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New Year, New Tribe with Aaron Young
We are always honored to have one of our regular guests on here who is one of my closest friends, a guy that I respect, adore and is part of our extended family. I always enjoy visiting with him. I’m honored he will be here in Austin. I’ll get a chance to hang a couple of days with him. It’s a small group setting. Without further ado, we are honored to have Aaron Young from Laughlin Associates join us.
Thank you. I feel the same way. Your influence both from friendship and a business perspective have enhanced my life, have been dramatic over these last years. We had the candlelight processional at Epcot. We had Whoopi Goldberg as the narrator. Was it your mastermind or was it a bigger event?
It was our mastermind group. We had 83 or 84 mastermind members. There are 120 people total.
We all lined up. When the time came, we walked in and we watched this phenomenal presentation there at Epcot with the trumpeters, the orchestra and the choir. Whoopi Goldberg kept doing all this very positive Christmasy stuff. I always think of Whoopi Goldberg as being very left-leaning politically. I liked her as a comedian but since she’s become a mouthpiece for the left, I wasn’t sure where it would go. I listened to her present. There was the written part, but then there were her own personal comments at the beginning and the end. I want to say it reminded me, Scott, that even though we get divided a lot of times, there are so many things that we, as Americans or as humans, are united on. Everything she said made me love her again.
I thought we get so polarized by politics that we forget the basic good humanity of almost everybody. Almost everybody is trying to do the right thing, trying to be good and trying to look out for their loved ones and themselves. It’s important that we don’t get stuck in a rut and start dividing up. We keep finding the things that make us similar. It’s critical that we keep opening ourselves up to new experiences, to new voices, to new opinions. Whether or not we accept them is our own choice, but we shouldn’t get closed off because when we start rejecting other people’s opinions or somebody that looks different or speaks differently or whatever, it limits our world. It shrinks our world. That’s one of the things that I’ve loved about working with you and meeting your people. You are doing things wildly different than what I’ve been doing in my business. It opens my mind up to a lot of new ideas, new horizons I didn’t even know existed a few years ago.
We like to surround ourselves with like-minded people. We all like that same and similar interests and similar outlooks in life and things like that. That’s always been very obvious on Facebook or in politics. You see a lot of leftist versus the rightist, the conservatives. There are not so many people in the middle. A lot of times people like to surround themselves in their same niche or their same click or their same group. It feeds on each other. I also think it limits a lot of people from expanding their horizons or learning what other people are doing. That’s one of the things that I love so much about our relationship is when we’re alone, we’re constantly picking each other’s brain, what are you doing with that or how did you get this to work or what troubles you have or any hurdles that you need to help overcome or dealing with any clients, things like that. That is a beautiful thing. That is a true mastermind of two people, but we also like to get involved with Steph and Michelle as well.
I want to talk about mastermind but let me go back and say one thing about like-minded. There’s a difference between like-minded, which could be bigoted. It could be incredibly left or right wing. It could be that. It could also be we’re like-minded because we’re curious. We want to learn. We like to travel. We like to learn about other cultures. Like-minded should be we’re not satisfied with staying where we are. The reason we join mastermind sometimes is not to have a club like we’re going to hunker down over here and we’re going to talk about toy trains because we all love toy trains. Sometimes you mastermind because you’ve got such diverse backgrounds. The idea of a mastermind is a new brain that’s created out of the disparate experience of everybody in the room.
I grew up in a Mormon church. The people, as a group, are very insular. They hang together. It’s not that they don’t have other friends or whatever but they tend to hang together, do activities together, do service projects together, worship together, mourn together and celebrate together. There can be and there’s a fairly prevalent attitude of insecurity or distrust of people who believe it a different way or even maybe pity towards people who don’t believe the same way. It’s like, “You’re such a great person. Isn’t it a shame that you don’t understand what I understand?” I spent most of my life being very involved in this group that was insular while my business life and my personal life were very expansive. It eventually led to the separation of us from the church because we couldn’t force these two belief systems together anymore. The problem that I discovered about being insular, which is that like-minded and we’re only going to hang out with people who believe like us, is that it stunts your growth. It makes you a small person.
