When you’re faced with difficulty in your business, who do you turn to?

For many years, I’ve been fortunate to have several close people that I can truly share what I’m going through.

The most powerful of these relationships have come through Mastermind groups.

Joining a Mastermind is a great step forward that will have a tremendous impact on your business. You’ll have real accountability and sound advice from people that have not only been there before, but have an understanding of your business.

That’s why I was so thrilled to meet Jeremy Shapiro. Jeremy runs Bay Area Mastermind and has a unique knack for helping entrepreneurs to get out of their own way, create the business that supports their freedom, and help them enjoy more of their lives.

In this deep interview, we uncover a wide variety of difficulties that many business owners face and how to navigate those waters.

After getting time with Jeremy, I’m encouraged to continue the mastermind that I’m already part of, but also consider the next step that I’ll take on the journey.

Links

Join Jeremy’s Mastermind: https://BayAreaMastermind.com/

Learn more at https://www.adamliette.com

Activate The Warrior Within https://www.adamliette.com/awaken-the-warrior

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Transcript

Adam Liette
What's going on smoothie operators, welcome to this episode. So good to have you. If you've listened to more than three episodes of this show, you know, I'm a lifelong learner, I love the never ending quest for more information for finding out the stuff I don't know about for identifying what I'm still curious about. Which is why I love this field so much because you're never done. And you can take that for what it is. I mean, I come from a music background. And the great thing about being a classically trained musician is there's always the next concerto there's always a next Sonata, you're always leveling up. And I think for the entrepreneurs that truly make it and make this part of their life. That's part of how we tend to view the world. And there's so many different ways of learning. As you know, like books are a big part of my life, I read a lot of books. But probably the biggest part of my life and the one that's had, the biggest impact is connections that I've made with other like minded people being able to really share to really connect with people in a way that like I've lifelong friends, and I love them, I will always be their friends. But they don't get this side of me, they still remember Adam with long hair playing guitar and a heavy metal band, you know, sneaking cigarettes behind the local store. They remember that me. So it's just a different mindset when you start to network with people from this world. And really, there's a couple of different ways to do that. And I found no way that beats having a mastermind, that you're a part of being with a group that people all have a little bit of skin in the game to be there. And they show up with a different level of intention. And there's so many different ways of like being in a mastermind. And I really want to explore that today. And so, as you know, I love to bring guest experts in, who'd like to talk about their experiences, working with masterminds, I'm sure I'm sorry, I'm gonna share some my own companion experiences here. But I have Jeremy Shapiro with me. So Jeremy has a group. It's called Bay Area mastermind. And I mean, Jeremy has been doing this for over 20 years, he's worked with successful entrepreneurs. He's been in almost every industry in one way, shape, or form due to his connections with multiple different types of entrepreneurs and getting to network with them, get to know them, get to see what really works and be on that side of the emotional roller coaster. That is entrepreneurship. So Jeremy, thank you so much for joining me today. How's everything?

Jeremy Shapiro
Outstanding? Thank you for having me. This is great. And I love

Adam Liette
it because Bay Area mastermind. So for those of you I mean, podcast, land people, you know, I recorded ahead of time, that's part of the beauty of a podcast, Jeremy has come in from the Bay Area right before the big game, the Super Bowl, because you know, I'm a football nut. And it's gonna be a good week. So Jeremy, I love what you've created. I was fascinated from the moment you reached out to me, how did you get to this place of forming this mastermind? What was the impetus to say I have to be the person to do this.

Jeremy Shapiro
You know, I've been a part of mastermind groups for going on 20 years of all different shapes and sizes, what I found is mastermind groups typically fit into one of three broad categories in terms of how they run or the meeting frequency and all that generally breaks down to you have what I call like your destination mastermind groups, these are the ones you hop on a plane, you fly out to somewhere fun for a few days, and usually have like two to three days sort of in session in a larger group mastermind setting. And those are great, but they're, you're usually cutting a five to six figure check just to be in one of those groups, you're taking off about a week of travel away from the family away from the office, and so on to be there. And you're only meeting like two, maybe three times a year. And what I've seen is sometimes a business can totally pivot and change drastically, just in that, you know, four to six month period. And so the next time you're talking to someone, they've taken care of all those accountability items, but they also may have like a totally different business. You know, once you meet again for the second or third time, on the other end of the spectrum are you might call these like accountability groups. You and I were talking earlier about like the weekly check in call you have with one person or maybe a small group. And these are typically you know, free to you know, low cost. And that results in a few things right. You often have higher turnover in terms of people joining and leaving the group. The show up rate can be pretty abysmal, because there's not much skin in the game. If you miss it, then you know, so what and The caliber of member isn't so great because of those factors. And lastly, you really don't get to deep dive into your business and what's really going on it's just short period of time. And the sweet spot we found right in the middle is a monthly meeting cadence, meeting for one full day to really deep dive into business. And with that size group in that meeting frequency, you can really get into the heart of what's going on in your business, get the peer advisory insights of other folks who are around you, and have accountability items that are beyond just a tactical item you can accomplish in a day, but not so big that we're talking business changing over the course of a month. And so you have that really good cadence of accountability, and getting things done with a social accountability of like minded business owners, entrepreneurs and founders who get you.

