From Failure to Success: Luke Acree Discusses Growth Mindset and Leadership

Welcome everyone to another episode of Mastermind Mastery. This is the podcast for you if you are wanting to create or already running peer groups. It's what we call PACs, Peer Advisory Councils. They might be known as mastermind groups, CEO peer groups, all the same. But this is the podcast if you want to run better PACs, that you want to be better at being a moderator, you want to up your game, learn advanced techniques, hear from myself as well as guests what works, new concepts, trends, techniques. Also learn content, things you can take back to your meetings, different ways to do different things to solve problems that we all have when we're running groups. It will increase your retention, reduce your attrition, get you more members, make you more money, this is the podcast for you. I'm Tina Corner Stolz, the host. I've been doing this since 2005. I built a territory of 10+ groups, sold for a multiple, started Ellis Council, Leader Exchange Council, in 2012. We are a licensing model. We are the leading educator in the peer advisory council space. We have the podcast. I have a licensing program with certification. I've written 2 books. So today, when you hear this episode each and every week, it's a new podcast where we dive deep into a topic for 15, 20 minutes. One week it's me doing a deep dive on all the experience and insights from not only today with our entire licensed partner community or the past, what I've learned along the way. But we also have guests that are out there doing groups today that share their insights and new concepts. So let's get started with today's episode. This whole thing. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Mastermind Mastery. I'm your host Tina Corner Stolz, and I have a guest today, Luke Acri, and I'm gonna let Luke introduce himself. But I love this topic today because we have not talked about it yet. And that topic is about growth mindset, having a mindset of growth. And Luke's gonna dive into that. I found him 'cause I read one of many articles that he has written out there. Um, And what I also love about Luke is he is a YPO member, so he gets it. He understands what the peer group concept is all about. So Luke, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Tina. Appreciate the opportunity to be here. It's always great to be able to network with great people, so appreciate the opportunity.

Absolutely. So will you tell our audience a little bit, one, where you're located and a little bit about all the things that you do?

Yeah, love it. So Luke Acri, president of Reminder Media. We are a marketing company based out of Philadelphia. but work all over the nation. Um, so really background is in marketing. My, my passion is marketing. We help small businesses with their marketing. Um, so you can think real estate agents, insurance agents, financial advisors. If you're a small, uh, business really working off referrals, that's where we come in and help you. Um, relationship marketing is the name of the game. I think relationships drive the currency of business. Um, my organization, I have about 300 team members, a little over 300 team members now. Had to take the team virtual during the pandemic like most business owners, but we stayed virtual. So I ended up hiring in almost— I don't want to say every state. I think I'm in 27 states now. So it opened up a great opportunity to get more talent. But now I kind of run a virtual organization, about 300 people. So that can be a topic for another day, how to run a virtual organization, because that's hard enough. No kidding. But happy to be here. That's a little bit about, about myself.

Excellent. And you mentioned like referrals and referral relationships and, and leveraging all that. And that's a whole nother two conversation because we really support that in regards to how you really find and put together the best members in your group is through referrals. And, you know, right, yep, yep, yep, yep. Not that hardcore cold calling marketing thing. Yeah, well, we're here.

People don't want to do cold calling anymore. I still believe cold calling works. I don't think it has to be cold, but, um, I still think referrals are the best way to, to grow a business. Referrals should be number one, and then you venture off into your calling of leads and outreach and stuff like that.

Yes, yes, absolutely. Topic is growth mindset though. So I'd like the audience to hear about, one, how do— what is growth mindset? What does that mean? And the definition. And then how did you get into, to kind of really being passionate about it?

Yeah, so I'll give you kind of my take. I mean, I think a growth mindset is the belief that you can actually change, that your abilities can improve, your mindset can improve by practice and hard work, that it's actually not something that you have to accept where you're at. You can actually improve upon where you're at, but you got to get yourself into a state where you see it that way. Most people don't even recognize that they go through life unintentionally. It's kind of like a leaf in the wind that they are just going and blowing through life based upon what happens to them, and they're reacting. Versus being intentional about how am I growing, how am I improving, how am I changing and developing? And it's a really simplistic concept when you say it out loud and think about it, but it is so hard to do in practice because like everything in life, it takes discipline, like discipline to have a growth mindset, discipline to focus on intentionally growing. If you read the book Atomic Habits, everybody knows you want to get better 1% every single day. You can kind of think of a growth mindset that way. The question to ask yourself right now, if you're listening to this, are you in a fixed mindset or a growth mindset? Where you believe things can't change, where you believe you are what you are and you're a product of your environment, or do you believe you can control your environment and, and control? So that's, you know, kind of how I think about it at a high level.

