I’m sitting in cozy cold Connecticut (after our first freeze last night), hot cup of tea in hand, trying to figure out how I’m going to recap the last five days. Having just wrapped up our fall 2020 mastermind – there are endless things I could write about when you put 100 business owners in a Zoom together- it’s overwhelming to recap nearly 40 hours of masterminding. And I’m trying to think what would be worth the next few minutes of your time? What can I give here
in this post that will educate, inspire, motivate, or enlighten some piece of your business journey?
Here’s my very best attempt…
Behind The Scenes: How We Ran The Mastermind
Starting with a few logistics (handy if you are planning a virtual mastermind yourself), here’s how we ran the event.
Helen kicked off each morning with intentions and other such bonding exercises to help the group connect, get ready for the day, and bond within the confines of a computer screen. She led these mornings from 9-9:30am.
After that, we ran a packed morning, starting with two Mastermind Gives. These are presentations by the members on all kinds of topics from Pinterest, to book writing, non verbal communication, Enneagram, ads, funnels, copy, etc.
We had everyone in the mastermind that wanted to, pitch an idea, and then the group voted on the top 15 presentations. Those ran every morning from 9:30-10:30am and then again from 11:30am-12:00pm.
In between the gives, we broke into coach’s workshops. All the DI coaches split into breakout rooms to workshop on topics. These were a bit more hands on, or discussion style trainings. The smaller more topic specific groups were able to engage more people and they ran simultaneously.
Lunch always came super fast (at 12pm) – and we left the Zoom room open for open chat. Sometimes we’d talk about the morning presentations, other times it was just personal fun stuff, or we’d ask the new folks to give us some background on them (since we had 28 new members since our last mastermind in April!!!).
After lunch, I gave a keynote style presentation for 30-45 minutes and then opened up the group for questions. It was hard to break at 2pm because several of these topics had us in really intense conversations that were so good and helpful, but deep.
At 2pm, I split the group into nine mini mastermind groups that were separated into breakout rooms for an hour. Each person had 30 minutes to be on the hotseat, and much of these hotseats were focused on creative brainstorming and strategy.
Yes I named the groups after Disney characters because, why not?
I believe this was team Captain Hook – which became Captain Hunk.
After that, we came back to the main room and each person who was on the hotseat got to share with the whole group – what their biggest takeaway was.
A few other fun things we did!
- We had a wall of appreciation for members to share and express appreciation for another member who had something meaningful to share. It’s hard to go through this post without a tissue because some of the comments are just incredible.
- We did a DI awards lunch on Wednesday where we celebrated all the big accomplishments from DIers over the past six months.
- One of our members – Aryeh – took the night shift and opened up the Zoom room every night at 9pm for the night owls who wanted to have a drink and debrief from the day. If you can believe it, after 7 hours on Zoom, many of the Extraverts in the group were ready for the night run of DI!
- Ahead of the mastermind, I sent out some swag boxes with notebooks, snacks, hoodies, and a camper mug that read “We Survived 2020 Together” (because we did!)
There was so much laughter (like the moment where Nathan turned his camera on to show that he was in fact listening WHILE on the massage table). There were tears. There was celebration! There was a ton of learning, ideation, and brainstorming. There were intense hard convos too.
One of three pages of Digital Insiders!
Some Takeaways For You!
“Events are a great way to create inciting incidents for your customers.” – Chris Creed
He spoke about how inciting incidents work in movies and they are key moments in a journey that change the character’s trajectory. How can you use events to create those moments for your students and customers? Chris runs a program that helps business owners launch a simple virtual event quickly and easily.
“Try to not have more than 3 links per email, and hyperlink your text vs. putting in the raw link.” – Brittany Bayley
She is the founder of Email Copy School and gave us a presentation on the topic of email deliverability. Though not a sexy topic, it’s a HUGE one for anyone doing email marketing so we were grateful for her insight!
There are five simple ways to leverage physical products in your business: loyalty/status cards, welcome kits, swag, merch, & complementary products.” – Tyler Jorgensen
He spoke on how to use buyer psychology and physical products to create more stickiness in your info product business. Tyler is the CEO of Four Sail – eCommerce & Social Media Agency.
“One of the fastest way to scale an agency is through software. You can white label virtually any tool you use in your agency to add more continuity.” – Matt Deseno
Founder of BAAM agency and High Level Pro Tools, Matt took us inside the way he combines agency + software to create ongoing recurring revenue in a service based business.
Every short form video script should go like this for maximum views: Start with the Hook, tease the Outcome, state a Testimonial, and then give Action tips.” – Elise Darma
She took us inside her short form video process for IG reels, TikTok, and IG posts, where she absolutely crushes these platforms with engagement, views, follows, and monetization.
“The easiest way to write a 294 page book in just a few weeks is to simply interview a bunch of experts in a niche with several simple questions, and then compile it and use Lulu.com or some similar site to drop ship free copies to the authors. Get them to share the book on social and watch the sales come in.” – Gabe Shillinger
I’m paraphrasing him slightly, but he blew our minds with a crazy process he went through to get in the top ten of Russell’s Traffic Secrets Affiliate contest. It included getting a book written, printed, and sold within 3 weeks. It was nuts!
“When determining who to hire, write down EVERYTHING you do, and then circle the things you WANT to do. Outsource everything else.” – Esther Inman
She went into her hiring process for VA’s (Esther runs a six figure a month business working very little hours) and she also trains VA’s. So she had a lot to share on how to hire, what to hire for, and how to make sure you’re in good shape when they join your team.
