The Best Advice Shared From Inside An Elite Business Mastermind

Listen to your own micro economy. What's going on around you? Are you making enough sales? Do you have enough people to sell to? If not, what adjustments can you make? Who cares what New York Times says? Who cares what Wall Street Journal says? Who cares what Fox News says or CNN or CNBC or any of that? Because everyone's just guessing, as proven by having the two world's best economists have opposite views on what they think is coming.

And we're back with another episode of He Said, she Said.

I. Sure everybody is getting used to the dogs, you know, chewing bones in the background, ringing the bell to go out barking at each other. I wonder if that's. Is that acceptable in a podcast?

I mean, there is no other way. Chris, Harder.

It's gonna have to be.

It is.

It's gonna have.

It is either accepted or we don't have a podcast.

So what do you want to talk about today?

Well, first of all, if you could see us, we are holding two inch baby microphones.

So I feel so huge holding this.

I literally, I feel like an influencer right now with this baby mic.

Oh, my God. This is. This is their videos. I wanted to share with you three ways to get skinnier. My first way is this. That's what it feels like.

I would follow her.

All right, I probably would too.

Okay, so here's what we're going to talk about. Are you ready for this?

I'm kind of scared.

I want to know three of your biggest takeaways. So technically, if I wasn't in the room, three of your biggest secrets that came out from being in the inside of your elite mastermind, because you just finished it and I always know when you're done. I'm like, we need to go on a walk. I need a full download. I have to hear everything that happened in that room.

You know what? Okay. One, freaking awesome subject. Two, can't wait to share it. Because so much good information exchange is handsome. Right? Let me start with this just in case anybody's been living on the rock and they don't know what a mastermind is. Here's what a mastermind is. It's a group of people that lock arms for a period of time, usually six months or a year, and they swear to exchange ideas and support and help for that six months or that year. And the idea is that you get to tap into the brilliance and the support of all these other like minded entrepreneurs that typically you don't have surrounding you in your regular life. We have mastered putting the right people together. Now this Is their words, not mine. I'm going to have a little moment of bragging. This was the best one freaking yet. Like, why every single person came. We changed the format up a little bit. We made it so that I don't want to get too in the weeds here, but let's just say everybody felt more connected. Everybody felt like they understood what they can go to each other for even more than ever. And everybody felt like they really got a good spotlight kind of turned on them, where the other, you know, 33 entrepreneurs in the room got to take turns solving whatever their biggest hurdle was right now. And we had epic guest speakers. Wait, I got it. You want to know what the takeaways are? How about I. I tell you one takeaway from each speaker.

I love that.

My favorite one. And then how about I tell you what one or two of the great ideas that exchanged hands in the room were? Because I really want this to be educational for everyone.

Yeah, let's do it. So who was your first speaker?

Dean Graciosi. Dean.

Oh, my God, I love him.

Dean Graciosi.

Okay. I love him because he was at the mastermind we were at. Obviously, you know, we're lucky enough to be friends with him.

Yep.

Having been his neighbor, that really brought us together.

Neighbor turned into good friends.

But having been on that mastermind with him, too, like, you know, you get one version when you're friends, but then also when he is teaching, he's like a whole other incredible genius. And I know that he poured into us in that mastermind, and, like, he was. Some of my favorite advice was given by him. So I want to know what the big takeaway from him was in your mastermind room.

This one might surprise you. So for context, no matter when you're listening to this, we had the mastermind the week after all the banks started to collapse.

Sbb.

Sbb. And then Signature bank, and the First Republic had to get saved. And now the Swiss bank UBS just bought out Credit Suisse. Right. So all of a sudden, there's some real instability out there, on top of the fact that we feel like the economy has slowed down on top of the fact of massive inflation. Right. So the headwinds are getting strong. And a lot of people wanted to know from Dean in particular, because he's friends with a lot of the world's greatest economists. Most people don't know this, but because Dean is Tony Robbins business partner and best friend, they hang out with a lot of the world's greatest economists. So he had just left before he Came to speak to the mastermind. He had just left the week prior talking and hanging out with Charlie Munger. Now, you may not know who that is, but Charlie Munger is Warren Buffett's business partner. Matter of fact, they're both in their 90s and they're both the two smartest economist probably in the world. Well, he was just hanging out with Charlie Munger and he was asking him, hey, what should we expect with the economy coming up? Now, Charlie had one take on it and I'm not going to tell you what that take is yet because that's not the punchline. Charlie had one strong take on what he thinks is coming. Then Dean recently talked to Ray Dalio, another one of the greatest economists in our time right now, and he asked him, hey, what do you think is going to be coming up with the economy? He had an opposite take on as what Charlie Munger did. Now these are two of the smartest economists, most successful people in the world, and they had opposite views of what is going to happen. So the lesson he delivered to us was this. He goes, listen, nobody knows, but all you can do is control what you can control. What is the effort you can put in? What are the pivots you can make? How can you adjust your prices? How can you serve people better than you did before? He said, control what you can control and realize people, some of the world's most successful wealthiest success stories come out of bad economies.

