A Crash Course in Mastermind Groups with Bedros Keuilian

So what's this craze behind mastermind groups? Everybody's talking about them, but today I get to the heart of it. I get to the real secret by talking to my friend, Pedro Scullian, the author of "Man Up," the CEO and founder of Fitbody Bootcamp, and the insane mastermind behind some of the biggest and baddest brands in the world. I deconstruct with Pedro's, what are these mastermind groups? If you are an entrepreneur, coach, consultant, service provider, how you can start one of your own to overlay a whole new stream of income and have a deeper relationship with your clients. And if you are in the market to join one, how do you actually choose one that's gonna benefit you and drive insane ROI for you? This is an insane episode with extremely tactical advice that will give you the blueprint on everything that exists in the world of mastermind groups with my man, Pedro Scullian, hang tight, you're gonna love this one. (upbeat music) One thing is for certain, just because it's tried and true doesn't mean it's working right now. So the big question is this, where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how to, how to go your business, how to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth. That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharon Tribata and welcome to Business School. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - So B, do you remember when we first met? - I believe I do. We were in a private jet flying from Orange County to Phoenix, Arizona for Joe Polish's 25K group mastermind. And you and I were sitting literally across from each other as we shook hands and met. And you were kind enough to book that flight for myself, you Craig Valentine and Jason Capital. It was the four of us on that jet. - Yeah, and the interesting part though, is that's when I was in the process of selling my business. And you gave me a bunch of ideas around how to restructure some of the recurring revenue components. I literally got like a MBA on a plane sitting with you, which is so awesome. The one thing that you don't know, which I will tell you, is we get to Joe Polish's mastermind group where we caught a $25,000 check to be there for two to three times a year. And when I got there, I actually asked the organizer, so I said, "Hey, you know, it's my first time here. "What is your suggestion?" And she points to you and she says, "Right down to whatever he says." And dude, here's, I will never forget this. We were going around and you said this and the question was asked and you said, "Listen, everybody talks about hobbies. "There's only three hobbies you should have. "Want to make you money, want to keep you fit, "and want to keep you creative." And I was like, "Wait, I don't even have one of those, "right, but no wonder my life totally broken." And I was like, "If I can come up with that, "I could really kind of give myself a designed life "on using my hobbies, well, so man, "I've had such a great time being around you "and in your mentorship, I appreciate you so much. "Thank you." - I appreciate you, man. And I've learned, I think Edmilaet says it well. He says, "A lot of things are taught, "but some of the best things are caught." And you've not only taught me a lot, but just being around you. Proximity is so powerful, being around you. I've caught so much in how you interact, how you build people up, how you are truly engaged. And I've learned a lot from you and I really appreciate that friendship and relationship as well, man. - Yeah, thank you so much. And listen, I wanna tell the person that is listening, something that they don't know, they don't know about you. And something that you actually, which at some point I wanna know why you don't share this, but you over the last decade, you are and have been the mastermind behind building some of the biggest personal brands in the world. Like you've literally taken somebody from nothing and nobody to creating an entire media empire for them. And I know people have told me, yeah, without Badras, I'd still be sleeping on my sister's couch. Like I literally have had people told me, and you know who that is, you actually know who that is, who's told me that. And one thing that I've seen you teach often, you've taught me this too, is this concept of mastermind groups. And this is where you and I met. So I have a very kind of kind of relationship to that. I would love if today we could do a little crash course and download from you on mastermind groups. 'Cause if someone asked me about mastermind groups, I would actually tell you there's nobody that knows more about building them, setting them up, figuring out how to make money and figuring out how to add value than you, much more than people who run them right now. So I almost wanna go back to, this is, you've been around many of them. This is not new. What do you remember like your early interaction with the early introduction to mastermind groups? - Yeah, well I'll tell you how I discovered a mastermind group. I, it was a two full thing. So when I first started to coach and consult small business owners in my industry, which was in the fitness industry, right? Back in 2005, gosh, 2004, 2005. As you know how this is, as you get a couple of private coaching clients, you have plenty of time to get on one-on-one coaching calls. But this is gonna be a very interesting story. As you get 10, 12, 15 private coaching clients, you find yourself literally sharing the same stuff over and over again on the next call and the next call on the next call. And Shiraan, this is pretty embarrassing to admit. One day I was talking on the phone to a private coaching call. I had already talked to seven private coaching clients that day. He was the eighth one and the last one. He's at a Bronx, New York. I'm trying to think of his name now. He's a client at Brockton, and I sat on my couch in my office. And before you know it, I must have laid down. And before you know it, I a lot