Entrepreneurs Over 40 Episode 2 with Aaron Walker

0:00:01.8 S1: Our guest today is a veteran entrepreneur that started his first... Of 14 businesses at 18 years old. He sold a Fortune 500 company at age 27 for well over one million. Since then, he started button, sold 13 successful companies over the past 36 years, a strong desire for personal development has kept him in a weekly mastermind from one in a decade. He retired at age 50. I was encouraged to come a coach by Dan Miller and Dave Ramsey, so he started iron sharpens Ira mastermind program to help men find success and significance in their businesses and personal lives. He also has altered several books on Amazon, including View From The Top, living a life of significance, and the Master Montfort building a rich life. He's been married, I was lonely, a wife Robin for over 40 years, and has Stefan tasting daughters and five beautiful grandchildren. Without further ado, Rinaldi.

0:01:04.8 S2: Hey, Greg, thanks for having me on, man. I've gotta live up to that introduction. I'm not sure I can do that, but I'm gonna give it a shot, man. Thanks for having me as your guest.

0:01:15.3 S1: It's my pleasure, and you've already lived up to the introduction... Yeah, you've already done the work. So.

0:01:22.4 S2: I appreciate anybody. Thank you so much, I appreciate that. I'm excited to be here today. Can you take a few moments and fill in the gaps from that intro and bring us up to speed with what's going on in your world today? I would love to do that. I'll try not to make this too boring, I'll go back just a little bit. I'm a native Nash billion. I've been in Tennessee for 60 years this year. We're three generations deep. So I'm pretty grounded here. People tell me all the time, man, Where would you live if you could live anywhere you want... And I said, I can live anywhere I want, and I do, I live in Nashville, Tennessee. It's the hub of the universe. Right here, I love it in Nashville. My two daughters, Brook and Holly, live about five minutes for me, so I get to see my grandkids every day, that's a lot of fun. Robin and I next month will celebrate our 40 first waiting anniversary. You've already touched on a little bit of that, started out early at 18, starting my first business sold to a Fortune 500 when I was 27, that allowed me to do some pretty cool stuff along the way, and you've already stated it in the opening remarks day in Miller and Dave Ramsey been friends of mine for a couple of decades now, they suggested that I start coaching, which I didn't wanna do great.

0:02:37.4 S2: I said, I don't want any part of that. I said, I'm tired, I've been working since I was eight years old. I'm 50, now I'm ready to retire, and Dan Miller come across the table on me, he said, Man, you've got to work, he said, You're too young to stop working, and I wanna see you encourage and coach some of these other young folks, entrepreneurs. And so I started doing that, and I'm a Christian by faith, and Christians pray about everything, and I tell Dan Miller and Dave, I would have to pray through this and I did, the Lord wouldn't let me up. He said, No, you've got a coach. And so I started coaching and started doing podcast interviews, I didn't even know what a podcast was eight years ago when I started doing podcast interviews, and man, the flood gates have just opened up, we've got 20 master mind groups now, we've got members from eight or nine different countries from around the world, and we're just helping people excel in every area of their life, and we primarily focus on professional, personal and spiritual development. So Greg, I'm just having fun doing that today, Eat and every day, well.

0:03:44.1 S1: That's a blessing to be able to do what you enjoy and to help others will do I

0:03:48.4 S2: Appreciate... I do consider it a huge blessing that I get to help people develop in those areas and help them have transformational experience. It's a lot of fun.

0:03:58.6 S1: So you did all the fact that you've been working almost all of your life... What was your first job?

0:04:03.9 S2: Yeah, my dad told me if I wanted to make some money, I had to get a job. He said, 'cause we're not gonna give you any money. Primarily, I think it's 'cause they didn't have any to give me, I was a real poor kid when I was young and started working at the bread box, it was a little drive in market down the street from my house stocking shelves, and my next job was with a guy that had a meat market route and he would go around on Saturdays and deliver hamburgers and steaks to people's houses... Not helped him with that. When I was 10 years old, I've built a little route of cutting yards in our community, and then when I was 13 years old, I started working for my dad in the construction industry, and I learned real quick, I didn't wanna do much of that, I was like, My goodness, I've gotta do something besides this, and then I took a job at a local palm shop, and that's where my whole life changed. I was 13 years old. When I was 15 years old, I decided that's what I wanted to do professionally, and I started the process at 15 years old.

