You’re Not Behind, You’re Isolated: 3 Things You’re Missing Without Community

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And we're back with another episode of.

He Said, she Said.

What are we talking about today, babe?

We are talking about the importance of not doing business alone. And it does not matter if that is a mentor, it doesn't matter if it's a mastermind. It does not matter if it is a networking space that you belong to that you end up making friends with and creating accountability. But we're gonna talk all about why you need to create a container for yourself in some form.

It's funny you bring this up. I was just teaching at a event this weekend, an entrepreneur event, and I had two different unsolicited conversations with two different people where they're talking about how lonely entrepreneurship is and how they feel like they're supposed to know how to do these things but they can't figure some of them out and they just feel stuck. And in both cases it's because they're trying to go about it Alone. And entrepreneurship is simply not a one man or one woman show. Matter of fact, you can get started that way. But the truth is this. If you're a one man or one woman show, and I mean this lovingly and constructively. But if you're a one man or one woman show, you're actually not really an entrepreneur. You are a service. You are a service. If you are somebody who is putting together a team and putting together resources in order to scale infinitely or at least to your goals, that is an entrepreneur.

Okay. So if you think about how people throughout history have learned, it's been in classrooms.

Yeah.

It's been in groups. In college, they, you know, tell you to connect with study partners, create accountability through tests. And when I look back at how I ended up homeschooling through high school, I could not get my work done.

Yeah.

Hence why I did not graduate, because.

You do it on your own.

I didn't have anybody to tell me when the work had to be done. I didn't have anyone to help push me. I didn't have anyone to tell me when it was good, when it was bad.

You had no one to ask questions to what you were trying to figure out.

Nobody. So ultimately, I just kept falling off. And I'd wonder. I wondered why I felt like such a loser. I was like, I'm. I'm not smart. I'm such a loser. I can't get this done. It's because learning and business and a life is not meant to be done by yourself.

No. And you don't know what you don't know. So let's go back to being an entrepreneur. There are so many things that you don't know that you don't even know them. And until you start working with individuals that shed light on it, then you're going to continue to struggle and wonder why. And it's because there's some key information that you don't even know that you're missing. That's the worst part. You can't go seek it out because you don't know what you don't know.

So in the beginning of business, I feel like you and I kind of went a bit solo, and we sought help pretty quickly, which is why the game completely changed for us. But I want to really talk about. There's some. There's some great stats. I want to talk about why, if you're not convinced yet, you need to figure out what to create for yourself. And we'll chat a little bit about that, too. So. People are so much more likely to complete goals when someone else is involved. And there's a widely cited business research that shows it is a 65% likelihood of completing a goal when you commit to someone else. That's a commitment. That's not just like, I'm going to do this with you, Chris. It's like, I am committing that we are going to get this done or I am going to get this done. It's like a true commitment to someone. And there's up to. This is up to 95% likelihood when you have a specific accountability appointment. So your intentions aren't the things that stick, it's the structure that you've created that does. And I really believe accountability turns. You're like, going to do that into I will do that. And then you meet up with them. And so I think of this all the time. In the elite Mastermind, these are wagers. Yeah, you got to tell them.

This is amazing. So in the elite level mastermind, every year when we meet in March at the last part of the last day, when we've all been there learning together, everyone stands up and they commit to a measurable goal, something that they're going to do between when we're leaving there and the next time we're getting together in person. And we have over an 85% success rate of people hitting their goals every single time. And that is an absurdly high success rate. And a lot of these are stretch goals. And the reason why is two things, and they both have something to do with not going at it alone. The first one is the positive peer pressure. When you commit to other people that you respect, then you'll be damned if you show up having not done what you said you're going to do. I mean, you will pull out all the stops to make sure you are not the person who shows up falling through on their word. That's why it's so important to have that accountability from someone you respect. And the second reason is because you don't have to figure out how to get there on your own when you proclaim in front of the whole room, this is my goal. By this time, here's what I'm going to do. Then not only do you have the positive peer pressure to deliver, but you have someone saying, oh, don't worry, I'll connect you to a guy. Oh, don't worry, I'm going to check in each week. Oh, don't worry, I'm going to build your sales page for you to make sure that happens. Oh, don't worry, I'm going to have you on my podcast when you do your launch, whatever it is that you need to do, you've got a posse of people saying, don't worry, I'm going to help row the boat. You don't have to row it on your own.