of here is Pedro's, Pedro's in my ear 'cause I had my ear buds on. And I woke up from my sleep real quick and I hung up on him and I called him back and I said, "Hey, we must have been cut off. I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened." The reality was I was so exhausted from teaching the same thing over and over again, answering the same questions over and over again, Shiraan, that I fell asleep and I said, "There's got to be a better way." Just then I was reading Napoleon Hills book, Thinkin' Grow Rich. And I remember he talked about that he started in his mind. He started a mastermind and he said, Abraham Lincoln and Henry Ford and all these other great leaders, Benjamin Franklin. And he said, "Whenever I have a problem, I just think about if these guys were sitting in a room with me, how would Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ford, Benjamin Franklin, solve this problem that I'm experiencing." And I was like, "Holy crap." I imagine. Because sometimes I'd be on a coaching call. The man I wish that I did I'm helping right now was on the call two calls ago, because that guy is doing exactly what he wants to be doing. And so I go, all right, to keep me from burning out and to follow what Napoleon Hill is talking about, what if I can get people in a group? So the very next year I said, "Hey guys, all of you that are private coaching clients, I'm gonna put you in a group. We're gonna be three times a year." Because I started doing a little research and I saw that three times a year would be perfect. It would break down a quarter into a year. So my goal was to give you three years worth of results in every quarter. And so if we met three times a year, two days at a time, I could teach for the first day and bring in some of my expert friends. On day two, I could do what's called hot seats and really do individual, what is your biggest frustration, what is your biggest opportunity, what is the biggest bottleneck, and then solve that problem. The group can help each other. And then we all leave and come back 90 days or 100 days later, and there was something magical about that process because 90% of my clients were taking action. 'Cause I remember before that, I was selling courses and education material and 20 Robbins talks about this and it's absolutely true. Less than 10% of people ever get past the first chapter of a book and less than 20% of the people ever go through an entire course. And that was a mastermind. That was flipped on its ear. 90% were doing the work they were supposed to and I realized why. No one wants to come back 90 days later, 100 days later and be the guy or the guy that goes, I didn't do the marching band. There's a lot of peer pressure. So I knew I was onto something big. And by 2009 Craig Valentine joined the mastermind, Vince Del Monte joined the mastermind. Now each of them have their own mastermind. Then you fast forward. Now I got the second mastermind with Craig Valentine to info mastermind and I had the seven figure mastermind. And then you fast forward even more. I start fit body boot camp or big franchise brand. Our franchisees want us to start a mastermind. Now I've got a third mastermind. So now that we were kind of talking about Lewis House reaches out to me, he says, hey, Pedro, so I think I want to start a mastermind. Can you teach me? Sure, let me teach you. And then Ed Mylett reaches out to me and says, hey, me and Andy Fricilla want to start a mastermind. Can you teach me? What's the process? And then you and I sat down and hey, I believe there's so many people that have a very specific knowledge and wisdom in a very niche environment. And you know a lot more. You've forgotten a lot more than what the guy next to you wants to learn. And we take that for granted. Like I know more about starting fitness businesses than most people will ever learn in a lifetime. And so it was as natural for me to run a mastermind. But I believe it is the greatest environment to teach, to learn, to network, to connect, and build new business partnerships. It's been a game changer for me and all the clients that I've served. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's so amazing because there are so many names that you didn't mention, which are like household names in our world right now. Yeah. I know that you helped, but. I'm just gonna say to you, Capitol, is another one like, yeah, you know, a coal harder. And then, oh my gosh, they're Lori Harder and Chris Harder themselves. There's just so many people who, somehow I, word got out that B knows what he's doing. He knows how to recruit, how to sell, and how to actually deliver the results. And I never had a course on it. I never had an education thing. I just told my friends, come on over, I'll teach you how. Well, because I remember you, I sat in your, I sat in your boardroom and you flipped the market, you're left in, I'm like, oh, lefty man here and you started drawing. You're like, dude, just give me a marker. I'll show you how to do this. Just listen. And I was like, I can't even, I can't even take notes fast enough because you had broken it down. Exactly. Actually, I wrote it down. I have the notes from the one week where together you're like, hey, first you got to create the structure for it. Then you got to fill it and then you got to run it. And I was like, okay, it sounds simple enough, but how does this work? And so can you go through at a very high level? I'm sure on, I have a very niche offering. I know I can do something. I know I can add value. Good, bad, ugly. What are the first few steps at a high level that I can take to cut your design that this mastermind process for myself? Yeah, exactly. So let's talk about that. So it falls into three categories. Just like you said, you got a structure, you got to fill it and you got to deliver it. And that last part is very important. And I know it sounds like common sense, but believe it or not, many people don't deliver the unicorn like they promised and it