0:05:06.7 S2: To get that up and going. When I was 18, we launched our first PON shop, so I spent 27 years in the PON shop industry.

0:05:13.7 S1: Wow, that is amazing. Now, does anybody in your family besides your dad have an entrepreneurial background, so... Yeah, they were all on to peers, but none of them were any

0:05:22.9 S2: Good. Nobody... We were all too stubborn to work for somebody else, so we just worked for ourselves and my grandfather did pretty good, my uncle did pretty good, my dad didn't do so well, he wanted to hunt and fish, and he was a man of character and integrity, but he didn't care anything about making money, I've got two brothers that are entrepreneurs, a sister that's an entrepreneur, you know, I've never worked for anybody since I was 18 years old, and I've always just kind of done my own thing, and I felt like if I was gonna be in charge of my schedule, I needed to work for myself, so that's what I started doing when I was 18.

0:06:04.7 S1: Man, that's amazing that... You never worked for anybody else. I tell somebody that the other day, I said I'm 60 years old since I was 18, I've never had a paycheck, what's a quote that's really made a difference in your life and help set you up for success.

0:06:17.9 S2: So my mom had a little saying When I was a kid, I don't know if this is what you're referring to, but she would say, Can't couldn't do it and could did it all. And I was like, what the world does that mean? And she said, Well, if you think you can't, you probably won't... And so she would always say, You can't use the word can't, then I'm like, Well, you just used it in the explanation. And she said, Well, you're not gonna use it. She said, You may not be able to make it happen. But you're at least gonna try. And so for that reason, it built a lot of self-esteem, they built a lot of self-confidence in me as a child, and today it's one of my core values, no excuses, and I don't allow people in our organization to have excuses like my next poor values everything's figure out able. I will figure it out. And so when you develop that mindset, if you can do it and you don't have any excuses and you've developed the strategy that everything is figure-out able, you're probably gonna end up successful, so we just adopted that over four decades ago, and it's worked out pretty well for us, it

0:07:25.2 S1: Sounds like your parents live while they may not have been financially successful, they really set you up well with what the... Either, there's

0:07:31.8 S2: No doubt. And my mom and dad had a work ethic that was unbelievable, and my mom had a very positive mindset, and she was like, Hey boy, if you're gonna make it, you gotta get out there and get after it, and so there wasn't any of this sitting around watching video two by tubes and all that, or whatever you call it, all day long. It was, Get your butt off the couch and go. Get to work. And so, yeah, they developed a lot of strong work ethics is in Proverbs 27-17, As I hear, and sharpens are so one man sharpens another.

0:08:05.7 S1: So why the name iron sharpens are for your mastermind.

0:08:09.4 S2: Well, you know, as I said earlier, I'm a believer, and I believe that we're designed to be in community, I don't believe we're designed to be alone, because I think Isolation is the enemy, tax lens, and if you really wanna go forward in life, you've gotta have a strong community around you, you've gotta have people that are willing to complement your super powers, but also to a flag on your blind spot. And I want people around me, Greg, that will call me out. People that'll say, No, you can't treat her that way, or if you don't come home a little earlier or somebody else is gonna take your kids to baseball practice, and then when you get old and rich, you're not gonna have any relationships and... I just need people around me to remind me of that stuff occasionally, and I wanna excel, I wanna do good, I don't wanna be average, because if you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are at the top, and I don't wanna live that kind of life, I wanna live a lot, full of adventure, I wanna be able to make a little bit of money, I wanna be able to take my family on trips, I wanna be able to give money away, I wanna be able to help people.

