Episode 218 – Why Embrace the Power of Collective Brilliance and Collaboration?

Episode Transcription

This is the Ultimate Advisor Podcast, the podcast for financial advisors who want to create a thriving, successful and scalable practice. Each week, we’ll uncover the ways that you can improve your referrals, your team, your marketing, and your business operations, helping you to level up your advising practice, bring in more assets and create the advising practice that you’ve dreamed of. You’ll be joined by our hosts, Bryan Sweet, who is moving fast towards a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson, the driving force for advisors looking to improve their operations and company culture, and Draye Redfern who can help you systematize and automate your practices marketing to effortlessly attract new clients. So what do you say? Let’s jump into another amazing episode of The Ultimate Advisor Podcast.

Brittany Anderson 01:07

This is Brittany Anderson with your Ultimate Advisor Podcast. So to get us kicked off, I want to talk about the importance of joining a mastermind of being around a group of individuals that are going to help you to think outside your box that are going to help you level up yourself as an individual and your business as a whole. And I think it’s important to point out that that when you join things like like a mastermind group, like a study group, it’s not only about the ideas that are generated, but about the connections that are made. So Draye, I thought you would be an exceptional one to kind of kick us off today to talk about how masterminds have really impacted you, and how they’ve moved the needle in your business.

Draye Redfern 1:57

So this is something that I’m so passionate about. I love masterminds for just a ton of reasons. But I the first mastermind I ever joined I was 25. And it was a $25,000 commitment, which is probably more than most people in their mid 20s would want to actually commit to but I didn’t have necessarily the money at the time I figured it out. And that became the catalyst or the tipping point for a variety of other things to occur in my life. And in my business, that helps everything just you know, level up across the board from my my health, my wealth, my relationship with my now wife, everything. So I love masterminds and the support that they can provide. But that being said, I think in order to get the most out of a mastermind, there’s a couple things that I think you need to be very clear on is that you need to know what your strengths are. So going into a mastermind, if you’re sort of this jack of all trades, master of none, that’s okay. Like you can obviously improve some of your weaknesses. But it’s a really clear and it’s going to help you a lot if you’re actually really clear on what your strengths are. And I’ll tell you what I mean by that in just a second. Because if you don’t know what your strengths are, and you want to just focus on your weaknesses and develop your weaknesses, and you want to go to these masterminds to improve your weaknesses. If you focus on your weaknesses, all you’re going to have are strong weaknesses. So that’s obviously not ideal. So if we take that, and we use that so that when you go to a mastermind, you know what your strengths are, you know what your value proposition is, you know, have all of these things very clearly defined, which we’ve talked about many of the earlier ultimate advisor podcast episodes. And then you take that to a mastermind, it makes it a lot easier to see where the gaps are in your business. Now if we circle back to the who, not how it also with the connections that Brittany was referencing, it also makes it easier to find out who can help you make some of these things happen, who can move the needle faster, whether that’s a software, whether that’s an outsourcer, whether that’s a new employee, because there’s a good chance that people that you may surround yourself with in these masterminds have been exactly where you are, at some point in time. And if you’re the dumbest person in the room, that usually means that you’re in the right room like I live by that when I go to mastermind meetings, I want to absolutely be the dumbest person in that room because then I act as like a sponge. And I just soak everything and and whether I use it or not, whether I implement it or not. It levels up my knowledge base across the board in my health, my wealth, my finances, my relationship, and me as a person as a whole not to mention businesses. But to take that a step further. Once there’s a quote that I love is once a mind has expanded, it can never return to its former state. I love it so much. I want to say it again. Once a mind has expanded, it can never return to it. Former State. And when you are actually in mastermind meetings like, you know, our study group or whatever it may be, your mind will expand and you will look at problems differently, you’ll look at solutions differently, you’ll look at the who not the how differently. And what I’ve also found is that the more that you invest in a particular mastermind, or study group, or whatever it is, the greater the psychological upgrade. Because when you pay, you pay attention, it’s a very famous Joe Polish quote, these days, when you pay you pay attention. And it’s not just a time commitment, because we all have time, time is our most precious resource. And you want to spend your time carefully. But when you spend your time, and you make some sort of monetary investment, you tend to actually give it more attention. If you were to spend $1 to attend an event, or you were to spend $100,000, to attend an event, which one would you take more seriously? Well, it’s usually pretty clear, the one that we’re spending more money on, you’re gonna give us all of your attention, all of your focus. So not saying that you have to go join $100,000 mastermind group, because I know there’s some of those out there. But it really shifts the perspective on I’m not just throwing money to go hang out with people I’m I’m investing money into my own sort of psychological upgrade. Because when you pay attention, and if you’re in the right group, if you surround yourself with the right people that can support your weaknesses that can help you show you where you can maybe find the right people so that you don’t have to focus on those weaknesses, and allows you to focus on your strengths, your superhuman ability, your superhero ability, your stupid human trick, whatever you want to call it, because there’s a name for it, you know, 1000 names for it, it allows you to focus on that thing, because that thing is most likely what allows you to move your business or to move the needle in your business the fastest. So if you take all of that, and really sort of if I were to hand it off to Brian, because I know that between Brian and I, we spend several hundreds of 1000s of dollars, probably annually on masterminds to always be the dumbest person in the room, to always want to upgrade ourselves, psychologically, to always learn new ideas. But you know, I invest 10s of 1000s of dollars annually. Bryan, I know you’re a bunch. But I also want to like shifted like, what is something about masterminds that not only that you get out of them, because we all get something out of them. But what is it that you also maybe look forward to about that, that next mastermind that may be sitting out?

