Brad Hart: From Hedge Fund To Masterminds, Discover Why This Entrepreneur Wants To Change The Trajectory In Other People's Lives

I do really believe 100% from every part of me that everyone has the capacity to be able to do the things that they want and not to be held back by the mental baggage that's in our head that we want to push through.

Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. In each episode, we get down and personal with people who go after the things they want to make all their wildest dreams come true. Join us as we unveil and dissect a formula for what it takes to do the thing. Here is your host, Stacy Lauren.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. I met our next guest at an investment mastermind, and after the event, I read his book and I instantly knew he was perfect for the show. He's another shining example of someone who does the thing and everything he does. His story really blows my mind and I know it will resonate with so many of you. This guest has an extremely open mind. While so many other entrepreneurs struggle with change and fail to break out of the mold, he's always guiding the arrow forward without ever looking back. He's not afraid to pivot when something no longer lights him up, and he's accepting of new innovations wherever he finds them. Oh, and he has a really funny sense of humor, too. He's been an entrepreneur for 20 years, and he has 16 years of experience in wealth management. But even making loads of money wasn't his end goal. Instead, he thrives on guiding other entrepreneurs to discover their full potential. He's the founder of Make More Marbles, the author of two books, and the leader and inspiration of countless masterminds. I am so excited to welcome Brad Hart to the show. Hey, Brad.

Hey, Stacy. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for everybody at home for listening. I hope you get something really great out of this.

Yeah. I'm so excited to have you on. It was so really, it was great meeting you recently and I know I got your book right after we met and just getting a chance to even getting to know you better through that has been really cool. And so I'm just super excited to be able to talk to you more about your story.

Not more excited than me. Let's go.

Well, I'd love you to start off and just tell everybody about you and your background.

Yeah. So my name is Brad. I'm from New York. I spent about 27 years there, went to school, did the thing. My mom and dad were. Yeah, they came from lower middle class, I'd say background. Dad was a lumber Truck driver, Mom worked in delis. Dad got hurt when I was really young and mom had to leave to go support us. So it was mostly me raising myself with my dad as a roommate in a lot of ways because he wasn't really up to the task of keeping me in line. Let's put it out. So I had to grow up kind of independent and you know, we didn't have a lot of money to kick around. So by the time I was going to be like 12, 13, I realized if I wanted anything besides the basics, you know, just food and roof over my head, I had to go out and work for it. So I ended up doing a number of odd jobs, starting lawn care business and working restaurants and worked at a shooting range for a while. Even ended up working on an ambulance. As a young kid, it was just always like, what's the next job that I can upgrade to, to make more money? And I never really gave a lot of thought to fulfillment or purpose or anything like that. So that continued on through my college years. Wanted to be a doctor for the wrong reasons. Got into Wall street and real estate for, for similar reasons. Just how much money can I make? And I learned a lot of cool things along the way. I met a lot of great people. I won't go into all those stories. You can probably hear them elsewhere if you're really interested. But it's around 26 when I had a lot of financial success and it wasn't really what it was cracked up to be. All of a sudden I'm 26 years old, I'm running this hedge fund. I'd been published in Forbes and had a few cool wins under my belt. And we had like 106% year, the best month of which we had a million $40,000 month in trading profits in my fund. And I never expected to make that much money in that short amount of time. So when it happens, I all of a sudden had to look around and be like, wait, do I like my life? Right? If money isn't the only goal, well, what is it? And it was at that time I had some mentors who had been guiding me or oh, you should check out Landmark and you should go to Tony Robbins and some other things. And I'm like, yeah, sure. I, I bought Tony Robbins book and I put it on the shelf for six years. Does that count? It's like shelf help. That's not the way you get the breakthrough and transformation. So I ended up going down that rabbit hole and doing a lot of personal development work. And it was actually at a Tony event that my life changed forever. And it was the first Tony ever went to, is called Unleash the Power Within. And I'm there in the event. And if you've never been, it's a big room with a lot of energy and thousands of people jumping around and music and all this stuff. And I'm like, I don't know if I'm in the right room. This is weird. Everybody's bumping into each other and they seem to have drunk the Kool Aid. And that wasn't me at that time. So I noticed a woman sitting there staring at the floor and not really engaged with everything that's going on. So I go up to her and ask her. I said, hey, what's going on? I shouldn't be here. What do you mean you shouldn't be here? Well, I can't afford to be here. Somebody bought me a ticket and I'm about to lose my house and my kids are going to not have food this month. I'm like, oh, man, that's rough. I'm sorry to hear that. Well, it sounds like you're in the right place. I don't know if I can solve all your problems, but I'm not going to let your kids starve, you know. What's your address? I sent her one of those prime pantry boxes that Amazon had. I don't know if they still do with just, you know, non perishable, healthy food. And I just said, hey, listen, you know, if you need more food, don't worry about it. I got you covered. Just. Just reach back out. So we connected on Facebook. I sent her the box and it just kind of forgot about it. I went on with the event, went on with my life, and never spoke to her after that until about a year later I got a note on Facebook that she had been live. And I was tagged in the Live and like, oh, what's this about? So I watched the Live, and she's in her car and she's crying. She's saying, hey, I was ready to give up. I was ready to end my life. And this act of kindness, which I completely forgot about, had kept her going and she was on a better. On a better track. So it was at that moment I realized that even small things that you don't even think about could change the trajectory of somebody's life, could save somebody's life. And that really stuck with me as, oh, I'm here to do more than just make some money and die. Right? I'm Here to do more than just master business. I'm here to work out some of the traumas I've been dealt, but then additionally help the people who haven't worked those traumas out yet. Help find the things that have worked for me. And that's something I've always been pretty good at, is like, if I can go someplace and dive really deep into a topic and then extract what I feel works, you know, like, Bruce Lee had a big effect on me. He said, take what is useful, add what is uniquely your own, and discard the rest. And I've just been doing that over and over again throughout many years. And masterminds have accelerated that, Businesses accelerated that, and the spiritual work I've done has accelerated that. The health journeys I've been on and exercise has always been really important to me, you know, have been. Have been instrumental in that. But I think everybody's on a journey, and some of us are on different journeys at different times, and we can all help each other to make sense of what they're. What we're going through, and then ultimately get to the other side and get a good outcome. So that's really what we focus on. And I don't want to talk forever. I'll. I'll let you chime in here and ask any questions, but I can keep going if you like.