“When running a sponsored message campaign, aim to run it between 3-7 days. We did this and got less than $2.00 a webinar registration, whereas traditional ads were costing us $9-$10 a lead!” – Stephanie Blake
Even though Facebook bots are changing constantly, the Sponsored Message option for Messenger is still returning an insane ROI. She went behind the scenes of all the ways she’s using messages in her agency to reach more customers and leads!
“Don’t underestimate the power of celebrating birthdays, handwritten notes, personalized videos, or any personal contact you can do with your customers to help build retention.” – Melissa Lanz
She dove into all kinds of retention strategies for membership sites (she is the owner of Fresh20), and blew us all away with her simple yet “why didn’t I think of that?” lists of things we could all implement in our continuity programs.
“Stop making two sales at once!” – Renee Hribar
She gave us a great presentation and sales script to clear the path for a “Yes!” when on a discovery call. Her comment about stop making two sales at once was an aha! for how to build rapport before the call so that on the call, you only have to sell your product, not you.
“Your Table of Contents in your book should your sales page.” – Nick Pavlidis
Ghostwriter Nick took us through his book writing process, and showed us how to get momentum, make connections, and leverage a book – even before it’s written. He gave all of us a major aha! when he said that your table of contents can and should read similarly to how you might architect a sales page to sell your offer.
“Imagine if some of your Facebook Lives – long fallen way below on your page – are constantly revived and viewed – just because you have Pins that are leading to them!” – Michelle Diaz
An accidental Pinterest expert (using it to help her get to 100k subscribers and beyond), Michelle is a health coach and the owner of the mPower supplement for pregnant and nursing moms. She showed us how she links pinterest pins to her other social content to keep it alive and garnering views long after the FB algorithm has stopped showing it.
“Depending on your number on the Enneagram, you might be oriented towards the past, towards the present, or towards the future.” – Nicole McDonough
She went through the stances of the Enneagram with us, explaining how we respond to the world around us. The most enlightening part of the talk was showing how this is linked to people who are ALWAYS thinking ahead, frequently looking back and nostalgic, and those that prefer to be in the present.
“The fastest way to build trustworthiness with your customers and clients is through your hands.” – Gonzalo Jimenez
He did a fascinating presentation on how to become more charismatic, and he started the presentation with this interesting tidbit of social psychology. When people can see your hands (yes even on Zoom) you instantly build more trust than if they can’t be seen. Gonzalo is a Kartra expert and also (unbeknownst to all of us) certified in non verbal communication as well!
“Most of what stops people from doing YouTube ads is their resistance to doing video. If I showed you some top performing ads, you would not even believe how poorly done they are! If you can do a video without an old mattress in the background, you can do YouTube ads!” – Chris Wyatt
He spoke about YouTube ads and encouraged any of us running webinar funnels, to seriously consider YouTube ads – even though so many people are nervous to create video.
Inside My Workshops + Presentations
Unfortunately I don’t have notes from Helen, Jessie, and Emily’s coach’s workshops because I was often running something simultaneously – and I haven’t had a chance to review them. But rumor is that all of them were poignant, enlightening, helpful, and full of useful and applicable information that can be used right away. I just want to take a quick rabbit trail to say that everyone on my team, including my Executive Assistant Jess – are INCREDIBLE. Digital Insiders is so much fuller, better, and more awesome with them on board.
Okay, I emailed everyone a few weeks back asking which of the following presentations you’d like an encore of.
Drum roll….
Google Hacks for Productivity WAY outperformed any of the others! So I will be doing a FREE workshop for anyone who’s interested, November 20th at 2pm EST. You can register at that link to save your spot (my limit is 500 people on my Zoom plan).
As for my other presentations, here are the slides that I think had the most impact when I was teaching.
During the Art of Delegation, the group asked a TON of questions about how I managed to delegate so much.
In the Top Takeaways Presentation, I started off by showing people about how many minutes I’ve spent actively coaching and/or auditing funnels, and what a privilege it is to get to be a coach where you get this incredible vantage point.
In the Certification Workshop, we spent a good deal of time talking about how the curriculum of a certification needs certain components to help aid in the completion of the material.
In the Increasing Profit Margin discussion, I gave members a look at the way I prioritized and deprioritized parts of my business when trying to reduce expenses and increase margin.
In the discussion of Irresistibility, there was an intense discussion as soon as I dropped this slide. I encouraged people to have others read a sales page and guess the price. If they guessed the expected price, the anchor wasn’t done properly. You want people to get to the bottom and expect ONE price and be delighted when it’s less than that.
During the presentation about Designing Courses That People Finish, this slide was a funny way to present how so many people teach. They give you SO MUCH information you don’t need to know.
In the Transitioning to High Ticket Consulting Workshop, we talked about how to get your customers the SAME result without actually doing the work. Here we started to break down the pieces involved in high ticket consulting.
I could go on for easily another 3000 words, and truth be told – I missed 6 coach’s workshops and 45 mini master meetups, so this is just scratching the surface of what happened this week. For now, this hopefully gives you a few things to chew on.
Don’t forget to register for the Google productivity tips webinar on November 20th and if you’re interested in the Insiders, you can put in an application at Digital Insiders Mastermind. Right now we’re booking calls for a possible 2021 enrollment (as the group is full and we have a waitlist currently that’s ahead in line), but we anticipate openings in 2021). We’re happy to let you know if we think you might be a good fit!
xx
Definitely the best MM event I have ever been a part of… live or online. Grateful and fired up. 🙂