Don’t misunderstand. I don’t mean to say that by being religious or being involved in church makes you small. I’m saying that when you decide that your way is the only way or my group’s way is the only way, especially in your group, there are fifteen million Mormons on the books out of 7.5 billion people on the planet, somehow there’s a whole bunch of other people with different opinions that might be valid. We have to get out. I heard a guy who is a big leader in the black community say, “Do you want to get rid of bigotry? Be good friends with somebody who doesn’t look like you.” I’m a huge believer in mixing it up with other people. You run a very successful mastermind. Over the last year, I’ve developed my first mastermind group. It boggles my mind. I bet you have endless stories. We have 47 companies and about 80 people because there are a lot of spouses or parent-child or whatever.
As a matter of fact, we’re looking to fill the last three founder spots before the end of the year. That’s not a commercial. It’s me saying what I’m doing. The stories that I’ve heard, people who’ve joined the mastermind and because of being part of that crazy disparate group, these people are wildly different from one another. The deals that have been done, the money that’s been made, the solutions that have been found by being part of it has been mind-boggling to me. I sit back on the sidelines. A lot of these people are going, “Aaron, thank you.” It’s like I didn’t do it. I created the environment to do it. What’s your experience with that? I stayed away from masterminds for a long time because there are so many people doing it. I don’t want to be an also-ran. If I’m going to do it, I want it to be something special that makes a difference for the members. I know you’ve been wildly successful. What is it that’s made your mastermind so good?
I would say two things. One is that it’s not about me. A lot of people will use mastermind as a way to sell more products.
New Year: When you only hang out with people who believe the same things you do, then it stunts your growth; it makes you a small person.
It’s like another seminar for them.
That’s not how my mastermind runs. Our coaching is a part of it. The biggest thing is getting other people to come in and share and me being open to learning from my mastermind members as much as they want to learn from me. That’s one of the biggest things that makes our mastermind successful is people come in and sharing sources, sharing resources. We’ve created a network of people across the country. A lot of it ties in with our WCN Crew Facebook page, as well as a very active 900-plus members strong Facebook group where people understand the community of giving. When they come to the mastermind, it goes above and beyond as people are sharing resources, sharing vendors, breaking bread with each other.
We try to make it as much fun as possible or you’ll get it all out of the office or out of the hotel. You take a sunset cruise or go to a ballgame or go to the candlelight ceremony we talked about to kick things off. Get people out there and get them talking about things besides notes. We found out at One Mastermind that about a third of the members were very active musically, drummers, guitarists. We could have our own band. We also found out at One Mastermind, a good chunk of our members were homeschooling their kids. Some had done it and some were in the process of doing it. That was a good blend of things. It’s always nice to have people that are buying in specific states. They’re finding out and figuring out their markets or they are sharing resources of realtors, attorneys and things like that.
There are other real estate masterminds in the industry. The big thing is that it’s not about me. The other people are talking about them, how can they pitch in more stuff? It’s not the case. If I bring in Laughlin Associates or Brent Buscay, it’s not necessarily a pitch. It’s to offer them a service that I know is valuable to them that will help them in their entrepreneurial future. We had our mastermind at Quest Expo. We changed the dates to match up to another event that will be very valuable for all. 60 or 70 people showed up including our vendors. The two most things of every part of the mastermind is it’s got to be open up to outside opinions. I’ve been a part of a real estate mastermind group that I was paying $20,000-plus a year and we didn’t get anything out of it. We would go and try to network with people. Everybody was so worried about their business. They weren’t necessarily sharing what was going on with other things or open to it because I had a different niche of real estate investing than they did.
There’s a big difference. Your thing is specific to real estate, the one you’re describing. The one you’ve put on is specific to notes, note investing. You said you’re part of another real estate thing. I know you’ve gone and participated in other podcasting things. You’re even starting a new podcasting program, right?
That’s correct.
That’s a specific function or technology. In the case of a podcast, it’s a new way of marketing. The Inner Circle, my mastermind, is completely unrelated businesses who wanted access to my lawyer, my accountant, my real estate investment expert. They wanted access to how to raise money. These are all my people that I use. Tracy Hazzard, the Hazzards produce both of our podcasts. She’s going to come and be a mentor at the next Inner Circle because so many people are interested in podcasting regardless of what industry they’re in. It’s a little different thing. One of the things I’ve noticed with being involved in these small groups, these more intimate groups, is trying to get the mix right so that you don’t have somebody who’s very new to the business. In our case, try to advise somebody who’s very seasoned. Everybody who’s reading is going, “That information is completely wrong. Why are you sucking the air out of the room with that bad information?” You also want to have people that can go up, can be improved by participating in the mastermind. Some people I know will sell something to sell it. I can get their money, so I’ll get them into the group. I don’t want that in my group.