Yeah. No, it's amazing how one moment can change so much. Not only for you, but for this woman. You kind of going through your life in this way that you're. We all kind of think we're supposed to, which is, let's let me just make enough money. And then there you are so young, where you've made it, and then you realize there's gotta be more than this. And then getting yourself to the Tony Robbins event and finding this woman there that needs help, and then there you are helping her, and then you get to find out about it a year later. I think that's. That's incredible. And then probably that feeling that you got afterwards just by knowing you made an impact on someone without even doing something that to you, wasn't hard.

Yeah. And the funny thing about life and universe and, you know, I was raised Catholic, which is a really good way to not end up Catholic as an adult, by the way, if you're raised that way. But I'm very spiritual in. In my adult life, and it's. It's more of a relationship with God, source, creator, whatever you want to call it. But there's. There's no way to really encapsulate what that is in words. So I'm not even going to try. But what it is to me is this benevolent force of love that wants every person, every living thing really, to express themselves in the highest and greatest condition and understands that this is a temporary expression. We're going to live, we're going to die, and it's going to be a relatively small, small amount of time based on the large scale of the universe. Billions and billions and billions of years. Right. So it's massive to us. It's our entire lives. It's all we've ever known, but it's a blip on the radar for it. So it doesn't really care what kind of suffering we need to endure. It's going to give us what we need to grow into what is our highest expression. So when you ask God just to use the placeholder for something, you'd have to be willing to accept that God is going to give you the things that you need to grow into the person who can that thing. So when you're asking for wealth, or you're asking for health, or you're asking for a great relationship, well, you have to become the person who can have that. And that's going to take some pain along the way. Now, you can choose to suffer, or you can choose to meet those challenges. You can s. You can choose to give up after the first one, or you can choose to. To keep at it until you get the lessons. And that doesn't mean you ever don't get those issues again. And, and they'll keep showing up throughout your life. But I think that's kind of the point is like, what do we have to give this person out of love? Right? It's not out of kindness. It's not out of gimme, gimme, gimme. It's more, what loving response do we need to give this person so that they can meet their desire by growing and contributing as the person they need to be in order to get it? Because if they were that person, they'd already have it. That's the vibrational and quantum nature of the universe. It's being proven even though we can't explain it in words always, it's being proven more and more with science. There's a. There's a spooky amount of quantum action that's happening in our daily lives that our thoughts, our beliefs, our habits, our actions, our. All of it is feeding into what our lives become. And that's why you hear a lot of successful people talk about manifestation and vision and all this stuff and most people are not successful, will immediately jump on that and be like, oh, they were just lucky or they had the right connections, or they were born in the right family or they grew up with money. It's like, no, none of that's true. In fact, I'm the exact opposite of that. And I don't even recognize who I am now compared to my perception. Even 10 years ago, 10 years before that, forget about it. A completely exponential difference. And I think anybody can transform their life in a big way. And it's just been fascinating to see how people respond to it. Both people I've never met before and people who knew me back then in different ways. And it's just really enlightening to see people further along in their journey. Good example is a guy named David Goggins, who I just listened to another podcast with him and Joe Rogan. He's, he's had a couple of best selling books. And this guy was, if you ever heard of him, I mean, he's, he's an incredible story. He was 300 pounds overweight, decided to lose all the weight, become a Navy SEAL and then an Army Ranger and then a power jumper and then a fire guy. All this different stuff just to prove that he could do it and prove to himself that he wasn't that weak, small minded person that he thought he was. And he failed and gave up a lot. And along the way he found his way to becoming one of the hardest men on the planet, so to speak. You know, like somebody who runs 240 miles in Moab for like 69 hours on busted knees. The bones in his feet are breaking. It's all mental toughness that gets him through. He doesn't have any reason why he should be able to do the things he's doing. Anybody who's not in his mindset would say it's impossible. Scientists would say it's impossible. But here he is doing it, so, so there must be something more to it. So I think a lot of my journey and what I'm trying to do here is show people that if you can change your mind, you can change your life. And if you can change your, your habits and your thoughts and your actions, that becomes your reality. Because everything is planting and reaping, everything is action equals to reaction. Everything is inputs equal outputs. And if you don't like the outputs you're getting in your life and you want different outputs, well, you got to start with what are the inputs you're putting in and add a little bit of Time and consistency and you'll start getting different outputs and then you adjust accordingly with the inputs. And it's like this keeps going until I would love for everybody in the world to be perfect shape, six pack gabs shredded, billionaire perfect kids, amazing family about to achieve alignment. But that's not the way the world is. But we can all strive towards whatever it is that we want. And I'm not saying everybody needs to be perfect or what even that is, I don't even know. But whatever it is that you want and you desire, you wouldn't have that desire if it wasn't possible to achieve it. So I really exist as, as a stand for that is. I don't want to buy into your limitations. Don't explain to me why you can't help you to understand why you can and why you should so that other people can benefit from that as well. Because your lifetime might be 80, 100, 120 years, maybe it's longer, but the legacy and the ripple effects you can have are endless. I mean, think about all the people throughout history that have inspired us. Even today, their name lives on. So I think that's an ideal worth striving towards, is to leave a legacy beyond yourself.

