How To Create A Deep Dive Mastermind For Small Businesses

Podcast: Download (Duration: 18:28 — 17.0MB)

A mastermind combines the resources of several individuals to come up with solutions and strategies. In this interview, James has a chat to his co-host from FreedomOcean Timbo Reid (who also runs the successful Small Business Big Marketing podcast). Having recently joined SilverCircle, Tim is in the process of creating and running a powerful marketing mastermind. Listen in as they share some insights of the process involved:

James Schramko and Tim Reid *the new skinny version of Tim

Download the PDF transcription

In the podcast:

00:39 – Behind the scenes of marketing your expertise
01:13 – The Small Business Big Marketing Deep Dive Mastermind
02:43 – Identifying the key aspects of people’s business
05:13 – The value of having a sounding board
06:04 – The perfect client
07:55 – Personalize your marketing
08:10 – Get a look behind the scenes of the Tim Reid businesses
09:39 – A virtual round table
11:20 – Marketing confidence
11:40 – More inquiry, satisfaction and retention, easier sales process
14:00 – Pricing
15:20 – Filtering clients

James also runs a mastermind called SilverCircle where he helps business owners double their business. Join the waiting list here.

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here, and today is going to be a strange day. I’ve got my special co-host from FreedomOcean but under different context. Now, behind the scenes, Tim Reid is actually a specialist at Small Business and Big Marketing. He has his own successful podcast and a thriving business where he works with companies to help them improve their profit.

I’ve been talking to Timbo lately about a new venture that he’s got, and I thought it would be great to go behind the scenes and find out what’s involved in taking your expertise to the market and how you would structure that. So we’re just going to cut across to that now.

Good day, Timbo! How are you, mate?

Timbo: James Schramko, I’m fine. This is a very unusual circumstance. Is the word palpable?

James: This is my show so I’m going to control you this time. I’m kind of enjoying it.

Timbo: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

James: Now, you’re putting together a mastermind at the moment. I’m wondering if you can just tell us a bit of how that came about.

Reason behind the mastermind series

Timbo: Cool. It’s called the “Small Business, Big Marketing Deep Dive Mastermind.” It came about for so many reasons, but the major one is, I’m sitting here in a hotel room in Brisbane in the middle of doing a roadshow for a company where I’m traveling to about nine different destinations and doing a roadshow in front of many hundred small business owners, and I’m just seeing time, and time, and time again, when I share some marketing nuggets with them, their eyes just open wide. It’s reminded me of how much the marketing world has changed and just how much time we, as small business owners, don’t spend diving deep down into some of those nuggets that are just below the surface.

James: You love your marketing stuff, don’t you?

Timbo: I do, mate.

James: You came from an agency background.

Timbo: I did, and it set me up well but I love small business now. Agencies allowed me to work with big clients, and I like to work with small ones. Look, I’ve created this Deep Dive Mastermind series, and here’s why.

You know when you dive into the ocean, or dive into a pool, or wherever you want to dive into, and you do that shallow dive and you cover a lot of ground, and it feels really good? You know that dive?

James: Yep.

Timbo: Well, the shallow dive allows you to cover a lot of ground but you don’t go deep down. And so often, you’re diving over. You’re racing over really important parts of your business. Now marketing is a critical part of any business, I believe, and the idea of the Deep Dive Mastermind series is that we do deep dive. We deep dive into key aspects of people’s business in the mastermind group, and really get stuck into them. We don’t do the shallow dive over them and just kind of briefly acknowledge them. In this mastermind series, it’s going to be an opportunity for everyone in the group to put their hand up, and say “I want to talk about this aspect of my marketing” and then we deep dive into it and really sort it out.

James: Nice. So why are you doing it now? What’s triggered this for you?