Adam Liette
Wow, so an entire day. So I, at first I kind of like panicked hearing that. And I realized that's a good thing. Because it forces you to actually remove yourself for that entire day. And you get to command their attention, their attention is focused on the objective for the day, which is the mastermind?

Jeremy Shapiro
Well, we all know about the work in our business, right? The actual work of the business. That's important, right, but the real growth comes when you work on the business. And this is when we start talking about operations systematizing, the business, the bigger picture of marketing campaigns, product creation, and the things that really move the business forward. That's all the work on the business that many business owners forget to do, because they're so focused on the work inside of the work of the business. And as you know, growth that comes from operations isn't accidental, right? That's a very intentional change we make in our businesses. So we carve out that one day a month, at the very least, right to focus on the business, that takes us out of the day to day work in the business. And lets us have that focus and the social accountability component. And having it on your calendar means it's going to happen, right, of course, if you can spend more time working on your business throughout the week, throughout the month, quarter, and so on, that's also valuable too. But the once a month cadence for the mastermind setting, really carves that out on people's calendar.

Adam Liette
And I think it's really interesting too, because, like I teach a lot about strategic thinking and how to, like do big picture visions, you know, but actually develop them. And what I found is, and I've caught myself doing this several times that says pot calling the kettle black, where I'll literally I'll just put on my calendar strategic time, and I'll give myself an hour. And I know what's going to happen in that hour, it's going to be I'm going to get distracted, I'm going to get thrown off slack, or something. And I think in so many ways, it's installing good habits on how to pull yourself into that strategic level of vision. Where it makes, because that is such a well used phrase on business versus in the business. But here it has now a tactical application to it, which I think is really helpful for us doers in the audience.

Jeremy Shapiro
Yeah, it's great to do. The question is, are you doing the work of the business? Right? Are you the proverbial carpenter hammering nails? Right? Or are you doing work on the business? So you can have a team of carpenters who are hammering in the nails, right? Like, there's a big difference there. They're both work. They're both productive, right? They're both valuable. But one of them's going to grow the business and one of them is just going to take care of the existing business. And so all of our members and our masterminds want to grow their business and grow themselves. And that comes from that strategic work, where you consciously carve out time to work on the business so you can grow the work that comes into?

Adam Liette
Absolutely, I think, and I have to imagine that some of your members when they're taking that day, they're probably making like deliberate shifts. I know I would, I've seen in myself, if I'm going to work certain projects, I'll go on my iPad, and I'll go to this little desk I have over here in the corner that's away from all the screens. So I can just like focus in and take away the distractions in a like a physical way as well. So it can kind of be like, multimodal that you're you're using during this type of approach.

Jeremy Shapiro
Well, so that's another piece of this too, by having a separate place that's not your office, we're all getting together. You're not distracted by you know, someone coming up to your desk and asking you a question. You're not distracted by a customer coming in, you're not distracted by your emails or anything going on. Right? You're in a physically separate place. And you know, we get together at a high end exclusive club. So everything's taken care of for our members during the day from, you know, having Wi Fi to food and coffee and you know, all the amenities and things you could need. So you don't have to worry about anything. All you need to think about and put your energy towards is not only growing your business but helping others and sharing your areas of genius in that peer advisory format.

Adam Liette
I love it. I was recently I was helping proctored a training session. It was entrepreneurs as more strategic, but still strategic level thinkers. And that's the rule was during the session was put your laptops away in the bag, don't want to see them, because you need to disconnect right now. And pay attention to work on yourself. So you can end up scaling up. You

Jeremy Shapiro
know, when I go to meetings and conferences, I bring with me my a leather bound notebook. And I have a set of colored pens. It's not electronic, right? It's not like one of those fancy things where I draw on, it's going to the computer. No, it's my colored pens. And I use grid paper for all my notes and doodles and checklists and things like that. And when I'm done, all I do is I open up Dropbox, click that little plus button and scan document and I get a scan to moleskin folder, and that just syncs up. So then on my desktop, I have everything I've done all date stamped and organized, I can go back and find it digitally. But I've had zero distraction, and nothing but focus and a very tactile hands on way in taking down accountability items or jotting down ideas or resources or books or any of those kinds of things.

Adam Liette
I still have one of these brother write my schedule every day. Yeah. Because there's there's a physical connection between writing something versus typing it. It's it's a different connection that formed in the brain. And it's by changing that it's a very little thing to change. But you're you're changing your wave, your frequency and how you're interacting with the physical world, which allows you to think at a different level. It's so beautiful.

Jeremy Shapiro
Now let me ask this out. And I'm curious, do you ever have an item on your list that you don't get done? On the day you wanted to get done, but you still want to get it done? So you like write it again? The next day?

Adam Liette
Yeah, yeah, I do. And I to be honest about that one. Yeah.