Yeah, that's so good. And it's so timed for me to hear this too, is because I'm in the middle of planning a do the thing, start a podcast challenge and really encouraging people to start their own podcast. Because, as you know, since you have podcasts like, there's just so many benefits to having one. And especially hearing you talk about being further along in the journey than someone else and then being able to share that wisdom. And then same thing, when you hear someone else further along in the journey than you and you get to hear from them, there's just so much power in that. And it almost makes that ability of enduring whatever that thing is that you had to endure so worth it because of the impact and the ripple that you have after that.

Yeah. I truly believe human beings are so limitless. And the only thing keeping us from seeing that is our own belief, whether or not it's so. And if you just shift that belief, even just for a moment, like if we even just took a moment to pause, visualize what our life could be if we just had no limitations, if we just completely started up from scratch and just get a really clear visual of that and then write that down and get working at it, and so reverse engineering it, you could absolutely build it in 10 years or less. There's no question in my mind. But people want things now and they want it to be easy and they want to be handed to them. And that's just not how the world works. That's not how the universe works. And so it's one of my jobs is to help people understand the nature of the universe so they can get better results. And while I learn it and master it myself, honestly, like, I don't have it perfectly figured out, but there's plenty of people that have shown that amazing, incredible things can happen. And luck doesn't explain it. It's not, it's not realistic to just assuage it all to luck.

Okay, so I'm curious. So I'd love to hear, speaking of limitless, I'd love to hear about 26 year old Brad who ends up working for a hedge fund. How did you even do that? How did you get the guts to actually do a job at that young?

Yeah, so for me it kind of worked organically. So I was 24, I was working real estate in New York, and I had done pretty well in real Estate during 2008-2010. I went from knowing zero things, working in Wall street, got my license, got recruited by a firm, and within two years I had five promotions, I had like six people working under me. I had some great mentors, shout out to Nelson, shout out to Bruno and Noah who own the company. And we were really making a run at it and we're doing well. And then my dad passed away kind of suddenly on Mother's Day, I was going to visit my mom. I was on the train, I got the call and it was a really tumultuous period of my life and I was kind of rudderless for a while, trying to figure out family stuff, trying to figure out money stuff, trying to figure out all the things that just been kind of heaped on me at 24 years old out of the blue. And honestly, I just decided, well, what do I want to do next? And I, based on what I knew about the world at the time, I was like, well, trading sounds cool and it's always something I've been interested in. And that's what attracted me to Wall Street. So I found some mentorship and I failed a lot and learned a lot and ended up in this chat room where they were trading options and just realized like, oh, what they're doing is repeatable and I can learn from these people. And I got into communities where I learned how to trade options. And the specific strategy we were using at the time was we would read Tape and look for dark pool transactions, so big institutional transactions that would get reported to the tape, meaning the transactional record on the, on the market. Like anytime you look at a stock, you'll see buyers and sellers, you'll see transactions. So essentially we just found a way to front run some of these big moves that these institutions were making. And I have no idea if this would work. This is 10 years ago today. But that's how we were able to buy options and get ahead of these moves and make either lose half our money on an option or make 10 to 20 times sometimes on our money. So it was a very volatile thing, but we managed to do pretty well with it. And people kind of caught word and wind of what I was doing. And I got this article in Forbes where I talked about some of the stocks I was trading and one thing led to another and those three stocks I mentioned ended up going up 10x in 18 months rather. And it wasn't really planned, like I didn't have a specific plan. I just kind of did the thing that felt right next and took every opportunity that came in front of me. And somebody reached out to me after that. I was like, hey, I just paid for my wedding with that stock you talked about. How do I give you money to manage? And I'd never considered managing anybody else's money. I was just managing my own little book, right? So I went to a couple really smart people and they say, start a hedge fund. I said, okay, can I just start a hedge fund? Like, do I need a license? And the advice I got at the time was, here's your exemption, here's your exemption, here's what you need to do to get it set up. Here's a lawyer, here's the accountant, the third party administrator, and all the reg D laws and regulations. I kind of sorted through all that with them and they were like, yeah, we can do this. I'm like, okay, great, let's do it. So while you need money if you're going to start a hedge fund, so okay, what do I do? I go to 200 people and I ask them, do you have any money? I can manage. Okay, great. So besides the one that already said yes, 16 others said yes. Like 17 investors out of the gate. And we took that and just traded that. It was a partnership between my fund and another fund who my mentor was running. And we ended up having 106% year that year, which is pretty cool. So 2013, just for reference, the market was on its way up from the more recent crash. In 2009, 2008, 2009, and it was up 25% that year, and we quadrupled that. So pretty big result. And then I turned around to go to the next level. I'm like, okay, great, let's raise real big money and start going at this again. And I just kept hitting resistance. So between that and just feeling burned out and lost and disconnected, I just decided, hey, let me. Let me go try something else. So got out of the financial world and into. Into that, and I would run a hedge fund again. It just would have to be different. That was a little too stressful for me. Like sitting on a computer trading day in and day out. I'd want to do something a little more long term. Met people that have billions under management that barely do any work, and I'm like, oh, that's. That's pretty fun. Maybe I could do a model like that. So it's definitely something that I could go back to if I wanted to. Yeah.