Timbo: Well, a) this roadshow that I’m doing just reminded me of the stuff that maybe I’ve accumulated over having interviewed 108 really successful marketers over the last three years on the Small Business, Big Marketing show. At the heart of it James, I just believe there’s never ever been a better time to market a small business. It’s unbelievable, the opportunities, that we as small business owners have at our disposal. We just need to know what they are.

The power of a mastermind group

The power of a mastermind group really excites me. It’s time to pull all that together and bring a small group of people together to really kind of first-hand look at each other’s marketing problems, challenges and opportunities. And I really love the idea of putting together – it’s almost like a board of directors. As small business owners, we don’t have a board of directors, many of us don’t. Some small businesses do, but many of us don’t. So I like the idea of bringing together a group of people who we can all kind of help each other along the way, facilitated by me.

James: I guess with your show, you’re obviously speaking to a lot of experts so you must be just soaking in business knowledge all the time. Although it’s intimate and it’s a great medium – the audio. I guess speaking to actual live people, and having responses, and being able to flex your marketing muscle must be a bit exciting.

Timbo: It is. Having spoken to, as we record this, 108 successful small business owners over the last three years, having received hundreds of listener questions over that time as well, I’ve really got a sense of what’s possible and what people are thinking. I really want to exercise that in this Deep Dive Mastermind series.

And the other thing too, by the way, before we go on is small business can be a lonely place when you’ve got no one to bounce an idea off, when you’ve got no one to tell you whether you’re right or wrong, when you’ve got no one to talk to. We get so stuck into the nuts and bolts of our business that we kind of forget to smell the roses.

The perfect client

James: So Timbo, when you were putting together this thing – you’re an industry expert, you’ve got a stack of experience because you speak to so many people, you feel that it’s the time for you to get more intimate – how do you actually select the people that you attract to this mastermind? Who would be the perfect candidate?

Timbo: Love it! Love that question!

James: Am I doing well? This is weird hearing you doing all the talking for once.

Timbo: Quite extraordinary. Look, perfect candidate. Here’s the thing, whenever I’m creating marketing materials like I am doing right now, I always have my perfect client front and center. I’ve actually got a name for my perfect client. He’s a real person. His name is Darren. I call him Dazzer. He gets the best out of me, and I get the best out of him. Whenever I’m creating something, I have Dazzer in mind, and Dazzer is the type of person that will really, really benefit from this Deep Dive Mastermind group.

Let me describe Dazzer for you. He’s a really successful small business owner. He’s motivated. He’s happy with where he is, but he really wants to ramp it up to that next level. He’s got a real respect for marketing as a key business building tool. He’d see himself as sort of that beginner to intermediate level of marketer. Great business owner. Runs his business really well. Knows he could be doing better marketing. He’s not afraid to have a crack. He’s always willing to try something new and not spank it. If it doesn’t work, he’s the kind of guy who’ll make that change, make that alteration and try again. He also openly admits that he doesn’t know everything and happily puts the hand up and rings me often and says, “Hey Timbo, what do you reckon about this? What can I do? Do you got any ideas for me?”

That’s who this mastermind group is ideally suited to. You’ve got to have a business. You’ve got to have cash flow. You’ve got to have a positive attitude.

James: Right, I like that. You really got a clear idea of who your customer is. I’m guessing that this is the kind of thing you’re teaching people in your mastermind.

Timbo: Yeah, yeah, yeah correct. Right there, that whole idea of having your perfect customer front and center whenever you’re creating marketing materials. Marketing is what you do when you can’t go see someone, James. That’s what it is, mate. The more you personalize it, the better.

James: So is it fair to say that people will probably judge your programs and services based on the way that you’re even communicating it to them?

Timbo: Part of this Deep Dive Mastermind is that you’ll come behind the scenes of my businesses. I’m not going to hold back. There’s no secrets. You’ll get to see how I do what I do with Small Business Big Marketing, with my keynote speaking business, my podcasting business, and any part of my business now and previous years, I’m happy to reveal.