Excellent. And thinking about growth mindset, one of the, one of the reasons that I am excited for you to talk to the audience today about this is because as moderators, chairs, directors, etc., running these groups, not only is this about them having a growth mindset— so to what your point out there, all of you guys listening, do you have a fixed or a growth? But the other thing is, do your members have a fixed or a growth? And then how do you deal with that? Because it will be hard for them to be in a group, as much as you know, and have a fixed mindset, right? And so what would you share about— okay, so fixed or growth, but maybe what are the, the benefits of having a growth? Why, why should anybody care?

Well, um, you know, what is the saying? If you're not growing, you're dying. Um, right? So as a, as a person in a relationship, as a business, if you're not growing, you're dying. I, I think a question you can ask yourself is, do you see— to, to understand if you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset— is do you see challenges as opportunities? Or do you go into a victimhood mentality in how you face challenges? Do you see it as an opportunity to learn and to grow and to get better? And then as I think about, you know, the benefits of a growth mindset, the obvious comes to mind, but you're not only improving, but as a leader, and I'm assuming every single person in the, you know, listening to this ultimately is a leader, and you are leading peer groups of leaders, it's like if you don't have a growth mindset of a leader, you yourself won't grow, but the others around you won't grow. Because more is caught in life than ever taught. And so you can teach people all day long, but they're catching way more from you than you're teaching them. And so if they're watching you and you don't self-develop, you're not seeing areas of adversity as opportunities, you're not looking at every challenge in your life as a way you can get better and you can practice, and self-develop, that is going to personify down to the people that you lead. So having a growth mindset is not only essential for you as a human being to grow, to get from point A to point B and what you wanna achieve, but it's that much more important for the, the people you lead. I think of my kids, I have two young kids now, and they're catching things from me all day long, how I face challenges, how I evolve. And so to me, it's like the challenge is to have a growth mindset, not just for myself, but for those who are watching me.

It's such a great point, and I would love for you to tell a story around that if one comes to mind. Um, because I— it was interesting you just said that, because I think of the community that, you know, I interact with all day long, our licensed partners, etc. And we just had a conference that was supposed to happen during the week of Hurricane Milton here in, in St. Pete and had to quickly pivot. I really wanted to have it because everything was planned. But it was too— the aftermath, it was too much to pull off. And just the quick pivot and making sure that the whole community knew this is what we're going to do and all of that. It was interesting the number of people that said and observed about how that was handled by our organization in such a positive way. So it was interesting that you talked about your kids because a growth mindset is just not in what we're talking about today. With peer groups and members, but in your life in total. So, you know, Luke, does a story come to mind that would help our audience kind of resonate, like the impact it can really have?