delivering a donkey. And before you know it, they're taking a program to master my false apart because word gets out these days. Word gets out. So first of all, the structure of it. The structure is very important. Again, it needs to be far enough apart where people can get the work done, but not so far apart where it takes advantage of the fact that people procrastinate. So if we say we're going to meet once a year, Sharon, and I gave you all these marching orders, well, you're going to wait and do nothing for eight, nine months, maybe not you, but the average person. They're going to wait around and procrastinate and during the last month before the mastermind and then come to the mastermind. So I realized that if we do this every quarter, we can really give you a lot of results. So, and I realized we need the two days. So where the structure is concerned on a high level, you got to go, what is the niche? It always works best in a niche. I've also helped friends like Frank Kern, who was like, hey, tell me how you run your mastermind and I gave him some insight. And then he, when I said, Frank, it works best in a niche. He ran his mastermind for a year and a half and then he dissolved it. And he's okay with me talking about this. So I'll gladly talk about it. I said, Frank, why did you, why did you dissolve it? He goes, well, I have nothing in common with the automotive mechanic store. (laughing) I'm nothing in common with a car practice who's in that mastermind. I said, exactly, you're a marketer. You needed a mastermind of marketers, right? And so my masterminds are all about fitness business owners. The seven figure masterminds for independent gym owners, the Fitbody mastermind for Fitbody owners. The only one that's probably for just entrepreneurs in general is the empire. - Yeah. - Yeah. So anyway, that said, the high level is who is the person that you want to serve? Pick your name and you have to say, what outcome do I want to produce for them? Typically, it's going to be, how do I drive traffic, make more sales and manage my people, scale, right? So you've got to also come up with a structure. And of course, as far as scheduling it, the best months, and I've tested all 12 months, are January, May and September. Those are the best months to have your masterminds. And you're going to have a two days back to the back, typically if Thursday, Friday, or Friday, Saturday, and you could run 20, 25 people in a group. And then there's ways to scale it. So once you have the structure, then the filling of that mastermind comes from reaching out to the people in your circle of your influence, the industry that you're in, and then the people who already know others. So if you are a person who knows Jim owners, I'm going to reach out to you, and I'm going to say, "Shiron, I've got a mastermind, it's $2,500 per person. I want to give you one free access to it, two, have you come and teach in there and you can gain some clients from it, and three, every person that you refer to me, I'm going to give you $500 ongoing until they drop out." Awesome. And so I'm going to tap into the resources around me. And so that's how we fill it. And we have a start date. Typically, you want to start filling it eight weeks out from the first start date. And then of course, the servicing is all about day one is teaching and bringing in experts that they don't have access to. And that's part of what the expert the guru has is, I've got access to Shiron that someone off the street just can't get Shiron in there. So I can reach out to my friend Shiron and Lewis House and head my let and say, "Can you come and teach for an hour and take some questions and answers?" And I'm going to teach what's working in my gyms. And then one of the best strategies I came up with was the people from the mastermind, we picked five people who have really crushed it the last 90 days and they teach for 10 minutes. And that mean that really reinforces the fact that the mastermind works because of-- Of course, working, yeah. Right. And so once we do that, day two is all about the hot seats where we do two anays. We have breakfast, lunch, and dinners together, which really creates a trial down the next mastermind. It's really that simple of a structure. And people don't realize that you've done so many of these. That I mean, I've been very fortunate. You've invited me to speak at many of them. And you've done so many of these that you have all the details so dialed in. Like you're so dialed in. To the point where you're like, "Kashiron, watch this." And I'm like, what's he going to do? He goes, "Hey, everybody, I know it's 130 and you're feeling a little low. And I know each of you have your own specific starboard order just like I do." And so my team's got, my team's got, it has this little form, just flood your order. We'll get you your exact Starbucks order. And I'm like, who is this guy, right? Like write it like 145. I'm feeling a little down even though I had this. And then my specific Starbucks order like shows up, which is, it's not expensive, but it's experientially beautiful. Yes. Right. And then-- And those things matter so much. The Starbucks order just on time, the steak dinner together, the experience that you give someone at a very high price point of $2,500 or $3,000 or $5,000 a month, the unique hat that you give him, the unique shirt, a backpack, a hoodie, those connections that you took time to study all the people that are in the group. And you go, these two people need to connect. And together, they can have a symbiotic effect. Those things are the it factors of a mastermind. And I'm not going to say who because it is a big name. But I helped another big name start a mastermind. And he said, hey, since you're helping me start it, can you be the first guest speaker to come and speak? And I said, I'd be honored to. And I went. And it was at his office. His office is beautiful and San Diego, La Jolla. And it was lunchtime. And instead of having catered food coming like