I'm wondering. Cause there's so many people that might have had a situation similar as you did, right? Where maybe they made money doing something and then they had the idea to go bigger and then they wouldn't be able to pull the plug to do the thing. Whereas with you, you ended up joining these trading communities, you're learning how to trade options. You realize, oh, I could actually be a HUD bench manager. You then found 200 people, and then out of those, 17 said, yes. What do you think got you to actually do it versus just talking about it?

I think a lot of fear was driving me at the time. So people are either running away from pain or moving towards pleasure, and usually both. But in unequal measure, and especially if you've had a lot of trauma in your life, if you're running away from that, if you grew up with a hell of a lot of love, love is the more powerful force, and it pulls you into your highest and best self. But if you're running away from pain, that can be really good jet fuel for the beginning, until it runs out, until you get what you want, and then you feel kicking the foot off the gas. So I don't know if. If anybody out there listening has ever experienced this, but you're running away from something that you don't want, you get what you wanted that was running away from it, or you have a result that you didn't anticipate, Then all of a sudden you take your foot off the gas because there's a set point. Everybody has a thermostat it's if it gets a little too cold, we kick the heat on. If it gets a little too hot, you start kicking on the AC and you're right back to where you were. If your financial set point is X and you start going two or three notches behind, well, you're going to pick up steam and get back to X. But conversely, if you end up doing better than you expect, you're going to probably self sabotage to get back to that too. So it's really a mindset game at every level. I like to tell people it's every level there's a new devil or new level, new devil. Because at every place you get to, whether it be a financial goal, health goal, relationship goal, there's always another level and it's always fraught with issues and demons and traumas and things you have to overcome and new mindset shifts. And what got you to that level will not get you to that next level. So you have to let go sometimes of what got you there in order to get to the next place.

Oh, that is so good. What got you to that level will not get you to the next level. That is, that is powerful.

Well, it's just the truth, you know, I wish it was one size fits all, but if that was the case, then we'd all still be working our first job.

I'm curious too. So with the, when you, when you reached out to the people for the hedge fund to be able to manage their money, did you get 183 no's? Did you end up reaching out to all 200 people or did you?

Yeah, some of it was I reach out and they would respond and I would follow a couple times and they just obviously weren't interested or it wasn't a priority. And some of the people were. We'd have a conversation or two and they'd be like, yeah, check with me in a year, I just don't want to do it right now, or whatever. Or some of the people would be like, yeah, I'm interested, but I can only do X. And I was trying to make deals with everybody at that point. So it got me good at pitching, got me good at making deals and it got me good at making it happen. But it was really just a belief. Like I know I've done this with my own money and I've had success, so the next logical step is to do it on a bigger scale. Like that was my mindset at the time. And remember I was like 2512 years on. I can look at it as a more holistic person that's, that's been through more things. And I can kind of think, okay, what was this kid, who was a kid at the time trying to do and did he succeed at it? Yes, ostensibly he got what he wanted. He wanted to make a lot of money. And, and that was fine. But the problem with that is that it wasn't a whole and balanced value set. It was make money at all costs. Not at the cost of others, but the cost of his health, at the cost of his peace of mind, at the cost of his having to work all the time. And what would be a better rule set going forward to get more what you want? Okay, well, maybe it's make a lot of money, help a lot of people, have a lot of fun while doing it. Maybe that's a more complete rule set. So that's kind of the one I've adopted and based off some of my mentors and what they've taught me is if I can help a lot of people and have a lot of success and fun and make a lot of money, and ideally the money part is the first part, because that allows you to do the other two much more easily and at a bigger scale, I'll be in much better shape. And that, even recently was a shift I had. Being around, you know, somebody who made 170 million in real estate in the last 10 years is money's got to come first because without the money, you don't have the fuel to do the other things.

Yeah. I think this leads us into what you're doing now with make more marbles. And then if you. And then talking about kind of that masterminding journey and how you sort of got into that. Do you mind kind of going there a little bit?