I have the same belief. I don’t want that. I’m very particular about who I’m letting on. I’m willing to allow people to come in for a sneak peek because a sneak peek allows to see and match if mine is a fit, but it also is a way that we judge them too.
Do we want them in the group?
The last time we went to Cape Coral, we had a couple of guys come in for a sneak peek and I uninvited them. I literally unfollowed them. I said, “I don’t think you’re fit because of the fact you’re not showing up. You’re showing up late. You’re not networking. You’re trying to take but not give as well.” That’s the true thing about a mastermind. You’ve got to give and you’ve got to take. You’ve got to refer things out and also be opening to things. If you’re not like that, I don’t want your money. I don’t need your money for that aspect of things. You have to be selective. That was one thing about the real estate mastermind I was a part of. They were requiring people to have done at least 100-plus deals a year. Now, they start letting people who are doing five a year. That’s not right.
All of a sudden, it’s the wrong group. I’ve watched that in a program that I participated in for a couple years as a presenter where it started out with a very high caliber of individual. Because the facilitator, the leader, needed the money they’d had some downsides on other places, they were letting anybody in. You had all these people that were desperate to get something and this is my last-ditch hope. That’s the wrong thing. The idea of a mastermind is to bring people together who can help find solutions to problems. One of the key elements of a mastermind is having something outside of the group that you’re working on. It could be a charitable thing. It could be going to give service to something. I think about the old days and I may get this a little bit wrong, but I’m generally right. Rockefeller, Carnegie, Edison, and Ford were all part of a mastermind in the early part of the twentieth century. They would meet, these four titans, in a closed-door setting and they would primarily focus on something else. Maybe it was US foreign trade relations. Maybe it was because they would all be significantly impacted by improving that without saying, “How do I do better on selling the phonograph or think about adding a different leather trim to my Model T?” It’s like, “What else? What’s the bigger thing?”
New Year: One true thing about a mastermind is you’ve got to give and you’ve got to take.
When we get together with something else that we work together, we start to bring out instead of that competitiveness or that taking and all of a sudden, we’re all giving to solve some problem that’s outside of our business. That’s part of why we’ve gotten so involved with the Unstoppable Foundation and building these schools in the Maasai Mara in East Africa, in Kenya because everybody can get behind slowing down sex trafficking and educating young women, and providing greater financial growth in this section of the world. All of these things come out of solving a problem of clean water, healthcare and education for women because women and girls hold those communities together not the men. It’s a very matriarchal society. When all these business people in this very privileged top 1%, 2% or 3% of the income earners in the whole world come together in a room and we say, “How can we help get more resources? We’ve now educated 36,000 young women. How do we get that to 100,000?” Not only money but ideas come together. Everybody starts to trust everybody else because we’re all doing something valuable, noble, and truly altruistic. We don’t need to educate these kids in Kenya but by doing it, it makes us all better stewards of our money and makes us feel like all the work we do in our business goes to something greater than our new car or our new iPad or some things like that.
It’s what mastermind is all about, trying to come together and help people out with things. We’ve always been a big advocate of Toys for Tots. We were doing a lot with the Fresh Start Program in San Diego with donating money, matching dollars raised at our events. The doctors in San Diego would do a facial reconstruction for kids.
Laughlin has done a lot with Toys for Tots. That became a fun thing for my team. Not all of whom make a tremendous amount of money. You’ve got receptionists and mailroom and that kind of stuff. Still, the idea was first can we fill the box that they provide you? Can we fill a few boxes? Can we fill a pickup truck? Can we fill a U-Haul truck? The company’s going to go out and buy 30 bicycles. The whole team gets behind it. When you get your employees or your friends or your mastermind all focused on doing something that’s outside of their own comfort, elevating themselves when you’re doing something for somebody else, it changes the dynamic of the relationship you have with those people. It’s super valuable. You don’t know how to hold onto your employees over the long haul as I do? I’ll tell you what you do. Do things bigger than pay them to do their job. Get involved and roll up your sleeves together on doing things. You become more than just transactional in your relationship. There’s an emotion that permeates it. Even when they leave or things change, the relationships remain because you’ve had these shared experiences. You can do that on steroids in something like a mastermind group.