I'm actually shocked every year how many people complete their goals because they're big ass stretch goals for these people. And we tell them, we're like, okay, make a big goal, but also don't make it so big that it's like you're not going to reach it. And some people do and then they reach them. It's really rare that people don't like, I, I am actually floored. And a lot of times when they don't, they came pretty darn close. Yep. So it's super, super impressive. But there's, you know, if you think about this, there's so much research around group accountability. So a lot of group weight loss programs, they outperform individual programs. So people who obviously not only get on a program by themselves, but also get put into groups for accountability as well. So group participants, they lo weight, they maintain results longer, they have a higher adherence over time. And what happens is community exercise programs show long term adherence rates approaching up to 70% in some studies. Because your willpower alone will fade. But the group norm, meaning the people you are now talking to on a daily basis, the people you are checking in with, those don't fade. So if I'm going to the gym every day and I have an appointment, which we just talked about, what appointments do as well, and I have an appointment, or I have an appointment with a class and I show up and I'm talking to all the people who have the same goals. It's like, they're like, oh, where were you Friday? I actually just had this happen. Where were you? What was going on? Oh, did you work out on your trip? Like, so this is the mentality of the group that all of a sudden it becomes not normal to not be working.

I'm laughing because this is happening right now with pickleball. So there's three ways that I've gotten exponentially better that all have to do with doing this with somebody else and with community. The first one is my friend John Bowles who's like, hey, we're going to start going on a regular basis together and we're going to start taking lessons. I would have started without. Yeah, right. So he is the catalyst that said, we're going to do this. I'm going to hold you Accountable because he wanted to get better and he wanted me to get better with him. The second piece was we got a coach, right? So that coach is the perfect example of not going at it alone. Once or twice a week, we go and we get trained by Abby, and he's this wonderful God. I don't even describe Abby. You've had the lessons with him. He's awesome, and he makes you feel good, but better yet, he makes you great at the skill sets. And then the third piece is, I've built community there. There are so many guys I've met there. They're like, hey, I haven't seen you here this week. Where have you been? Hey, what's going on? I didn't see you last week. They expect me to be there mixing in on the games. Because you end up playing with everybody and playing against everybody at the club over there. And because it's a, you know, a country club for tennis and pickleball, people expect to see you on a regular basis, and they hold you accountable. If not now, here's what happened. I went and I played with a bunch of guys that hadn't played with in a while. I hadn't played with them in months and months and months. They're not from the club. It's a good group of guys that my friend Kyle got together, and we played pickleball on a Saturday morning for a few hours. And they said, holy shit, you've gotten. Like, how'd you get so good? I said, simple. My friend named John made me start going on a regular basis. He got us a coach named Abby. And then I had to keep showing up and practice with the other members there that expected me to be there. Yep, those three things is how I got really good.

Yeah, there's. There's no better way than also having to play with a bunch of other people with a bunch of different styles. And I think this talks so much about the segue into business. Like, you can go and you can play with other, you know, people who have learned from the same coach as you, and you guys are going to kind of be at the same rate, but then if you go and these people are two years ahead of you, five years ahead of you, seven years ahead of you, guess what's going to happen. You're literally going to increase the speed in which you learn, because you are going to learn their skill set way faster because you are playing against them, and you have to start anticipating their moves.

Well, in business, you gotta surround yourself with people that are better than you or you're never gonna grow. Same thing on the pickleball courts. I play guys that just absolutely shellack us and they'll beat us, you know, four or five, six games in a row. And we, I mean, absolutely embarrassing. And at the end they're like, sorry about that. I'm like, no, thanks for making me better. I say this all the time, like, thanks for making me better. I'm gonna see you next week and you'll be better next week. And I see people progressively and like, hey, you really are getting better. I want to play against people that make me better and I want to play with people in business that make me better because they know more than me.

Okay, so for business groups, literally change your consistency because you're going to show up your speed of decision because you can ask people and they're going to help you work through it, they're going to help you with your follow through. And let me tell you, they are going to help you with your standards and how you show up. Because when you work with people who are better than you, they are going to make you very aware of where you're falling short and where you need to step up. So again, if you think of this in school with kids, I mean, here's the thing is, whenever you think about what you want for your kids and how you want them to learn and how you see them learning best, why are we not applying this to us? Like so many people are looking at non traditional ways of educating their children. They want more hands on with groups, they want them solving the problems in groups. They want them learning about entrepreneurship in these groups, practicing it in groups. Why do you not do this in your business? Using just reading off of ChatGPT is actually going to teach you what this actually looks like in life. It won't at all. And so we educate children in groups because it works. And then adults try to build companies in isolation and we wonder why it's harder. So mentorship, there's randomized controlled studies out there that show mentorship increased profits by 20%. 20%, that's literally crazy. And so I want you to think about what mastermind rooms do, what mentor rooms do. It creates accountability groups for you. It's going to help you with your habits, it's going to help with consistency, it's going to help with accountability and strategy pressure, which is so important. You need dates, you need deadlines, you need to say, okay, this is my first event that I'm going to. And now the second event I'm going to show up and have completed this, I'm now going to show up in the room different next time because I'm aware of, you know, how I showed up the first time and I want to be more confident the next time. I want to add more value. I want to ask more questions. It's the ability to actually use the rooms and use the people to get better at such an accelerated rate. There is nothing out there like it.