Yeah. So make more marbles. The, the idea and the brand is when I was working Wall street and working in real estate, it was a zero sum game, meaning in order for me to win, somebody else would have to lose and vice versa. I didn't love that. I always thought that was like the Hungry Hungry Hippos, if you remember that game, grab them for all the marbles. And I was like, well, why can't we just make more marbles? I had this kind of left leaning abundance mindset. Right. And what I realized as I went on is there's room for competition in the world and there's room for collaboration in the world. And you can compete to win in a zero sum game, but you must collaborate to dominate an abundant game. Right. You really need to Surround yourself with people who share your values and, and want to grow along with you and win together. That's the biggest thing is if you don't have friends that you can do business with and feel comfortable doing that, you need new friends. Come on, you know, we need to be around successful tribe and you're the, the average of the people you spend the most time with. So the, the idea of Make More Marvels has evolved slightly, somewhat, but it's really about community because entrepreneurship is lonely, investing is lonely. You don't have trusted advisors and people you can ask. It's about having mentorship and guidance. And a mastermind is kind of the best of all worlds because it allows us to have the biggest impact and create the biggest income in the least amount of time. So we have a program for example called Build a Mastermind. I worked with a lot of clients to launch their mastermind where our whole goal is to add six figures profit to their business with five to ten hours a month of ongoing work. And that's what a mastermind's about. So I've written a best selling book about that. It's called the Eight Minute Mastermind. We sold, you know, 12,000 copies now, which is pretty good for a book. And we've been able to do a bunch of backend business as well over I think 1.2 million now and helping people build their masterminds through the Build a Mastermind program. So we won like a 2 comma club award and we were top affiliate for Tony Robbins and became a speaker and a trainer and did workshops and masterminds all over the world. I've been a part of like 50 masterminds now. I've started around 15 on my own and I'm currently in seven. So I run two and I'm in five others. And that's really been my biggest hack with which to meet and grow relationships with people who want to win together and have that abundance mindset. So that's really what Make More Marvels is all about. Additionally, recently we started to really help people that they're on that entrepreneurial journey. And remember, you know, my first big win in success in finance, which I've always been obsessed with since I was 16 years old, is how to manage money, right. And how to grow it over time. Because I had a great uncle Al who left my grandfather Bell telephone and Standard Oil stock which became like 25 different companies and paid for his whole retirement. I was like, wow. I saw how much a single decision could change the life of the person who came next in one generation. And then I conversely, saw how my dad inherited that money when I was 16. And by the time I was 24, I was almost gone. And it. Had he lived another three or so years, it probably would have been gone. And I was really sad to watch that. No fault of all, my dad was a beautiful man. He had a lot of demons, but alcohol being probably chief among them. He just didn't have the education. He didn't have the understanding of how to manage that money and make it grow. And that was really my job. I decided going forward, I'm going to master this. And in doing so, I met some of the top billionaires and 100 millionaires and family offices and all the wealthiest people that I can get around. And I've just learned. How did you do it? What did you learn? You know, what were your mistakes? And there's an old saying, a fool repeats their mistakes. A wise person learns from them, but a genius learns from the mistakes of others. So if I can learn from the mistakes that all these people have had and accumulating their wealth, well, maybe I could do better. And then I can pass that along, because each one teach one, and you learn better by teaching, you reinforce these concepts. We do these wealth workshops and money masterminds, and, you know, this family office mastermind offer, FOMO for short. We have all these different programs and protocols in order to get the result of, okay, you're successful as an entrepreneur, you are making more money in your business than it makes sense to reinvest at all. Because for a while, it makes sense to reinvest in your business, but after a while, you have to diversify. So how do we start thinking about that? And most entrepreneurs are terrible at switching gears from offense to defense. They can make the money, but they can't grow, protect, and keep it. And unfortunately, I meet so many people in their 40, 50s, and 60s. They're like, if I could just have held on to the money that I made, I'd be wealthy for the rest of my life. But instead, it's been this famine cycle for 20, 30 years. I don't know any different. I'm too old to make a change, and that sucks. And I want to help them to get on track and, and really come out of this next recession richer, not poorer. It's going to be a really hard one, I think, because we've been kicking the can for so long. So I'd love to have any more questions, prompts.

It's great when you see how, like, all the Things that you've been through, done in your life then lead to something that's now potentially going to be able to leave or it is going to be able to leave a legacy for so many other people.

Yeah, 100%. And written a couple books. You could check them out. The one about masterminds, if that's interesting to you, is called the Eight Minute Mastermind. You can go to eightminutemastermind.com and grab it for free plus shipping. It's like six bucks anywhere you want to go. And then the other One is the 8 minute money manager. Same deal, 8minoneymanager.com check it out. I think they're great books and one makes sense if you're looking to add profit and less time to your business. The other one is like, okay, cool, I'm making good money. How do I manage it? And I know it's a more niche topic than the mastermind one, but I really feel like for the people who it's right for, it's, it's the perfect next step.

I love that eight minute thing. That's smart. I didn't realize that you had multiple eight minutes branding.

Yeah. And I got an eight Minute marketer book in here somewhere. I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

So what do you think is the thing that gets you to do the things you do? Have you kind of honed in on that? How. And you mentioned you were driven by fear when you.

Yeah, good question.

That, that other job. So I'm just curious, now that you've had more, more things under your belt, what is it?

