EP 395 – New Year, New Tribe with Aaron Young

This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now, here's your host, CEO of We Close notes, Scott Carson. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Note Closures. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here with you today. We are always honored to have one of our regular guests on here who is one of my closest friends, actually a guy that I absolutely respect, adore, and is part of our extended family, somebody that I always enjoy visiting with. And I'm so honored he will actually be here in Austin and I'll get a chance to hang a couple days with him. Just a small group setting here. So without further ado, we are honored to have Aaron Young from Lawful Associates joining us today on the no Closer Show. Again.

That's so nice, Scott. Thank you. And I feel the same way. And your influence, both from a friendship and a business perspective have enhanced my life, have been dramatic over these last, what is it, maybe five or six years?

About six years now. I saw some stuff pop up. So, yeah, six years flies by when you're having fun, right?

Yeah. And we've been a lot of places, done a lot of things together. And of course, Michelle and Steph are good friends. And so anyway, my wife Michelle, for those that don't know who we're referring to. And your fiance Steph.

So we're not quite engaged yet.

Everybody wants pretty soon I'm just gonna call you your partner, your life partner.

The spouse is fine. It's quite all right.

Common law wife. I think in Texas by now you've got some obligation.

Not how I wanted to start this episode off, but that's quite all right. I think she would agree with you there.

Christmas time. I'm just trying to be a good influence on you.

That's right. Steph is actually at her is at the mothership, as she likes to say.

She's still there.

She's still there. Yesterday we drove up from Cape Coral from having our mastermind meeting last one of the year. We drove to Orlando. She dropped me off at the airport and then she went over to Epcot or Key West. I don't think she's saying that Old Key west. And had some friends there. They were out last night for. And what popped up was memories of you and me last year. Yeah.

Was that Last year or two years ago.

Two years ago. Two to seven.

So what we're referring to is the candlelight processional at Epcot. And we had Whoopi Goldberg, I think that was the narrator, but that was there with a bunch of. Was it your mastermind or was it a bigger event?

It was our mastermind group. We had 83 or 84 mastermind members. There are 120 people total.

And we all lined up. And then when the time came, we walked in and we watched this phenomenal presentation there at Epcot with the trumpeters and the orchestra and the choir and Whoopi Goldberg kind of doing all this kind of very positive Christmasy stuff. And you know, I'm going to say something about that. So I always think of Whoopi Goldberg as being very left leaning, politically right. So I didn't. I liked her as a comedian, but since she's become kind of a mouthpiece for the left, I wasn't sure where it would go. But I listened to her present and there was the written part, but then there were her own personal comments at the beginning and the end. And I want to say it reminded me, Scott, that even though we get divided a lot of times, there's so many things that we as Americans or as humans united on. And everything she said just made me love her again. And I thought we get so polarized by politics that we forget the basic good humanity of almost everybody. Almost everybody is trying to do the right thing, trying to be good and just trying to look out for their loved ones and themselves. And it's really important that we don't get stuck in a rut and start dividing up and that we keep finding the things that make us similar. It's really critical that we keep opening ourselves up to new experiences, to new voices, to new opinions. Whether or not we accept them is our own choice. But we shouldn't get closed off because when we start rejecting other people's opinions or somebody that looks different or speaks differently or whatever, it limits our world, it shrinks our world. I think that's one of the things that I've loved about working with you and meeting your people. You guys are doing things wildly different than what I've been doing in my business. But it just opens my mind up to lots of new ideas, new horizons I didn't even know existed a few years ago.

I think that's one of the critical things, is when you don't get wrong. We like to surround ourselves with like minded people. We all like that, like same, similar interests and similar outlooks align, things like that. And it's obviously been very obvious on Facebook or with politics, you see a lot of that leftist versus the rightist, you know, conservatives stick with the cursor. There's not so many people in the middle, but a lot of times, a lot of times people like to surround themselves in their same niche or their same clique or their same group, and it feeds on each other. But I also think it limits a lot of people from expanding their horizons or learning what other people are doing. And that's one of the things that. That I love so much about our relationship is when we're alone, we're constantly picking each other's brain. What are you doing with that? Or how did you get this to work? Or what troubles are you having? Any troubles or any hurdles that you need to help overcome or deal with any clients, things like that. That's a beautiful thing. That really is a true mastermind of two people. But we also like to get Megan involved and Steph and Michelle as well.

