Masterminds: How to Increase Your Income By $100K+ in 5-10 Hours a Month with Brad Hart: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the ideal destination for business professionals with great shows like My First Million. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down masterminds, how to increase your income by$100 ,000 in five to 10 hours a month. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Brad Hart into EO Fire Studios. Brad is a mastermind master. Having been a part of 30, started over a dozen of his own, and worked with Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, and more.

0:34He shares his secrets to creating profitable mastermind groups to bolt onto your business in five to 10 hours a month. And today at Fire Nation, we'll talk about how there's always a better way to make more income, more impact, and do it in less time. You owe it to yourself to explore and investigate other models, which we will do today, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Brad and our sponsors. Sales Evangelist, hosted by my friend, Donald Kelly, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now.

1:15A recent episode you should definitely check out is the five ways to do daily outbound with LinkedIn. Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Hostinger is among the top web hosting and website creation brands in the world. See for yourself. Head to hostinger.com slash onfire and use code onfire for an exclusive 10 % discount. That's hostinger.com slash onfire and the code onfire. Brad, say what's up to Fire Nation and what's something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? Hey, everybody. What's going on, JLD? Hey, Fire Nation. Thanks so much.

1:55I'm so grateful to be here. What I believe about being successful that I think most people would disagree with, especially the people I talk to on a daily basis, is that you need to be doing everything. I truly believe that if you are focused, you're going to go way further. Oh my God, so much further. And you really focus on building that foundation and getting your offer dialed in. You're going to go way further in entrepreneurship and any endeavor than you will if you're squirreled out looking at a hundred different things. Fire Nation, you know my favorite word is focus. Follow one course until success.

2:26So Brad, You are beating my drum, brother. And Fire Nation, as I teased you at the beginning of the episode, we're talking all about masterminds today, how to increase your income by 100K and of course your impact exponentially in five to 10 hours a month. So let's start at the core. Let's start at the base. What exactly is a mastermind? That's a great question. So I see a lot of things that aren't masterminds. A mastermind is not a$7 Facebook group. A mastermind is not this little membership group that a lot of people are putting out today. A mastermind to me is between eight and 20 people usually who have similar values, similar goals, similar visions, and they want to support each other, create accountability, really connect each other, the resources, the opportunities, the people, the systems that are going to allow them to achieve their missions faster and overcome their challenges faster by gaining clarity, by really moving through problems in a way that doesn't just go for the band-aid solution but really gets to the core and the root.

3:20And as a facilitator of masterminds, you can be the person who doesn't necessarily need to be the expert, but you can bring in all the experts. You can put it all together. You can get paid to learn from the best, and you can do it with no inventory and no expertise and no infrastructure. Like a lot of these internet businesses, unfortunately, they're huge. They're big money hogs. They take a huge infrastructure to run and to launch things. Masterminds require none of that. It's very basic tech, and you can get one started very quickly. Now, you said no expertise. Expound upon that. Because I know a lot of people are like, don't you need to at least be an expert in something or have knowledge in an area?

3:52What do you mean by no expertise needed? I'll share a story. I think that'll alludicate that. Thank you, John, for asking. When I was part of Jay Fizet's community, who was awesome, and he also runs Masterminds. He's a great guy. I met a guy named Michael at one of their VIP dinners. And Michael went to Bali with his family for six months and built an Amazon business. This is probably five years ago now. and I was asking him about it. He's like, oh yeah, you know, just spend, you know, some time with my family. I ride my power power glider. I live on a boat up in Seattle. I'm like, that's pretty cool.

4:21He's like, yeah, we do about a hundred K a month. I'm like, that's awesome, man. What do you sell? He's like cat tunnels. I'm like, what the heck is a cat tunnel? It's like, yeah, it's like a little neoprene tunnel that you run through. The cat runs through and hits the bell. I'm like, you do a hundred thousand dollars a month selling cat tunnels on Amazon. I'm like, yeah. He's like, yeah. He's like, and salt and pepper shakers, but mostly cat tunnels. So I'm like, dude, show me your ways. I'm like, how much you work? He's like about five hours a week. I'm like, legitimately, this guy has a million dollar business.

4:47He works five hours a week. He lives on a boat and he parties all the time. This is great. So he's like, yeah, I'll teach you what I know. It'll be$30 ,000. I'm like, okay, well I could pay you$30 ,000, but here's the thing. I'm an expert at another thing. It's, it's masterminds. Have you ever considered running a mastermind? He's like, no, I haven't. And he's like, well, do you have other people that, that want to learn from you? He's like, oh yeah, I have hundreds. I'm like, well, do they all $30 ,000 to drop on coaching? He's like, nope. And even if they did, would you want to coach that many people?