I taught him, his secretary took orders from Subway, Subway sandwiches. Now listen, I'm not picky. I'll eat Subway sandwiches. But those people paying $2,500 a month, you can tell that they were disappointed. Because having catered food come in, served up in a buffet style, and then taken away. It's a very different experience than here's your bag of Subway sandwiches. And those details matter if you want to create longevity and you want to create a reputation that goes beyond your industry. Yeah. Hey, V, so the one thing that I-- from participating in a mastermind, you not only have helped people create them, you not only run them, but you also-- you're also-- you cut the check to be at many of them. And just like you and I did, if I'm in the market, and people are talking to me about masterminds, I'm saying, you know what? I'm not starting one, but I think I'm ready to kind of go to one and be a part of one. And people have been talking to me about this. Any-- what are your kind of strategies around, how do I pick one that's good for me? How do I think through that process? That's a great question. And especially today with social media, it's so easy to be fooled by someone who has the blue check mark that they paid for. They bought 200,000 or 300,000 people as an audience. And they might be perusing Sharons' Instagram page, taking all your genius nuggets, rewarding them, and posting it on theirs, and making themselves look like experts. But they may not have a track record. And those are charlatans. And it's easy to get fooled. I get people like that all the time. Who go, man, I paid 20 grand to this person. When I should have paid 50 grand to you, I realize I should have just paid my 50 g's to you. The number one thing to do is like, hey, what is your mastermind about? And they're going to tell you it's about this. Great. Can you introduce me to three or four people who I can talk to who have gotten benefits from the mastermind? And if they can introduce you to-- like right now, someone says, "Badros, tell me about your private coaching program. I'm going to go, great. I do X, Y, and Z with it. And I'm going to introduce you to Aaron Labauer, Tony Steppen, and Devon Fizik, three very different industries, and talk to them, give back to me, and decide if it's right for you. And they're going to tell you the results I've helped them get. If I can't produce the people I've gotten results for, you probably don't want to go into that mastermind, even if it's half of what Sharan is offering. Because Sharan is a guy who's already built a company, sold it, gone through the problems, had the aches and pains, has run the team, has had the marketing difficulties, has had the sales ups and downs, and it's worth paying for that speed to time collapse. And so really what you want to look for, does the mastermind produce results? Yes, to prove it. Give me three to four people I can talk to. And then when you talk to those people, say, what do you like most about it? What would you do things differently? Would you join it again? And they'll tell you straight up, and that is the best way to figure out if a mastermind is right for you. And most people I should say, who are thinking about joining a mastermind? If you're already thinking about it, you're probably too late. because it was. been thinking about it for a few years and you've been winning for the right time. There's never a right time to fork up 30, 40, 50, $100,000 for education like that. Yet it's funny that people will go pay that kind of money for a college degree that 89% of the time doesn't ever pay for itself. Yeah, and let's talk about that money for a second. So first I wanted to ask you this money question. Here is, I'd say you and I have cut big checks to doing it and many people have cut big checks to you for doing it. And then we feel a sense of responsibility to deliver on those. That's what people don't realize is that when someone writes me the check, I feel a deep sense of responsibility to help them deliver. Like I don't sleep at night and I'm like, okay, those 40 people came, those 39 people got the result. But Jimmy, man, I haven't figured it out and I am on Jimmy, like, white on rice. I want to have Jimmy to have a better experience than almost all of them because I feel such a deep responsibility to get have Jimmy have the result, not just because he signed up, but because I feel responsibility to deliver the result. So my question for you is there are folks out there and I don't for a lot of people what I've noticed, Baderos, is not that they can't cut the $30,000 check. It's actually not that. It's just that they've never cut a $30,000 check before so they don't know, they have no barometer or benchmark to evaluate that again. So how do you recognize or reconcile that for someone who literally has the capability to do it? But does has never done anything like it before so they don't know how to invest in something like that. Yeah, that's a great question, right? Because again, I literally had been in Joe Polish's mastermind for four years straight. So every year I was paying him $25,000. In addition to being in his mastermind, I've also paid for private coaching from Dan Kennedy, Frank Kern who I ended up later helping in the future, which is really cool. My coach became my client for a moment, right? Joel Weldon for speaking. So like I find experts and I get coaching and masterminding from them in whatever the industry is. And then thankfully you and I have a relationship and if you ever said, Baderos, pay up, I would. And thankfully you pick up the phone and answer my questions. And I always promise to do the same for you. And I think we pay each other in reciprocity that way, same with Craig Valentine, etc. But if you've never cut a 30 or $50,000 check, that doesn't mean that you never, that it's having the ability to and the desire are two different things. Like having the ability to write a $50,000 check is one thing. You got the money into account and you