Going, I want to talk about masterminds, but let me go back and say one thing about like minded. There's a difference between like minded, which could be bigoted. It could be, you know, incredibly left or right wing. It could be that. But it could also be we're like minded because as you just pointed out, we're curious, we want to learn, we like to travel, we like to learn about other cultures. Like minded could be we're not satisfied with staying where we are. Like minded could be the reason you just mentioned a mastermind of two or four. The reason. The reason we join Mastermind sometimes is not to have a club. Like, we're going to hunker down over here and we're going to talk about toy trains, because we all love toy trains. Sometimes you mastermind because you've got such diverse backgrounds that when we come together, we create that whole master. The idea of a mastermind is a new brain that's created out of the disparate experience of everybody in the room. So this idea. So I grew up in a church, in the Mormon Church. And the Mormon Church is. I don't want to say the church. The people as a group are very insular. They kind of hang together. It's not that they don't have other friends or whatever, but they tend to hang together, do activities together, do service projects together, worship together, mourn together, celebrate together. And there's a. There can be, and I would say there's a fairly prevalent attitude of insecurity or distrust a little bit of people who believe a different way or even maybe pity towards people who don't believe the same way, isn't that you're such a great person, isn't it a shame that you don't understand what I understand? And so I spent most of my life in this, being very involved in this group that was kind of insular. While my business life and my personal life were very expansive. It eventually led to the separation of us from the church because it just we couldn't force these two belief systems together anymore. The problem that I discovered about being insular, which is that like minded, we're only going to hang out with people who believe like us, is that it stunts your growth. It stunts your growth and it makes you a small person. Now don't misunderstand, I don't mean to say that by being religious or being involved in church makes you small, but I'm saying that when you decide that your way is the only way or my group's way is the only way, then and especially when your group, there's 15 million Mormons on the books out of seven and a half billion people on the planet, somehow there's a whole bunch of other people with different opinions that might be valid. Right? So we have to get out. I heard a guy who's a big leader in the black community say, you want to get rid of bigotry, be really good friends with somebody who doesn't look like you. I'm a huge believer in mixing it up with other people. I've attended a lot of, well, you run a very successful mastermind and over the last year I've developed my first mastermind group and it boggles my mind. And I bet you have endless stories. But from our, we have 47 companies and about 80 people because there's a lot of spouses or parent child or whatever, business partners. But we have 47 companies. Matter of fact, we're looking to fill the last 3,000 founder spots before the end of the year. But that's not commercial, it's just me saying what I'm doing. The stories I've heard over the last year of people who've joined the Mastermind and because of being part of that crazy disparate group, I mean these people are wildly different from one another. The deals that have been done, the money that's been made, the solutions that have been found by being part of it has been mind boggling to me. And I kind of sit back on the sidelines going a lot of these People are going, oh, Aaron, thank you. But it's like I didn't really do it. I just sort of created the environment to do it. So what's your experience with that? Because I stayed away from Masterminds for a long time because I thought, oh, there's so many people doing it. I don't want to just be an also ram if I'm going to do it. I want it to be something special that really makes a difference for the members. I know you've been wildly successful. What is it that's made your Mastermind so good?

I would say two things. One is that it's not about me. A lot of people will use Masterminds as a way to sell more products.

You know, that's like another seminar for them.

Exactly. And that's not how my Mastermind runs. Don't get me wrong. Our coaching is a part of it, but the biggest thing is getting other people to come in and share. Yeah. And that's where I think in me being open to learning from my Mastermind members as much as they want to learn from me.

Yeah.

And so that's one of the biggest things that makes our Mastermind successful is people coming, sharing sources, sharing resources. We've created a, you know, a network of people across the country. I think a lot of it ties in with our WC and Crew Facebook page as well as a very, very active 900 plus member strong Facebook group where people understand the community of giving. And then when they come to the Mastermind, it goes above and beyond as people are sharing resources, sharing vendors, breaking bread with each other. You know, we try to make it as much fun as possible. Always, you know, getting out of the office or out of the hotel to either take a sunset cruise or go to a ball game or, you know, go to the, you know, the candlelight ceremony we talked about to kick things off in Disney. It's just a. Get people out there, get them talking about things besides just notes. We found out a while ago that one Mastermind, about a third of the members were very active musically. Drummers or guitarists. We could have had our own band.

Okay, I didn't know that.

Yeah, I did not know that.

I'm quite a singer.

You are quite the singer.

I want you to know that.