Jeremy Shapiro
So isn't it funny, like the third time you're writing the same darn thing? Again? You start to have a different conversation about that. And don't you? You do? Yeah. So what I love is, that's where you have that conversation with yourself like, alright, am I ready to just admit, this is not important enough to get done? Do I want to figure out what the block is that stopped me from getting it done? Do I want to delegate this? Right? Do I want to just suck it up and get it done? Like, what category does this fall into? And I know for me, personally, I have the hardest time admitting this just shouldn't get done. But for other folks, it's easy to just across avenues, hey, I'm not going to do it. But the fact that you've got to write it, day after day, by the second or third time, I've copied it over. I'm like, Alright, let's have a conversation about this item.

Adam Liette
I haven't thought about in that framework. Because I have literally two on my list today right now that still aren't done yet. And now I'm this is dangerous to do live, but it's okay. Hey, guys, live format. Lotta Love it. Because that's that's part of this whole process is take a moment. And just literally, if you have to pause the episode right now to go look at your to do list to go What the heck is it? Do give yourself that permission? Because I think this is a really important learning curve for all of us to say, what is it about that thing? And be brutally honest with yourself? I know what it is for me on these two things. It happens to be delegation. So even though I'm like the delegator, we're never done growing folks, like I said, and on

Jeremy Shapiro
the topic of delegation, there's a one of those categories of masterminds, I was talking about the destination mastermind, I was part of for a number of years, it was a fantastic group. You know, these are all, you know, seven, nine figure businesses. These are some pretty big players running some pretty incredible businesses. And we're sitting around the boardroom table. And there's one little gentleman in the group with us, very low tech, taking notes, like we're talking about pen and paper. And on each of the breaks, he would take his paper of all of his notes, step out of the room, handed to someone that will get no joke faxed back to his office. And he'd come back in with a fresh sheet of paper. Everything that was in his mind was put down a went to the office to an operator to get a delegated someone else with an execute on all those ideas and move them forward. And he can have a clearer mind for the next session until the next break. And that, to me, I always thought like aspirationally was so powerful to offload and things can still get done. You're not the one who has to do every

Adam Liette
Oh, I'm stealing this in one way or another. Because that's such a beautiful way of doing things.

Jeremy Shapiro
The key part though, is you need to have the right operators and executors on your team who can take your chicken scratch and move forward with it.

Adam Liette
Exactly. And that's part of that operator CEO relationship that builds over time. And and if you've been part of one of those relationships, it is really special. It's something that that you have to grow and it's a it's a two headed monster on that one the operator has to grow and the CEO has to grow. You're growing together at a slightly different level. But you're still growing together towards the same objective. And it's so cool, and it happens. It's beautiful. Good deal, man. Dude, I'm thinking now like off the top my head, how can I do that in real life. And I'm gonna figure it out because that's now an aspiration.

Jeremy Shapiro
So the the dark side to that, though is you need to make sure your operator can see the difference between a harebrained wild idea that was hot in the moment, that actually isn't gonna move the needle forward. And like the real diamonds there that should get developed move forward, because executing on just everything you toss over the fence. If you're not disciplined about what you think should get done, just creates a mess on the other side of the fence. So you need someone who's going to balance you out well and knows when to push back or knows when to say unless develop this further, you know, and knows when to say we're running with, like, that's like a really important differentiator.

Adam Liette
And I've used like idealist or scrum list for that were basically there's no such thing as a bad idea that goes on the idea list. Well, there are but we don't tell allow people to judge when they put them on there. But basically, like you form the list, then you can look at it with a clear mind later, but at least you were able to download it and put it somewhere. So then you can remove yourself with that responsibility of like feeling like you have to still own it, you've already put it in the in the system. It's it's processed it it's matter of when where it goes to where from there.

Jeremy Shapiro
So if you want to talk like from an agile standpoint, one of the important roles of your Scrum Master is being able to go back through and groom the backlog. And like no one wants to talk about that. Because that amazing idea you had like six months ago that is now item 413. On your backlog. Yeah, like at some point, you've got to groom that off and say, Hey, that was a good idea. Much like our daily list. Clearly, we haven't done this in six months is still really a priority. Or do we want to just admit, this isn't an important thing to get done? You don't delete it, what we do is we close it. And we have a special category for the closed reason we call expired. So at some point down the road, you have this amazing idea. And you're like, wait a minute, I think we had something like that, you'll still find it. It's not in your backlog anymore. It's a closed issue. You can reopen it, you can look at all your notes and your ideas. It's not gone. It's just off the backlog because it's been too long. So figure out what your threshold is three 612 months. And we have a filter in our JIRA that just shows Anything over that length we can filter for and just bulk closes expired.

Adam Liette
I was gonna say you started talking Scrum. And then you said Jira, Mike. All right, brother. We're in some of the same playgrounds. Oh, yeah. Love it. So working with so many entrepreneurs, I'm sure like, you've seen everything known to man in some way, shape or form. Like what are some of the things that you've seen from business owners that either work or don't work when you're talking about scaling and growing within the business?

