385 – Mastermind correctly and you’ll help both you and the participants: Tom talks Short Term Masterminds

Episode 385 – Short Term Masterminds
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody it's Tom here with episode three hundred and eighty five of Screw the Commute podcast. I'm talking about short term masterminds today. Now, these are great for the people involved and they're great for you. And it's great for you in more ways than one, so stay tuned to find out how hope you didn't miss Episode 384. That was Patricia Drain. She's a long time friend and colleague of mine and a businesswoman of the year in Arizona. She's got a new podcast, When Passion Meets Profit, in a new book coming out for Valentine's Day with the secrets to a Happy Marriage. How would you like to hear your own voice here on screen, the commute? Well, if the shows helped you out at all in your business or giving your ideas to help you start a business, we want to hear about it. Visit screwthecommute.com and look for a little blue sidebar that says send a voicemail mail, click on it, talking to your phone or computer and tell me how the shows helped you. Hey, also, put your website on there and you'll get a big shout out on a future episode of Screw the Commute. Now make sure you pick up a copy of our Automation eBook. Just one of the tips in this book.

[00:01:36] Literally, we figured it out has saved me seven and a half million keystrokes. And it's got all kinds of tips and tricks on how I automate my whole business. So pick it up at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And we charge 27 bucks for this book, but it's just free for listening to the show. While you're over there, pick up a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app and you can put it on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. Now, I know people are still freaking out on this pandemic, vaccines are being distributed and I don't know if that's working or not, who knows? But I know that people are still suffering because they can't sell from home. They they either can't go to work or they had to quit because their kids can't go to school. Well, all of that is wiped out. If you knew how to sell from home like I have been doing since 1994, that's 27 years, folks. OK, so myself and my students don't worry about that kind of stuff. Now, I've been teaching this for way longer than than my school has been open. But I thought, you know what? I can reach more people if I could have a school.

[00:02:55] And so I have the only licensed dedicated Internet marketing school in the country. Probably the world is certified to operate by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia because it's distance learning and it's good distance learning. It kind of cracks me up. All these universities are scrambling now to slap slopped together a distance learning program. So I've been operating the whole time like this with great results. So check it out at IMTCVA.org. It'll be in the show notes. But also a little later, I'll show you how you can get a scholarship to the school for yourself or you can gift it to somebody. If you're in my mentor program and these skills are in high demand by every business on Earth, they all need chatbots and shopping carts and email marketing and blogs and everything else that goes along with it. So you will have a short duration school that gives you a massively great career as opposed to the traditional method that people have been brainwashed about, go for years and party and spend one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and then come out and compete for jobs at Starbucks. Well, that doesn't work when I'm around, so check it out. IMTCVA.org.

[00:04:14] All right, let's get to the main event. Short term masterminds. I've seen so many rip off people doing fake masterminds. I'm a little reluctant to do this topic. But a fake mastermind is when a rip off seminar leader charges you a lot of money to be in a "mastermind" where there could be a hundred other people from all different skill levels. Now, with this many people, the leader of the mastermind can hide their poor depth of knowledge and experience on the topic covered in the mastermind. What happens is the nice, more experienced people help the less experienced people and the more experienced people, they kind of get ripped off because masterminds are supposed to be comprised of people in about the same experience level. The rip offs walk away with lots of money and most of the people in the mastermind do not get value. That's not what I'm talking about today. I'm talking about legitimate short term masterminds on very specific topics. Now, this helps everyone who participates and doesn't depend on everyone being the same experience level, you should be pretty darn good at the topic so you can facilitate the mastermind and answer questions from anyone who is participating.