James: I guess there’s two things in that. One is that when you’re running a mastermind, you have to be prepared to share a bit of yourself and you’re going to get bonded to the people and reveal stuff. That’s part of the deal. They’re paying for behind the scenes access. But secondly, you probably should be attracting people who are on the same topics that you specialize in. Do you sit down and list them out? Do you make a big deal out of what they would be?

What the Deep Dive Mastermind is about

Timbo: Yeah, absolutely. Let’s be really clear. The Deep Dive Mastermind series is about branding. It’s about better marketing practices. It’s about getting your message right and then putting it in the right medium. It’s about getting more customers and retaining those customers. It’s about local marketing ideas. It’s about improving your sales funnel. It’s about being more productive, and it’s about innovation.

So they are the kind of areas that this mastermind group will deep dive into. If any of those areas are of interest then the mastermind group is for you. And the way it works is, it’s not me presenting on those topics. Let’s be really clear about that. Let’s call it a virtual round table, James where we literally meet on a weekly basis and we go round that virtual table. I’ll start the discussion of, but then we go around the virtual table and every single person within the mastermind gets an opportunity to talk about their business, ask questions of me and of the group. And it’s that power of the group that really excites me.

James: Nice. So they’ve got your experience to draw on but you’re really focusing in on their business. And I guess from that format, there’s two things that appeal to me about that format and I’ve experimented with this as well. I’ve actually chosen the same format, a weekly check in. I’ve been studying about willpower lately in this great book and it said that the more often you monitor something, the more control you have and the more success you have in things being implemented so that makes sense. You’re able to open this to people from anywhere in the world, technically, if you’re going to do it in a timezone that suits.

Timbo: Absolutely. As long as you tick the boxes off the criteria I went through earlier, then where you are is not so relevant.

Real marketing confidence

James: What do you have to offer to them for them to see value in this? I haven’t asked you how much it costs yet. I’m more interested to find out what would someone expect to get from it? What’s the promise? I guess you have to craft some kind of an offer?

Timbo: Here’s what I want to deliver as a result of this mastermind group. I’ve coined this phrase like a real marketing confidence. I want people who join this group to develop a real confidence in the way they go about building their brand because you actually build a brand. You don’t just go and buy one. You register a business, you build a brand, so there’s a marketing confidence. But let’s be commercially real, in this mastermind group I want to deliver more inquiry to those who attended. I want more client satisfaction, more client retention for those business owners that are on the group, easier sales process.

One of the things that I found with the way I’ve gone about marketing my business is, I prefer marketing over sales so I spend a lot of time getting my marketing right so when someone approaches me, they feel as though they know through the podcast, through my speaking and through all those other things I do.

James: You must get people coming to you all the time from even just the podcast. You’re like the most popular marketing podcast on iTunes in Australia, so that’s saying something, isn’t it?

Timbo: I love getting letters from listeners which happens more and more saying, “Hey Timbo! It’s such and such. I feel like I know you,” and that’s really powerful. And that’s the result of having done the marketing that I’m going to share as part of this mastermind group. Solid ideas from me and the rest of the group is another output they can expect, James. And just that whole group power is bringing together like-minded individuals so I don’t think that can be underestimated.

Tim on one-on-one consulting

James: Do you still do one-on-one consulting?

Timbo: I try and avoid it. I’m doing a little bit but I’m not offering it going into the future. The mastermind group is where I want to take 2013 for my business. As a major part, I do a lot of keynote speaking. I do a lot of podcasting. I want the mastermind series to be a really major part of what I do, so no one-on-one.

James: I remember from one of our episodes, we were talking about SEO for one of your keynote speaking packages but you charge for that right?

Timbo: Yeah, I do. Absolutely.

James: How much would someone pay to hire Timbo to come and speak to their event?

Timbo: For me to give a keynote around small business marketing, it will start at four grand.

James: But this is a one session?

Timbo: Correct, that’s an hour of keynote.

