THE ULTIMATE ADVISOR PODCAST

Weekly Insights to Help You Craft the Ultimate Advising Practice

EPISODE 20:

The Places That Make You Better And Level Up Your Advising Practice

In this episode of The Ultimate Advisor Podcast, we jump into the final part of our four part series that focuses on WHO versus HOW. We discuss the importance of joining the right mastermind to help you think outside of the box, strengthen your weaknesses, and catapult you into the future. So, push PLAY and join us as we delve into finding YOUR mastermind to support you, level you up, and grow your business!

 

 

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Announcer: 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 your hosts, Bryan Sweet, who has more than half a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson, the driving force for advisors looking to hire, improve their operations and company culture, and Draye Redfern who can help you systematize and automate your practice's marketing to effortlessly attract new clients. So, what do you say? Let's jump into another amazing episode of the Ultimate Advisor Podcast.

 

Brittany A.: This is Brittany Anderson with your Ultimate Advisor Podcast. We are in part four of a four-part series where we have been drilling into the depth of who versus how. Now, if you have not listened to the last three episodes, I highly recommend you go back. It really sets the stage for what we're going to be talking about today. 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 when you join things 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: So, this is something that I'm so passionate about. I love masterminds for just a ton of reasons. The first mastermind I ever joined, I was 25. And it was a $25,000 commitments, 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 helped everything just level up across the board from 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.

 

Draye Redfern: So going into a mastermind, if you're sort of this Jack of all trades, master of none, that's okay. You can obviously improve some of your weaknesses. But 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, have all of these things very clearly defined, which we've talked about in many of the earlier Ultimate Advisor Podcast episodes. And then you take that to a mastermind.

 

Draye Redfern: 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, 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. I live by that.

 

Draye Redfern: 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 in. 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 and my relationship and me as a person as a whole not to mention businesses. But to take that a step further, there's a quote that I love is. It's, "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 its former state." When you are actually in mastermind meetings like 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.

 

Draye Redfern: 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 a dollar 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 you're spending more money on, you're going to give it all of your attention, all of your focus.

 

Draye Redfern: So not saying that you have to go join a $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 investing money into my own sort of psychological upgrade." Because when you pay, 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. It 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, a thousand names for it.

 

Draye Redfern: It allows you to focus on that thing because that thing is most likely what allows you 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 Bryan, because I know that between Bryan and I, we spend several hundreds of thousands of dollars probably annually on masterminds to always be the dumbest person in the room, to always want to upgrade ourselves psychologically, always learn new ideas. But I invest tens of thousands of dollars annually. Bryan, I know you have a bunch but I also want to shift it. 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 next mastermind you may be sitting in?

 

Bryan Sweet: 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 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-ins 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.

 

Bryan Sweet: 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 in or 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 hump. And so, I participate in a lot of different ones and have changed things as I've gained knowledge and either transferred them off to other people on the team or just learn new things.

 

Bryan Sweet: 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. 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 conversations and question-answering sessions where somebody that had no affiliation, no insight, no idea about anything financial actually gave me the brainchild of something that I was able to implement. It had a remarkable impact on my business. Because they just look at things differently. It's a way of getting out of the box without you having to maybe do the 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.

 

Bryan Sweet: 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. Not only have we developed and grown our financial planning practice but we've started Ultimate Advisor Coaching. I do an invitation-only conference symposium that's just got exceptional reception. I've written three books. I've started a couple of companies with Brittany, my COO. 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 there more energized, more excited about what you can do and the opportunities that are in front of you, just because you look at things different.

 

Bryan Sweet: And I don't know how to even put enough emphasis on that but, this is just me personally, I would never not belong to one because I thoroughly enjoy how people think. These are 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. So I got some lifetime friends that if I need something, I can call them, they'll give me their honest input. It's impartial and typically extremely, extremely helpful. So, just to tell you how crazy I am, I'm actually joining another mastermind next year because some of the best business minds that at least I follow from podcasts and just meeting these people are part of this mastermind. And I want to learn more from them about certain business tactics and things like that.

 

Draye Redfern: I'm guessing that the financial investment for that mastermind is probably not a couple dollars. You're making that physical monetary investment in each of these things.

 

Bryan Sweet: Yeah and this one... Yeah, I mean, not to talk about money but it's $30,000 but 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've paid them. Essentially, it's free to attend if you want to look at it that way. So, you're actually losing money if you don't go.

 

Draye Redfern: I love the way of looking at that. It's a slight shift. 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. 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. I think 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 joined them a year or two or three years earlier, who knows how much further down that path we would have actually been?

 

Draye Redfern: But there's something also that I think is worth mentioning is that if you're the dumbest person in the room, which is 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 you step into that room? So, when I was 25 when I cut my first $25,000 check, I was absolutely... I felt like everyone was looking down at me 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 talked about this and had similar experiences about how each of us were very nervous the first time we joined those. But I wanted to hear, sort of get your take on what it was like first surrounding yourself with all of those people who seemed like they knew so much more than you might.

 

Brittany A.: Yeah. Draye, I think that you said something so interesting. The first thing that you commented on, 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, 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... 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 fairly new to the entrepreneurial world. I had worked alongside Bryan, been exposed to the entrepreneurial journey, helped him 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.

 

Brittany A.: And I will say 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 be able to say, "I don't understand your language." Both Bryan 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 it 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.

 

Brittany A.: I see this happen all the time where it's people that have built crazy successful businesses don't give themselves enough credit to what they'd 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 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.

 

Brittany A.: 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. This is something that Draye, I'm going to have you talk a little bit about kind of our why behind creating the mastermind that we've created. Bryan talked, and I want to touch on this, 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, how is there nothing like this in the industry? How are you not going deeper in the operations 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.