It’s a variety of things. I’ve got some friends that are doing stuff for homeless in San Diego. We both know Dan Fleischman is doing some big stuff.
Dan Fleischman does tremendous work with those backpacks.
Aaron and I were talking beforehand how we wanted to take this episode and talk about it, a lot of people out there, we don’t want to talk about goals for the New Year. If you want to take your business to different levels, if you want to go up your game, go find a different tribe to hang out with. Our buddy, Greg Reid, likes to say, “You’re the average of the five people that you hang around the most with.” If you need to adjust who you hang out with, now is the time to start looking at where you can find those people. Maybe it is not a business. Maybe it is a BNI group, a business networking group, or maybe it’s a postmaster’s group or something like that. Maybe it’s going to join a mastermind like mine or Aaron’s to surround yourself with other entrepreneurs that have gone through the same thing that you’re going through. You don’t want to go out and have a hack a path through the forest. You can follow a path where others have gone before you.
We started our mastermind at $4,700 for the year. Everybody said, “Are you crazy? It’s too inexpensive.” Two live events plus a lot of other acts, a lot of other value, $4,700. My goal was to see who we can attract and what we could create. As you prove the concept and you see the value that’s created, then the reason you raise the price isn’t to get greedy. It’s to have a filter for who gets to be in the group. Depending on what the playing field is of the people in the group, you need to have those filters in place. There’s a group I’ve been invited to a number of times. When I very first looked at it years ago, I didn’t see the value of spending the $25,000 to get into the group. I didn’t know the guy that was facilitating it. I didn’t see how his business background and mine meshed. I didn’t know anybody else that was doing it. Now that same group is hard to get into and has the who’s who of people in there because it’s been self-selecting. They’ve bumped people out. To get into the group, there’s a financial filter but there’s also the filter of do you qualify to hang out with this group of people.
I’ve often said that it’s not that the rooms that the Nevis Four Seasons Hotel are so much better than the Marriott at Wailea in Hawaii. It’s not that the room is so much different that makes the price ten times different. It’s that the Four Seasons is trying to attract a different group of people. If the movie star or the business titan comes there, they don’t have people bugging them because the other people that are staying there are of the same ilk. They’re not excited to meet and greet Tom Cruise. There’s a reason why Ellison from Oracle bought the entire island of Lanai, the giant massive volcanic island. It’s not like Eddie Murphy’s little island of Bahamas. Those people want to get away from everybody else. The filter is a couple of hundred million dollars. We’ll buy a continent and leave ourselves alone. The reason people charge is the filter. That’s the point.
There are people that are like, “Let’s do a free mastermind. Let’s get together.” If you open up to everybody, it waters down the message on different things. It’s not saying you’re not going to get some nuggets out of it and not be able to find some things. If there’s no investment on their part, there’s no investment for them to show up on a regular basis. There’s no incentive or loss that they’re like, “I’m going to stay home and watch NYPD Blue,” versus go into a meeting or, “I don’t want to fly across to San Diego. I’ll stay home.”
I like what you said about NYPD Blue. I have a son, a wonderful twenty-year-old who’s living in Japan right now going to a university there. He’s very introverted. Where my other three kids are very extroverted, Chase is very introverted. Most of his friends are online. He has a very vibrant online life. He has a very successful online business but when it comes to interacting face-to-face, it’s challenging for him. We are video chatting and he said, “Dad, it’s hard for me to talk myself out of going out of my apartment and doing something because it makes me very nervous.” A lot of people feel that way when they go into a new circumstance. It’s very intimidating when you don’t know the rules of engagement. I told him the story of a woman who had a goal. It’s a true story. She had a goal to go to the gym, lose weight and get in shape. She had kept a membership of the gym for years and had never walked in the door. I get that because I look at all the equipment and stuff and I’m like, “I don’t know how to use it. I’m chubby.” I see all my flaws. We all do. I get that like, “I’m going to be out of breath. I’m going to smell like a pig. I’m going to look stupid. I don’t have the right clothes.”