James: So if you’re meeting with these people every single week, how much?

Timbo: It won’t be four grand. I promise.

James: It’s not?

Timbo: No, no, no, no, no.

James: Cause they’re sharing you I guess? The value.

Timbo: They share me. Absolutely. Which is kind of good too because we bring in that power of the group. On a weekly format, we’re going to meet on a weekly call via webinar, that virtual round table. I’m starting it off in order to get this baby up and running for $399 recurring per month, James.

James: Per month, not per week?

Timbo: Nope [laughs].

James: Okay, this is like the foundation. Do you envisage that increasing in price?

Timbo: Real quick. Yeah, absolutely.

James: That makes sense. So you’ve got like a founder’s rate

Timbo: Founder’s rate, they’ll always have it. You buy in at that rate and you’ll always have it. For $399 a month, that covers every single weekly session.

James: How many people do you expect would be in something like this when you’re putting together group sizes? Have you anticipated a size?

Timbo: Yeah, there won’t be a group. The founding group or I don’t see any group in the future being bigger than 15.

James: Okay. So if you have more than that, you might just start another group?

Timbo: Start another one. I will get this one set in stone first before I’ll take a waiting list on a second or third.

James: Right, so it’s one only when you start. That makes sense because the way I look at it and when I started doing consulting for customers, I think the first customers I had got tremendous value. I just delivered like ten times more than probably was necessary because I was so interested in making it a winner. I bet you’ll be doing the same thing.

Timbo: Yeah, this is really important to me.

James: I’m interested if you put any sort of filters on it like do you just take anyone if they’ve got the money or do they go through some sort of process of approval?

Who qualifies for the mastermind

Timbo: If you are listening and you go, “You know what, Deep Dive Mastermind sounds like a really good thing” here’s what you need to do and if you tick one of these boxes, don’t bother doing it because there is some filters, James, and there are people that it’s just not going to work for us. How about I cover that and I say how to access it?

James: Yeah, how do you arrive at the filters? I’m interested in that process and you can tell us what they are.

Timbo: How I arrive with the filters is going, okay, this is not for everyone. And for this to be successful for both those attending and for me to run, there needs to be a certain type of person in it and there also needs to be a certain type of person not in it.

The certain type of person that won’t make it is someone who’s kind of down to their last dollar in their business. They’re kind of desperate and this is like their last ditch effort to make their business work. I can’t work with these people right now.

I want people who are motivated. As I said before, I want those Darrens of the world. And there’s a wonderful little trick or, I don’t know what you’d call it, a little exercise but the sentence “opportunity is now here” is a string of letters that can also be read as “opportunity is nowhere,” James.

James: It’s like the glass thing.

Timbo: Yeah, yeah that’s right. The glass is half full. The glass is half empty. I want people who read the the letters “opportunity is now here” as exactly that, not “opportunity is nowhere.” I want those people who are going to have a real crack, not those one who are down to their last dollar.

In order for me to determine if you’re going to benefit from the mastermind, simply go to deepdivemastermind.com and you’ll find my contact details there. You can get me via Skype, phone, email. You can hit me up on Facebook or Twitter, as well. All those details will be there. And all you need to do is say, “Hey, I’m interested” and we’ll book a time for a quick discovery call where you can ask me any questions, and I can ask you some questions. And then we can get going.

James: Tim, this sounds like a lot of fun and a good opportunity for someone if they’re a Dazzer.

Timbo: If they’re a Dazzer, absolutely! A Dazzer or a Dazzeliry for boys and girls.

James: I hope one day you invite me along to eavesdrop on your mastermind, and maybe share some stories.

Timbo: You are always welcome, James.

James: I’ll tell them what really happens on our shows. [Laughs]

Timbo: Yeah, good idea.

James: Alright, I’ll let you go Timbo. Thanks very much and have a great mastermind.

Timbo: Thanks, James!

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