And so they were rocking and rolling, really excited. So I had a surge of people who only knew, quote, good times. Which is ironic because it was actually not a good time. It was a bad time, but it was weirdly a good time financially. And so in 2022, two things happened, right? The first is I got divorced. And so that I. I definitely did not take my foot off the gas in coaching my clients, but I took my foot off the gas in market, virtually stopped marketing Di entirely, and I focused exclusively on just nurturing the people that I had, because I couldn't, you know, I couldn't do all of it and go through the divorce at the same time. So that was happening, but also at the same time, that micro boom was fading. So even though 2022, I felt like the majority of people maybe stayed the same as 2021. They didn't really lose money. So nobody had these, like, warning bells go off yet. I lost some people in 2022, but not. Not huge. 2023, though, man, I. I know. That's where I noticed that all of the lack of marketing from 2022, right, because I wasn't doing any marketing because I was just busy getting divorced and surviving that year. The lack of marketing meant my lead flow had dried up. And also that micro boom was completely over, and now people were leaving Di, and I didn't have anything to replace it with. So, you know, I quickly, you know. Well, not quickly. It took me about seven, eight months to figure this out, and I got back on the marketing wagon, and I have had lots of new people join Di, and there's, like, a new resurgence of energy. And in fact, the mastermind we had in November in Miami was one of our best masterminds yet. And I just think, man, if I made the mistake of ever taking one day, one week, one month and snapshotting it and saying, this is the reality of this group or this is the reality of this program, I would totally screw myself instead of seeing it as waves. Like, there's good years and bad years. There's good months and bad months. You know, you. You think about it in a marriage, right? You have good years and bad years, good months and bad months. It's the same thing with a mastermind. So when you're really dedicated to a program and you're dedicated to a community, a cause, a people, you ride those waves. And better than, you know, than if you are idealizing what something is supposed to look like. And I'm realizing as I drone on and on here on the mic about this question that I was asked, what keeps you going? This applies for business. It's really. This is all business advice. As much as it is Mastermind offer advice. Running a mastermind is not for the faint of heart. There are a lot of times when trying to keep the group healthy takes every ounce of energy that I have and I could not do it without my team. I have. Helen and Nuno and Jess all help me run the group. And Helen especially is someone who really, really is sort of the anchor and the plumb line for keeping people in their seat of personal responsibility and curiosity versus judgment. And she really helps keep that group dynamic healthy. Of course there's always going to be, you know, arguments and disagreements. We've had times where we've had to remove people from the mastermind. Very, very difficult situations. We've had people who, you know, have left in a huff and been super angry. There is, we have, we've gone through deaths and births and, you know, sickness and all kinds of things. But I treat it like a town and in doing so, I play the long game. So as I'm sitting here thinking, okay, we're on year seven and we're gonna be in just three years, we're gonna hit a 10 year anniversary for Digital Insiders and what am I gonna do for that? Like I was trying to think like what would be the. I definitely think there just needs to be a party, right? That we made it 10 years, especially 2017 to 2027 feels like harrowing years to make it. Secondly, if there are people left that have started from the beginning, what kind of award should I give them for being basically lifetime members, Never stopping. And I was thinking, I was like, I wonder if I should have a party at the 10 year anniversary where if you've ever been in Digital Insiders, even if you're no longer, you can come to the party. That would be a lot of people. That would be really expensive. I would need to make sure my, my profit and loss can handle that. Anyway, I hope this has been really helpful. One last thing, I will say if you are in the high ticket space, which Digital Insiders is in the high ticket space and there are a lot of people that say, oh, high ticket is dead. It's not dead. It's not dead even a little. What is dead is outrageous pricing for crap service that is dead. So if you're going to charge someone $20,000 and you're going to give them a little eight module course and give them a weekly group call and call it good. Yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be a hard sell. Digital Insiders is 100% high ticket program. I mean, you have to sign on for a year. It's just under $30,000 for the year. But when you start to itemize out everything that's included and what that essentially $2,000 a month payment gets you, you realize you're getting three one coaches and you're getting two weeks of events and you're getting, you know, 52 audits. Well, not quite because I take some vacation and you start to add all of that up and you think about what it would cost you to go get a mindset coach and go get a business coach and go get this person and that person and what it would cost you to pay for this, that and the other thing and what it would cost you to attend, you know, such and such conference and event. You realize very, very quickly how valuable the program is. So if you are in the high ticket space, high ticket for low value is out. But if you are confident that your pricing is correct, that it is, that it is valuable for the offer that you're bringing to the market, you don't have to wave, you don't have to like get weird and think, oh my gosh, am I too expensive? Right? I actually didn't think that once this year during that downturn. I knew I wasn't marketing. I knew the economy was hard. I knew that my 2022 year off I was now paying for a year later. But I never stopped and thought, is di just too expensive? Because I knew and I know what my costs are and I know what the value is. All right, this was a long episode. I hope it was helpful. Thank you, Sarah, for asking the question, what keeps you going? I love digital insiders. I invest in it every single day of my life for the last seven years and will continue to. And I am gunning for that ten year anniversary party. So talk to you soon. And there you have it, folks. Another dose of million dollar grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, Harness your grit and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie and this has been Million Dollar Grit.