He’s a little introverted. It’s all it is, especially adding a foreign country to the mix.
New Year: If you’re going to have a different experience, you have to become a slightly different person.
Here’s deal with this lady. The question her coach, and her coach is somebody that I know quite well because they’re the same coach as my son, Chase, said, “What could you do?” “I could drive to the parking lot of the gym.” “Do that a few times.” The person drove to the parking lot, turned around and left, drove to the parking lot, stayed there. Another coach says, “Good, you’ve gone there. What else could you do?” “I don’t know. I’m so scared to walk up and go in.” “Could you walk up and touch the handle of the front door?” “Yes, I could do that.” That went on for several weeks. The person drives to the parking once or twice a week, get out of the car, walk to the front door, touch it, get back in the car and leave. Finally, the person had the courage to open the door and step in. Once they were in there, they said, “I’m a member. I’ve never been here. How do I do this?” They realize that people were there put their arms around them and celebrate the fact that they walked in and showed them how to use the equipment.
I said to my son, “If you want a different experience in Japan than you’re having if you’re going to have a different experience, you have to become a slightly different person. You have to gain some new skills. What could you do?” He said, “I could walk a different route to the train station. I could walk in a different convenience store that I normally go in.” All leading up to, “Could you stay on campus longer and go to the restaurant, Student Union? Could you invite some friends that you meet in your class to go get a Coke?” I said, “What could you do?” “I could walk a different way to the train station.” That’s the start. That’s the thing. If we’re going to make 2019 different than 2018, we have to do something different than what we’re used to doing. Maybe that’s to join a book club. Maybe that’s to take rock climbing lessons and maybe mixing it up with a different group of people to sharpen your saw, to enhance your skills. You and I both give a lot of talks. It’s important to keep meeting new people who will invite you to speak in front of their group. If you only speak to the same people over and over again, pretty soon you’ve saturated that market. You’re done. It’s done. It’s not a big harvest.
If you’re going to harvest, you have to go new places and meet new people who don’t know about the things that you do so that they can go, “I’m discovering you fresh for the first time right now even though for almost 48 years everybody knows what Laughlin Associates does.” I bet most people reading this right now go, “Who’s Laughlin Associates?” After hundreds of thousands of clients over five decades, doesn’t everybody know we exist? No, they don’t. Even if they’ve heard of us for one thing, they don’t know about the whole menu of other things. You’ve got to get in front of new people. One of the best ways to get in front of new people and grow your business is to invest in a mentor or coach or a mastermind. I’d say for personal development, a coach is better and for business development, a mastermind is fantastic.
I have coaches until this day that I spend time with. I talk with them on a pretty regular basis, at least once a month. We talk about things and where business is going, what I want to focus on. I do the same thing with other people. I have people that reach out to me as being their coach in the note space. They are dealing with issues or struggles. Sometimes it’s an event session where they need somebody to vent to. I’m like, “That’s fine. Bend uphill to your couch, don’t bend downhill to your spouse or employees. You never want to do that.”
The people who can’t guide you. You’re bitching them. You said that’s more PC. Complaining down and all that makes them either feel nervous or make them insecure or make them frustrated with you or they’ll be on your team and fan the flames of your complaint. A coach will ask you how you can change things. People sometimes worry about the cost of a coach. I hope nobody misinterprets this as being a commercial. This is not. You cannot coach with me. I don’t provide coaching personally. It doesn’t matter, I don’t do it. I don’t want to be a coach. However, I’d say I’ve spent $150,000 on coaching for specific things that I needed guidance with and I hired somebody who knew what to do to speed up my results. A lot of people go, “$5,000 for three months or something is a lot of money. I can’t afford it.” Here’s my answer to you. If you figure out that you can’t afford it, because you’ll find the money for something you want to do, if you say, “That’s too much or I can’t afford it or that’s more than I would pay a psychologist or a doctor,” you’re going to stay in the same rut you’re in.