Bryan Sweet 7:54

No. And I couldn’t agree more with every single thing that you said, Draye. I think one thing that I would allude to first before I kind of get into that is the one thing that people probably don’t get about masterminds, if they’ve never participated is if you go to a conference, and it’s a couple of days, you get exposed to a lot of information, but you never get to go deep. So it’s all surface material. So if you’ve found a topic, there’s never the ability to kind of go deeper, and how can I take that concept and apply it and make it work for me. So the masterminds are an ongoing facility where you meet two, three times a year, there might be some monthly call ends. And you’re talking about topics and things that literally you could improve on and work on for year after year until you get it perfected. So part of people that don’t have the success that they want, it’s because they do everything on the surface, and don’t go deep. And so I would highly recommend if there’s topics that people have found some interest and they wanted to get better in and they can’t figure out how come I’m not getting that implemented, then a mastermind is probably that resource that would help you get over the, over the hump. And so I participate in a lot of different ones and have changed things as I have, you know, gain knowledge and either transfer them off to other people on the team, or just learn new things. So one of the things that I would mention is masterminds in general, as you alluded to are areas where you could go and hopefully you are the dumbest person in the room. And the thing that I’ve gotten is, you hear all these different perspectives of how to do things or people’s thought processes. And when you’re at a conference of a bunch of financial advisors, you’re going to hear only financial advisor lingo. But if you’re in a room with real estate guys and scientists and marketing people and you name it, they all look at things slightly different. And I’ve been through, you know, conversations and question answering sessions were somebody that had no affiliation, no insight, no idea about anything financial, actually gave me the, the brainchild of something that I was able to implement. And it had a remarkable impact on my business. Because they just look at things differently. It’s a way of looking, you know, getting out of the box without you having to maybe do they’re getting out of the box, you’re just seeking input from people that in their own industry, in their own careers are very, very successful entrepreneurs. It’s just not in the financial services area. And I will tell you, especially in the last three years, masterminds have been the thing that I can say, with the kind of exponential success that we’ve had, I would say the vast majority of it is belonging to some new mastermind groups, you know, not only have we developed and in grown our financial planning practice, but we’ve started ultimate advisor coaching, I do invitation only conference symposium, that’s just got exceptional reception, I’ve written three books, I’ve started a couple of companies with Britney, my CEO. In addition, the company’s never done better. And it’s all because I’ve gotten these ideas and the how to do them from different people that I would have never ever been exposed from. So you go to a mastermind, you spend two, three days, you come back, they’re more energized, more excited about, you know, what you can do and the opportunities that are in front of you, just because you look at things different. And I don’t know how to even put enough emphasis on that. But I would never, this is just me, personally, I would never not belong to one because I thoroughly enjoy how people think these are, you know, energetic, they’re trying to do well. And not only do they help me, but I feel good, because I can give them some of my ideas that they can implement, and use in their businesses. And so, in addition to that, you create some really great friendships. And that’s a nice byproduct that you probably don’t intend to have. And so I got some lifetime friends, that if I need some, I can call them, they’ll give me their honest input. It’s impartial, and, you know, typically extremely, extremely helpful. So just to say how crazy I am, I’m actually joining another mastermind next year, because some of the best business minds the least I follow from podcasts and just meeting these people are part of this mastermind. I want to learn more from them about certain business tactics and things like that.
So I’m guessing that the financial investment for that mastermind is probably not a couple dollars, while you’re probably you’re making that physical monetary investment, each of these things.

DR 13:08

So I’m guessing that the financial investment for that mastermind is probably not a couple dollars, while you’re probably you’re making that physical monetary investment, each of these things.

BS 13:20

Yeah, it’s this one. I mean that, you know, the talk about money, but it’s, you know, it’s $30,000. But, you know, it’s definitely not a cost, it’s an investment. And I’ve already made recurring revenue from ideas I’ve gotten from my other ones, so many times more what I paid them, essentially, you know, it’s free to, to attend if you want to look at it that way. So you’re actually losing money if you don’t go.