0:09:13.2 S2: And you can't do that just sitting on the couch at home, watching reruns of Andy Griffith, now we gotta get out and get after it. And so I think if you get into a master mind group, listen, nothing worth having is worth having, if some sparks are not flying, and that's the reason I aren't sharpening iron. We're there to help one to... And if we can't help one another, it's like, I don't know what your purpose is, and so people only remember how you make them feel, and if you don't get in the trenches with them and really propel them to the next level... For me, that's not much of a relationship. So Proverbs 27-17, a rose to the top, and I said It's gonna be iron sharpens or...

0:09:54.4 S1: That's a great name for it. So you hit on that a little bit, but how has being in a mastermind changed your life and the lives of your fellow comments? Yeah.

0:10:05.0 S2: Well, as I said earlier, we weren't designed to live this journey alone, and we've gotta have people around us, and

0:10:11.8 S1: If you're not in a mastermind, how can anybody give you a boss? And

0:10:15.8 S2: The reason is is because they don't know you. They don't know your spouse, they don't know your kids, they don't know your propensity to do certain things, they don't know dreams, they don't know your aspirations, they don't know your goals, how in the world is anybody gonna give you advice if they don't know the interest to all those questions. So when you get in a mastermind, you let the veil down, you let the facade then and you say, Hey, here I am the good, the bad, the ugly, like you getting it all right here, I'm vulnerable, I'm transparent, I'm gonna be authentic. And that's when we start building on a solid foundation, but here's what happens, we all got this facade of we all got... Everybody thinks everything's Rainbow and sunshine in your life, and that's just not reality, we all have trials and you'll have relationship problems. Listen, Robin and I've had mountain tops, we wouldn't know we had mountain tops if we didn't have valleys, and so you live a life for somebody for decades, you're gonna kinda get tired of them occasionally, and they're gonna maybe get all up in your face and then you're gonna say something you should, and then you gotta apologize, and I need people to help me go be a...

0:11:22.8 S2: You can't do that, you can't say those kinds of things. And you need to be home when your children are there because you only get one go through with them, you don't get a second chance. It's like, I don't wanna have her grants, I don't wanna lay there on my death bed one of these days and go, You know, I should have paid attention, I should have been at home, nobody says I should have been at the office more, but yeah, people just spend the majority of their time there, they don't really prioritize their family, and then you come home one day with a pocket full of money to a house full of strangers, and you wonder why they don't have anything to do with you. And I need people in my corner occasionally reminded me of that, so I just spent the past 21 years every week in a mastermind group, and it really helped propel me to a level of success that I wouldn't have had alone.

0:12:12.0 S1: I was a man, I think we're conditioned to at least think that we have to be the loan ranger, that we have to solve everything by ourselves and rely on all other people this week, and as you get older, you find out that that's just utter nonsense. Yeah.

0:12:28.1 S2: Well, thing is, Is that ego and pride slips in and you think, Hey, I'm a man, I can do it all on my own. Well, there's no self-made people out there, it takes community, it takes great colleagues, it takes team members, it takes a tribe to raise a family. Why wouldn't it take a tribe to keep you on the straight and narrow to run your life and run your business, but people think that if they are vulnerable and transparent, they'll appear weak, and the truth is, is you'll be stronger as a result of it. So masterminds give you a new perspective. Like Greg, you have one life experience, you have one set of filters, you don't have a different perspective, you can't see it differently if you wanted to, and we need people in our corner that can point out things that we can't see, and when we have the consensus of the multitudes, more than likely, that's probably gonna work out, but you've got to subject yourself to the scrutiny of a group of people that are willing to throw the flag on you, willing to call you out, willing to give you constructive criticism.

0:13:36.0 S2: I mean, my goodness, I even send out letters to people saying, How do you see me in this life, how do you see me act in around my family, how do you see me out in public, like Help me... I wanna get better, and I just tell me, hit me on the 10, I can take it. And just tell me the truth, 'cause I can't fix something if I don't know. It's pro.

0:13:56.4 S1: Now, imagine your wife's pretty conditioned to that now, but coercion the first time that she realizes that you were doing that...