Jeremy Shapiro
Yeah, a lot of the folks I work with are on that journey from being what I call like a solopreneur. Right or self employed to what I call a true business owner. If you're a lover of books as well, you probably read Kiyosaki Cashflow Quadrant decades back, right. You know, the the chasm on one side of that quadrant, the other of going from self employed to business owner is huge. And what a lot of folks do is they go out from being if you want to use E Myth terminology, which we also love. You go to as a technician, you hang a shingle and you're like, Man, I used to work in a pie shop. And now I own a pie shop, this is great. And you suddenly realize, like, all the businesses, stuff you got to do, just to do the trade you really love doing, right? And this could be, you know, you're a plumber. Now you go start your own company and realize, Wait, I gotta be invoicing and estimates and quoting and bookkeeping, like, all this stuff, marketing. And it's so much more than just the trade of the business. So like, some people go out, and they call themselves a business owner, because for example, they own a Subway franchise. And then you look and you realize you're making like 5060 grand a year, working 8090 hours a week, you have all the liability of owning a business, like everything that comes with that. And like, all the worst sides of being an employee, someone. Yeah. So, you know, that's like a self employed side, and then you jump over the other side of the chasm to what is it to be a business owner? The litmus test I always use on this Adam is like, really simple. Can you step away from your business for like, a week, three weeks, three months, and come back to a business the same or better than when you left? For most business owners? The answer is like if I left it for two days, I come back to a dumpster fire. Right? Yeah. And I've seen some business owners try this test and then realize nope, not quite there yet. And I've seen many business owner work the many business owner and myself, try that test out and realize it actually is possible. For me and one Those moments came, I was building up one of our Sass companies, and my wife and I were starting a family. And so we decided to share with my team like, hey, you know, we got big news in six months, we're having a baby. And my team was excited for me. And then they said, that's great. Jeremy, how many months are you taking off? And I mean, I had to think about this, I'm like, Well, I don't know, like, you know, I'll be a new dad, and I'll be able to do stuff on the computer. That's no problem. They were like, no, no, no, Jeremy, you're gonna take some time off. So we decided to take off three months. And they, you know, we immediately said, Well, you know, these are the systems we need, these are the hires we need. And this is what we need to get out of your mind and into the system. Sort of like here are the holes in the systems. And so we had a six month runway to get that done. And then I was able to truly unplug and be offline for three months. That means like, not an email, not on Slack, not, you know, checking in with a team, like, totally offline desert island style for three months. And wouldn't you know, when I came back, not only did I have three wonderful months with, you know, a newborn baby, and all the wonderful sleepless nights and things that come with that, I can be fully present there. And it was incredible experience to have that time, with, you know, a new family, and newly growing family as well. But when it came back, the ideas and things I wanted to do for the business that came up at that vacuum, were huge. So I came back so excited, and jazzed and pumped to implement some new ideas and things that came to me while I would have that distance and space from their business. So one of the challenges I see with business owners is thinking they've got to do it all. And that it all is on them, when the reality is you can and should step back. And really find the freedom that entrepreneurship provides, that many business owners forget, is like the biggest reason to get into it.

Adam Liette
Oh, man, you know, it's so interesting that there was like this forcing mechanism, if you will, to, like, get you to pull away. Because I just a friend of mine, um, this just happened in the last quarter where I saw he went dark, and I'm like, What's going on with my buddy? Where is he? I didn't see him on the Facebook Lives anymore. I didn't see him on social. And he comes out after three months and said, Dude, I just had to step away to figure this out. I let my team run the business. And he came back and like the first launch out the gate was eight figures. Because that vacuum that was created. Yeah. I think that's that's given me all sorts of like inspiration to like, find that own vacuum.

Jeremy Shapiro
Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes you even we choose to create that space. Other times that happens for us. There's one business owner I was talking with. And in his business, he had a hardware product. And so he was supporting these local stores. And for him, he loved mountain biking, hiking, getting outdoors. But he realized from the places he liked to go mountain biking and hiking, there wasn't a cell coverage. And he's like, I'm not next to my cell phone. And a business calls me because something's not working. They're offline, I can't have them. And so he couldn't go mountain biking and hiking and enjoying the outdoors, if there wasn't a cell coverage, for fear of one of his customers having a problem. Like that's not healthy. He was able to do the things that recharged him that gave him the space. Um, because it was wonderful how committed he was to his customers. What was dangerous is that that was all blocking on him. So, you know, working together, he was able to get someone on the frontline handling customer service. So he could that was like his first real hire, so he could step away and know whatever he's doing the customers have someone that can reach by email, phone, etc. And that was a really powerful step, to be able to delegate that responsibility to free him up. Wow. Another another story, I think you'll especially appreciate Adam is, you know, veterans story. Come back. So Ryan comes out of the military, he was in demolitions and has his congregation conversation with the CEO who who wants them to re up and he says like, hey, look, there's a career for you. And he made the mistake of saying back like, hey, you know, look me up and you get out I'll have a job for you. So after, after knocking out a handful of push ups and all he ended up, ended up leaving and finding like getting a job was not great coming, you know, coming out of the military. And so ended up starting his own business and was doing with a demolition background, found a niche in pool removal, and had a business that was doubling every single year. Every single year was double the pools from previous years. But it was a point where, you know, he he's on the job sites, he's quoting jobs, he's providing the estimates. He's getting the crews going on the jobsite, every single morning, his physicality was so much of the business. And so one morning he was at the jobsite, talking to him. customer, and he got a bobcat on a trailer hooked up to his truck that was parked a little ways up the hill, and the truck trailer Bobcat started rolling down the hill backwards. And he looked up in time to see the truck, run him over, not just hit him, but then drag him down the road. And he's got, you know, his femur sticking out of his leg bloods everywhere. And it's a mess. So, you know, he ended up at the Trauma Center, where he's gotten broken, and punctured and ruptured everything. And finally comes around and realizes like, my whole business is my physicality. And I don't have that. So he's lying on the hospital bed, like trying to figure out does this mean, I don't have a business? Am I just done? Or? Or do I find someone who can go do those estimates? Do I put the systems in place and the technology? So my team can clock in at the job site and not need me to there to see them there? Do I put the right systems in place? So my team knows how to do things consistently, even when I'm not there. And so like, he hired someone to do the sales calls for him, and wouldn't you know, they were closing more sales than he was. And he hired someone to oversee the team. And when you know, the team is doing better work without him there. If so, while still stuck in a hospital bed, his business grew and grew, because was operationalized, and systematized have the right operators in place, and the right people to actually run the business, not because he was thinking, this would be a good direction to go. But because that was forced on him. And if it weren't for that dark day in business, he might still be that guy, you know, in the pickup truck yelling, it was a crew working 14 hour days, seven days a week. Yeah.

