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Tell me what your vision was when you decided to become and do Bay Area of mastermind

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Yeah, so I as a participant had seen so much value from being part of mastermind groups over the years

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So, you know, I knew that was an going to be an important part of my life because there already was and at times

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You know, it's not unusual to find folks in a few different mastermind groups

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But with you know to your question earlier different focuses, right?

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So I was looking for

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You know a version of a mastermind group that is what we have now today in the Bay Area mastermind

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And what's valuable with that is I'm surrounded by people who are sharing what's going on in their business

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and I'm able to lend you know my expertise from decades in business serving entrepreneurs as

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You know as a facilitator. Yes, right

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So I keep our meeting on track make sure everyone gets their hot seat

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Help to guide the conversation having that longitudinal knowledge of each member's businesses and really, you know

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Keep that conversation not just on track, but really productive. It's not unusual for someone to

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Be sharing something going on in their business and for the group to jump on and want to fix something

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That is not what that person wants help with and so if you're able to help guide that person to you know

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Make sure they get their questions answered and the help they need

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that's really powerful and

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You know the accountability piece as well

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Like you were touching on is so valuable for us entrepreneurs because as the entrepreneur it's lonely at the top

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Yeah, who hold who holds you accountable to you do what you say you're gonna do because the good news is you're your own boss

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But the bad news is you're your own

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So when you have that peer accountability of you know

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People you've committed to getting certain things done with and you know

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You're gonna see them in a month and they're gonna be asking how you did on things

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You don't want to show up there having let down your you know, your fellow colleagues

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So it creates that accountability that we so need as business owners

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To keep us from just going with our whims or whatever the idea of the day is

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Yeah

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and it's it's it's um

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I keep thinking about when I was in the in the corporate business and we had a weekly meeting and

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Then we had a meeting about that meeting the next week because we couldn't get it all out and then we had a whole

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ginormous meeting once a month about those meetings that we could not get everything out and I think that this would be it's such a

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unique

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form a way of putting everyone together and having that to be

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That that solid piece to having that like big discussion

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And like you said a full day and I know some businesses tried to start that but it didn't seem to work

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Well to keep everyone away from your desk or doing the job

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Or they would do it on a Saturday when no one really wanted to do it

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So I love the fact that you can you know, you'll have these these masterminds and they'll be for a day and accountability piece

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And not only that is just hearing the outside voices

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I always tell people you working on you or you working on your own business

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That's not gonna work out like

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Workout at all. You'll just be as confused as you were when you first started

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So when you're working with go ahead, I'm sorry

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Well, if I hold like you don't know what you don't know and your perspective is only from where you are

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You know, I always think of it like, you know, if you're at the gym

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You've got the perspective whatever that wherever that mirror is, but you're still tied to what your eyeballs see

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Yeah, whereas like if you're in a yoga yoga class, for example, and the instructor comes over and they provide a minor correction

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Yeah, you couldn't see it. You heard what you're supposed to do, but you couldn't see it

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But all they do is make an adjustment. You're like, oh, that's what I needed

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yeah, I was out for I was out for run with a friend of mine recently and

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We're getting towards the end of our run on our way home. And and he said to me is like, hey, you know, Jeremy

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Your core is collapsing. I'm like what now? He's like your core is collapsing and like I'm hearing his words

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But I don't think I don't actually know what that means. So I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, oh like, you know

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Put more power, you know use the glutes more this and that he's describing it and I'm you know asking like this and he's like

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No, do this and so we very quickly

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Iterated onto and he's like there you go that that's the change and I'm like, oh, okay now I feel it

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So I didn't even know the problem I was facing someone else had to tell me about it

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But even hearing about it, I didn't know what to do with that. So having someone with a perspective I could never have on myself

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Point out a problem provide the solution and then guide me to

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Executing on that was so powerful and that's exactly the kind of stuff we do in the mastermind for your business all the time

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And I love how you say point out the problem

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Find a solution and guide you you never use the word fix

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You know every most people want to fix it like just fix it

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And that's also when you went back to the analogy of working out working out without a mirror

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You don't know what you don't even see, you know what I mean? I feel yes. Yes

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And most of the time feeling is surface and not really that core like you were saying

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Exactly with all of this and all of the learning and the experience that you have

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What was your most significant learning experience in this all?