Yes. You're quite the singer, quite the poet, and most people don't know it. We also found out at one Mastermind, a good chunk of our members were homeschooling their kids. You know, some had done it and some were in the process of doing it. So that was really a good blend of things. You know, it's always nice to have people that are buying in specific states too. So they're finding out, figuring out their markets or sharing resources of realtors, attorneys and things like that. But the biggest thing that I think I hear, because there's other real estate masterminds in the industry.

Yeah.

And the big thing is that it's not about me. You know, the other people are. Oh, it's all about be about them, them, them. How can they pitch you more stuff? And it's not the case if I bring in. Like I bring in, you got Laughlin Associates or it's not necessarily. The pitch is to offer them a service that I know is valuable to them that will help them in their entrepreneurial future. Like we did. Like we had our mastermind, the Quest Expo, just recently. We changed the dates to match up a couple dates that another event will be very valuable for all the 60 or 70 people that showed up.

Yeah.

Our vendors and I think that's what the most. The most. The two most things. If you'd be part of a mastermind, it's got to be open up to outside opinions. I've been a part of a real estate mastermind group that I was paying 20 plus grand a year and we didn't get anything out of it. We would go and try to network with people and everybody was so worried about their business. They weren't necessarily sharing what was going on or with other things or were open to it. Because I had a different niche of real estate investing than they did.

Yeah. That's interesting. So there's a big difference. There's a big difference. So your thing is specific to real estate that you're. The one you're describing.

Yeah.

You know, the one you put on is specific to notes. Right. Note investing. But you said you're part of another real estate. I know you've gone and participated in other, like podcasting things you've learned a lot about or even starting a new podcasting program, Right.

Yep, that's correct.

And so that's specific function or technology. You know, in case of podcasting, it's a new way of marketing. Whereas the inner circle, my mastermind, is completely unrelated businesses who wanted access to my lawyer, my accountant, my real estate investment expert. So they wanted access to, you know, how to raise money. So these are all my people that I use. Matter of fact, Tracy Hazard, you know, the Hazards produce both of our podcasts. She's going to come and be a mentor at the next inner circle because so many people are interested in podcasting, regardless of what industry they're in. So it's sort of a little different thing. I think one of the things I've noticed with being involved in these small groups, these more intimate groups, is trying to get the mix right so that you don't have somebody who's very new to business. In our case, trying to advise somebody who's very seasoned and everybody's listening going, that information is completely wrong. Like, why are you sucking the air out of the room with that bad information? But you also want to have people that can go up, can be improved by participating in the mastermind. Some people I know just will sell something to sell it. I can get their money, so I'll get them into the group. And it's like, I don't want that in my group.

Yeah, I'm the same belief. I don't want that. I'm actually very particular about who I let in. I'm willing to allow people come in for a sneak peek because a sneak peek allows them to see if the match minds a fit. But it also is a way that we judge them too.

Oh, yeah. Do we want them in the group?

Yeah. Like last time we did one Cape Coral six months ago, I we had a couple guys come in for a sneak peek and I uninvited them. I was literally on that following Mondays. Like, listen, guys, I don't think you're a fit just because the fact you're not showing up, you're showing up late, you're not networking, you're trying to take, take, take, but not give, give, give as well. And that's the true thing about a mastermind. You've got to give and you've got to take. You've got to refer things out and also be opening to things. If you're not like that, I don't want your money. I don't need your money for that aspect of things. So I think you have to be selective. You have to. And that was one thing about the real estate mastermind as a part of they were. You're requiring people to have done at least 100 plus deals a year. Well, now they start letting people doing like five a year, Mike.