DR 13:47

I love the way of looking at that. It’s a very, it’s a it’s a slight shift. You know, obviously, we’re all paying money to be in masterminds. And I think part of that is the commitment and you take it more seriously. But I love that as you’re actually losing money by not joining a mastermind. And I wholeheartedly agree, because I think between the three of us, we’re probably in about seven or eight different masterminds, or study groups, etc. And I think that, you know, that we’ve all probably taken different facets from each of those. And each of those have probably had a positive ROI on our business that had we join them a year or two or three years earlier, who knows how much further down that path we would have actually been. But there’s something also that I think is worth mentioning, is that if you’re the dumbest person in the room, we’re just sort of uncomfortable the idea It sounds a little abrasive even, but if you’re the quote unquote dumbest person in the room, and you really feel that how does that make you feel the first time like you step into that room, so when I was 25, when I made my first cup, my first $25,000 Check. I was absolutely like, I felt like, like everyone was looking down and because I was this young kid, I shouldn’t be there. I wasn’t welcome. I was really uncomfortable. but it didn’t really come out that way. And I know Brittany, we’ve we’ve talked about this and had similar experiences about how each of us were were very nervous the first time they joined us, but I wanted to hear sort of get your take on what it was like, first surrounding yourself with like all of those people who just who seemed like they knew so much more than than you might have.

BA 15:19

Yeah, Draye, I think that you said something so interesting. The first thing that you commented on, you know, you want to be the dumbest person in the room. But you also alluded to the fact of people there have been in your shoes. So I remember, you know, one of the masterminds I’m involved with is Genius Network by Joe Polish. I remember my first time in there, I mean, I was literally like, my palms were so sweaty, I couldn’t even pick up the pen or put my hands on the paper. Because I’m sitting here, and I’m looking around this room, and I’m like, Oh, my gosh, there are brilliant people in here. And I was a fairly new to the entrepreneurial world, I had worked alongside Brian, been exposed to the entrepreneurial journey helped him build, build the business to where it is now and been able to have impact in that. So I know that I have skills and talents to offer, but I was so nervous. And I will say that, that after a couple of different sessions and attending, allowing myself to be fully transparent and being like, hey, I don’t know what you mean, when you use that term. Right? So you’re in breakouts, and just being able to say, I don’t understand your language. So you know, like both Brian and Draye, you both touched on this is you’re being exposed to people from different industries, it’s okay to not understand and not know, at all. So that is part of what I would really encourage you to embrace as you’re looking at this is, number one, don’t discredit yourself, I see this happen all the time, where people that have built such crazy successful businesses, don’t give themselves enough credit to what they’ve done and what they’ve accomplished. So really, give yourself some grace, give yourself a little bit of credit. And when you step into those room, those rooms, don’t be afraid to be fully transparent. Talk about what your biggest needs are, talk about the biggest gaps you have in your company, where you’re hitting certain ceilings of complexity, because everybody is there, I should say, not everybody, but most people are there, for very similar reasons. They’re looking for help as well. There’s a reason that they’re reaching out. So that’s why I think it’s so important to identify, where do you need the most help? And then being honest about it, being honest with yourself, and being honest in your interactions. And this is something that Draye I’m gonna I’m gonna have you talk a little bit about kind of our why behind creating the mastermind that we’ve created. The Brian talked and I want to touch on this, as he talked about how a lot of different conferences different things that you attend, it’s very surface level. And that’s part of the demand that we keep hearing from some of our clients within coaching. It’s like, man, we How is there nothing like this in the industry? How are you not going deeper in in the operation side and financial services, and in the marketing side, the automation, the systematization, there’s just nothing out there. So Draye, maybe you could talk a little bit about kind of why we’ve created what we’ve created, and how that could potentially benefit members of our audience.