Adam Liette
And there's something so like, the dark moments can really be an area of light if we choose to lean into the opportunity that they present. Because there's no opportunity like necessity, to force us into a new way of thinking. That being said, everyone out there don't go get run over by truck just because of it instead, like use this as a jumping off point. So I met I know for so many I talked to it's it's not the feeling of impending doom, but it's like, feeling plateaued. Feeling stalled, feeling stuck. Like how, how do people get unstuck if they're not in a literal fight or flight situation?

Jeremy Shapiro
Yeah, it's super common, you know, businesses often grow and like these S curves, where you sort of have some flat, gentle upward growth, then like you do something, you got a big pivot and boom, you grow up, and then it plateaus. And part of our goal is to, you know, what we call stack the essence. So as one curve is starting to plateau, you're already at the base of that next one. So you have this continuous upward trajectory. Oftentimes, if we don't have that strategic planning to create those S's and stack them, because we're so stuck in the business, we stumble across those bumps. And sometimes we stumble across bumps that go down. So when we're more intentional about carving out the time to work on the business, we can look forward and say, like your buddy did with his product launch, what's this next thing I want to launch? What do I want to do that provides that really big upside on that s. So if you're finding yourself plateaued, take the space away from your business, whether that's in a mastermind setting, whether that's in a retreat somewhere, whether that's, you know, off in the forest, do what you got to do to get the space, and then be intentional about looking at what's next for your business. And there's probably not going to be more of the same. The growth does not usually come from trying to sell the same thing the same way to the same market. It usually comes from changing one of those three variables. Right.

Adam Liette
I have a little hack if you haven't tried this one yet. What do you got? The last time we went on a family trip last summer before last or last big, really, really big family trip. And I collaborated with my daughters and said, Hey, Dad solid working. Okay, Dad, we got it. We'll we'll take care of it, dad. And so the whole time we're packing the car that kept one of them in my office, looking at the laptop to make sure it didn't get packed away. And then the other one came to me right before he got in the car and said, Dad, let me see your phone. Have you deleted your apps made me delete everything. It was like this fun little thing I told the girls in jest and then they helped you to they helped me to it. And yeah, pretty sure their mother had something to do with that too. Because they're, you know, it's

Jeremy Shapiro
funny, you know, as entrepreneurs like the good news is we're our own boss. The bad news were is that we're our own boss. So like, Who are you held accountable to? If you want to do more of the same, you can do more of the same. If you want to grow you can grow it If you feel like you've got to do everything in the business, then that's what you're gonna do. Right? So until you have someone like in your case, your daughter's holding you accountable, you're just gonna bring the laptop on the phone like you always do, until there's that change. So when you find yourself, for example, in a mastermind setting, you're looking for that accountability. So one of the things that we do with our members, is everyone has a hot seat during the Bay Area mastermind session, right. And this is where you focus on them and their business. And we take that what their accountability items are, what they're committed to getting done over the next month. That's now shared with the group. So there's that social accountability of hey, I said, I do this thing. And we then check him during the month. We have a private email group and a private Slack community, where we stay in touch with, you know, Hey, how are you doing on your accountability on? And at the next month's meeting, part of what you're recapping, if you haven't covered already, is, it's assumed I got everything done. But if you face some challenges along the way, well, we can talk about that. And if you got some stuff done and learn something new, share the lessons, if he did something that didn't work, share the failures. The beauty is, you have I think of it like a laboratory with 10 other scientists out there working on experiments, and sharing the results. And so instead of you tripping and skinning your knees, 10 different times, everyone else does that for you. And you then learn the things that work and the things that don't, especially in areas that are not your core competency or not your area of expertise is huge, skip our shortcuts.