It's that all of a sudden it's the wrong group. I've watched that in a program that I participated in for a couple years as a presenter where it started out with a very high caliber of individual. But then because the facilitator, the leader, needed the money, they'd had some downsides on other places people got, they were letting anybody in. And now you had all these people that were just desperate to get something. And this is my last ditch hope that's the wrong setting. The idea of a mastermind is to bring people together who can really help find solutions to problems. One of the key elements of a mastermind is having something outside of the group that you're working on. So it could be a charitable thing, it could be going to give service to something, it could be solving some. You know, I think about the old days. I may get this a little bit wrong but I'm generally right. But Rockefeller, Carnegie, Edison and Ford were all part of a mastermind in the early part of the 20th century. And they would meet just these four titans in the closed door setting. They would primarily focus on something else. Maybe it was US and foreign trade relations, maybe it was because they would all be significantly impacted by improving that. Without saying how do I do better on selling the phonograph? Or how do I, you know, I'm thinking about adding a different kind of leather trim to my Model T. Right. It's like what else, what's the bigger thing? And so when we get together with something else that we work together, we start to bring out instead of that competitiveness or that taking, all of a sudden we're all giving to solve some problem that's outside of our, just our business. That's part of why we've gotten so involved with the Unstoppable foundation and building these schools in the Maasai Mara in East Africa, Kenya, because everybody can get behind slowing down sex trafficking and educating young women and, and providing greater financial growth in this segment or this section of the world. All of these things come out of solving a problem of clean water, health care, education for women because women and girls hold those communities together, not the men and the women are this, it's a very matriarchal society. So when we all, all these business people in this very privileged top 1 or 2 or 3% of the incomers in the whole world come together in a room and we say how can we help get more resources to getting, we've now educated like 36,000 young women. How do we get that to 100,000? I'll tell you what, not only money but ideas come together and everybody starts to trust everybody else because we're all doing something really valuable. And I'm going to say it noble, truly altruistic. We don't need to educate these kids in Kenya, but by doing it it makes us all Better stewards of our money and makes us feel like, oh, the work we do in our business goes to something greater than just our new car or our new iPad or some stupid thing like that. I'm sorry, I'm getting really.

No, it's. I totally agree, but that's. No, it's. It's not philosophical. It's. It's. Honestly, it's really what masterminds are all about. Trying to come together, help help people out with things. I mean, we've always been a big advocate to Toys for Tots. We were doing a lot with Fresh Start program in San Diego with donating money, matching dollars raised at our events. We had live events. The doctors in San Diego would do facial reconstructions.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Toys for Tots is when. Laughlin has done a lot with Toys for Tots. And that became a fun thing for my team. Not all of whom make a tremendous amount of money. Right. You've got receptionists and mail room and that kind of stuff. But still, the idea was, first, can we fill the box that they provide you? Can we fill a few boxes? Can we fill a pickup truck? Can we fill a U Haul truck? The company's gonna go out and buy 30 bicycles, and the whole team gets behind it. This is. Guys, as you're watching, when you get your employees or your friends or your mastermind all focused on doing something that's outside of their own comfort, outside of their own, elevating themselves, but you're doing something for somebody else, it changes the dynamic of the relationship you have with those people. It's super valuable. You want to know how to hold on to your employees over the long haul like I do. Tell you what you do. Do things bigger than just pay them to do their job, get involved and roll up your sleeves together on doing things. And you become more than just transactional in your relationship. There's an emotion that permeates it. And even when they leave or things change, the relationships remain because you've had these shared experiences. You can do that on steroids in something like a mastermind group.

Totally is. And it's. It's a variety of things. Like, I've got some friends that are big that are doing stuff for homeless in San Diego. We don't. We all, you know, we both know Dan Fleischman is doing some big stuff out there.

Oh, Dan Fleischman does tremendous work with those backpacks and everything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's a variety of things when you look at. If you're really, you know, Aaron and I were talking beforehand, before we started this kind of how we wanted to take this episode and talk about it. A lot of people out there, we don't want to talk about goals for the new year. Everybody overdoes that. But literally, if you really want to take your business to different levels, if you want to go up your game, go find a different tribe to hang out with. Our buddy Greg Reed likes to say you're the average of the five people that you hang around the most. With. So if you need to adjust who you hang out with, now's the time to start looking at where can you find those people. Maybe it's not a business. Maybe it is a BNI group, a business networking group, or maybe it's a postmaster's group or something like that. It's speaking public. Or maybe it's going to join a master like mine or Aaron's to kind of surround yourself with other entrepreneurs that have gone through the same thing that you're going through, that you don't want to go out and have to hack a path through the forest. You can follow a path where others have gone before you.