5:12He's like, nope. So I'm like, all right, well, how about I build a mastermind around you? You teach, you'll be the expert. I'll enroll, I'll facilitate, and we'll take everybody to China and Hong Kong and teach them how to source products and train them on the ground and all that great stuff. And we'll have a blast doing it. He's like, sounds great. So long story short, we enrolled 52 people. They all came to China and Hong Kong with us. We ended up generating plenty revenue. I made money. He made money. My trip was paid for. And I met so many incredible people. I got to have experience I've never had before, uh, go to country I'd never seen before.

5:44And on the back of that, I ended up building a marketing agency that went from zero to 75 K a month in six months marketing on Amazon because I met my partners and I, you know, people ask better questions than I did and thought about new opportunities in different ways than I did. And they took better notes than I did. And it wasn't about me and what I learned. And I could have got a great experience from working with Michael directly, but through the mastermind, I got so much more out of it and I got paid to do it. So I limited my risk. So that's why masterminds are great for not having to be the expert.

6:13In fact, you can do way more and help way more people when you don't rely on your own expertise. That's a great story. And we got a couple more coming up for you, Fire Nation. But first and foremost, let's just get real specific real quick here. How are masterminds different from courses, from group coaching, from other ways that people are generating revenue today? That's a great question. So you can start a course, for example. And the problem is, is that it takes a lot of knowledge, a forethought about who your clients are, what their problems are, how to get a result in a stepwise process that can be repeated over and over again.

6:46And with a course, unfortunately, 90 % of them aren't going to be consumed. And the ones that are consumed, only maybe 10 % of those people will take any significant action and get the result. And that's a huge problem, right? So courses are great, but I don't recommend you start there. They take a huge infrastructure, affiliates, marketing budgets, you know, funnels, all these different things, webinars that are just very complex. And there's a lot of nuance too, and it takes time to really master those and money. Um, so courses are great. I recommend it. I sell courses. I just don't recommend you start there.

7:15Uh, books are great. I've written three books. I've got one called the eight minute mastermind, which we'll talk about. Uh, but you know, books take a year to write. They take multiple edits. They take multiple revisions to write a really great book that stands out requires a lot of research and interviews and and case studies and testimonials. You might not have all that when you're starting out. So books are great. I highly recommend them. Oh, and by the way, you're not going to make a ton of money on books. Most books never sell a thousand copies. JLD knows this. He's launching one right now.

7:41So, you know, by the way, I bought it and I'm excited to read it. Oh, Brad, you're the best. Oh, my pleasure. Absolutely. Happy to support. So books are great. I just don't recommend you start there, right? That's a later thing. Coaching and consulting, that's where most people start. It just doesn't scale. You're on that income rollercoaster, right? You go out and market and sell a bunch of coaching consulting, then you got to fulfill on it. Now all of a sudden, you're back to square one and you're up and down and up and down. You never can get out of the rat race and your calendar is full of calls.

8:05And all of a sudden you're back to where you started. And it's really difficult to scale business being a one-on-one coach. But with masterminds, you get the benefits of all those ones I mentioned, which they all have benefits, but without all the hassles and without all the upstart and with all that. And it makes everything else that you're going to do as a result of this mastermind that much easier. So you get to work with people in an intimate setting and they help each other and you build the content vault and you have the expert speakers and you have all these different pieces. As you build your process out, you get consistency.

8:34You get to work with people. They get way more of a better experience, more impactful, more insightful experience, and they get all the benefits of working with each other, hearing each other's breakthroughs and working with each other, which would be lost in a one-on-one setting. And the book obviously is just not that intimate. The course can be completely hands-off, but you need time to really build your methodology you to a point where you can give it to somebody and they can get results without you. So it can take a little bit of time and a mastermind is a great way to start because it's high impact, high touch, and can increase your income in less time.

9:05So listen, people throw the number 100k around pretty freely. But the reality is, I mean, that puts you in the top 5 % of all earners in first world countries. I mean, let alone, you know, if you add in second and third world countries, you're top 1 % of 1%. So how legitimately realistic is it to add 100k to your business with masterminds? That's a great question. And I appreciate the skepticism because it sounds crazy to some people, right? But the fact is, it's not that crazy when you break it down. It's not magic, it's math. So if you look at the numbers,$100 ,000 a year, let's say you had 10 clients paying you$1 ,000.