Well, when you don't go it alone, then you're able to get the three most important things you need in business, and that is, number one, accountability, number two, new knowledge, and number three, support. This is how you need to shape your community around you. I don't care if it's mentors, I don't care if it's peers, I don't care if it's business partners. But you must make sure that you have those three components by tapping into other people accountability. I don't care how disciplined you are, you still need accountability to show up your best and to follow through with what you said you're going to do. You need new knowledge from people that have already gone down the path ahead of you and you need support for the bad days, for the rough times. You need people to kick you back in the game. And you get those three things when you're in community.

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For anyone that doesn't know me, I have started a lot of businesses and I will tell you that every single one came with some. So many worries and so many fears. It can be really terrifying because there are so many questions that you don't have the answer to. What if no one listens to my podcast. What if nobody buys my products? And I am so grateful that I have started all of them, especially glossy and that I believed in the launch of my products. Because despite all the fears and hesitations, it also helps when you have a partner like she Shopify on your side. And Shopify is what I use for glossy so you can get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style. Accelerate your efficiency. Whether you're uploading new products or trying to improve existing ones, Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines and even enhance your product photography. And what if I get stuck? Shopify is always around to share advice with their award winning 24. 7 customer service. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.comhappy go to shopify.comhappy that's shopify.com happy. So if you're thinking, you know what I'M fine by myself. Like, maybe your sales went up last year. Maybe you, maybe you do feel okay right now. Like, you feel okay in certain times, but you're really not okay in other times. I want to tell you that isolation is actually not neutral because there's an analysis that shows that people who are lonely have 26% higher mortality risk. 26% higher mortality risk. Isolation impacts your mental health, your stress regulation, which is so important in business, your decision quality. And in business, this can make you have way slower moves. Like, you're going to make way slower decisions. You're going to overthink. Oh, my God. The level of overthinking that we see in people before they join a mastermind or mentorship, and the level of overthinking that I have had around, you know, before I got a book coach, before I got a book mentor, it's like I was writing a book for three years before I got a book coach and then got this book done in like a year. Yeah, because you get a mentor who tells you exactly what to do. And they're like, stop over analyzing everything. Here's the frame, here's the structure, here's the plan. And so it's also, you know, it's. They're going to. In groups and with mentorship, they're not going to normalize mediocrity. Like, they're going to normalize being a high performer. They're going to normalize making big moves, they're going to normalize taking risks. When you're alone, those things are going to feel big and scary and not normal to the people around you. So you're probably not going to do the things that are absolutely required to grow your business.

I remember watching you struggle to write that book for almost three years. And it wasn't until you got the three things I talked about that you could only get through working with other people. Back to the accountability. Number one, the new knowledge. Number two, and the support. Number three, you guys cannot get to your goals long term and consistently without that. Even if you have a lucky year, you cannot get past your hurdles without that. You cannot stay in this very difficult sport called entrepreneurship for the long run. Without that, markets change, trends change, products change, algorithms change. And if you don't have the accountability and the new knowledge of where they're changing to and the support to keep going, then you're going to fall short of where you really could have gone. And I'm so grateful for the mentors we've had, and I'm so grateful for the peers that we have. And I'm so grateful for the friends that we have and I'm so grateful for the people that we have in our life that provide those three things to us. And I think that's probably why we put together the elite level mastermind of which by the way, like Alert, Alert. We're down to two spots, guys. That is it, two spots. And this is the one for this. Mostly seven and eight figure businesses, but you can apply if you earn more than $500,000 or more to get into the room. And we provide in a structured way these three things that Laurie is talking about. We provide accountability where he told that story. When you show up from one event to the next one, you have to have done what you said you're going to do in regards to your goals. And we kind of gamify it and make it fun. We provide the new knowledge and skill sets by creating structured idea shares among each other and bringing in teachers. And of course we're teaching. And then we provide the support. You get everything from quarterly strategy calls, one on one to monthly group calls to unlimited texting Monday through Friday with Lori and I. As much as you need, I'll jump on the phone and help you out or connect you to somebody. You cannot fail when you have those three things. Accountability, new knowledge and support in a structured container. The way that we've structured it and we learned from masterminds that we joined and realized that those are the three things that got us what we needed and that's why we recreated them. God, nine years ago now, can you believe that? The ninth year we're doing this thing. I can't believe it. And there's only two spots left. This is the most special container that we offer, in my opinion. So real quick, go to chrisharder me, mastermind or loriharder.com mastermind both of them bring you to the same place and that is this. You must fill out the application. I will jump on Zoom with you to see if it's a perfect fit or not. And if it's a perfect fit, you will get one of the last two spots. Seriously. Lorihutter.com mastermind or chrishutter me mastermind. Fill out the app and we'll talk.

Soon and we'll see you next week. It.