Yeah, I think it's still fear in ways. Right. It's like fear of irrelevance or fear of meeting the day, meeting the person one day that I knew I could have become. Like, I'm around successful people a lot and that's a blessing and I love it. But it keeps you humble and it keeps you focused on like, oh, there's next levels. And it's not, oh, I want what they have. It's no, I want the possibility and the unleashing of my true potential to be the number one goal. So I'm driven by love of my future self, my future family, future generations, helping the entrepreneurs, we get to help building the tools and the cool companies that we get to build. And I haven't even gotten into like what we're building on the, on the blockchain side. We have four different startups there. And you know, it's just, there's a lot to do here in Life. And people want to sit you down and say, Brad, you're doing too much. Or when are you going to take a break? Or why don't you just, you know, ease off the gas pedal. I'm like, no, I have a mode and this is the mode. And I'm on a marathon, not a sprint. I don't slow down, I don't speed up. I just keep going at the rate uncomfortable. And as my capacity increases, I can do more and more and more. And I hate taking breaks. Like I get in arguments with my, my fiance Jasmine all the time, like, why don't you just take a vacation to sit on the beach? Because I'd be miserable. I'd be bored in 10 minutes. I have nothing to do and it's not fulfilling. So I'm going to fill my time with stuff that fulfills me. And if that's not fulfilling to other people or they don't understand it, well, then they get to do their life however the hell they want. Let me do mine. Right. It's impossible for, for one person to feel, know and understand what I've been through and vice versa. So I just ask for the grace to find my own way and what makes me happy. And hopefully that helps other people too, you know?

Yeah. When you're working with people, so are you, so are you directly coaching them with make more marbles? Is that kind of the model that it is?

Yeah, it's a mastermind model. Right. So we love masterminds. And everything is group. I don't do anything one on one right now. And that's been the model for the last five years is my team supports me and I support the group. And I have office hours every Wednesday. And I don't miss, you know, for the last four years I haven't missed a single call. And the goal is just to have everybody show up. And we follow a format. It's on the book and you can look it up, but the format really quickly is, you know, gratitude and wins. Right. So we want to celebrate what's working in our life because we don't want to just bring problem energy to the problem. That's not going to solve it. You know, Einstein said that you can't solve a problem in the same level of consciousness in which it was created. So you bring gratitude, you bring celebration, you bring abundance to the beginning of the call. You celebrate, it was working. Then we transition into challenges or something that we want to move faster on. They clearly articulate that. And if it's not clear to everybody in the room or me or whoever's facilitating. I'm going to ask a bunch of clarifying questions, because clarity is the number one goal of a hot seat. That's why masterminds work. If you're not clear on what's actually going on, then how the hell are we going to solve it? We're going to aim at something we're going to miss, so we have to be on target. And the clarity allows you to be on target. So we ask clarifying questions until it's really clear what's going on. And then 90% of the time, when somebody is really clear on what's actually going on and they're not lying to themselves anymore or just not understanding what's happening, they can solve their own problem. Like 90% of time, and then 10% of time. We need a little bit of a connection, a resource, an opportunity, a person assistant. Talk to this person, talk to that person. But that's the power of a hot seat, is that clarity. And there's really three things that make a mastermind. There's clarity, community, and content. And if we can continue to build amazing community and an incredible library of content and then add that clarity piece so that people can customize their journey and really get to the heart of what's going on for them. It's an unstoppable formula, and that's why I keep doing it, because it just works so damn well compared to coaching and reading books and all this other stuff. Like, those are all fine. I do all those things. But the mastermind is like jet fuel. It's unbelievable, especially for the time per. Per person.

Yeah, it's. I've been in a mastermind also for the last four years, and that is, I would say, the number one thing that's really helped me move the needle, too. So I think it's so smart that that's something you're doing and then also helping people do.

Yeah, and it's a. It's a leverage hack, too. Everybody asked me out for coffee dates or to put on a podcast or to go out to dinner, and I received and responded and scheduled and booked every single request. I would have no life. I just wouldn't. Right. The number of people I know, the number of people want to know me would be untenable. And I'm not even that famous. Right. I always tell people, I don't want to be Brad Pitt famous. I'd rather be Brad Hart famous. I don't want to not be able to walk down the street, but I can't even imagine what it's like for somebody like that. And I'm just an entrepreneur. So the way I get leverage on that is I do these mastermind groups. So I tell people, hey, instead of you and I just one on one doing something, why don't you come to this group and we can all meet amazing people and hang out together and get clarity our stuff together. So that's been what I've done professionally for a while and it's been the basis of everything I've done to launch businesses and to grow our brand and to meet the people I want to meet, to build relationships I want to build for whatever the next thing is. And it will always be a tool in my toolkit that I keep coming back to. If people want to have a lot of success, well, the top coaches in the world like Dan Sullivan would say who, not how. If I know everybody, I don't need to know everything. So my goal is not to master every single skill in the world. It's to become competent enough and know who the best is so that any problem can be solved.

So good. What are the masterminds you're in right now? What are the ones that you're learning from?

Yeah, so I'm in Genius Network. I just joined that one recently. Flight club is a really good one. My birthday twin, Alex Sutoni and Glenn Ledwell, shout out to them. I'm in one with Taylor Welch. I'm in one with. I run two myself. The wealth workshop slash money Master of mind and the bam one. So that's, that's two. I mean Peter D. Mans is about his 360. And there might be one more I'm forgetting, but like there's always little one off ones too. We do like referral parties and little mini things too. So yeah, that's, that's what I'm in right now.

Do you have a strategy before you decide to join something or start something that you use to like?