9:37That's$10 ,000 a month times 12 months is$120 ,000. There you go. Or if you had 20 clients paying$500, or if you had 40 clients paying$250. I'm not saying to go that cheap, because, you know, again, masterminds, they want to be a high ticket, high touch experience. There's plenty of people willing to pay more for a great mastermind. But if you really focus on delivery, over delivery, if your niche is really clear and you are differentiated from the rest of the marketplace, your mastermind can command price points up to and including$100 ,000 a year. I just paid 100 grand a year to be a part of a mastermind with Dan Fleischman and Joel Marion.

10:07It's worth every penny. So whatever you end up doing, you know, just decide, hey, I'm going to be the niche. I'm going to really own this space and I'm going to create a very specific offering for people that's reassuringly expensive and your income will balloon as a result. I'm going to be the niche. I mean, if that's something that I could pound on a drum as well, Fire Nation, I would. You want to be the niche. You want to own the niche. When I launched Entrepreneurs on Fire, it was the best daily podcast in the world the day that I launched interviewing entrepreneurs. It was the worst. It was the only.

10:38I owned that niche. How can you be that niche. So, so powerful. And Fire Nation, if you think we're even close to being done talking about masterminds, we're going to talk about the best way you can get your mastermind going in 2021, how they can increase impact and income in less time and so much more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. The new year is upon us and that means new goals, more growth and upgrading your day-to-day workflow. While most sales folk are stuck in the mud of manual scheduling, digging into data, and tracking down leads, let me share with you a better way to win so you can crush your Q1.

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14:19share with us the best way here in 2021 for us to get our mastermind going. So it's really a five-step process. And by the way, just to spoil the alert, you can use this process to build almost any business, whether it be software, SaaS, launching a course, any of the other things that you might be doing, but let's use masterminds as the case study, right? That's the vehicle we're going to choose for all the reasons we talked about earlier. So the first step is to dream it, right? Get clear on your vision as best as you can with the information you have. The second step is to go talk to people and research it and have these market research calls.

14:49And that might sound boring or a waste of time, but it's really not, right? Because you're doing double duty. You're not just gaining research in the marketplace and asking people questions about what logically and emotionally drives them about what their problems are, their challenges are, and really getting your offer dialed in, which is so important. It's the foundational piece of everything you're going to do, but it's really excellent in generating leads as well. So that brings you to the third step. So once you've dreamed it and researched it, now you want to test it and you test it by selling it.

15:13You've never built something, whether it be a course, a SaaS product, a mastermind or anything else before you sell it, before people come to you who are in your market and they say, yes, I'm raising my hand. Here's my credit card. Take the money. Let's do this because that allows you to verify if you have product market fit. And if people aren't willing to buy it under the circumstances of a pilot or a beta program where it's maybe discounted and there's a guarantee and they're going to get more time and access with you than anybody else will in the future, then it's probably not something people want.

15:44You got to go back to the drawing board. So working on that is so important. Selling it before you build it is so important. And that leads you to step four, which is nailing it. So you do a pilot or a beta. You keep it tight. You don't make it two years long. You know, you give people a result and you give them a result that they may not have even expected. So you deliver on what you promised and then you over deliver. And then when it's green lights across the board, you make any tweaks you need to make. Hey, this worked well. Let's do more of that. This didn't work. Let's cut that. You add whatever you need to add.

16:11Now you get to the point where you've nailed it. And then only then can you scale it. So I hear so many people talking about Facebook ads, about funnels, about, you know, Clubhouse, about all these, you know, beautiful tools to get more people into their funnel, so to speak, or into their world that know, like, and trust them. But if they don't have their offer dialed in and they don't have anything to offer those people, it's kind of a waste of time, right? So having that offer nailed is the prerequisite scaling. So we got dream it, research it, test it by selling it, nail it, and scale it. Fire Nation, that's the five-step process.

16:43And I love number two specifically, you need to talk to people about it. You need to do the research. These are key steps that, by the way, people usually skip. They usually don't even do this thing. They just dream it, and then they just try to turn it into a reality. Then they're like, well, why is nobody responding to this? It's because you haven't had the conversations. You haven't researched it thoroughly. You haven't really said, okay, this is a real pain point that I will be to provide a solution for. Now, how do masterminds increase the impact and income with people who run them in less time?