If I wasn’t on your show and I was on my show, I would say it more harshly. I would say, “The reason you’re staying poor or if not poor, stuck, your company is at $650,000 revenue and you desperately want to hit $1 million, but you can’t grow is because you don’t know anymore. You’ve exhausted what you know. You need someone to help you see a different way of doing it than you already know.” That’s why you go to a coach. If you had a golf coach or a baseball batting coach or a quarterback, it’s not because they are more of a world-class athlete. It’s because they can see what you can’t see. I love the expression, “You can’t read the label from inside the bottle.” That’s how it is. The reason we have a coach, a mastermind, a confidant or a psychologist you go to is because they can see things you can’t see. The reason Scott mentioned that Aaron and Scott get together privately and we’re going to do it in Austin is because there is stuff we know how to do that the other one doesn’t know how to do. If we share that or go, “I’ve noticed in your writing you’re saying this expression all the time. What does that mean?” I know it’s jargon you understand but I don’t understand it as the reader.
Maybe that will increase your conversion rate because now people know what you’re talking about. You’re writing the way you know how to write and your coach or your mastermind group will go, “What if you try it in a different way?” “I got a better result.” If you can’t afford to put yourself in positions to fly across the country to Cape Coral or to San Diego or to Austin, expect your results to stay the same. If you’re satisfied with your results, hooray, but if you’re frustrated with your results, it’s probably because you’ve exhausted your awareness of what to do. You now need an outside perspective. You mentioned Greg Reid and he talked about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. He didn’t try to go do it on his own. He hired somebody who has been up that mountain 300 times. He put his foot in the footsteps of the person leading him and they got to the top. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have climbed, but he also could have died on the way to the top.
A lot of us are killing ourselves trying to get different results out of the same actions. That’s never going to be the way to do it. It is a total definition of insanity. I’m a big believer and they’re all individual. There’s not any crossover now of being able to sit down and look at for a day and a half, what’s your schedule look like for next year. I have a pretty good at knowing what everybody’s business is. Not everybody knows what everybody else does. These are the companies that we end up promoting throughout the year. I wanted to bring everybody in or some of the largest referrals for these businesses, Laughlin, Quest, and others and have you come in and spend some time thinking, “How can we do a better job in 2019 for you? What are your events?”
Let’s be proactive about helping you market those events or getting the word out. Not only to our database but also out to other marketing faction and also looking at each other’s businesses, “I think there’s an opportunity here between A and B or there’s an opportunity between B and C. If you’re speaking a lot at different clubs, what’s another event that you’re speaking that might be a good fit for Aaron that I spoke or plays that Aaron spoke that might be a good fit for George or vice versa to help us get more out of our year?” and also to pick your brains.
The other thing that’s cool about this, and this goes back to what we’re talking about with masterminds is, while this is not a seminar, a lot of people will say, “Why am I doing this? What’s the transaction?” If we only look at business relationships as transactional, I believe we missed the bigger point. What happens is if I meet Nathan Long, we meet, we chat. We have a moment. We hand it off to subordinates to work on stuff. We get busy and we hand off. There’s something about the leader, the owner, the buck stops here, being in a room, having dinner with or lunch with, seeing how the other person is dressed or hearing about what they’re doing for the holidays or whatever it is, knowing what their hobbies are, it changes the nature of the relationship. It gives everybody a greater desire to be mindful of my friend, my warm acquaintance or my friend. I don’t throw the word friend around. That’s why it’s very touching me at the beginning when you said I was one of your closest friends. I feel the same way, but I never want to presume these things because that’s a very personal intimate relationship.
We have a lot of warm business relationships that with a little nurture, with a little face time, with a little breaking bread time, as you said, it changes the relationship and it exponentially grows the opportunities. This is why you’ve got to do something more than doing a deal. You’ve got to be around people. Everybody says, “How do you have the life you have? How do you make the money you make?” Don’t you get that all the time? I get it all the time. The thing is Scott Carson and Aaron Young are both constantly out meeting people, nurturing relationships and then trying to teach the people that come to us for nurture to teach what we’ve been learning. We have to make an investment to get that information to pass it on. Those people that we teach end up teaching others and the growth of the entire group accelerates, explodes. If you stay home watching NYPD Blue, you’re not going to grow.
New Year: A lot of us are killing ourselves trying to get different results out of the same actions. That’s never going to be the way to do it. It is a total definition of insanity.