wouldn't miss it if you cut it. But there's that back of them, the voice in the back of your head that says, is it going to work? And so it's usually emotions that control the conversation in the back of your head. It's always the emotions. Fear, doubt, what if uncertainty, this person has never been tested. How do I know? And so if you can get logic to trump the emotions by saying, all right, have I talked to three or four people in his group that have gotten results? Yes. If I get similar results as them and the getting of the results is on me, my ability to take action, if I get similar results, will that justify my 30 grand or 50 grand in 12 months? Yes. Then I must use logic and execute. And all of a sudden, it's like a thermostat. You crank up the thermostat and now you're used to a room where the temperature is now 80 degrees. Once you're like hot yoga, when I did hot yoga for a long time, then you're used to 80. They crank it up to 85. First it's a little hot. Then you get used to it. Then they crank it up to 90. Before you know it, you're at 103 degree temperature and you're used to it. And so very much the same way, it's easy to do once you've done it once before, but you must use logic to justify your way through it and not emotion because emotion uses fear where logic uses outcome. And outcome is the only thing that matters for an entrepreneur. Yeah. The one, when can you talk a little bit about what people generally don't, they can't quantify or they can't expect in the mastermind. And I'll give you my thoughts around it. For some reason, when I walk into a room where, and I'm just going to call the high level room, where entrepreneurs are there, like empire mastermind when I walk in, like my skin feels different. Like I just feel different. And like I feel like one, I need to show up better. I just have this, like I need to come up and show up better. I also feel like the quality of my questions get better. My language patterns instantly turn out to be better. Like I suddenly am a smarter person in that room just because of being in that room. And that's an insane and tangible, which people don't like. I actually yearn for that one day to go there because I feel like I'm living into a whole new persona. I don't know. You felt that many times. Can you talk a little bit about that? Absolutely. And I still feel that. And I'll give you a great example. Recently, I was asked to speak to a bunch of Navy SEALs. Right before the lockdown, I was asked to speak to a bunch of Navy SEALs and Army Rangers. These are like the tip of the best of the world. I walked into that room. And these were guys who are transitioning from literally killing bad guys and doing crazy stuff and kicking indoors and et cetera, to now they want to become entrepreneurs. I should have been the dominant force in there. But as I walked in, I felt the collective alpha energy and I was like, holy crap. And I immediately felt like I'm in a place right now that if I just connect with these guys, I have a lot to learn from them as they have a lot to learn from me. Like imagine how quickly they have to make decisions in a life or death situation that you and I have more time in a business situation. So during the breaks, I was asking them their decision making capabilities. Because I knew that if I can make decisions under stress like they can and it always has to be the right decision, that will give me a massive edge in business. And let me tell you, the sniper told me how to control your heart rate, like how breathing works. Like they use a lot of yoga and Pilates elements when they're about to snipe someone, how to pull the trigger between their heart beats. Right? And I'm like, oh my God, my heart rate goes up when I'm freaking out in business. Coronavirus, what do I do? Oh my gosh, right? So that piece is very important and I basically the answer is this environmental exposure and proximity to powerful people force you to level up. We all have the potential and capability within us. But if we're hanging around chickens all the time, we're not going to want to soar like an eagle. We typically are, they say you are the average of the five people that you hang around most. We'll get into a room every 90 days where these are high level people in different industries, some above you, some below you, some at your level. And believe you meet, the rising tide does lift all ships because of that environmental exposure factor. You begin to crank up that dial within and it's such an amazing feeling. You know, I will never forget this my videographer who came to hang out when you and I were shooting the Empire podcast show. He said to me, because he was there, I mean, your team sees you, you know, sees you live in motion all the time. But my, he had never seen like you and me together, both before and after and we were just talking and he had everything and we were driving back and he's like, bro, like I could do that all day. I was like, what do you mean? He's like, you should just, you guys should just talk because that was awesome. And I said, what, like I asked him why? Because we don't know. He goes, well, you, he goes at this, there's not, it was not the stress, but you were, you were elevating each other's ideas every single time. But it was, it was still super honest. It was like, hey, how do I do this? Oh, great. Hey, can you actually go into the granularity of that? Oh, great. And he goes, the one thing he told me or just great be was he said, you guys never talked about execution. I was like, do you understand who you're talking to? Like, bitters and I, as soon as he and I know that we got to the idea, like we're good. We know that we can, we can craft it to the point and hand off the execution or do it ourselves or whatever. Like we don't need to coach each other on execution right now, which is why you had fun listening to these ideas. It's not like do this ad on Facebook. Yeah, we can do that if we need to. But he was just in the, he goes, it was so effortless. I