17:15So John, that's a great question. I end up talking to several hundred people a year about this. And some of them, they really want to work with me one-on-one. And my one-on-one rates are pretty high right now. I charge$50 ,000 for six months of coaching,$100 ,000 for a year. And I discourage people from going one-on-one with me. And the reason I do that is not because I don't want the money. I'm not, you know, I value money. It's not, but it's not the driving force. I just know that they're almost shooting themselves in the foot because so much of the value of being part of a mastermind comes from, like I talked about earlier in my story with the mastermind in China and Hong Kong, it comes from having other people in the room who are smart and on the same track as you are and have similar goals and values, asking great questions, getting great answers and taking notes.

17:57So you might not ask the question, but you can get so much value from being in the room with other people who are on hot seats who are getting their questions answered. So that's one of the main reasons, honestly, that I choose to work in masterminds and I can do it for two hours a week, you know, maybe five to 10 hours a month of delivery and create a bigger impact with more people than if I had 10 one-on-one clients. So right now we've had about a hundred clients that have gone through our program, working with me. I don't hand them off to somebody else. And every single one of them, if they've shown up and they've really asked the questions and they don't stay stuck and they follow the program has gotten insane results.

18:32Some of them have doubled and tripled their money in the first month with us. So it's really effective and that's why I do it. I don't want to be the biggest cock of the walk. I don't need to be Tony Robbins or Brendan Burchard. As long as my clients are really, really happy and they're excited to refer me to other clients, that's awesome for me and that's what my goal is. So whatever your goal is, make sure you pick a vehicle that allows you to get there. And the mastermind vehicle is perfect for me and a lot of our clients. Fire Nation, Brad's dropped 100K to be in a mastermind of his own. So he practices what he preaches.

19:03He is walking the walk. He's talking the talk. And Brad, we do love stories. You've already told us one. Share another of your favorite mastermind stories and why masterminds just overall is the number one tool in your toolkit. Yeah. So I think the story that comes to mind first is the story of my first mastermind. So before I joined 30 masterminds and started dozens of my own all over the world and you know bali china hong kong italy all these different places all over the u.s and met all my heroes i was on a trip with a guy named tim ferris who you might have heard of and tim at the time wasn't the 800 pound gorilla that he is today although he was very successful with his first book which was the four-hour work week so that was kind of a sleeper hit it went crazy and he was working on a second book which is called uh the four-hour body and as a result he had this land rush giveaway thing where you could buy a certain number of books and get a trip.

19:55And it could be a trip to, I think it was Argentina, Africa, or India with Tim for 10 days. I'm like, that's a pretty cool idea. I've always wanted to meet Tim. I had the money. So I went and I bought the thousand books. I took the write-off and I went on a trip to Africa with Tim Ferriss. And it turned out he didn't actually sell, or maybe he didn't want to go with any of the other people that did it. So it was like the only opportunity that anybody got to go spend 10 days in Africa. So it was just you and Tim. There's nobody else. Yeah, it was me, Tim, Charlie Hone who works for Scribe and Tucker now.

20:24Uh, but now, uh, you know, at the time he was his director of special projects and we went with an NGO that Tim was familiar with called Samosource that was run by Lila Janah, who, if you haven't met Lila, uh, unfortunately she passed away, but she was an incredible, uh, giver and just, it opened my eyes to the amount of impact that one person could make. She brought like 50 ,000 people out of poverty in places like Africa and Malaysia. And she's just a beautiful woman. Uh, I would highly recommend checking out her book, give work, uh, if you're interested in charity work. So, um, so we're in Africa and we're there for 10 days.

20:54We did the safari thing. We went to, you know, Nairobi, we played, uh, golf with like the general of Kenya, like the army and the president, all this crazy stuff. And I'm getting to talk to Tim and he's like, well, what do you want to do with your life? And I'm telling him. And at the time I was into trading and hedge funds. I used to run a hedge fund and he's like, okay, interesting. And, um, yeah, asked me some more questions. He's like, all of a sudden he's like, do you want to go to North Korea? I'm like, North Korea, why the hell do I want to go to North Korea? That's such a Tim question.

21:21It's such a Tim question. I'm like, I'm like, are you going to North Korea? He's like, nope. He's like, what's the deal? Uh, well, my friend is bringing this group of people to North Korea. It's this mastermind group. And I think it would be really good for you. I think it would help you develop. I think it would help you professionally. I think it would be like, you know, good to be in that kind of group. And I'm like 24 years old at this point. I had never been to a lot of places. And, uh, you know, I'm like, well, are you going? He's like, no. I'm like, why do I want to go? Cause if you don't remember, like North Korea was a scary third world dictatorship, kind of still is, but it was really scary back then.