You’re going to stunt your growth for sure. One of the big things that we look at doing as well too once a year is trying to take a big trip whether it’s a cruise for a week or a trip to Europe or stuff like that. I know you and Michelle love to travel as well. We look at our schedules and I’m like, “It’s been five weeks straight, we’ve basically been doing something. It’s all right. It’s coming when we had this last thing of the year.” I’m more excited about this event honestly. I love my masterminds but this is up there because I’m excited about it. I’m excited to spend it with twelve people that I admire and respect that we get a chance to not have students around, not have to be on. We all can lay back and turn the on switch off a little bit to be our normal selves, to joke a little bit because it’s a rarity these days for things when you get a very busy schedule.
You and I, we’re in teaching mode a lot, digitally and face-to-face which is great, and I love every second of it. That’s why being in a mastermind, it’s one thing to facilitate. It’s another thing to be a part of it where you can go into a student mode instead of teacher mode or what’s going to happen here in Austin. I don’t mean to be exclusive because people who are reading are not going to be there. The point is everyone can say what is it that Scott Carson has organized and the rest of us get to participate in because it was your idea, Scott, that you guys can do out there for your main affiliates, your vendors, the people that you would like to be doing business with, that you have a relationship with, but you’re not having that real valuable ongoing pipeline of business that goes back and forth.
If you’re here, I hope the takeaway from this is invest time, energy and money into being around people that can help elevate you as a human being, as a leader, and as a financial success. I think that has to go in that order. As a human, how are you going to be a better person that will make you a better leader and as a better leader, you’ll have greater financial success at which point you become a servant? When you become successful, it’s incumbent on anybody who has a surplus to begin serving other people, giving away that surplus, investing it in the betterment of our community, of our world, of our health. You’ve got to give it away. Ironically, the better you are giving away, the more flows back to you as a person, as a leader. It’s a crazy circle. It’s true that the people who stay hunkered down and sit home on the couch at night and then wonder why the world passed them by, it’s because you didn’t get out of playing the game. You didn’t get in the game.
You’ve got to get in the game. It’s such a big key out there. You’re in the game right now or whatever you’re doing. If you’re not scoring as much, you’re not seeing much activity, you’re not closing enough business, the best thing I can recommend, I know Aaron said this before, get in the game, go surround yourself with new people, new tribe. Look at the people you spent your time with, look at the groups that you spent your time with this past year, were they fruitful? Was it beneficial to you? Did you receive as much as you gave? If all you did was take and you didn’t give, that’s the wrong type of relationship you have to be in. You want to give and then also be able to receive. I guarantee if you give, you get ten-fold back of what you end up giving. Aaron, I want to thank you for being on here, being a regular contributor and being a sponsor of the show as well for us. We are so honored that Laughlin Associates is a big staple of what we love to promote. You do a tremendous job for all of our students. I know that many of them are very happy that they have you working with them.
You had me on as a guest for years. When you said, “I’m blowing up my podcast, would you like to sponsor?” This is the thing you want to throw fuel on because what you’re doing matters. I didn’t have to pay to get on this thing. You’ve had me as a guest many times, every event. I’m telling you I’m so proud to be a sponsor of the show. I’m glad that it’s having such success. I hope that everybody out there goes back, checks out the archives and learn all they can from both Scott’s expertise and the vast number of people you’ve brought on. Thanks for letting us play in your sandbox.
Do yourself a favor, look at what your year has done, look at your calendar, look at where you’ve been or where you haven’t been this year and look at what are the opportunities lie ahead in 2019 for you. Trust me, if you expand your tribe, expand your audience, expand the people you hang out with, you may expand your bottom line, expand your wealth, definitely expand your hearts. Go out and have a great day. We’ll see you all at the top.
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About Aaron Young
Aaron Young, is a lifelong entrepreneur, trusted advisor to CEOs and business owners and creator of The Unshackled Owner a program for entrepreneurs looking to build a business and not just a glorified job.
Aaron is Chairman/CEO of Laughlin Associates, a 44-year-old company that has helped over 100,000 entrepreneurs start, grow and profit from their business. This has given Aaron an ideal vantage point to observe common mistakes and successes in businesses from Main Street to America’s largest yacht broker from medical professionals to manufacturers to investors. For over 34 years, his experience founding, acquiring and directing multi-million dollar businesses as well as working as an officer for a publicly traded, multi-national, sets him apart from the crowd as a voice of real-world knowledge and authority.