Adam Liette
We we don't have to be experts in everything, Jeremy is that like permission to not have to be the number one person in the shoot. So

Jeremy Shapiro
you know how people can lovingly see your shortcomings and let you know sort of the things you're not good at. We have a choice, right? We can either try and make ourselves mediocre and everything, right? Or we can really deep dive in the stuff that we're above average on and become excellent at that. And then delegate operationalized hire out or not worry about the areas that are you know, areas of weakness. So yeah, you have permission to not be experts in everything.

Adam Liette
I was just talking to an owner today who, like they know, they have to get into Google ads to grow their business. It's like the next step. And they're ready for it. They have the financing to do it right to like, we're just so nervous, like, what? How do you just, I don't have time to learn this. I'm like, why are you trying to learn this? Like, that's silly. Like there are agencies that do this for find the right one that's a fit. Yeah. Like, you can't be the expert in that to

Jeremy Shapiro
that caveat, or pro tip for that. I wouldn't say though, is make sure you know enough about something to manage it. Right? Yes, we've all probably experienced or seen others experience that challenge of trusting someone blind to do a great job. And if you haven't defined what I call the definition of success, you won't know if they're hitting their mark or not. So for example, with PPC agencies, right, they love to show you their busy work, don't they? Oh, we created all these ads, we drove traffic, we got CPCs down all this. But if that's where the end of their visibility stops, and they don't have that full funnel visibility, then they're being held accountable to top of funnel with no regard to lead quality, right. So if you define success, you say, hey, what we're looking for from this campaign is, you know, X new customers, right, or why new qualified leads or whatever you got, and make sure that their visibility to that, then we're all on the same page about the result we want. You don't have to know how they do it, so long as they're hitting that result within your parameters.

Adam Liette
And that all kind of comes down to establish your goal first. And work backwards to a tactic instead of what we often like to do is the other way around. Now that like AI is big, the big term had been for like the last couple of months, like someone literally came to me and said, I think I need some AI. I'm like, What do you mean? Like, give me a goal. And we can see if there's an AI function for that. But you just don't need some AI for the sake of it. Like, no, yes.

Jeremy Shapiro
If you listen what everyone's saying you need some AI and something some way somehow, and we've got to look at is that, you know, how much that is you feeling that social pressure of I have to use this somewhere in the business? Versus how can I support you in meeting your goals?

Adam Liette
Yes.

Jeremy Shapiro
Yeah, cool. When you're talking about the expertise and know how to do everything, like when you were deployed, look, you're on your unit. You had specialists, didn't you? Oh, yeah. Right. You don't want everyone to be a generalist, you need specialization, and that applies, you know, to the to business as well. It's good that you know enough of what everyone else is doing. But you don't need the deep expertise of every single specialist and in in other areas, and that applies to our business and you know, as we build out, build out our team for business as well. I

Adam Liette
have a funny story to tell that about that you'll enjoy. So my specialties was, I was in psychological warfare, which is part of Special Operations. And so sometimes we get attached to a SEAL team or Army Special Ops Greenbrae team. And they said, hey, you know how you like get put on radio duty back at the fob, like pretend you're a seal. So if you're attached to a seal, great BE THE PSYCH SIOP guy and own your specialty. Because the guy that comes in says, Oh, I can be another gun for you. He's just gonna say back at the fob, they don't need another gun. No,

Jeremy Shapiro
no, they want your specialty. That's why you're there. Exactly.

Adam Liette
That's very cool. I love to like that permission to own that specialty and to be proud of it and to like, really encapsulate it in everything you do. And to keep getting better at it, you're only going to be able to serve at a higher level to,

Jeremy Shapiro
yeah, well, you get to sharpen the sword. But what's what's nice beyond just honing your expertise, is as you become an expert in something that allows you within, you know, a peer advisory a mastermind group to provide that expertise based on your superpower, right. So one of the things I love is like, everyone's got trade groups they can go to for their industry, right? And that those are valuable and wonderful and great. And if you're a mortgage broker want to know how to be more of a mortgage broker, go hang out with mortgage brokers, right. But if you want to, like really pivot and differentiate, well hang out with different kinds of business owners. So we really intentionally and consciously curate a diverse group with a wide range of businesses. And what we get there and like I so love, this is the cross pollination of ideas, because of that variance and expertise. So you'll have you know, an ecommerce company, doing great killing it online. And then they're talking to someone who's doing direct mail, they're like, Wait a minute. So you send out like, paper in the mail, and you pay for printing and stamps, and you get business from that. Tell me more about that. And then someone who's doing direct mail can share that with them. And now this e commerce company starts to differentiate from all their, quote, competition by doing direct mail. And then flipside, you get someone who's got a brick and mortar, retail shop, or medical practice, and so on. And they're looking at E commerce person saying, wait a minute, so you like you send out emails, and every time you send an email, like money just comes in the door? How does that work? How can I do that, too. And so you take people with very different expertise, and they can truly help each other out and have that peer group. And it's so awesome to see them.