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Well, I think I remember back to being at an event for us business owners and entrepreneurs and at that event

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I think there was like a thousand of us entrepreneurs in the ballroom and my friends up on stage and she's speaking and

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She's something something that's always stuck with me

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She said, you know look around and you'll see you're in a room full of people who are about the ooh shiny

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And I remember being accused of being an ooh shiny person and that was always said almost like derogatorily

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Like you're so distractible

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But what I realized on that moment was what makes us entrepreneurs entrepreneurs

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Is that we do see things that most others don't yeah

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We see opportunities where others just walk right on past and so what I found is that us entrepreneurs sort of go through

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Three checkpoints that that you know, most folks don't get through three gates as it were, right?

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The first is that we see opportunities. Yeah, right. We see a gap in the marketplace. We see a problem

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We see something out there. That's wrong. Yeah, right

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Whereas most folks walk on by have the blinders on we see the problem. All right, so that's one

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Now most folks at that point if they see the problem will probably just complain about it or talk about it to others

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But won't actually find a solution, right?

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So the second thing as entrepreneurs do is we see a solution to the problem where others might complain

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We see a way to make it better. Yeah, but the third one is the reason we're in business and others aren't

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That's not that we actually do something about it

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So some folks see a problem they know how it could be better, but they don't do anything about it

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We entrepreneurs do

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Right. So, you know getting that clarity over the years has been so so vital and this helps me not just for myself

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my own businesses, but for you know clients and mastermind members and so on over the years is

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is recognizing that and others and

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Knowing that the fact that we see opportunities is not a problem

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It's actually our gift. It's why we're entrepreneurs in the first place

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So long as we can harness it and make it through those three gates and actually execute on the ideas we have

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And not just see the opportunities without doing something

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Yes, yes, I mean that that was that was so spot on and you know, we often mention entrepreneurs

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And then I was looking on your your site and I see solo prenuers. What's the difference?

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Oh, I love this so a solo preneur someone who's out there running the business on their own

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Right and look we all start there almost all of us start out wearing all the hats in the business, right?

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From you know from sales to service to invoicing to sweeping up to washing the bottles and everything in between

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We do it all as a business owner. So you're a solo preneur when it's just you

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When you start to grow you start bringing on team members and you start to think about

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You start bringing on team members to help out and when I say team members

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Yes, this can be a full-time employee and it might be a part-time employee

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But especially early on it might be like a va like a virtual assistant

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It might be a contractor or an outsourced person or it might be a vendor

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Providing an area of expertise, right?

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Whatever it is you're starting to hand off some of the responsibilities of the business to others

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You're not handing over the entire thing. You're just handing off a piece of it, right we had um

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You know a very common one that comes up again and again is like having someone just take care of the bookkeeping

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Yes

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Bring you up from like entering receipts and transactions and all of that to then handling invoices and payments and paying the bills and all those things

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Like that's not something that you need to be worrying about every single day. You want oversight and management of it

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Yeah

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But that is something you can have a specialist take care of for you to free you up

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Right another common early hire is customer service or customer support

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Someone to be there on the front lines taking care of your customers while you work on the business side

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I had someone I was working with

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He started a business and he was running his own business, but he was also loved mountain biking

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The problem was the mountain biking he'd be out in the forest in the mountains enjoying nature. Yeah, that's where he recharged

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That's where he got that oxygen and you know the fresh air and really recharged himself and got space from things

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And that's so important for our you know, our mental health our physical health and so on. Yes

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The problem was he had built himself a little prison

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He started a business and if he knew if he wasn't there to answer a customer call

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That customer can be offline or you know, not able to handle their customers

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Until things got fixed so he felt like he had to be by his phone

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Which meant he couldn't go out to the mountains where there wasn't cell phone coverage and do the thing that was so important

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Yeah, and so he was like many business owners feeling stuck and feeling trapped in the business

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Yes, so the first hire we made was an outsourced outsourced part-time support person

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Yeah, suddenly there was someone to answer the phone and respond to customer emails during business hours

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while he could go and get back to nature and also do things like

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Handle sales for new customers work on product and do all these other parts of the business

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Without feeling like he was always going to be interrupted and having to be right there to answer a phone call

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Yeah, yeah

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And that's that's actually a really good point because of the simple fact that he couldn't find that balance

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which I really never think there's a real big balance, but at least balancing getting away and

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And enjoying the things that you like to do and being a business owner

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And a solo or an entrepreneur and then I see on your site

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It goes solopreneur to business owner or entrepreneur to business owner. So the difference between that

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And business tell me so self-employed like you're going out. You're hanging a shingle and you're in business, right?