 

Draye Redfern: 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. Or here in Texas, we'd say 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. For our sake, 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.

 

Draye Redfern: So Bryan 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 to 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 business side, individual side, operational side, and really having deep, long-lasting impact with a smaller group of people, not a super-wide group where we're going to go and be able to serve tens of thousands 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, and get 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.

 

Draye Redfern: So we can take multiple days. What our mastermind is going to look like, we're going to meet 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 what the hot seats are what we call them. So you can basically share what's going on, share where you're stuck, and get 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 in 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 to find the how" and "I don't know where to start."

 

Draye Redfern: We want to eliminate all of those roadblocks for you by coming to the table to give you the ideas, the 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 [inaudible 00:21:47] some of the 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 learning. I think you're going to be surprised at the affordability of the investment. Because we really want to make this a group of really tight-knit people who we can really help transform their lives in a very deep way. 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 advisors as a whole. So, that's what the mastermind group will look like.

 

Draye Redfern: We'll have a couple ideas here in the show notes. We'll wrap it up at the end with the link where you can go apply for the mastermind if it sounds of interest to you. But Brittany, Bryan, anything that I may have missed when describing the absolutely epic mastermind we've got for all of our listeners?

 

Brittany A.: Yeah. You know, I think to tie it back to this whole who versus how, right? Something that we strongly encourage if you do have an interest in the mastermind is also deciding who on your team can be your implementer. Something that we encourage is we actually offer a discount off of your implementer's registration fee because we believe so strongly in that.

 

Brittany A.: So when we talk about who versus how, we are serious about that. We want you to come as the visionary of the company to be able to brainstorm, to be around people that help you kind of level up your thinking. But then also have your key implementer or your key person there to help bring that vision to life. So that's 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 implementer there, I know Bryan will attest to this, hands down, I'm going to have him comment in just a moment. It's just, it's essential. And it's essential in 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, Bryan, what else can you offer us here?

 

Bryan Sweet: Yeah, just a couple of things. And thank you so much for bringing in your implementer idea. Seriously, that is... I've been in mastermind groups for 20-some years. And it wasn't until I actually had Brittany 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 huge. One other thing, kind of taking off what Draye said earlier about being there or Brittany alluded to it too. It is scary. I can't tell you enough how you felt like you were drinking from a fire hose or you were just nervous that you weren't adequate.

 

Bryan Sweet: But I will tell you after you get to meet people and they're all caring, they're all trying to help and you want to help them. That does go away very quickly. 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, if what we're going to be doing with the mastermind class on 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.

 

Bryan Sweet: So, if you would like to get our input as to, "I'm looking for some help in this or are thinking of joining the mastermind in this topic." If you want to just email brittany@ultimateadvisorcoaching.com and let us know what you're interested in, we'll give you a contact person, we'll 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.

 

Brittany A.: Awesome. Bryan, 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. If you would like more information on our mastermind coming up in November, it's going to be in Dallas. Go ahead and visit ultimateadvisormastermind.com and we can provide you some more information there. So that wraps up the four-part series that we are doing on the who versus the how. Again, go back if you have not listened to all four episodes, I highly recommend it. Start with mindset. That's what matters more than anything else. Decide what it is that you can let go of. Decide what your one focus is, what you want to do to move the needle in your business to exponentially impact your life. And then decide what you can be a part of, what mastermind, what study group is going to help you catapult into the future. So that wraps up today's episode of the Ultimate Advisor Podcast. We will see you back here next week.

 

Draye Redfern: 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 be sure to rate us five stars on iTunes because when you do, you'll be entered into a monthly drawing for our Ultimate Advisor Coaching program, which is a $2,000 value. And if you would like to access more of the show notes, additional resources, and our free premium content, then please visit ultimateadvisorpodcast.com. We look forward to seeing you in the next episode of the ultimate advisor podcast. We'll see you there.

ABOUT THE

PODCAST

The Ultimate Advisor Podcast was specifically created to help financial advisors unlock their ultimate potential by providing invaluable information and resources to improve your income, and the management, marketing and operations of your financial advising practice

The Ultimate Advisor podcast is a business podcast for financial advisors who are looking to grow their advising practices with greater ease and effectiveness. Ultimate Advisor was developed to help financial advisors master their marketing, sell their services with greater authority, generate repeat clients, and additional revenue in their business.

 

Each week, your hosts Draye Redfern, Bryan Sweet, and Brittany Anderson will share some of the closest guarded secrets from successful financial advising practices across the U.S.  

YOUR HOSTS:

DRAYE REDFERN

Draye is the founder of Redfern Media, a direct response marketing agency that helps professionals to improve their marketing, attract new clients, generate more referrals and consistently "WOW" their clients. 

BRYAN SWEET

Founder of Sweet Financial, CEO, Wealth Advisor, RJFS,  Creator of The Dream Architect™

Co-founder of Dare to Dream Enterprises

Creator of Elite Wealth Advisor Symposium

Author of 3 books – Dare to Dream: Design the Retirement You Can’t Wait to Wake Up To, Imagine. Act. Inspire. A Daily Journal and Give & Grow: Proven Strategies for Starting an Running and Effective Study Group

BRITTANY ANDERSON

Director of Operations at Sweet Financial, Office Manager, RJFS,  Co-founder of Dare to Dream Enterprises Author of two books – Imagine. Act. Inspire. A Daily Journal & Dare to Dream: Design the Retirement You Can’t Wait to Wake Up To

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Ultimate Advisor is NOT a financial advising firm and does not provide financial services.