Well, I'll tell you, I've invested quite a lot of money over the years. Here's the thing, folks. We started our mastermind at $4,700 for the year. Everybody said, are you crazy? It's too inexpensive. Two live events, two plus access, plus a lot of other acts, a lot of other value, $4,700. My goal was to see who could we attract and what could we create. But as you prove the concept and you see the value that's created, then the reason you raise the price isn't to get greedy. It's to have a filter for who gets to be in the group. And depending on what the sort of the playing field is of the people in the group, you need to have those filters in place. There's a group I've been invited into a number of times, and when I very first looked at it years ago, I didn't see the value of spending the $25,000 to get into the group. I didn't really know the guy that was facilitating it. I didn't see how his business background and mine really meshed. I didn't really know anybody else that was doing it. Now that same group is like really hard to get into and has the who's who of people in there because people, it's sort of been self selecting. They've kind of bumped some people out. And now to get into the Group. There's a financial filter, but there's also the filter of do you qualify to hang out with this group of people? I've often said the reason that. And I have another thing I want to talk about here. Totally different in a minute. I've often said that it's not that the rooms at the Nevis Four Seasons Hotel are so much better than the Marriott at Wailea in Hawaii. It's not that the room is so much different. That makes the price ten times different. Right. It's the Four Seasons is trying to attract a different group of people so that if the movie star or the business titan comes there, they don't have people bugging them because the other people that are staying there are of the same sort of ilk. Right. They're not so excited to have their to go meet and greet Tom Cruise. Right. There's a reason why Ellison from Oracle bought the entire island over there of what is it? Lanai bought the entire island. The freaking giant massive volcanic island. It's not like Eddie Murphy's little island in Bahamas. This is like boom. Those people really want to get away from everybody else and they. The filter is a couple hundred million dollars. We'll buy a continent and leave ourselves alone.

But.

The reason people charge is the filter. That's the point, right?

There's people that are oh hey, let's do a free mastermind. Let's get together. If you open up to everybody, it's really you're. It really waters down the message on different things. I mean that's not saying you're not gonna get some nuggets out of it. I be able to find some things. Sure, of course, yeah. If you open a very topic and there's no investment that part. There's no investment for them to show up on a regular basis. There's no incentive or loss if they. I'm just gonna stay home and watch NYPD Blue tonight or versus going to a meeting or I'm not going to. I don't want to fly across to San Diego. I just stay home.

I like what you just said about NYPD Blue because I was talking to my son. No, no, I was talking to my boy last night. I have a son, a wonderful 20 year old who's living in Japan right now, going to university there. He's very introverted where my other three kids are very extroverted. Chase is very introverted and most of his friends are online. He has a very vibrant online life. Very, very successful online business. But when it comes to interacting face to face it's challenging for him. And so we were video chatting last night. Last night for me, daytime for him. He said, dad, it's really hard for me to just talk myself out of going out of my apartment and going and doing something because it makes me very nervous. And I think a lot of people feel that way when they go into a new circumstance. It's very intimidating when, you know, you don't know the rules of engagement. And I told him the story of a woman who had a goal. This is a true story. She had a goal to go to the gym and lose weight and get in shape. And yet she had kept a membership of the gym for years and had never walked in the door. Had never walked in the door. I get that because I look at all the equipment and stuff and I'm like, I don't really know how to use it. And I'm kind of chubby. Like, I see all my flaws. Right? We all do. And I kind of get that. Like, I'm gonna be out of breath, I'm gonna be sweat like a pig. I'm gonna look stupid. I don't know that I don't have the right clothes, right? So I get his. And for a boy who's very introverted and socially, I don't wanna say challenged, but it's uncomfortable.

He's just a little introverted. That's all it is. And especially adding a foreign country to the mix is also a double too.