Adam Liette
Interesting enough, I just interviewed an Etsy expert last night, and that was like, Whoa, right? Wait, I knew that sees a thing. It's that big of a thing. Holy cow is completely blind to it.

Jeremy Shapiro
Now how much you're gonna pay for an Etsy expert versus a VA? Probably a few more bucks on

Adam Liette
a lot. Lot more bucks. Yeah. But I tell you what, I'm very like my daughters who are like, really into some things they're building. I'm like, my kids are all entrepreneurially minded. I'm in big trouble, dude.

Jeremy Shapiro
I know, you're, you're in a good place. That's a wonderful, okay. That's a wonderful thing.

Adam Liette
Yeah, it's getting their mother. But it's it's wonderful,

Jeremy Shapiro
though, right? When they have that mindset. Yeah, and this is one of those. One of those really interesting things is like, when you look at how you talk about money, or business, or the world or any of these things with your kids, right, like, a lot of that gets ingrained from an early age. And so when we're more intentional with the language that we use, they pick that up. And one thing my wife and I started doing, probably a little later than we should have. But we realized, like with love the great philanthropic causes and things that we support, we would always go and like just do that. And you know, as far as the kids knew, we were just on another date night. And they, you know, they weren't home. And then at some point, we realized, we realize, like, we're doing all this great work out there. Like Should we tell them more about what we're up to, and involve them? And so, you know, we had a donor appreciation event that we're going to, for a wonderful entrepreneur, entrepreneurial, related cause that we love. And we asked our daughter, we're like, hey, you know, would you want to come with us. And she did. And so she got to see firsthand the impact, and firsthand all the stuff that we're doing. And it was really neat, because it wasn't like, Oh, Mom and Dad are heading out for a night. She was involved in that with us. And in the same way, when you think about, you know, just given a small word you use around the kids, like the difference between saying, like, that's a waste of money, and I don't see value in them. Or tell me more about the value you see in it, right? Because waste of money implies, like, this is this limited resource that is gone. Whereas there's value in that. So if you as a kid see value in that piece of candy, or that piece of junk plastic toy, that's going to break up for two uses. I don't see the value, but maybe you do and we can talk about it's not that it's a waste, but, you know, where does that fit in? So just changing that bit of language or, you know, as we're looking at deals involving the kids and looking through the financials and even if someone was over their head, answering their questions and talking about things has been really powerful to to not just do that stuff behind the scenes, but model it in front of them and with them. A lot of very much Like what you're talking about, which is why you've got, you know, two little entrepreneurs running around. Yeah.

Adam Liette
And it's so interesting the way you phrase it, I'm immediately thinking of the book radical candor. And like having like those just really candid conversations within the office space. Because you can have those same level of conversations with your employees, with your subordinates with your team members, no matter what level they are, like, speak to them, like adults, and speak to them with the right framing, and then the end result is going to be so much better than that limited interaction that could be either negative or positive, depending on what you're dealing with. So it's like, we're seeing what you want to build in the future and like being deliberate about building it. Well,

Jeremy Shapiro
that goes back to talking about the goal, right? What's the goal we're moving towards? Right?

Adam Liette
And when we're all aligned all circle with you, Jeremy, I

Jeremy Shapiro
love it all connects? It's all there does? Yeah. So when you have alignment around the goal, or your mission, your vision, your purpose, or even your core values, you suddenly have, you know, I think of it like a decision making structure. Right. So now we're talking about something, it's not you versus me, boss versus employee, you know, Dad versus kid, you know, there's not a, there's not a head on personal challenge, if suddenly becomes we're on the same side of the table. How do we work together towards that goal we agree on? How do we make this decision within the context of this core value? And I remember for one of my businesses, the first time we started doing some core value work, because we'd heard about this forever. We've all heard the speakers read the books, you should have all this stuff. Great. No one ever talks about, here's how to actually figure out your mission vision purpose, core values. On the first book, I read on vision. Right? Yeah, okay, well, we'll make a plaque and put on the wall is what are my options? Choose eight, right? So the first book i i finally found that cracked the code on this was traction by Gina Whitman. And that was the first time someone said, Hey, here's the process for how to figure this stuff out. Not just you should have it. But here's how to here's how to get there. And I was on a call with my team. And I mentioned like, Hey, I'm reading this great book, we, you know, we're gonna have a first meeting coming up about it, you guys all now have a copy of the book. Let's read this section. And then on Tuesday, at our meeting, we're gonna go into the process of figuring out our core values, and like, Okay, that's great. And so we moved on with our meeting, and we're talking about, it was something one of our customers was looking for in a product. And so we're talking about how we can help them accomplish that small thing they want them to get done. Or there's really a broader, better solution that would help more customers in a more generalized way. And so I said conversationally, when discussing this, well, I mean, we could do it that way. But like, when we do something, we do it, right. It's one of my one of my team members was like, Hey, Jeremy, I think that might be one of our core values, right? And I was like, before that even gotten to reading the chapter already, that, you know, that radar was up for, what are the beliefs we have? And so, you know, we, you and I could talk core value stuff for hours. But like, what I loved about that is it became one of the guiding principles. And so often, a decision point will come up and we'll say, Yeah, we could do this. And then a team was like, Yeah, but when we do something, we do it right. So we're gonna choose that more difficult path, because it's the right. And so now, it's not a matter of my idea versus your idea. It's a matter of what is the idea that supports our core values? And that applies not just to business, but in family. Awesome.