Isn't that always the only answer?

Yeah, so this is his point. He's like, don't listen to the headlines because no one's right, no one's wrong. Don't listen to the experts because no one's right, no one's wrong. Listen to your own micro economy. What's going on around you? Are you making enough sales? Do you have enough people to sell to? If not, what adjustments can you make? And it was that simple. And it freed everybody up in that room. So like, okay, who cares what the New York Times says? Who cares what Wall Street Journal says? Who cares what Fox News says or CNN or CNBC or any of that? Because everyone's just guessing, as proven by having the two world's best economists have opposite views on what they think is coming?

Man, I was just saying that there's always a need and there's always money. It's like, where is it shifting? Even if it's shifting, like even during COVID shifted to doordash and deliveries and how can you get your product delivered to their door? Like just. It's Always moving around.

Yeah, it really is. By the way, listen to what I just got to say. It just dawned on me right now. I had Dean Graziosi get to come and share what he learned hanging out with the world's two greatest economists.

That is insane.

In the Mastermind. That's like nuts. That's some next level stuff right there.

I mean, those are, like, the people I would love to sit with right now. And you're one person removed.

I know, I know. Okay, so that was my best takeaway from Dean. Next, we had Brit Driscoll. She was Ali Webb's partner in Drybar. You're her CMO Chief Marketing Officer, and now she and Ali are partners, but she's the CEO and founder of Squeeze, the massage chain that we invested in.

And she's one of my favorite people.

One of the smartest, brilliant business people on the planet.

We also did a podcast together for a little while called Girlfriends in Business, and she was a genius. Go listen to some past episodes.

And she turned me on to my favorite martini, by the way, called the Driscoll.

The Driscoll. Her last name.

Yeah. Y.

So it's part gin, part vodka with a lemon twist, and no vermouth. So good.

Anyway, okay, so, you know, they were asking her lots of questions about when you did dry bar. How did you get everything to run the same no matter what one you. You went into? In other words, how do I expand my brand without diluting it?

Yeah.

And then with Squeeze, how do you get the experience to be the same everywhere you go? And a lot of people are saying, hey, how do I take me out of the equation? I am the bottleneck. How do I take me out of the equation? How do I scale and keep the quality there?

That's interesting that that's kind of the place where everybody was, oh, my God.

It was the theme for at least.

One third of the room called the theme for scaling.

Yeah.

Take yourself out.

Well, you know what? Probably because everyone in there has a, you know, one to $7.5 million business, right? So they're all kind of in that same stage, so it makes sense. Her answer was really good. She said, if you don't have written SOPs, you don't have a business.

Dang.

And it made me as, oh, we don't have squat for written sops.

Damn.

I'm just raising my hand. I'm not looking at you. I'm looking at you, but I'm not looking at you.

You're. You're actually looking right at me. And you're looking into my soul.

But I mean, this hit me and this hit everyone else. She said, even if somebody has to come in and observe you, like there's professionals that come in, they know what to ask you, they know what to observe and they write your SOPs for you. She said Squeeze has a 500 and some page written set of SOPs.

Wow.

And that's what they use for training, is what they use for duplication, is what they turn to when someone has a question, is what they turn to when there's a crisis. She said, if you don't have written sops, you're not going to be able to take yourself out of the equation. If you don't have written sops, you're not going to be able to replace the most talented person on your team. They're going to be the bottleneck. If you don't have written SOPs, you're going to scale to a certain point, but not to a mega point.

Wow. Okay. I have a question on this. It might stump you.

Okay.

But let's say startups or companies like, you know, the people in your room and some of mine, where we are using agencies for some of our procedures.

Yep.

So should we be trying to create SOPs from our agencies before we.

Yes. You either ask the agencies to provide written SOPs, or you have a professional come in and work with them and you to capture them. By the way, people might be like, what's SOPs? Standard operating procedures. Literally, how does every person do their job? And what is, you know, if this. Then that type of procedures.