Oh, I'm like, I'm like the easiest mastermind sell ever. Like if you get me an iced tea with lemon while I'm at your mastermind, I might give you $30,000. Like the dumbest stuff has gotten me to join a mastermind. Really. I just, I care about the people in the room. That's what I care about. If the people in the room are legit and I feel like there's, there's a level, I don't need to be the dumbest person in the room anymore. That's usually not the case. But in the beginning I was a hell of a lot of times. And when I find rooms like that, I'm like, hell yeah, that helps me grow because there are rooms out there that are just unbelievable and you're surrounded by people that are all brilliant and playing their game at the top level. And that's, that's inspiring to me. Some people hate it, but I've never been the kind of person who could just go in a room and figure stuff out myself. I need to be in the flow with people, talking about stuff, brainstorming stuff. Like the most fun I've had recently as another mastermind we could add to the list kind of is this project 10k that I did with Jared Yellen and his crew. And basically it's like we're launching companies based on a brainstorm session and they have this whole infrastructure to get them up and running into 10k a month with like low code, no code app software. Essentially they're all SaaS companies. And our goal was just like everybody bring your best three ideas and pitch them. So we started with like 42 or some ideas for 16 people, whatever that math works out to be, maybe 44 or 48 ideas. So it'd be six times three is 1848 ideas. And then the outcome was just to whittle it down to 16 good ideas. We ended up with 13, which I can't talk about the specifics on any of them because it's a portfolio now. But basically we built 13 companies out in two days. All the bits and pieces and the ideas and the nuances and who do we know and all that lean startup scrum stuff. And it was the most fun I've had in five years as an entrepreneur. It was so fun to be in a room with brilliant people who were all hand selected by Jared to be in this room, many of whom had done hundred million dollar and billion dollar exits. And here I am still doing more stuff with these people, going to charity galas and events and masterminds and like I'm going to fly to Austin today actually after this. I got a, I got a bail in about 20 minutes to start another project with somebody there that I met. So as you keep going, the leaps get bigger and bigger. So there's that steady consistency and then there's those quantum leaps that happen every so often that you're, when you least expect them, your whole life can change. So that's why I love what I do and where I get to play. And this mastermind thing is I think if you have a Mentor. If you have a mastermind and you have your mindset sorted out, you can achieve anything in life.

What would you say for someone that hasn't been in a mastermind that wants to join a mastermind? What would you tell them?

Get in one. If it sucks, get in another one. Find the one that works, that helps you make big changes in your life. Because if you're not in a room that makes you want to level out, then you're in the wrong room.

And what about someone that wants to start their own mastermind? What would you. What's been kind of holding it off for the right moment or the right time or the right whatever?

Well, I'd like to remind them there is no right moment. There is only right now. Yeah, right now is a good time to read my book and get started. You know, check it out. Aidanmastermind.com I'm not gonna pitch it to you because it's right for you if it's right for you, and if that's not the way you want to go or that's not how you're feeling, like your gut knows what's what. But don't, don't not listen to it if your gut is telling you, hey, build a mastermind. Get the help you need. I'll help you. And we'll get, we'll get your mastermind started. We've dealt with everything you've dealt with or dealing with 500 times for 500 different people. It's like, it's not even a question we can help you at this point. It's just, are you willing to get the help?

Yeah, I wonder is how they. That saying is the best book you'll ever read is the one that you wrote yourself because you had to like channel in to get that is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that. That's good. Is.

Is running a mastermind kind of the same thing where because you're the one.

Comment I get over and over and over again for people to do it is love. It was so much easier than I thought it was. So much better than I thought it was going to be and I can't wait to do it again. And all their bullshit, all their mindset stuff, all their learning beliefs just kind of evaporate when they do their first mastermind. They're like, this is so great. I can't believe deprive myself of this for so long. I'm like, yeah, I get it. And tell somebody else, let's keep it rolling because this is the best Kevin's secret in my Mind you teased me.

A little with your blockchain startups. Do you mind just kind of talking about that for a few minutes?

Sure. So back in 2009, I was developing apps on the App store, maybe like 2008, somewhere in there. And back in the day, you could basically write a long essay and pay a kid 300 bucks to code it. And they would code it and put it on the App Store and they would sell for like two bucks. And we were making a couple grand a month just selling apps. And I was like, this is crazy. It was the first time I ever had a digital product that was infinitely scalable, that would sell all over the world, and money would just show up in my bank account. I was like, I just invented Fire in my mind. It was the coolest thing. So, you know, it was right around the time my dad died and we had a few apps that were doing okay. And this. The guy that was coding them came up to me and he says, hey, you know, I know we've had some success together. Would you be willing to fund an app I've been wanting to build for a while? I was like, yeah, sure, what do you got? He said, I want to make a bitcoin trading app. I was like, what the fuck is bitcoin? You know, I had never heard of it. This is 2009, right? So I looked into it. I read the white paper. I was like, this is fascinating. I don't quite understand all of it, but what do you need? He's like, $5,000. What are you trying to create? He's like a bitcoin trading app. I'm like, okay, got it. Go for it. Here's the money. Let's go see where it lands. And he failed at it because he was basically trying to create Coinbase on a shoestring budget. Wasn't going to work. But had I just bought those damn bitcoins, which were $0.05 at the time, I'd be a multibillionaire.

Wow.