Adam Liette
I love it, man. Well, folks, if you can't tell Jeremy has to be an absolute gas to be in a mastermind with because this is like what to get through experience. This is like one brief little glimpse. So oh, man, did it has been such an honor to have you I do want to be respectful of your time are coming up on the on the hour? Um, where can people find out more about you? How can they get involved? And if they can't get involved yet? Like, what's the next step they should take on their way to getting involved in a Master? Yeah.

Jeremy Shapiro
So you can find me and my writings and stuff, I love interviewing and talk with entrepreneurs, about their journeys to that entrepreneur freedom. And I write about, you know, all these journeys and stuff. So all that's over at bay area mastermind.com, so be a ye ar e a mastermind.com. So you'll find everything about our group there, you'll find my writing is there and all that, um, you can also find me, you know, Jeremy Shapiro on LinkedIn, or any of your favorite platforms. You asked him interesting question about like, if they're not ready to get involved yet. And I think that's so interesting, because we've always been for established growth focused entrepreneurs who are looking to scale their existing business, right? They already have revenue, they already know how to sell their stuff, right? They have a team or getting a team and are looking to now grow. But this past year, I had folks who are talking to me saying hey, like I'm earlier stage, and I'm still looking to connect with folks. But you know, a full day and you know, financial investment and expertise wise, I'm just not there yet. Jeremy, why don't you have a group for like founders and so when We actually, just under a year ago launched our founders group, which is for earlier stage, sometimes even pre launch businesses, they're still working on refining the idea. And what we found is like in our full day mastermind, we dive into how to scale and grow your existing business. And we're sharing peer advisory on best practices. Our founders group is more on the how to side, because the expertise isn't there yet. So it's more a question of not, how do I refine this ad campaign as an example? Right. But how would I even get started with AdWords? Right as a as a differentiation point, right? Or what's the right entity to use to form a company? Or how do I find if I find out if my prospective customers would even want this product I'm creating. And so that founders group, we can also find at bay area mastermind.com. We talk all about sort of the difference between those two communities and how to find out which ones you know, really the better fit?

Adam Liette
Absolutely. And I think most of us know which one we're in? Well, there's always that middle area, like, right before you bridge the gap, or right after you where you're not really sure which camp you're in. And there's also the case tell people lean to the left, right, just go further. Well,

Jeremy Shapiro
there's also that even earlier camp of like, you know, what, you might call it your entrepreneurs, right? They like the idea of a business because they see you, and your success as a duck on the water, not seeing all the insanity of what's going on underneath of the duck mantle. So there's people who aspirationally like, oh, man, I'd love to have my own business, but don't actually take the action to move forward. Right? So yes, in that case, lean to the right more and actually take some action, right, figure out what is the idea that you want to move forward with figure out? Who is the market? How would I sell my thing to them? What's the problem I'm solving? And do your research for one of our companies we launched was actually in a mastermind group that I was in, almost every business I've launched has filled a gap. I've had one of my other businesses. And this was one of those, we saw a gap in the marketplace. And so you know, there was an idea. So I asked her on the table like, hey, look, here's a problem. I have a mind business. Here's how we're looking to solve it. And here's that looks like, is there anything here? And right in that mastermind group, I had, you know, a third of the room, raise their hand and say, Jeremy, if you build that I want it we'll pay you for. I'm like, Well, I mean, that's not a sure thing, but that's not bad. So out the gate, we had beta testers to try out the product. And then the day we launched, those all converted to paying customers, right with tremendous customer lifetime value, simply because I was able to test that idea. Look for the fit, see if that made sense and get their early feedback. So he get an MVP shipped and generating revenues. Before we even spent $1. On anything in that business. It was generating revenue. So move from one intrapreneur to truly founding your business, get that idea, go and test the idea out. It might not be great, but you won't know unless you test it out.

Adam Liette
At the end of the day, just one of my favorite lines is two favorite lines is like jump and the net will appear. And then there's one from Mother Teresa, who says I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish you didn't trust me so much.

Jeremy Shapiro
Those two put together very well.

Adam Liette
Jeremy, it's been an absolute pleasure, brother, man. What a fascinating journey. I absolutely adore what you're bringing to the industry. If you can't tell, like just getting people to get past their own perceived or real limitations. It's it's, it's a wonderful thing you're doing and I'm just so honored to have connected with you and look forward to staying in touch man.

Jeremy Shapiro
Thank you. Likewise, it's been a blast. Thanks for having me on.

Adam Liette
Hey, operators, I believe that within each and every one of us lies a warrior in waiting this warrior is able to conquer any obstacle that comes their way to discover how to awaken your warrior spirit and conquer what's holding you back. Go to Adam liette.com and join awaken the Warrior Within