So here's the deal with this lady. The question her coach. And her coach is somebody that I know quite well. Same coaches as my son, chase his mother. The coach said, what could you do? What could you do? I could drive to the parking lot of the gym. Okay, so do that. Go do that a few times. So the person drove to the parking lot, turn around, left, drove to the parking lot, stayed there for a little. Okay, now another coaching session. Okay, good. So you've gone there. What else could you do? I don't know. I'm so scared to walk up to, you know, and go in. Okay, well, could you walk up and touch the front door? Could you just touch the handle of the front door? Yeah, I could do that. That went on for several weeks. The person would drive to the parking lot once or twice a week, get out of the car, walk to the front door, touch it, get back in the car and leave. Finally, the person had the courage to open the door and step in. And once they were in there, they said, I'm a member. I've never been here. How do I do this? And then they realized that people were there, put their arms around them and celebrate the fact that they walked in, show them how to use the equipment and so on. So I said to my son, pal, if you're going to have a different. You want a different experience in Japan than you're having. If you're going to have a different experience, you have to become a slightly different person. You have to gain some new skills. What could you do? He said, I could walk a different route to the train station. I could walk in a different convenience store than I normally go in. All leading up to, could you stay on campus longer and go to the restaurant, you know, the student union? Could you invite some friends that you meet in your class to go get a Coke? Right? I said, what could you do? I could walk a different way to the train station. That's the start. And that's the thing. If we're going to make 20, 19 different than 2018, we have to do something different than we're used to doing. And maybe that's join a book club. Maybe that's take rock climbing lessons, or maybe it's. Or. And maybe it's mixing it up with a different group of people to sharpen your saw, to enhance your skills, to meet new people who will introduce you into, you know, you and I both give a lot of talks. Well, it's really important to keep meeting new people who will invite you to speak in front of their group, because if you only speak to the same people over and over again, pretty soon you've saturated that market. You're done. It's not done done, but it's not a big harvest. You have to go new places and meet new people who don't know about the things that you do so that they can go, oh, discovering you fresh for the first time right now, even though you feel like everybody already knows every. I think after 40, what's it gonna be? 47. For almost 48 years, everybody knows what Laughlin Associates does, but I bet you most people listening to us right now go, who's Laughlin Associates? But after hundreds of thousands of clients over five decades, doesn't everybody know we exist? Well. Well, no, they don't. And even if they've heard of us, for one thing, they don't know about the whole menu of other things. So you've got to get in front of new people. You got to get in front of new people. And one of the best ways to get in front of new people and grow your business is to Invest in a mentor, a coach, or a mastermind, where it's kind of like, I'd say for personal development, a coach is better, and for business development, a mastermind is fantastic.

I totally agree with that. I have coaches still this day that I spend time with, that help I talk with on a pretty regular basis, you know, at least once a month when you talk about things and where business is going and what I want to focus on. And then I do the same thing with other people. I have people that reach out to me as being their coach in the no biz space as they are dealing with issues or struggles. I always tell them sometimes it's just a vent session where they need somebody to vent to. I'm like, that's fine. Vent uphill to your coach. Don't vent downhill to your spouse or employees. You never want to do that.

Or to people who can't guide you.

Yeah.

I mean, you're just bitching then, right? You said vent. That's probably more PC complaining. Down. All that makes them either feel. They'll feel nervous or they'll feel, you know, make them insecure, or it'll make them frustrated with you, or they'll just be on your semen and fan the flames of your complaint, you know, because, darn it, that's not fair. A coach will ask you how you can change things.

Yeah.

You know, people sometimes worry about the cost of a coach, and this is not meant to. I hope nobody misinterprets this as being a commercial. This is not. You cannot coach with me. I don't provide coaching personally, so it doesn't matter. I don't do it. I don't want to be a coach. However, I'd say in the last two years, Scott, I bet I've spent. I don't want to exaggerate this. $150,000 on coaching for specific things that I needed guidance with. And I hired somebody who knew what to do to speed up my results. A lot of people go, oh, $5,000 for three months or something is a lot of money. I can't afford it. Here's my answer to you. If you figure out that you can't afford it because you'll find it, you'll find the money for something you want to do. If you say, I can't, that's too much, or I can't afford it, or that's more than I would pay a psychologist or a doctor or something, you know, a medical, you're just going to stay in the same rut. You're in. And as a matter of fact, if I was saying this, if I wasn't on your show and I was on my show, I would say it more harshly, which I would say the reason you're staying poor, or if not poor, stuck. Your company's at 650,000 revenue and, and you desperately want to hit a million, but you can't grow because guess what? You don't know anymore. You've exhausted what you know. You need someone to help you see a different way of doing it than you already know. That's why you go to a coach. If you had a golf coach or a baseball batting coach or a quarterback who somebody showed, it's not because they're more of a world class athlete, it's because they can see what you can't see. I love the expression you can't read the label from inside the bottle. I say it all the time, but that's how it is. The reason we have a coach or a mastermind or a confidant or a psychologist you go to is because they can see things you can't see. The reason Scott mentioned earlier that Erin and Scott get together privately and we're going to do it in Austin over the next couple days is because there's stuff we know how to do that the other one doesn't know how to do. And if we share that or go, oh, I've noticed in your writing you're saying this expression all the time. What does that mean? I know it's jargon you understand, but I don't understand it as the reader. Maybe that will increase your conversion rate because now people know what the heck you're talking about. But you're writing the way you know how to write. Your coach or your mastermind group will go, what if you tried it a different way? Oh my gosh, I got a better result. If you can't afford to put yourself in positions to fly across the country to Cape Coral or to San Diego or to Austin, right, like we're going to do, then just expect your results to stay the same and if you're satisfied with your results, hooray. But if you're frustrated with your results, it's probably because you've exhausted your awareness of what to do and you now need an outside perspective. You mentioned Greg Reed and he talked about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and he didn't try to go and do it on his own. He hired somebody, been up that mountain 300 times, and he just put his foot in the footsteps of the person leading him they got to the top. Doesn't mean he couldn't have climbed. But he also could have died on the way to the top.