Yeah, I love what you were sharing there. It reminds me of the golden rule of PR is the golden rule of PR is communicate, communicate, communicate, right? In the sense of like when negative things happen, if you let a void happen in communication, negativity will fill the void. But if you step out and you control the messaging and you show up for your people, or like you guys did showing up in the area, then all of a sudden it's— you're controlling the narrative. So it's such a great— that's such a great business and marketing tip. I mean, the story that comes to mind for me, there's many challenges that we have faced in growing ReminderMedia. I'm like probably most people listening. I had over a dozen people quit on me in a matter of 2 weeks, which is a failure in my leadership. I'm not proud of it. I look back and I go, okay, why did they quit? But the reason why they quit is because we had ventured off and created another office. It wasn't really working. We brought people back to corporate. We're— you're trucking along, we're making decent money. I think we're $40 million at this time in revenue and we're making decent money. And what they don't teach you about success is success is the drug that paralyzes. When you have a little bit of success in your life, you get comfortable. And we all know comfort's the enemy of progress. And so we were at this point in ReminderMedia, we're a $40 million company, we're making some money, but we're not growing. And if you're not growing, you're dying. And I had a choice to make as the leader. Do I accept where we're at and consider this a lifestyle business and make myself comfortable and just slowly die and let the co— and the, the, uh, you know, organization die? Or do I go, hey, we're not growing, and face the adversity? And the adversity in our organization at the time— it might be the same for you right now listening to this or different— the adversity for us was that our standards weren't high enough. We didn't have standards of excellence, specifically in our sales and marketing teams. Some people were making 20 dials a day, some people were making 100. We had not implemented standards of excellence. So that was my failure in leadership. I had created a culture where people could be lackadaisical, where there wasn't hard standards. And so this is where the growth mindset comes into mind. It's like, if I have a growth mindset, then a couple things have to happen. One is I have to see this adversity as an opportunity to grow. Two is I have to be measuring where I'm at because you can't improve what you don't track. Because if you don't track it, you can't measure it and you can't improve what you don't measure. And so I had this decision to make. Do I choose a growth mindset for myself and where I'm going for the organization and for the vision of the company and go in and set standards of excellence? Or do I maintain and have a fixed mindset and just be comfortable and let this thing just truck along? So I chose to go in and say, hey, we're not going to accept this anymore. We're going to have standards of excellence. We're better than this. You have to do 200 dials a day. You have to do 4 hours of phone time. You have to get this many deals, X, Y, Z. Well, it was like 14 people quit in 2 weeks, and that was tough because we were quitting. It could sound all glorious now when I'm sharing it on a podcast, but when it happens, you feel like a complete failure. You're still in the heart of it. You don't know if it's actually going to pay off. You're like, what did I just do? We're a $40 million company. We're making money. You know, 14 people are quitting. But here's the thing, now that I'm through this, and this has happened years ago, and we've grown the organization, and, and, you know, we're making more money now and all that stuff, I look back on it and I go, my gosh, if I would not have chosen to see that adversity as a challenge and opportunity to grow, had not had the, um, fortitude within me to go, no, I'm not going to accept a fixed mindset, I'm not going to accept mediocrity, I'm going to only push us to the level of what I know, like, or I'm going to continue to push us to the we can achieve, we would have never made it here. So I failed as a leader because it should have never gotten there in the first place. But because I was willing to get in and set the standard, and it taught me 4 things in leadership. One is it taught me a great leader has to be vision-minded, not relationship-minded. And this was one of the hardest things for me to understand as a leader, is that some of the greatest leaders of all time, if you think about what they've done, like I think about, you know, storming the beaches of Normandy, And, and that as a leader, sending troops into battle that you know are going to pass away for the cause and for the vision and mission— I mean, that is a leader that is so vision-oriented that they're willing to even send troops in the battle for the cause. You as a CEO, you as a leader, have to be that vision-oriented on, on your company and your success. But it taught me that your vision has to be big enough, as Ed Mylett says, for the people that work with you, for their vision of their life. To be with inside your vision. And what I had failed to do is I, I wasn't committed to the vision at the time, and I allowed people's vision of their life to be, um, disconnected from the vision of the company. And I had not chosen to align that until that moment and ended up having casualties because of that. The third thing it taught me is the greatest leaders are not the leaders that lead from on high. They're the leaders that lead from the trench. Yes. Um, you wanna challenge yourself of do you have a growth mindset or not? Here's what I would challenge you is, are you in the trench? Are you in the trench? Are you in the details? The greatest leaders are in the details. It's easy to espouse theories from on high or from a corner office. It's very difficult to get in there and do the work with your people again and again, digging. And, and only from the trench do you understand what needs to be changed. Only from getting in there and using the tools that your employees have to use do you understand, wow, this tool doesn't work, we got to invest some more money into another tool. So it taught me that, wow, in order to turn around the organization, I had to get in myself and figure out what should the standards be, do the work myself, get in as a servant leader. And I hope this isn't coming across as a brag on me, it's actually my failure, but it taught me so much. And these are the lessons that I've learned from it. And then the last thing is that great leadership, great growth comes from accountability. So you need to have a great vision. You need to make sure that your people's vision could fit inside your vision, inspiring to them every single day. You need to walk with the people in the vision. But most importantly, you have to hold people accountable to the vision. It starts with first So the growth mindset starts with your accountability to growth, the man in the mirror. Mm-hmm. And that's a really hard thing to do. Mm-hmm. And then it starts with the people that you're around. I, I'm, I'm reminded constantly of the story of Michael Jordan when he talks about the person who made the most impact on his life. And this is something I think he had shared with Tony Robbins, but it really impacted me when I heard it because Michael Jordan referred to the basketball coach that cut him from the team.