So that'd be 100,000 bitcoins at 20k. Yeah, about $2 billion. So the idea here, the lesson, anyways, always invest in the underlying at least a little bit of your funds. Try to invest in the platform if you can, and if you have no other choice, you can bet on projects. But realistically, the closer you can get to the real innovation, that's what you should be investing in. So now my strategy is more like, you know, what are the platforms that are going to be really relevant and Web three, because, you know, we've had the Web two revolution. And you know, Web two companies, Web three, Web one was companies make content, companies make money. Web two is people make content, companies make money. Web three is people make content and people make money. So rather, Web two platforms that we know and love, like Google and Facebook and YouTube and Amazon, like, would you invest in an Amazon seller or would you want to invest in Amazon? Would you want to invest in a YouTube channel or would you want to invest in YouTube? Would you want to invest in a Facebook profile or in Facebook? Like I think the answer is obviously, but that's the way people are treating crypto. They're trying to invest in these little projects that are built on top of these bigger ecosystems, when you can just invest in the ecosystems. So again, this is not financial advice. I'm not telling anybody to do anything or invest in any securities. What I'm trying to say is my philosophy is I want to be building and investing in the platforms that will really change the game in Web three. Right. Which is where we're heading. And it's still very early. The number of blockchain users versus the number of users that were on the Internet. It's like 1998 right now. So what was happening in 1998? Well, Google was like a year old, Amazon was a few years old. Facebook didn't exist yet. YouTube didn't exist yet. We don't even know what the platforms of Web3 will be. And even if we could kind of put them in a lineup, we wouldn't be able to pick them out right now. We wouldn't be able to tell because everything kind of looks okay. So my goal is to get exposure to as many of these platforms as possible as they become known, and build some along the way. So that's a very long winded explanation. Or you know, the four that I'm really focused on are a dashboard which we're going to launch in about a month. That's exciting. We have four NASA engineers working on it. Guy built Salesforce, another guy just holds company for seven figures doing the UX ui. Really great team, good investors, really strong products. So that'll be one thing. The next thing will be a marketing company and the next thing will be smart contract company, which we've already started. Develop smart contracts for clickfunnels and a few other companies just as like test cases and then finally charity, which is what I'm working on this weekend. So that's very exciting as well.

It's amazing to me, you're like such a great example of Someone that just does the thing and then with everything you do, you're just getting more and more confident to do new things and then go bigger and then be able to keep moving in directions that some people can't even wrap their head around yet. It's really cool the level that you're at right now.

Yeah. And basically the whole world is open like that right now. Like you want to get into the Internet of things or sensors or 3D printing or AI or VR or augmented reality or any of these things is in that stage right now. And these are all things that are going to be huge, massive industries in 10, 15, 20 years. But if you wait around, it's too late. You got to start now and you got to take the arrows a little bit and figure it out. So my goal is to have money now sorted out and that's why I still train and coach people and then working towards money later, which is these big companies that hopefully one day we'll be able to sell and exit and grow into big things.

All right, Brad, the time is here. I would love to hear what is your number one piece of advice for the listeners on doing the thing.

Just keep doing it Every single day. Every single day I get in the cold plunge at 45 degrees. It's one of the ways I start my day. Every day it sucks every day. I don't want to do it every day it's cold. Somehow it feels just as cold as the day before, even though I've been doing it for years. And it's always worth it because I always feel better afterwards. So that's kind of a metaphor for life is like it's always going to suck. You're always not going to want to do it. Your brain's always going to tell you no, but you burn out your mind. You're not your brain, you are a spiritual being having a human experience. So override any limitation, lack or short term gain in order to get the ultimate outcome that you really truly desire. And you're going to have to grind, you're going to have to work and it's going to be hard. And sometimes it's going to be easy, sometimes you'll make quantum leaps. But if you're not in the game, you don't get anything. So seeing as we're all going to die eventually anyway, why not ride this thing until the wheels fall off?

Ah, that was good. That was really good. Please share where people can learn more about you. And I know you mentioned you have a couple of podcasts too, so Your books, your podcast, your website.

Yeah, everything's@makemoremarbles.com that's our website, makemoremarbles.com you can check out the books. 8minutemastermind.com 8minutemoneymanager.com we have all kinds of freebies, giveaways, cool stuff on our list. So definitely jumped on there. We've got some amazing marble makers that you can meet and we're doing four or five events a year. I'm always bouncing around different masterminds, so let's get in the flow and hopefully we can help you to achieve the dreams that you're looking to achieve.

What kind of events do you do?

So we have two ones that we run right now. One is the money masterminds and one is the mastermind of millions, which we're just bringing back. It's a actually one of my mentors events. So we're starting to bring it back together. So that'll be in March probably. We're working on that right now. Awesome.

Well, thank you so much. It's been amazing to get a chance to talk to you. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this with.

Thank you, Stacy. Thank you for everybody for listening. And please do reach out. You know, head on over to makemoremarbles.com let us know what you're up to and hopefully we can help you. And if not, I can definitely point you in the right direction. So no stress. We'll talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening to the do the Thing podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. But even more, we hope you'll be inspired to do the Thing. Do you have a burning question on Doing the Thing that you'd like answered? How about an inspiring do the Thing story of your own that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear all about it. Just leave us a voice message at do the Thing callcast co or email us@helloothethingpodcast.com.