[00:05:37] I'm working on one now, which will be an ebook mastermind. Well, I'm highly qualified to lead such a group because I've been selling e-books now for exactly 20 years. I've written long 1042 pages and short ones, 30 or so pages. I've made many millions of dollars selling them in both PDF and Amazon Kindle formats, including. Three point six million dollars so far on a book I wrote in a four hour layover at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas it still brings in between four and fifteen thousand dollars per month. So very few people can match that record, so this makes what I'm doing totally legitimate as long as I help the people in the mastermind reach their goals. I'm not saying you have to have that kind of track record to start a short term mastermind. I'm just saying you should have a good amount of experience and success in whatever topic you're promoting. I've been using the phrase short term in this episode. Some masterminds go on in perpetuity and and those are great. But I'm talking about a very specific time frame and topic. When I say short term, it could be three months, six months or even a year. But longer than that, it's not what I'm talking about today. Now, why is this good for the participants?

[00:07:04] And I want to talk about this first, because any product or service you provide needs emphasis on great results for the people who have invested their money with you in hopes of receiving great value and achieving their goals to many people only concentrate on success for themselves. And they couldn't care less if anyone else is successful or not. Now, those are the rip off people who usually get lots of refund requests, poor reviews, people charging back their credit cards to get their money back and even lawsuits, you don't want to be that kind of person. You must concentrate on your participant's success and that will translate to your success without all those bad things I just mentioned. It also mean referrals. You can do the same mastermind over and over with new people and you can have multiple masterminds going as long as you keep them small so everyone gets value. Your participants get to have accountability, which is important for people who aren't really self starters. They get to have clearly defined goals that come from their participation and they get access to you, the guru of the topic, at a smaller rate than you would have to charge for one on one time. The speaking a one on one time offering it as part of your mastermind deal can get you a higher fee for your mastermind.

[00:08:37] Or mastermind participants, another way to do it would be if they went one on one coaching, they can be offered an upgrade. Now, I've covered in other episodes why I think offering one on one mentoring can be a really great thing. And yes, I know many of you listening don't want to offer that, but I'm just saying I think it's a big mistake if you don't. So why is offering a short term mastermind good for you? Well, if you've never done it before, it can be good practice for you when you develop much more expensive, longer programs. After doing each short term mastermind, you will undoubtedly learn some way to improve your future masterminds or other programs, it's also obviously great for cash flow. You can charge a monthly fee or give a discount for full payment up front. When I pick a mastermind, even if people can make monthly payments, I pitch it as a three month or six month or some period of time commitment. So it's a very specific obligation of the participant. I really don't want tire kickers just for the money who aren't committed because from past experience I know they won't get results, which is bad for the reputation of me and the mastermind.

[00:09:58] Another hidden benefit to you is that it forces you to do the things you should be doing all right for residents. One of my ulterior motives for my ebook mastermind is to force me to get my ebooks converted to Amazon Kindle. I've been procrastinating on this because it takes a little more hassle and detail than my PDF e-books, which I can crank out in a matter of hours or a couple, maybe half days. See, I have to be really precise in converting to Kindle, and, well, being precise isn't really my strong suit. So that's an added benefit for me that doesn't take away from the things I'm teaching the participants. Now, how did you plan for your mastermind? Well, that's part of the beauty of masterminds mentoring and coaching programs and and the many of you know that I don't really like the term coaching, but anyway, you get to set it up any way you want. So I'm participating in a mastermind now where they are using what's called gamification to help you stay accountable. It's a deal where if you reach your goals for the week, you get back some of the money you paid to get into the mastermind. Now, if you don't reach your goals, everyone that did gets to split some of your money. So it's fun, but it's way too much accounting involved for my taste to lead the thing. Now I'm happy to be in it and reach my goals and get my money back. I don't want to be in charge of all that money. You can set it up weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly.