0:14:04.4 S2: Well, we got married two weeks out of high school grades, we kinda raised each other, so we've been together the vast majority of our life, and she's not known in any other way except for me to be this way, but the truth is, the world we're living in today is start into death or authenticity. We're so tired of the polished persona and living on the beach in Hawaii and the Four-Hour Work Week and no disrespect to that bug, it was a great book, but his intention was not for people to literally take it to that extreme. And we've lost all sense of our bearings, and we need people to walk around us and help us grind it out and have that grit and determination and perseverance, and really set these aspirational goals that we can accomplish the things that we need to... To help us stay on the straight and narrow, to help us prioritize our priorities and help us accomplish the things in life that really matter, you know my first number one core value is relationships matter most, and if people don't matter to you, you go have a long road ahead of you, because you're dealing with people regardless of what you're dealing with, and when you really focus outward and you're the giver and not to take her, that natural reciprocity, it comes back to you 100 X.

0:15:25.5 S2: And so when you really focus on other people and help them accomplish their goals and dreams, and you'll get anything you won't add alive, you just gotta be genuine, and you gotta go out there and really help.

0:15:36.9 S1: Now, what about for the person that joins your mastermind or any mass remote for that matter, and they're going by the old adage, but are not open my mouth and have them think of the fool...

0:15:48.6 S2: Well, yeah, I've heard that before. It says it's better to appear stupid than to open your mouth and relieve all about... But the truth is, is none of us have it all figured out, now we can't go out there to the general populist that has no context to your situation and air your dirty laundry. That's not what I'm suggesting at all. What I'm suggesting is, is you go into an accountability group or a mastermind group, where people are genuinely interested in your well-being, people that align with your core values, people that align with having a purpose in life, people that really wanna excel personally, professionally and spiritually. I want people around me that are really interested in doing life the correct way, and we've got to have some straight age by which we determine what it is for you that is based on truth and my final core values. Truth before opinion. And for me, God's word is true, and I measure everything against it, and if it doesn't coincide with that, then I'm out, I'm not interested, I can hear other perspectives, I can understand, I can regard you for who you are and who you stand for, but at the end of the day, we've gotta have some value system that we measure everything that we do in our life, and so when you get around people...

0:17:10.6 S2: They say, You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. I think Jim Rome is noted for that quote, but it's true, if you really want to excel, you really wanna go to new heights, you've gotta get around people that have the capability or the probability of getting there, if not, you know you're just gonna kinda hang out where you're at and you're not gonna really up-level, you're not gonna push through upper limit challenges, you're gonna be comfortable where you're at, and procrastination kicks in and then you look up one day and here you are 65, 70 years old, and you finally discover that you really didn't know, meet your own expectations and you didn't really do the things that you're capable of doing, and I just wanna be pushed to that level, so how do you attract and vet the people for your mastermind groups? Just to make sure that they're the right fit. Yeah, it's a great question. I've done a number of podcast interviews over the years, and a lot of people hear me and they say, Hey, I wanna know more about that, there's an application that we take that applications that View From The Top dot com, and we vet each and every person we go through and have an interview, just like you and I are talking now, and it lasts about 40 minutes historically, and I asked some very pointed, very direct questions about you and your goals and what it is that you've accomplished, what you hope to accomplish, some of your personal values, what your mission statement is, where you wanna be in life, and then we say, Hey, this is who we are as an organization, we really go through and we make the member promise.

0:18:49.2 S2: We say, Hey, this is what you can expect from us. But at the same time, this is what we expect from you. We want you to show up on the calls, we want you to show all your cards, we want you to help other people connect with other people, we want you to call them out, walk with them, connect offline. We really want you to build that camaraderie, build that type of sense of report that you would have with somebody that really wants to form that relationship, and once we establish, you're in... Then we just continue to grow our community

0:19:24.1 S1: Now are... Most of these virtual

0:19:25.5 S2: Are all virtual. Yeah, we've got members in about eight or nine different countries now, and you know what's pretty cool is, is that we found out that people will be more vulnerable and transparent with people that they first meet virtually, they wouldn't do it in person because they're worried about a bankers in the room, you know, my chiropractors in there are preachers in there, and our wives play tennis together, or they're at the country club together, or man's wife cleans my teeth, my wife may hear this is like all they're scared. They're locked up, and so virtually, that's not a problem. And then the other thing is, is you can get such high quality people because you're not limiting it to your geographic area.