Exactly. Well, that's the thing. And a lot of us are. I think a lot of us are killing ourselves trying to get different results out of the same actions. And that's never going to be the way to do it.

I mean, that's a definition of insanity.

It is. It is totally. Definition of insanity. And you mentioned, hey, you're coming in Austin here. I'm really excited to have you here. It's not a typical event. It's not a class or a workshop. It's literally Aaron, myself. Megan's coming as well, too, correct?

Yeah, Megan will be here. Quest.

Quest, Yep. Quest will be there. George Antone will be there. We got. Meryl Chandler's gonna be there.

We got the hazards, right?

The hazards are coming. The white.

Like seven. Seven or eight of us.

Yep. There'd be like eight of us. Eight or nine of us there.

Like seven or eight companies.

Yep, yep, exactly. And I'm a big believer. And they're all individual. There's no really any crossover of being able to sit down and look at for a day and a half. Okay, what's your schedule look like for next year? I'm pretty good at knowing what everybody's business is. Not everybody knows what everybody else is, but I believe that, well, these are the companies that we end up promoting the most throughout the year. And I wanted to bring everybody in. We're some of the largest referrals for these businesses, you know, Laughlin and Quest and, and have you come in and spend some time, hey, how can we do a better job in 2019 for you? What are your events? Let's be proactive about helping you market those events or getting the word out not only to our database, but also out to other marketing factions and also looking at each other's businesses. Hey, I think there's an opportunity here between, you know, A and B or there's an opportunity between B and C or hey, if you're speaking a lot of their speaking at different clubs, what's another event that you're speaking that might be a good fit for Aaron that I spoke on or place that Aaron spoke that might be a good fit for George or vice versa to really help us get more out of our year and also just kind of pick our brains.

The other thing that's really cool about this, and this kind of goes back to that, what we were talking about with masterminds. While this Is not a seminar or. It's sort of. A lot of people will say, well, I hear this regularly. Well, why am I doing this? What's the transaction? And if we only look at relationships as transactional, I mean, business relationships as transactional, I believe we miss the bigger point. What happens is like, I meet Nathan Long. We meet, we chat, we have a moment, and then we hand it off to subordinates to work on stuff, right? We get busy and we hand off. There's something about the leader, the owner, the buck stops here. Being in a room, having dinner with or lunch with, seeing how the other person is dressed, or hearing about what they're doing for the holidays or watching, like, whatever it is, knowing what their hobbies are, it changes the nature of the relationship and it gives everybody a greater desire to be mindful of. Now, my friend, right? My business, my warm acquaintance, or my friend, and I don't throw the word friend around. That's why it was very touching to me at the beginning when you said I was one of your closest friends. I feel the same way, but I never want to presume these things because that's a very personal, intimate relationship. But we have a lot of warm business relationships that with a little nurture, with a little face time, with a little breaking bread time, as you said, it changes the relationship and it exponentially grows the opportunities. This is why you've got to do something more than just do a deal. You got to be around people, and getting out and being with the people makes. Everybody says, how do you have the life you have? How do you make the money you make? Don't you get that all the time? I get it all the time. Well, the thing is, Scott Carson and Aaron Young are both constantly out meeting people, nurturing relationships, and then trying to teach the people that come to us for nurture, teach what we've been learning. But we have to make an investment to get that information, to pass it on. And then those people that we teach end up teaching others, and the growth of the entire group just accelerates, just explodes. But if you stay home watching NYPD Blue, you're not going to grow.

Yeah, you're going to stunt your growth for sure. That's definitely the biggest. We look at the new year on some things and, you know, we always. One of the things I always do go back. I've got different calendars in front of me here. I'm constantly looking at my calendar. Where are we at? One of the big things that we look at doing as well, too. Once a year is try to take a big trip, whether it's a cruise for a week or a trip to Europe or stuff like that. I know you and Michelle love to travel as well.

Yeah.