Yes.

That told him he couldn't play. You've heard this story. It's an amazing story because the power of it is Michael was more talented than the people on his high school basketball team.

Mm-hmm.

But the coach said, you can't play cuz you don't have the right attitude. You're not showing up. But if you show up every single day for practice and are committed to the team, I'll guarantee you a spot next year. And he remembers that coach as having one of the biggest impacts on his life. And what stands out to me in that is he remembers the person that called him out on his BS. He remembers the person that was hard on him, the person that held him accountable. He doesn't remember the people in the stands cheering him on, telling him he is the greatest. Think about all the people that made the most impact on your life for a growth mindset. It's the people who called you out on your BS. It's the people that—

that's true.

The carpet. Yeah. And it's like, can't be afraid of accountability in a growth mindset. Uh, in, in that lesson and story of losing 14 people in a matter of 2 weeks, And in going through that, it was a failure in my leadership because I had accepted the status quo. I wasn't pushing myself to the vision, inspiring people every single day in the trench, and then most importantly, holding myself accountable. And when I started to do that, I lost people because consequences of a mistake are losing people because they didn't want to go with the change. But our company is now doing $70+ million. We've grown substantially. And so I would go back and make that decision every single day because it's what was needed. And if I'm not willing to do that as a leader, I shouldn't be the leader.

Correct. So many things I want to comment on what you just said. It's like where to start. And I hope the listeners, you may want to rewind and hear this all again. But I think about kind of your story about Michael Jordan. Even I remember being in high school. And I was on track to be, um, valedictorian of the class because in whatever this senior year, and I was an all-stater in multiple sports, first team multiple sports. And the PE coach gave me the equivalent of a C because he said I wasn't working hard enough to my potential. And I was so mad. I'm like, what are you talking about? And it, it just— but that stuck into me. That's all I can remember now. I'm like, all right. You know, maybe I wasn't. And he, he called me out and it, and it cost me, you know, dearly. Obviously that, that C killed me on that remark. And, you know, the things that you talked about in regards to leadership and if you're not growing, the people around you won't grow, they won't stay with you because you want, you want great ambitious people that go after and get it and stuff. And if you're not doing that, they're not going to stick. And that's another issue, right? And it's no different than it members in a group. So you talk about accountability. So as a moderator, the moderators, you guys are accountable to holding your members accountable and calling them out and teaching your other members to do that with each other when they're not living up to their potential either, right? And if they're faltering about decisions they need to make like you made a really tough one, right, with what you had to do. And that happens all the time in the, in the boardroom. And all of those examples you stated, when I think about how do you— how do our listeners walk away with like, well, wait, what's a growth mindset?

I—

you laid out so many things that are the traits and characteristics of a growth mindset. Right, both personally and in, and in your business to do that. But also, if you think about it with your clients, like you did with your kids and, and all, and all your team members. And the other thing I heard, you didn't explicitly say this, but here's my question to you, Luke, is you clearly— I suspect that your company knows how you felt about that you weren't in this growth mindset and you kind of slacked on the expectations and stuff and owned it and then turned it around? Like, were you really verbal about that?

