Announcer: Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the gile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors, Neil Patel and Eric Siu.

Eric Siu: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu.

Neil Patel: I'm Neil Patel.

Eric Siu: Today we're going to talk about if it's worth it to pay $25,000 for a mastermind. Here's the thing, there's many masterminds out there. Just to give you an example, there's digital marketers, War Room, Russell Brunson's Funnel something?

Neil Patel: I don't know what his is called, but he has a mastermind, Digital Marketer has one, Joe Polish, Tony Robbins has a ton of them. There's a lot of them. I know my buddy Austin who's staying with me right now, he's in Tony Robbins 100K program where he spends a hundred grand a year to meet a lot of successful people, and he was mentioning to me the other day, he's like, "Yeah, we may get to meet Ray Dalio." I was like, "Not bad."

Eric Siu: Yeah. So here's the thing with these masterminds, you're probably thinking like, oh that's so much money, this is where all the rich people go to hang out and everything. Here's the thing I think the ... This is how I looked at it in the past when people told me they would pay for a mastermind it's like why would you ever do that just to go learn things that are readily available on the internet? Well the cool thing is about these masterminds, you get to go hang out with people that are willing to, again in the last episode we talked about investing yourself. You're basically investing in yourself right? So in some cases Neil's attended some of these masterminds and he's lucky 'cause he has a big brand and sometimes while he can end up getting tickets for free, right?

Neil Patel: Yeah, I get a lot of tickets for free, I don't think I pay for any of the masterminds I'm in.

Eric Siu: What's been your experience?

Neil Patel: A lot of them are good, I don't show up to most of them. I actually probably don't show up to any of them. Yeah it felt like in 2017 I didn't show up to even one, they're not bad, it's more so I think masterminds are great if you're looking to network and grow. I've built up an amazing friend circle over the years so I don't really need to attend masterminds. I'm not saying I wouldn't learn if I would go to them, I should get my butt up and like start attending more of these 'cause they're valuable. It's more so I've learned over the years that either you attend masterminds to get your knowledge or you better build your own "mastermind" of other people who are alike you or doing better, so that way you can help each other grow.

Eric Siu: Yeah, that's certainly a way to do it. I think a couple of years ago I ended up building a kind of custom mastermind and we met at my place once a month or so, and we just had dinner at my place. We just talked about stuff right, so if you want to learn about masterminds in terms of how to set one up you can just Google mastermind talks, or mastermind dinners. There's a PDF to help you set that up. But I would say this, my entrepreneurs organization group, I would consider that a mastermind and I've said in the past without that group I wouldn't have been able to save this business. They are ... I've been in that group for five years, I've put in well over $25,000 for sure and a lot of my time, blood, sweat and tears. That has been one of the best things that I think there's life long friendships in there. I think again if you're looking to meet a high caliber group of people you can certainly join these masterminds. When I look at groups like YPO or EO, I consider them masterminds 'cause it's the same group of people you see once a month.
These other ones that Neil and I are talking about, maybe you're meeting three or four times a year, you get in good learning from people, you're meeting high caliber people. But Neil's at the point where he doesn't need to attend as much.

Neil Patel: Yeah in general we're saying masterminds are worth it, as Eric mentioned it saved his business, I've got a lot of value. Like I never did EO, I've gotten pitched to join EO many times, and I was like, uh there's no point I can just go and meet all the people I already know who in it without spending any money. But if I was starting up all over again I would join them. You save yourself from making a lot of mistakes and in addition to that you learn from them. 'Cause they all share their strategies and tactics, I know we had an episode in the past on like how to learn new marketing tactics, whether it's business, entrepreneurship tactics. You can find out from other people who are successful on what they're doing, and you can start replicating those in your business.
Now here's a few points when it comes to picking a mastermind and Eric's going to know these better than me. I would say the first one is you want to be with like minded people, because if you're all in roughly the same spot and ideally there should be a few people who are ahead of you guys, it'll help you grow faster. Versus if there's a lot of newbies in there, that aren't knowing what they're doing. Now if you're a newbie there's nothing wrong with being in a mastermind with a few other people who just started, and they're getting some traction, because they'll help guide you and tell you what to avoid and what mistakes to not make.
The second thing to look for is look for a mastermind with people who have the same mindset. If everyone in there is looking to just cash flow, like I know there's a few business groups in which a lot of the members are like YPO, a lot of the members in there have inherited the business, and they don't care, and they're just coasting. That's fine, but if you're looking to do the same thing that's great. If you're looking for people to really help you, you're looking for people who are grinding it out day in and day out, you want to make sure you're in a mastermind with other people who have that same philosophy. If they don't then the value you're going to get is different than what they're looking to get.

Eric Siu: Super important yeah. You've got to ... Again this is why a group like EO or YPO is good because there are certain revenue requirements, and so everyone's at a certain level. Then with EO in your forum, this is your group of brothers and sisters, you have people that aren't trying to ... You cannot have competitors in the same group. So it's basically a streamlined process in a worldwide organization that's going to help you out. So again it all depends on what you're trying to do, and what you're hoping to accomplish.
For me you know my forum we talk about business and personal stuff, and if you're looking to kind of do it with a bigger group like a 100 people or so, there's these other masterminds that we're talking about. But certainly think about what you're looking for, and if it makes sense to you.

Neil Patel: Yeah, the last note from me is once you're in a mastermind what you'll find is after a year or two you've gained most of the knowledge from a lot of the people. Sure new things will continually come up but more so if you just stick with it for one year, you'll soak most of the information. Then what I recommend is you keep switching and going after new masterminds, versus being in the same one over and over again, 'cause a lot of the information will become stale.

Eric Siu: Yup, and my final thing to add is just keep in mind they're very different. So when I talk about EO, or YPO, the forum that you're meeting with, it's the same group of people and you talk about again. It's not like a $100 mastermind where there's like people teaching stage and all that, these are people where day in and day out they're presenting on business issues. Like we have a guy his business does over 100 million a year, and there's other people in the group, all different levels, all different challenges. You learn a lot from these different struggles, so just keep that in mind. So with that being said, that's it for today. Just got to singlegrain.com/giveaway if you want access to our marketing goodies and we will see you tomorrow.

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