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Then we move on to you being self-employed

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Right. You may still have a team you can even have a large team and yet still be what we call self-employed

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And here's the litmus test that I use to determine are you self-employed or are you a business owner? And that's this

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For our listeners who aren't driving or doing something else close your eyes for a moment

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And imagine what would happen if you stepped away from your business for a day

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or a week

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a month three months

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And then you come back to your business

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Do you come back to your business being the same as when you left it?

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Is your business better than when you left it?

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Or do you come back to a raging dumpster fire of a business?

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For most folks the answer is the latter you come back to you know, being out of business and things are in chaos, right?

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So that's just an indication that you don't truly own your business just yet

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You are still self-employed because the business still requires your presence on an ongoing basis. Yes, and that's okay, right?

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We're just looking to gauge sort of where you are

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You know in that spectrum on that journey. Yeah

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When we think about what does it take to be that business owner that can step away for an extended period of time?

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Right. And when I say step away, I mean like no email slack phone call

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Calls text like just you're not you're on a desert island. You're on a cruise. Whatever it is. You're away from the business, right?

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So in order to do that, we need a few really important things

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One is you need systems or processes. Yeah, and then you need people to run those systems and processes. Yes without those

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You are tied to your business

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right, so

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Our first step is to figure out what those roles are

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We need to hire for and what the systems are and we start to think about what are the roles that we need to hire for

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The systems are and we start to build that out and the more we pull you out of that business

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The more you move towards being a true business owner

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And we're not saying you can't work in your business, right?

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Like most of us have a business because we're doing something we love right some of us love working with our customers

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Some of us love doing the work of the business. Some of us love working with our team, right?

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Those are okay things to do

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The question is does the business require that from you constantly or is it something something that you just can do when you choose to do it?

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Yeah, yeah, and I and I when you separate all of those uh solo entrepreneur business owner

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I can see where the mastermind would be so helpful in a solopreneur

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and being able to sit in a in a group of people that have probably reached a different level than you and helping you

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Understand and design your business in a way to you can get to that point, you know to be on

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Uh an island and not have to answer the phone

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So I I love that and interesting enough is i'm a real estate agent and I love being around a group of people that are like-minded

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However, I don't believe that I got into a point to a mastermind

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So I am a solopreneur looking to be an entrepreneur looking to be a business owner

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So I I see that vision definitely. Yeah, we work with folks who you know started out as real estate agents, right?

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But then moved on to you know, actually being a broker broker record and having a team of agents which suddenly means

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You get to work with the boutique clients you want to work with when you want to work with them

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Otherwise your agents are out there making you money on every single transaction they do

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Yes, that starts moving you more towards business owner

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And then I you know, I know folks who as brokers went off and actually sold the brokerage, right?

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So they actually cashed out of the business because they had an income producing asset, right?

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So that's one of those questions is you know, uh, if you look forward for your business, whatever model you've got

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There's only three directions it can go right?

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You can pass the business on to your kids. Yes, which you got to ask like do you really have a multi-generational business?

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Right, right

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Probably not most of us don't and like, you know, do your kids want the business is it? You know, is it going to stand that test of time?

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The answer is probably not it does happen, but it's really really rare, right? The second direction your business can go and uh

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This is where most go

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Is that you hang up you hang up the towel you run the business to the ground you shut it down. Yeah

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right and like

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We don't want to admit it

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But that's where most businesses are going to go and you have to ask is that where you want it to go?

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Probably not i've had businesses that have gone that way right we see them all the time, right?

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So then you look at the third option

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Well, the only thing left is you sell the business

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So give them the choice of passing on to your kids who don't want it, right somewhere down the line, right?

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Running it into the ground or selling it. What seems the most attractive? Yeah, well

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Building a business you can sell. Yes, if the business is you how do you sell that? Exactly

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So we need a business comprised of systems

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And people yeah, and that does not block on you when you've got that now you have an income producing asset

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Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to vision pros live

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I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward

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It's going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well

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We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention

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Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a vision pro yourself