Oh yeah, absolutely. Because, um, vulnerability creates vulnerability. And, um, you know, it's a golden rule in marketing. And I didn't purposely like, oh, I'm going to be vulnerable for people, but it's like, you got to be real because You know, people can respect someone who makes a mistake and owns it, and they'll get behind it even more because it builds trust. And trust— you're talking about like holding people accountable. The only way to do it, the only way to have healthy conflict is by having high degrees of trust. And if they can see that I'm owning my crap, as they say, and I'm owning it, I'm taking extreme ownership, I'm making changes, I'm moving. Now they feel empowered. To be real themselves. And we can have high degrees of trust because I'm not sitting here as in a perfect seat. I'm sitting here real, owning it for myself, telling other people to own it. And so I try to be as real and transparent as humanly possible with my people. Um, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes gets me in trouble. But, um, I try to do that because I believe that's the only way to really lead. Otherwise, you get politics, you get bureaucracy, you get silos, you get a bunch of crap that doesn't help people move forward.

Right? Correct. Well, here we are towards the end and wonderful information. What I ask every guest is, what one piece of advice would you share and leave our audience with? And it could be about anything, or it could be about growth mindset. Um, but what comes to mind? To share as the one last thing?

Well, to keep it in the same vein, I'll tie it to growth mindset. It's like most things in life, a growth mindset is not something that's accomplished in a moment in time. A growth mindset is a discipline and a habit that you build in your life that turns into who you are from a character perspective. And so that means that every single day, every single peer group meeting, You have to practice intentionally the things that are showing that you're in a growth mindset, that you are asking yourself the question, how have I grown this past month? Where have I evolved? What am I supposed to be accountable for? How have I approached adversity in my life? Like, all these things will happen. And I can't tell you when you can claim that you have a growth mindset, just like I can't tell you when you'll actually get in shape if you go to the gym and eat healthy. But I promise you this, if you go to you go to the gym and eat healthy every single day, you will eventually look in the mirror and be in shape. I don't know if it will take 3 weeks, 3 months, or 6 months, but you will be in shape. The same for a growth mindset. If you wake up every single day tracking and measuring your results, holding yourself accountable, making sure that you're not in a fixed state but in a growth state, you will be conquering so much more than you ever thought because it builds upon itself. And I think of the biblical, um, I think it's, you know, Proverb that says he who's faithful in the little is given much. If you're faithful in the little every single day, you're gonna wake up one day and go, holy cow, how did I get here? And it's because you just stay consistent in that growth attitude, that growth mindset.

Excellent. Great, great lessons, Luke. Thank you. And if anyone listening would love to contact you and find out more about what you do, what your, what your company does, how would you suggest they do that?

Yeah, I would love to connect on social. So you can find me on Instagram. I'm probably the most active. It's @LukeAcree. It's A-C-R-E-E. So Luke Acri, and then LinkedIn, you can find me @LukeAcri as well, or on Facebook. But we'd love to connect with you there. And then my company is Reminder Media. We're a marketing company. So if you are looking for marketing, we'd love to talk to you.

And that is literally Reminder, like R-E-M-I-N-D-E-R for everyone out there.

ReminderMedia.com.

Excellent. Luke, thanks again. And to everyone out there listening to this episode, and particularly because this is airing in December, It is a great time to do a stock, right, of how did the year go with your growth and what do you really want your growth mindset to be like going into 2025. And until then, you guys go make it happen. Thanks again, Luke. Thank you everyone for listening to another episode of Mastermind Mastery. And to get access to today's episodes, not only the show notes, but any tools and resources encourage you to— not only will you find them in the episode show notes, but also you can go to the website www.lxcounsel.com. So lx counsel.com, and you will find a plethora of articles and content and tools and resources and worksheets and things like that that can be helpful to you in creating and running successful PACs. I want to leave you with one thing that we end and teach to do in every single meeting, and that is the very last thing is to ask, what is your takeaway from today's episode? I encourage you to give that thought. Take advantage of the time you just invested in listening to the episode, and what can you do to move one step closer to the vision that you have and the goals that you're trying to achieve with your groups. So again, take a step back. What's your key takeaways? What can you actually act on? And I leave this with one note, and those of you that have read my book, Your Seat at the Table, you know that I ended the book with a story about my mentor. He always, when he met people, had a pebble in his pocket that he passed to them when there was knowledge shared. And so I ask you today to think about that pebble concept and to pass what you learned today on to someone else, which could be your members, or take it internally to yourself and act on it. So now go do something with those takeaways.