filmed for eight hours and I didn't, I'm not tired at all. And like that, it's your powerful point you're making for your audience right now. You know, if anyone in the audience is listening, just please, please, please rewind and listen to what Shuron said. We never once talked about execution and execute. It's no different when people reach out to you, Shuron, and I say, Shuron, how do I get motivated this morning? No outside force like Shuron or myself or Tony Robbins is going to motivate you. You are going to be the one that's going to self motivate. All I need is the idea and I will go execute. I remember we had lunch at true foods in Newport Beach. Yeah. And I was, for one of my bigger companies, I was like, Shuron, I'm thinking of selling in the next couple of years. How do I do this? And it was you, me and Bryce, our VP here. And you listed off some things and one of those things were make sure you get two things that we're doing right now. You said, make sure you have competing private equity firms bidding against one another so that you can increase evaluation. Number one, and number two, even if you're not ready to sell, go out there and say, hey, how much would you give me? What multiple of my EBITDA? And I've been doing that this past year. And ironically, we've got the Princeton Capitol out of New York and JW Childs out of Florida, right now competing against each other. I think you didn't have to go and inspire me to execute. You just told me what to do. And the next day, Bryce and I were executing on that. And that's the self motivation that comes in. That motivation will never come from an external source. Yeah, that's awesome, man. Here's the question for you. [BLANK_AUDIO] I'm kind of divided on the sum. I love you're spinning on this one. There are paid and unpaid groups. And the unpaid groups are kind of the self-banded guys that get together, which is cool. I appreciate that. And then the paid group, which are moderated, organized and run as well. Your thoughts have you had, have you had a polarizing experience in either the other and what are some thoughts on the paid versus unpaid mastermind groups? Five years ago, I got into a paid, I'm sorry, an unpaid Facebook group of what was supposed to be like-minded entrepreneurs. And it was just a group of little bitches complaining about all the things that are going wrong for them, Sharan. And I realized very quickly, you get what you pay for, number one, and when you pay, you pay attention. And so I wasn't interested in what they were sharing 'cause I wasn't paying. And what they were sharing was just them bitching and complaining and pointing fingers. And the more I've paid, the more I've paid attention, and the more I've paid, the higher, money is a filtration system for the caliber of humans. Someone might go, whoa, that's insane. That's good. Gandhi didn't have money, whether Theresa didn't have money, okay, there was always a couple of conditional people like that, even Jesus didn't have money. I get that. But in the world that we live in, in the entrepreneurial world, the higher the price point is the filtration of the quality of entrepreneur and person that you're dealing with. So I will pay to have access to great minds all day long. And when I pay more, I pay attention more. >> You'd so crazy. I don't know if I ever told you the story. And it's worth for the listener. I went to my, this was before I hired my first coach and any of that. I went to a conference. It was a small leadership conference in San Francisco. It was my first business in San Francisco. And I was talking to my dad and I said, hey, I'm talking to my dad on the phone. He said, I'm going to this conference. I really don't want to go, but it's a day away from the office for me to think. So I show up. There's 20, 25 people in the room. And it's really kind of intimate. And this lady gets up on stage and she starts sharing this message. And I was like, hey, I'm here. I might as well pay attention. So I'm starting to take notes and be literally every question that I have in my head that I'm almost ready to raise my hand and ask, she naturally goes into the answer. I was like, wait a minute, that's just, that's, that's eerily wild. Right? And so on my way home, I'm called my dad and I said, dad, you won't believe what happens. I'm narrating the story to him. And he says, well, do you think she can help you? And my dad is a, like a, like a professor of English at a university. He's never, like the biggest check he wrote was to get me out of India. Like that was the biggest check he wrote. So he told me, he says, well, pick a number that is, that you can still afford, but that's going to hurt. And I said, what are you talking about? So at that time, it was like $10,000, right? So I said, well, like $10,000 and he goes, okay. And my dad's an English professor. He's like, well, let me give you the script. And I'm like, I love him already, right? So he says, write this email and I wrote this email. I said, miss, miss so-and-so, I watched you here. I would like to offer you $10,000 as a symbol of my seriousness. I'm not looking for one-on-one or any time from you. From, for the next 12 months, I would appreciate it if you prioritize my communication and some responses to my emails. That's it. Send. - Brilliant. - And dude, I, so I sent it five minutes later. Five minutes later, I got a response saying, is this a joke? Right? And I say, no, not at all. I didn't know how to approach you. She said, write it up. And I said, well, I don't know what to do. So I hit print on the email. I signed it and I wired her $10,000. And she became my first coach and, and be two things happened there, right? For me, number one is, I didn't feel awkward asking for help anymore. And I think that was super important. And my dad called it something cool. He said that there's a karmic imbalance when someone is offering decades of experience to you and you want to pick their brain. No, no, you're not, I don't want you, I