[00:11:45] You see, like I said, you get to pick prior to the pandemic, some people would have a weekly or biweekly online gathering and then maybe every quarter meet in person somewhere you can structure it any darn way you want. And and people that like your structure will join and the ones that don't won't. But one thing is for sure, you aren't going to be able to please everybody. So you just set it to suit yourself and then find people that like which have set up. You'll have to make decisions on what day of the week you'll be holding sessions and what time of day maybe you do a Monday night mastermind and also a Wednesday daytime mastermind with a different group of people. Maybe you do a Monday mastermind with the daytime and an evening one with different groups. You do them all on Mondays. So if you really have a lot of people interested, maybe you do five or ten separate groups a week, any time you want, you get to pick. Now, one thing you want to do is lay out clear and specific goals for each meeting, I like to have a specific aspect of the overall topic as a training session, and then each person can tell their progress and ask for feedback on anything they're having trouble with.

[00:13:04] It's important to limit each person's time so one person doesn't dominate and the more timid participants feel stifle, you got to encourage those people to speak up. The better facilitator you are, the more all the participants will feel they are getting value and their voices are being heard. An example for my ebook mastermind, which will be the overall topic, is one session maybe on developing the skeleton of your book in the chapters. Another session might be on formatting a PDF book. The next session might be formatting for Kindle. Another session might be writing your book description and all and so forth. Another thing you can do is assign accountability partners that way. In between meetings, people can help each other. You can even be an accountability partner for a different person each week. That way they will get some one on one time with you as part of their deal. Now, if you're going to assign partners pretty quickly, you will learn how the more advanced people who the more advanced people are and and you don't want to always pair them with a beginner so they don't get much value from working with a beginner all the time.

[00:14:24] So I go back to my original premise here is that you can structure these however you darn well please. All right. And you can get a great cash flow and accountability for yourself and your participants. And you can get a lot of goals accomplished. So everybody wins. So consider starting one and rolling it out as the new year begins. Now, if you want help with this and hundreds of other things to be successful online, you might want to consider my mentor program. It's the longest running, most unique, most successful ever in the field of Internet marketing. Now, how do I say this? Well, it's the most unique in that it's one on one. Nobody in my level to even talk to you, let alone teach you anything. And it's one on one, not only with me, but my entire staff who I've trained. So you get enormous one on one help and we'll even take over your computer screen and show you where to click and where not to click and what to do. So that's one aspect. Then you get an immersion weekend at our great Internet marketing retreat center in Virginia Beach. Now, of course, this will be after the pandemic, but nobody else has done this ever, where you actually live in the house with a guy like me and see all this stuff happening. So that's another unique thing. While you're here, you get we go next door. I have a TV studio where we shoot marketing videos for you. We ship them home to you. We added them. We put the graphics on and send them to you after you get home. Then you have a separate trip here where you're the only one here and we do all marketing videos for you.

[00:16:06] So it goes on and on. Plus you get a scholarship to my school that you can either use yourself or gift to somebody else. So that's included in the deal. And like I said, it's the longest running. It's been going for 22 years now, something like that. And the other unique feature, which nobody else will do is we charge an entry fee and then a percentage of your profits that's capped. So you're not stuck with me forever. So people at my level, we're charging 50 or 100 thousand bucks up front to teach you this stuff. Well, I didn't think that was fair, so I kind of made a mad 20 years ago and did it this way. So for me to get my 50 grand, you have to net 200 grand. Well, people love this. And seventeen hundred plus students later, it's still going strong. So anyway, it's at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com. You can see the details and you get all of what I just said, plus way more. And it's for a year. I mean, you can't learn this in a weekend, folks. There's too much stuff and there's new stuff coming all the time. So if you really want success at this, you have to commit to it. Now, you can be working full time and do this on the side. No problem. But there's lots of stuff to teach you. And I'm going to be here doing it because guess what? I want my 50000 thousand rights, so I have to help you make 200000 to get my fifty thousand.

[00:17:38] All right. So that's that. Check it out. GreatInternetmarketingtraining.com. And then also watch for episode 386. Our next episode is Bekkah and Ruthie. I call them the Sister Act, and we just had a blast talking about their interactions between each other and what they're doing in entrepreneurship. All right. We'll catch you all on that episode. See ya later.
 
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