We look at our schedule, stuff like. And I are like, oh, my gosh, you know, it's been five weeks straight. We basically been doing something. I'm like, it's all right. It's coming to end. We had this last thing of the year. It's gonna. And I'm more excited about this event, honestly. I love my masterminds, but this is up. Up there because I'm excited about it. I'm excited to spend, you know, with 8, 9, 12 people that I admire and respect, that we get a chance to really not have students around, not have to be on. You know, we all can lay back and turn the on, switch off a little bit just to be our normal selves, to joke a little bit. Because that's kind of a rarity these days for things when you get a very busy schedule.

When we're. Yeah, I think you and I both, we're in teaching mode a lot. We're in teaching mode a lot digitally and face to face, which is great. And I love every second of it. Well, we do need. We all need time. And that's why being in a mastermind, it's one thing to facilitate it. It's another one thing to just be a part of it where you can just go into student mode instead of teacher mode or what's going to happen here in Austin. And I don't mean to be exclusive, because people that are watching are not going to be there. But the point is, everyone watching can say, what is it that Scott Carson has organized and that the rest of us get to participate in? Because it was your idea, Scott, that you guys can do out there for your. Your main affiliates, your vendors, though, the people that you would like to be doing business with that you have a relationship with, but you're not really having that real valuable, ongoing pipeline of business. It goes back and forth. If you're here, if you've lasted an hour, I hope that the takeaway from this is invest time and energy and money into being around people that can help elevate you as a human being, as a leader and as a financial success. And I think that has to go in that order. As a human, how are you going to be a better person? That'll make you a better leader. And as a better leader, you'll have greater financial success. At which point you become a servant. When you Become successful. I think it's incumbent on anybody who has surplus to begin serving other people. Giving away that surplus, investing it in the betterment of our community, of our world, of our health, of our. Just give. You got to give it away. And ironically, the better you get at giving away, the more flows back to you as a person, as a leader, and you become. It's a crazy circle. That's true that the people who stay hunkered down and sit home on the couch at night and then wonder why the world passed them by. It's because you didn't get out and play in the game. Because you didn't get in the game.

Gotta get in the game. It's such a big, big, big key out there, everybody. And I think that's a really good spot to kind of wrap up this episode here, because if we are. You're in the game right now, whatever you're doing. But if the game's not. If you're not scoring as much, you're not seeing much activity, you're not closing enough business, the best thing I can recommend. I know Aaron said this before. I will get in the game. Go surround yourself with new people. New tribe, New tribe. You know, look at the people you spent your time with. Look at the groups that you spent your time with this past year. Were they fruitful? Were they beneficial to you? Did you receive as much as you gave? Because you have to give. If all you did was take, you didn't give. Well, that's the wrong type of relationship. You have to be in. You want to give and then also be able to receive. Like, I guarantee, if you give, you get tenfold back of what you end up giving.

Oh, yeah.

It's a big, big thing out there. So, Aaron, I'm gonna let you go. I want to thank you for being on here and being a regular contributor, being a sponsor of the show as well. For us. We were so honored, and I'll say this online here with everybody. I were so honored that Laughlin Associates is a, you know, big, big staple of what we love to promote. You guys do a tremendous job for all of our students. I know that when I. That many of them that are clients here are very happy that they have you guys working with them.

Okay. Yeah, we love. And I endorse you right back. You've had me on as a guest for years when you called up and said, I'm really blown up my podcast. Would you like to sponsor? This is the kind of thing you want to throw fuel on because what you're doing matters. And so I didn't have to pay to get on this thing. You've had me as a guest many times, every event. Right. But I'm telling you what, I'm so proud to be a sponsor of the show, and I'm so glad that it's having such success. I just really hope that everybody out there goes back, checks out the archives and learns all they can from both Scott's expertise and the vast number of people you brought on. Thanks for letting us play in your sandbox.

Hey, our sandboxes get bigger when we play each other's.

Right? And I'll see you for dinner tomorrow night.

Sounds good, brother. You guys have a safe trip out there. We'll see you then. All right, Aaron.

Thanks, man. Okay.

Bye.

Bye.

All right, guys, that's going to wrap it up for this episode. Do yourself a favor, look at what your year has done. Look at your calendar. Look at where you've been or where you haven't been this year and look at what maybe opportunities lie ahead in 2019 for you. Because trust me, if you expand your tribe, expand your audience, expand the people you hang around with, you may just expand your bottom line, expand your wealth, definitely expand your hearts. So go out, have a great day, everybody, and we'll see you up top, everybody. By.