don't want to go to coffee with you. I don't want you to pick my brain because I have no idea if you're serious and you're just going to irritate me and you'll never do anything anyway. So he goes, he goes just like your awkward asking the question. She feels awkward because she's thinking about like why she's having this conversation with you. And so this karmic imbalance thing has like totally embodied man. So I have zero problem writing the check because of the karmic imbalance. And the second thing is, there's almost, apart from a few times, and I say two, three to five percent of the time. There's probably, I've probably gotten a deal every time. I've probably gotten a deal, like the 50k to you is a steel, is a deal, right? Is it like you realized later that it was a total deal. The 25k for all the years and Joe Polish has massed my was a steel because now I get to spend time with you with Jason with Craig and all the, like it was a deal. Never was it where I was like, never had I ever had to think about an ROI because the ROI was 100x plus on this when the karmic balance was in place. And so for me, that's been kind of the driving force around all of this. - I love that lesson. That's, it was fun. I'm hung out with you. We've gone to dinner so many times. I've never heard that experience that you had and that's how you paid your first coach. It's such a powerful way for your dad to explain the karmic balance of it all. And I guess in my gut, I knew that even recently. So two years ago, in fact, you're wearing the shirt. I wrote this book, "Mana," right? And I've never written a book, Sharon. And I wrote the book that had to do with entrepreneurial leadership because it was the entrepreneurial leadership that I built over time that helped me scale our brand Fitbody Bootcamp to this massive franchise. Well, as I'm writing the book, and what I thought I finished a manuscript, I sent it to Benbella, which is my publisher. And they sent it back and it's so embarrassing to admit, but who better to admit this than you? To you, they sent me back 15 pages of notes, to change, edit, modify. And here I thought I sent like a really awesome manuscript. And I was so disheartened and so frustrated because I also asked them for two extensions on the deadline. So after two extensions, I sent them this and they sent me 15 pages of pretty much it sucks, do it over, right? And I realized very quickly that the way I had written it was, I had written it as a blog post because I've had a blog for many, many years. I can write in 700 to 1500 word chunks. And I wrote, you know, what was pretty much gonna be a 70,000 word book in 1500 word chunks. And that's not how you write a book. And so I go, all right. So I've committed to writing a book. I've been talking about it on social media. I really want this book to make an impact and not just to have something out there with my name on it. What would I do if a coaching client came to me and said, what do I do here, Pedro? Well, I would say find someone who's an expert at it. So I merely thought of Ryan Holiday, right? He's, he's, he's, he's ghost written for Tony Robbins and several others. He's got a great book called Ego is the Enemy. I reached out to our mutual friend. I said to Craig Valentine, I said, Craig, can you introduce me to Ryan Holiday? Now, I could have asked for the introduction and then said, hey, Ryan, I just have a couple of things. Can I pick your brain? The picture of brain thing. Can I pick your brain on how to write a book? Now, the man has spent so much time building his craft. When people ask me, can I pick your brain? I just want to punch them. I want to reach to the computer and punch them because I know it won't do them justice and if they don't pay the karmic balances off, like their dad says. So he introduced me to Ryan Holiday. I sent off an email and I said, Ryan, I heard that you charged $30,000. I've got a check. I can literally write you and put in the mail tomorrow for $30,000 if you will help me take these and I forwarded the 15 pages. If you can help me take the things on these 15 pages and put it applied to my book within five minutes, just like the lady that responded to you, he responded back and he said, you got to deal. I never have a problem buying speed and value from people who I consider to be the expert. Of course, you'll pay $10,000 for this lady to prioritize your emails and your questions because you will extract 10x to value from that. By having Ryan Holiday go through my book and piece it together and then he said, hey, I'm gonna send you a bunch of questions. You're gonna record it on your iPhone, the answer. Then I'm gonna piece it together for you 'cause you did such a horrible job. (laughing) And when the book I gave him credit in the back is obviously helping me with writing it and look, $30,000 was spent. Not only did it become a Wall Street Journal best seller and you helped with that by buying a whole bunch and giving them away, but also I've gained 22 coaching clients out of it at $50,000 and 16 Fit by the Bootcamp franchise we sold it. So I knew the book, if it was well written and sold and had good reviews, would work for me. Why wouldn't I pay for an expert to make it better versus trying to either figure it out on my own and get frustrated or trying to pick his brain and throwing off the car make balance? - Yeah, I wanna ask you something which I think this will kind of bring it all home. And this is for me as well. Maybe a coaching call or coaching day with you or maybe a coaching call that we have or maybe a day or two after, like I've gone through the mastermind. If you could make a recommendation on, how does somebody post event, post coaching call, post mastermind, how do they get the best value from integrating those learnings? So what would be a couple of things that people can do? - Oh my God, oh my God, okay. So and I'm pretty sure I share these with you. So there's two forms that I give at the mastermind, just two forms. Form