0:20:10.3 S1: Okay, one of my first thoughts, and now I'm kind of rethinking this was this would be a perfect ministry for your church or for any other church, but for the reasons you just described, people might not be as open to sharing or talking about their individual struggles as they might be in a zoom-type forum.

0:20:34.6 S2: Yeah, well, Greg, let's talk about that 'cause you might have opened up Pandora's box for a minute, but I've been a leader in my church for decades, literally three and a half decades. I love our church. I mean, I love our pastor. It's amazing, but the truth of the matter is, we really get off more in your business in the mastermind groups, then we do a church, we ask very, very personal questions. I'm challenged and I'm asked things too that I just don't get asked on a regular basis in our church, and I had this discussion recently with our pastor, I say, Why aren't we doing that? Why aren't we in each other's business and ask them about various things that are causing them and creating problems in their life, why aren't we calling them out, why aren't we saying, You can't do that, you need to be at home with this time, you need to be around your kids, you don't need to be looking at pornography, you need to be treating your wife with respect, like Why aren't we doing that? And I just for the love of me, don't understand why we're not doing it, but we do that in the Mastermind, I don't ever join my Mastermind, if you're then scan...

0:21:43.4 S2: If you can't take it on the chin, you don't need to be in our group, 'cause we're about getting it done. We're about moving the needle. We move the ball down the field. And when you say, I'm gonna do something and you don't... You get called out, in a church, we hide, we don't even tell... Nobody asked, nobody tells, and I'm like, Man, how are we gonna get better if we're not doing this stuff, and so no disrespect of the majority of our churches, but we're doing what church should be doing.

0:22:10.8 S1: I think the majority of the churches are just trying to survive and they probably think that if I asked the hard questions that will drive people off, but I was like, they're failing because they're not asking the hard questions, if they would get in there and be life transformational for people, they would wanna come and... Yeah, so I think if that's the mindset... We got it backwards. So how long does the average membership in a mastermind last versus... One of your Masterminds.

0:22:41.1 S2: You know, I don't know this, I can't support it. Statistically, I can just tell you kind of the word of mouth, historically, less than a year, in most masterminds, we do have the analytics to support what we've done, and we've had hundreds and hundreds of people go through our mastermind program, 32 years... Is the average life of one of our members, and we've had dozens and dozens and dozens, stay six and seven years in our Mastermind group, because why would they not wanna stay in... Their marriage is better. They're better day. We have a women's group as well, they're better wives, they're better moms, their businesses are doubling and tripling, they're walking the way they should be walking in regards to personal and professional and spiritual in every area of their life. Why would they wanna get out when they're getting that kind of return, and so it just doesn't make sense, and that's why they stay so long... We really have a great program here. It's really something that your audience should check out

0:23:44.8 S1: Now, you mentioned that you have masterminds for women. We do... Are they co-ed? Or they're not.

0:23:52.2 S2: No women are run by my daughter, Brooke, Brooke is the director, and we have facilitators that run those groups, and co-ed groups can be fine, but the truth is, I'm just old school, there are some things I need to be talking about with me and that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing with women in there, and there again, I'm from the old school, I know a lot of people say, That's ridiculous. Well, it's just the way I am. You know what I'm saying? And there's things that women need to be talking about that the men that need to be in there, and you and I are similar in age, and you're kind of from the old school too, so you can appreciate what I'm talking about, but I just feel it's best there's many masterminds that are hugely successful, that are co-ed, and if that's... For you, that's fine. The other thing is, is I've done a lot of financial counseling over years, Dave Ramsey and I've been best friends for almost 30 years, so I kinda grew up in him growing that radio business, and I was his second sponsor, I sponsored his show for 21 consecutive years and so I grew up kind of around that, and my wife used to say, Why do you make the women cry?