DR 18:30

So I think it really is worth spending a few minutes talking about the differentiation and recognizing why masterminds are so important. And then why we want to do it different. So I think we all at least three of us believe that it’s so much more important to go deep and not wide. And or here in Texas, we’d say you know, rifle instead of a shotgun, you want to be really precise and not necessarily broad. And by doing that, it allows you to have much more clarity, and be much more concise about what you’re going to get out of a particular sort of group. And for our sake, you know, we’ve mentioned before, we spend lots of money every single year on masterminds and what we want to do is really just aggregate all of that experience and other masterminds or other events, and the different backgrounds and experience. So Brian has run sweet financial built into an incredibly successful advising firm, Brittany has run the operations to actually help get it there. I have run a marketing agency to actually help market and systemize and automate whereas most other masterminds are run by a singular person with a singular viewpoint. And the idea of what we wanted more or less create is not just to help you go and make money in your business, we want to go deep into actually improving the individuals that we work with and that’s on a on a business side, individual side, operational side and really having deep, long lasting impact with a smaller group. group of people, not a super wide group, we’re gonna go and be able to serve 10s of 1000s of people, but really make a deep, long lasting relationship and help people across all of their lives, and obviously, their businesses, and taking everything that we’ve basically done in order to help ideate innovate with other advisors back to implement a lot of things that can really move the needle in their business. And the mastermind, is one of the best ways to do that. So we can take multiple days, what our mastermind is going to look like, it’s we’re going to be three times a year for two days, at a time in person. And what that allows us to do is actually meet everybody in person, do some deep diving into what the problems are, or the hot seats or what we call them. So you can basically share what’s going on share where you’re stuck, and get group the collective group input to help you overcome some of those obstacles. And in between these three meetings a year, basically meet once a month, and a group setting online digitally. So that if there’s additional marketing questions you need help with or operations questions or systems questions, you can get the support that you need, and you have a community to actually lean on so that you don’t have to worry about, I don’t know the who, or I don’t know the how, and I don’t know who the who define the how, and I don’t know where to start, we want to eliminate all of those roadblocks for you, by coming to the table to give you the ideas or strategies, and the tools to actually go from idea to implementation. And then we’re there to basically support you throughout the entire process and have these meetings to really go deep with you, and actually actually did some of that stuff. And if this is of interest to you, which we hope that it is because you’re listening to the ultimate advisor podcast, you’re here you’re hanging out with us you’re you’re learning, I think you’re gonna be surprised at the affordability of the investment because we really want to make this a group of really tight knit people who can really help transform their lives in a very deep way. And and by doing so really create a long lasting impact not only for you and your business and for your family, but for your clients, and really get excited about the trickle down effect that this group have for for advisors as a whole. So that’s what the mastermind group will look like. We’ll have a couple ideas here in the show notes, we’ll wrap it up at the end with with a link where you can go apply for the mastermind, if that sounds of interest to you. But Brittany, Brian, anything that I may have missed when describing the absolutely epic mastermind, we’ve got for all of our listeners,

BA 22:25

One thing that I wanted to add that I think is so so incredibly important, no matter if you decide to come along with us and join our mastermind, or you go and do something else. Having your implemented there. I know Brian will attest to this hands down, I’m gonna have him comment in just a moment. It’s just it’s essential. And it’s essential and helping you get the traction that you need for nothing else, to help get the rest of your team on board with the crazy awesome ideas that you bring to the table. So that being said, before we kind of wrap this up, Brian, what else can you offer us here? 

BS 22:59

Yeah, just a couple of things. And thank you so much for the, you know, bringing your implementer idea. Seriously, that is, you know, I’ve been in mastermind groups for 20 some years. And it wasn’t until I actually had Britney, go with me that we started to see the exponential changes. So not only was I getting the information, but now she heard the information, she takes it back and gets the team to buy in and actually implement it. So there’s where you find the impact is you got to take the action after you understand what the steps are. And so this implementer part is is huge. And one other thing hadn’t taken off what Draye said earlier about, you know being there, Brittany alluded to it, too. It is scary. I’m, I can’t tell you enough how you felt like you’re drinking from a fire hose or you were just nervous that you weren’t adequate. But I will tell you if after you get to meet people, and they’re all carrying, they’re all trying to help and you want to help them, that does go away very quickly. And pretty soon you feel very comfortable. And you get to know who these people are and what their concerns are. And they have problems and they have concerns just like you. So it might be in a different industry, but very, very similar. They’re really no different. And one other thing I just wanted to do if this is helpful, so you know if what we’re going to be doing with the mastermind class on, you know, building a second in command and how you create the great culture and how you automate your marketing if that’s not really what you’re looking for, but you don’t know where to go to get some coaching or some mastermind, I probably or between Draye and Brittany and the three of us we probably know several resources that could be helpful. So if you would like to get our input so Looking for some help in this or thinking of joining a mastermind in this topic? If you want to just email Brittany at ultimate advisor coaching.com and let us know what you’re interested in, we’ll give you a contact person will tell you, anything we know about it, we can give you a direct contact at some point to get you introduced. So if that type of thing is helpful, let us know.

BA 25:25

Awesome, Bryan, that was that was so good. And he is absolutely correct. We’ve got all kinds of amazing resources at our fingertips, so please don’t hesitate to reach out. So that wraps up today’s episode of The Ultimate advisor podcast. We will see you back here next week.

DR 25:46

Hey there Draye Redfern here. And before you go, we just wanted to say thank you for listening to this week’s episode of The Ultimate Advisor Podcast. If you enjoy this episode, then please subscribe to the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or Spotify. And if you would like to access more of the show notes additional resources in our free premium content, then please visit ultimate advisor podcast.com. We look forward to seeing you in the next episode of The Ultimate advisor podcast. We’ll see you there.