number one is the one that I'm going to use. has a three boxes that says, where are you right now in your business since our last meeting? Where do you want to go between now and the next meeting in the next 90 days? And then the third box is, what's the opportunity that we need to exploit or the bottleneck that we need to fix to get there? So I give them that form at every mastermind. And then next form is that I stole from Joe Polish is, it says, what do I need to do on one side? And then what's the first step on the other? And there's like seven things, right? And I tell people at the mastermind, I go, here's what you're going to do, guys. You're going to take notebooks full of notes. You're probably going to walk out of here with 15, 20 pages of notes. The best way you can get the most out of this is to take day three off as well. So day one and two are spent at the mastermind, day three, stay an extra day at whatever, wherever we are. For when Las Vegas, we're in Florida, wherever, if you're going to fly home, take the next day off, move the top seven things from your notebook to that form in the order that you need to execute. What is the highest level thing I need to do? What's the first step? What is the second highest thing? And when you extract seven things and put it on that piece of paper, now you're not overwhelmed with the 20 pages of notes. Number two, you have all the priority things you need to do and you have the first step. And apparently, psychologists have proven that your six times more likely to execute on something if you know what the first step is. So if you're like, "Hey, Bader, how do I get more clients?" And I'm like, "You got to market." Well, okay, that didn't tell you anything. Now if I say, you got to market on Facebook and that starts with getting a Facebook ad account, there's more step. You're more likely to take the second and the third and the fourth. So by doing that, take the next day off and then take those high priorities, the top seven and the first steps for those top seven and start executing it on them because you're so jazzed up from those two days of mastermind. You're on a high. Take that high one more day, execute it on the top seven. Those are the big things that are going to move the money needle, the meaning needle. That's weren't business for two things. Money and meaning. That's the only reason we're in business. And so, pick the seven things that are going to increase the money, increase the meaning, execute on them on day one. And then that'll lead to day two, three, four, five. And that's how you get the most out of a mastermind experience. It's so good. I think to me, the golden that was, hey, listen, Shuron, you're writing this check. Just give yourself the extra day to integrate these learnings so that you can respect not the check that you wrote, but the time that you spent learning these things. And then come up with a little go-to plan, the next step plan, the one first step plan. And now, even if I actually have done that with you before, and I love when all seven first steps are not me, like I have to, there's someone else's problem. And I know that I've created like this domino effect of momentum because if someone else on my team does step one, now the automatically self-owned that project. So that'll get done as well. And so that's a half that I learned way too late, which I should have done earlier. Because I feel like I need to, I was a mastermind. I need to solve everything as opposed to, hey, can I empower someone else to solve this as well? Hey, it be, you've done, you have, you're spending a lot of time on social media giving a lot of advice to folks just, you know, insights from your experience and your learning. You have, you have the book, which my favorite story about the book that people don't know is that when we were helping promote it early on in the first few days, you texted the four of us and you're like, you need to stop right now because Barnes and Noble ran out. And I was like, what a minute, wait a minute, like I got to stop all my email sequences, like I want to promote this book. But you got the book, you got several courses, you've got you and several friends that I know run the project. You've got a lot of great opportunities for people to get into your orbit, into your world. Where, where is the central gateway where they can kind of get in and start to learn how they can connect more with you? Yeah, good question. The central gateway is just on social media. I always want to come with a giving hand first, like let me give where business is concerned, where personal development is concerned. And then you decide if we're going to be a good fit and then connect with me how you want, take the free information or work your way up and pay for something. But it's an on Instagram mainly at Bedro's Kool-In. And you know, I'm very active on there as you know, I try and answer every comment and get to every DM and well, these days I got a couple of people helping me with DMs and they're going to pretend that they are me. But if it's important enough, it'll get to me. I promise you that. Hey, I know you don't need to do this. I am super grateful for you. Every time I get to spend with you, even if it's virtual or real, breaking bread or not, I look forward to and cherish this time very much. Thank you for being an awesome mentor to me. I really appreciate it. Sharan, I thank you, man. And I feel the same way in times like this to be able to connect with you is so valuable and I do appreciate the opportunity. Hey, Sharan, I have a cool gift for you. I took some of my best ideas from the last 20 years and created a five day MBA. It's quick connection pact that you could listen to on the go just like this podcast. And I want to give it to you for free. Just as a thank you for listening to the show. No fluff, no gimmicks, just pure actionable ideas for you to use instantly. You can grab it right now at businessschoolshow.com. That's businessschoolshow.com.