0:24:56.4 S1: And I started laughing, I said, I don't mean to make them cry, I just did... I say it, I say whatever it is, and

0:25:02.2 S2: So I do that with me. Like, I can't help you if I don't just say it. And if you don't say it to me, you like in me is good, but my main priority is to make you better. And if you like me, it's a benefit, it's a plus. But our objective is for you to get better, and just sometimes I get a little carried away myself, and we felt it was better if the women had a director and they run their groups and then... I mean, we run arts...

0:25:31.6 S1: Yeah, I can't imagine being in a man being in a group and asking a question, How should I proceed with my wife or something even more personal, and that would just seem like it would inhibit responses and

0:25:45.8 S2: It does, and so I wouldn't want my wife in there talking about real personal things in front of other women related to our relationship, and we found that to be true, there are a few outliers that are okay with it, and that's fine, there's groups out there for you, it's just not so happened to be our group.

0:26:06.4 S1: So you touched on this a little bit. I was gonna ask anyway, how involved is your family and view from the top and our shares are... Yeah.

0:26:14.0 S2: Well, our daughter Brooke is the chief operating officer for our company, so that's pretty involved. Everything runs across her desk, she does an amazing job. My wife and I elect not to participate in business because when I leave and turn the light out in my office, you know we need to have our family time and we need to leave the business as much as I can at the business and then we need to have our family, we did try, during one of our companies, we used to own a construction company and Robin worked in the company, and now that didn't work out too well. 'cause she let me know in so many words, he didn't work for me. And I'm used to getting it done, and she didn't like the way I was throwing out some of the commands, and she said... I said, You know what, Robin, I'd probably be best. We didn't work together, 'cause you know me, I'm a hard charger in pedal to the metal, I gotta get it done. And so we just elected at that time that we probably shouldn't work together.

0:27:13.0 S1: Why are mastermind groups a good add-on for online businesses?

0:27:17.7 S2: Yeah, that's a great question. Great, we have a lot of people ask us that question, you know, when I first started coaching, I didn't really have the desire to start masterminds, but when I started doing podcast interviews, man, people started coming out of the wood work, and I said, fitness crisis, there's no way, I can coach all these people, I've been in a master of mind. It was successful, and I said, Well, I'll do one group. So I did, kept doing podcast interviews, kept filling up groups, and I'm like, Good Night, what am I gonna do? But I just kept adding groups, and then all of a sudden thought leaders from around the world started notice and we were scaling mastermind groups, and I had a guy called me from Dubai, and he said, Big A, he said the, How are you scale in these mastermind groups, and I told him, he said, Would you coach me to do that? I said, No, I don't wanna do that. I said, I'll take too much time, I don't really wanna do it. He said, Just name a price. And I was gonna name a price to get rid of him, and I threw a big number out there to run him off, he said, Where do I send the money? I said, What? You say, Where do I say in the money? I said, Are you serious? He said, Jim, and you're killing it.

0:28:27.0 S2: And I wanna do the same thing. So he sent me the money and I coached demon, another guy called said the same thing, I tried the same tactic. I said, Hey, I don't wanna do it. And he said, How much? And I named the price. And he said, Where did I send the money? And I'm like, Dang. So my daughter came in my office one day and she said, Dad, these people are really taking notice of how we're building the masterminds, we should create a playbook, and I said, I don't wanna do that broke. I said, That'll take too much time, and it'll take a lot of effort and energy on our team, and she said, Well, what do you wanna do? Do you really wanna scale and keep growing, or do you wanna teach other people to do it? They can continue to do it, and she guilt me into it, and I said, Okay, so we created the mastermind playbook where all the systems and processes are in one play book, and then we developed a coaching program to teach people to do exactly what we're doing. So we've got people now all over the world that are implementing our strategy, and we've created a framework in a playbook in order to teach other people what we're doing, and what people have discovered.