So crazy because SOPs also take in like a lot of reinforcement. So you can have your SOPs. What's making me think this? It's really funny, but it's so true. Of course, when I worked at Joe to go, we had SOPs for the way the whole place should be. Right.

Coffee shop.

The coffee shop. Because he was trying to make it a chain.

Yep.

Or franchise. And we had SOPs for how the drinks were made and like none of it was enforced.

Right.

Ever. So guess what was not the same. I think the whole reason that that did not do well was because they never got the same product at a different place. That company kind of bought employee to employee. They never got the same drink.

Yep. They didn't have written SOPs or they did, but they didn't force them.

Yeah. So even your customer service, like, it's.

Interesting because she said, not only will you never scale without SOPs, not only will you never take yourself out from being A bottleneck. Not only will you not remove your most talented person on your team from being bottleneck, but she also said you have no real team culture if you don't have SOPs.

Oh, my God, totally. Because people come in and they want to do it a certain way, and there's no bonding over one way.

Yep. And so, you know, a couple people raise their hand. They're like, there's no way I can write sops for all my departments and everybody. How do I do it? And she. She said, there's professionals that come in and do this, so don't DM me for them, because I don't know who it is yet. But I'm sure if you ask your audience or freaking Google it some, you can find people to come in and capture your SOPs and put them down for you.

Yeah, I've had. You know, and just. Even when I was running my business in a smaller way, I had the people who were in those positions just write the sop. It was like, okay, I want an SOP within the next month. It's not something that I'm like, I need this right now. It's like, let's. Let's really look at what we're doing and write an SOP for the next month. If someone new comes in or you work yourself out of your position and get a promotion.

You know what keeps going through my head? You down with sop? Yeah, you know me.

You can absolutely have that as an anthem in your business.

No, I've been singing that the whole time I've been talking in my head. I'm so weird.

That's not weird. That's really commendable.

So those are the best pieces of advice from each of the speakers now.

Extracting from the room's genius. So everybody got a chance to go around and kind of share what's working and what's not working. And then they got feedback on what they needed. So what was some of the main things that came out of it that everyone was like, dang, first of all.

It was the biggest idea dump ever. It was the biggest idea exchange ever. It was insane. And some of the ones that stood out, like, common themes, people are always like, ooh, what's the next thing I can start? What's the next product I can inject when ready? Here's the catch. When they haven't maximized what they have, the one that they already have. So think about. They're taking their eye off the ball. They're taking momentum away from the one that was doing Pretty good. They're starting something from scratch because they just think at, oh, look, there's a gap in my product suite here. Logically, I must put something in there. And everybody wanted to. So I'd get up in front of the room, right. And they'd be like, okay, here's my business and here's what I got. And I think I'm missing this product. And my audience is at. Here's the catch. Here's where they trap you. My audience is asking for a such and such. So I wanted to create a such and such for them. Except when you say your audience is asking for whatever, it really means. Maybe three people DM'd you.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden you're like, oh, my audience wants this. And so you put your energy and some resources and some money and some marketing and whatever it is towards this new product, when all of that money and time and energy and resources should have been continuously applied towards your original product until you max that one out.

I actually think this was our Achilles heel when we were growing for the first, I would say seven years, honestly, because Chris and I kept. We kept on creating new products just because we're like, oh, you know, I think we used, like, we got everything that we need out of this one. Meaning it's hit everyone in our current audience. Okay. Well, if everyone in our current audience has bought it and we've done pretty okay with it, meaning we've. We've sold a good number to our current audience and maxed them out, why wouldn't we then learn how to do ads and reach other audiences? Yeah. And expand. And I think that's where people go wrong, especially newer people in business. That's where we went wrong was like, oh, well, we feel like we kind of max it out with our current audience.

Yep.

Oh, my God. I mean, this is exactly where you start to scale something. If it's proven. If you guys have had something that's done pretty well, that means it's a proven concept. And now you should put your efforts into scaling and marketing and getting it out there in a bigger way.

Yeah. You're 100% accurate. You want to know what the other one that was commonly exchanged and, oh, you know, where people got called out on their stuff.

What?

It's like an epidemic. Everybody has one or two employees that are continually giving a C plus effort, but they're paying them, like an A plus employee.

Oh, gosh.

And they're tolerating it. And, you know, there is this constant theme over and over again. Where what you tolerate is your fault, not the employee's fault.