0:29:35.8 S2: An average cost of a mastermind is about 500 a month. There's some that are way more, and there's a lot that are way less, but let's just use the average of 500, if you have two groups, that's 20 people, 'cause we put 10 in a group. Well, if you do some quick math, that's 120000 a year, if you lead two groups, each group takes about three hours a week, so an hour to leave the call, about an hour to get ready, about an hour to follow up, so now you got six hours a week invested in a six-figure business, now, Greg, I don't know about you, but the way I do math, that's pretty good ROI for your time. And you only need 20 people to do that. Well, here we are with a couple of hundred people in these mastermind groups, and I didn't anticipate a seven-figure business that I'm involved in seven of the groups, but the remainder of the groups I have facilitators that we do revenue share with, so I'm making money on all these groups, and I'm not even in the group because I've built the framework, and so you ask a great question, why would you want to do this as an add-on? I don't know about you, but if you invest six hours a week and you can pick up an extra six figures, that's a pretty good...

0:30:54.1 S2: And all

0:30:55.1 S1: Of that, you're doing it, I think for more altruistic reasons too... Yeah.

0:30:59.1 S2: It's the transformational experience. Right, and so we get to participate in that, and then also the revenue is nice as well, so I don't wanna... I hate it when people with money go, money is not important. I wanna go, you are really important. Let's take it away from... You say how important it is. It's very important, but it needs to be a tool, it doesn't need to be your God, it doesn't mean to be the sole reason that you're doing anything, but listen, we all got bills to pay, I like to eat, I formed this bad habit, and then I like to go on trips, and I like to give money away, and in order to do those things, you gotta make a live, and so we're just teaching people how to do this all across the world right now. It's really working. Wealth. Angry, thank you for asking.

0:31:46.3 S1: You mentioned transformations, are there any specific examples you can give without obviously identifying somebody, but anything that should be comfortable sharing...

0:31:57.9 S2: Yeah, man, I could talk the rest of the afternoon and all day tomorrow on the transformational experiences, but what we find is, is that people primarily are isolated, they're trying to figure it out on their own, and they're at home and they try this and they try that but you only try so many things because you don't know what you don't know, and when you get around a group of people that are like-minded that really wanna grow, it just opens up so many opportunities, you just have new perspective and new insights, and these people are getting in now and they're like, Man, I didn't even know to think that way, and they make one or two small alterations in their business, and then they just grow exponentially. Well, it's not that they're dumb, they were just ignorant, they just didn't know that they could make those changes or people that are like... I don't know if you're familiar with day and Sullivan's book, Dr. Benjamin Hardy actually wrote, it's called Who not hell, and everybody's always trying to figure out how... Well, the truth of the matter is, you don't need to know how you need to know who, and that's how you're gonna really grow your business.

0:33:06.7 S2: Well, people in the Mastermind, I didn't know to know that, I didn't know to think about getting a who rather than trying to figure it out on my own. And so we do a program called come as you will be in 2023, to where you said, aspirational goals and five key areas of your life. And usually after about the first year, people are re-doing their goals because they've already accomplished their three-year goal because we help you really get focused, and so there are so many personal and professional transformations that are going on. Just think about when you're in a group every single week for an hour and you tell people what you're gonna do and you have to report back the following week, well, there's no more procrastination, you don't kick the can down the road, you do the thing. And when you do the thing, you know what happens, you're successful, and as a result of that constant accountability, there's gonna be a huge transformation in your life, and then when you go home and you continue to work, and little Billy wants to throw a baseball, but you're like, I gotta send 10 more emails.

0:34:06.7 S2: He goes to bed, you finish your emails and you pass out and you get up, you go to work the next morning before he gets out of bed, you don't even know your son, and then somebody else takes you a little girl, a piano recital, and you're like, Honey, was it good? Yeah, good data. I wish you'd been there. And it's like, Well, see, but when you're in our group, we hold you accountable to being at home at a proper time, and we want you to stop emailing and go out and pitch baseball with Billy and go to the piano recital, and that wife that you've taken advantage of for 20 years, and she's been patient, you're like, Hey, she'll only be patient so long, you'll come home one day and find your log you out on the front porch. And you're like, Man, I never saw that coming. Well, you'd see it coming if you were paying attention, and so that's what we help people do, so great. That's just a few very broad transformations that happen, but there's very specific transformations that happen all along the way.

0:35:05.0 S1: Okay, so it sounds like a lot of it parallels coaching, what do you see as the primary difference... Yeah, there's a little bit of difference.

0:35:14.6 S2: Some people that are unfamiliar with Masterminds will compare it to group coaching, group coaching Greg, and you're a great group coach, you stand up and you do a dissertation. Everybody's looking at Greg for the answer. In master inmate line for all equal, we have a facilitator that keeps us on track to make sure we get through what we've scheduled to do, but everybody is sharing equal, and so that's the difference in group coaching, it'd be like you inviting me to your house and Mrs. Meals opens the door and I come in and sit down at the table with five other couples, and we look at the head of the table and there's gray, and every time somebody poses a question, Greg answers the question, that would be a pretty boring evening, no disrespect but that would be pretty boring. But when somebody toes out a question and everybody around the table gets an opportunity to share their perspective, it's a lot more interesting and you're gonna get a lot more wisdom and so that's what masterminding is. It's trusted advisors, they don't have anything to gain or lose, it's kinda like having your own board of directors.

0:36:25.5 S1: Okay, do you ever have someone that's just not a good fit and you just have to ask them to leave...

0:36:31.3 S2: Absolutely, and we do ask people to leave, and we ask people to leave that don't show up on the calls, that don't do the accountability tool, that don't share that, don't encourage that. Don't throw the flag occasionally, we say, Hey, this is not for you. It's just not for you, or we'll get people in that really need maybe a psychiatrist or a psychologist, maybe they need one-on-one help prior to the mastermind, and so we're not about doing work that a psychologist is trained and educated to do, but we are about... The consensus of the multitude, but there are people at different levels, and so for various reasons, oftentimes, a person is not a good fit, and we're quick to point that out. Okay.

0:37:16.3 S1: Switching gears just a little bit, and what do you consider some of the best business books that you've read and why...

0:37:22.9 S2: Oh man, here, He's so many amazing books out there, I think I mentioned earlier who not how Dan Sullivan really did a job with that business on purpose is another really good book that I would recommend Holly. Yeah, as a matter of fact, if you wanna go to our website, view from the top, there's a book recommendation reading list there. Thou Shall Prosper is a really good book. Rabbi Daniel Lapin wrote that book. I'll recommend it. If you're looking for a really good book on negotiating from a business standpoint, not in a used car salesman type negotiating, but never split the difference by Chris Voss, is a really good book. Essentialism by Greg mic. Human is a really good book. Turn the Ship Around is another great book, so go to our website, view from the top dot com, and you can get our list of books that we recommend, positions

0:38:21.2 S1: Understand that you're working on several new book, one of the top ten of those gonna be...

0:38:26.5 S2: Thank you. I wasn't expecting you to mention that Seth Buckley wrote a book called ambition, and he is in our Mastermind Group, he owns a company called Cathedral consulting, you're at an Oregon, and he and or partnering up, we're gonna be writing two books, one is, who is my mentor? And the other one is how to be a mentor. And so I think we all need mentors, we need to reach back and we need to reach forward, and we're gonna teach people how to do that.

0:38:55.7 S1: I think there's just a huge need for mentors today, and unfortunately people soon be... A lot of people, so be wrapped up and do not have the time to do it or not be willing to do it.

0:39:07.8 S2: Yeah, I think it's the latter, not the former. I think most people are not willing to do it. We have the time to do whatever we want, if we're willing to allocate the time to do it.

0:39:18.9 S1: Is just trying to make time to re-prioritize, that's

0:39:23.1 S2: A... Go ahead and we'll wrap this up here.

0:39:25.4 S1: What's the number one piece of advice that you can give for our listeners.

0:39:28.4 S2: I would just say fear of missing an opportunity more than your fear of failure, and keep an open mindset of how you can do something, not how you can't... And I think you'll live a very successful and significant life.

0:39:42.4 S1: And what's the best way for people to check you out and get in touch with you? Yeah.

0:39:46.0 S2: Thank you, Greg. View From The Top dot com is the easiest and best way. All of our social media platforms are there, and I would love to engage with you all... Right, that's a wrap. Thank you, Erin, for being against an entrepreneurs over 40. It's been a pleasure, thank you. Great.