What you tolerate is the business you have.

Yes. And. And people weren't having the tough conversations that they knew they needed to have. It's not like they discovered in the room they needed to have a conversation they knew they needed and that people are not having these conversations. So literally, they found accountability partners. They set deadlines, and they made it so that, hey, you have to have this conversation by, you know, this day when you get back from the mastermind, and we're checking up on you. So there's some. Some tough conversations happening as people went back. It's like when you used to have this project, and people would go back and two or three would get divorced because they'd have conversations. Right.

But I would always dread it. I'm like, yo, not responsible for that. Sign this waiver. All you're gonna do is discover what you should be doing in your life. I am not responsible for what happens after this.

Yeah.

I also would say, by the way, just talking about that as we make a funny joke, but I would literally say, do not make a decision for two weeks after this, no matter what you did. Because people can go back and be like, I. I'm in power, and I don't want this person in my life or this person or my husband anymore. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Yeah.

Give yourself two weeks to make a decision. Well, I love that. I know that when I had to. When I had that moment of, what am I pretending not to know about my business? I was actually on a trip away at a masterclass, Gabby Bernstein's masterclass. And I was with one of my friends. I was with Angelique, and I had this huge epiphany of, oh, God, I have to actually let two of my employees.

And you came home and did it. And I was just in shock. It's like, whoa. What happened?

Well, the reason that I did it is because, number one, it was time, and I was operating. Nothing was working. It wasn't a good fit, and I knew it for probably three months. Three months, you guys. That is when you know you're a beginner entrepreneur, is when you tolerate something for a very long period of time.

Yep.

And three months is three months and a day too long. So with that said, I made a deal with Angelique. I was like, right when I get home, can't live this way anymore. Right when I get home. Hold me accountable. When I get home, the next day, you call me, and if it's not done yet. Like, do not let me off the hook. And that was the only way it got done. Because you know why you get home? That shit's hard. The people are nice. You see them and you're like, is it really that bad? You know, and it's like, well, no work's getting done. But man, we had some fun lunches. And that's the problem. Because you want to keep the people around because you want them to like you. But that is not your job.

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Oh, that's funny because almost all these people said, well, I like the person but they're doing a bad job. Great.

Keep them as friends if you can. Yeah, probably won't, probably won't be able to.

It's a real trap, but you got to fix it. It's real trap. Again, those are some of the, the cool ideas exchanged and what the speaker shared and you know there's about a hundred thousand more breakthroughs than that.

Yeah.

Oh my God. The amount of referrals that were passed around like, oh, you got to use my cfo. Oh, you got to use my fractional marketing officer. Oh, you got to use my digital ad. I think everybody just found their people, so to speak. And that's from the referral exchange alone is amazing.

That is everything. And by the way, if you just realize that you have a tough conversation to have, I think that that is what I want to share is that literally 15 minutes after you have it, you're going to feel the craziest weight lifted off you and there's going to be so many ideas and great things that come your way because of that. You don't realize how much that's blocking. When you have someone who's not a fit, not pulling in their weight or not a good energy around you.

Is that like when you leave the bathroom? Like, wow, I didn't realize how good I could feel.

I mean, more every morning.

So gross. What's wrong with us? We're broken.

No, we are. Everything is right about us.

I have a giant sheepadoodle on my lap, chewing a bone that I'm holding with my hand right now as we record this. Technology is amazing.

It really is.

Okay guys, thanks for listening. We sure appreciate you. Hope you liked the glimpse and the information from. By the way, people invest $50,000 a piece to be in this Mastermind for the year. So when we share like some of the takeaways and stuff, this is really valuable stuff. So apply it, use it, apply it, go, you know, find your accountability partners and do things on your own. And we're doing many versions of this. Like if you don't have the 50 grand, if you don't qualify to be in the year long elite Mastermind, we started doing round tables, smaller groups, two days, a lot of the same exercises. Only five grand worth of a tax deductible investment and people are freaking loving it. So I think we're going to put together another one. I don't know for sure, but the first one sold out in six and a half hours and the second one sold out in 23 hours. So if you guys want to be in the front of the line when I do one more, all you have to do is text me the word roundtable to 310-421-0416. Again, text me the word roundtable to 310-421- 0416 and you can have a mini mastermind two day experience of this.

All right, you guys, this is how we truly changed our life in our business. So we hope that we get to see you and until next time, peace out. Peace out. Bye. Bye.