How I Sold Out My First Mastermind Group

Dustin: [00:00:00] Hey, Kevin. Just a, uh, note before I really get into recording this. And that is, I think we can keep the title of this very simple because this is something I asked about all the time. And I think we can literally title it how I sold out my first mastermind group. Uh, so that's, that's kind of context.
Dustin: That's really what I want to dive into at the story. Um, and I'll get into why that is as part of the recording. So with that, I'll take a quick pause here and I will kick it off.
Dustin: Welcome back. Uh, today I'm really excited. I get to unpack a story, uh, and a very tactical progression of how I sold out my first mastermind group. And this is really pertinent because I honestly think I get asked at least weekly about this and our most current podcast profits accelerator group has really asked me to dive deep into this.
Dustin: And I've had some time within the group to address it, but I have [00:01:00] never really went. From beginning to end, or in this case, how can we go from end to beginning and unpack how this unfolded? Because now I'm sort of known for running these higher ticket mastermind programs, the accelerator itself. But of course, that wasn't always the case.
Dustin: And I actually ran my very first mastermind group in September. And so to start with sort of the results of what we did there, uh, we sold about 51, 500 worth of seats to this mastermind. And again, I had never done a mastermind group. Uh, I'd never done any high ticket group coaching. And so how in the world did that happen?
Dustin: Because I've now repeated it 10 times. Uh, and every group has been sold out and I've learned a ton of course, and gotten much more efficient. And now I teach. Uh, one of the core things we do in the accelerator, in addition to lead generation with podcast guesting is actually helping people improve their offers.
Dustin: And many times that is taking people from a one on one coaching situation or consulting [00:02:00] situation, helping them launch a higher ticket group coaching or mastermind program. So now I'm sort of an expert at it. And I think people are. Come to me for that advice specifically, but you know, two years ago, that certainly was not the case.
Dustin: And it's fun because I can actually tell you very specifically about what each person paid to be in this group. I know exactly who these people are. Many of them are still active in our alumni network. And one of the reasons I can do that, if you're seeing the video, it's actually have a piece of paper and it has all of their names on it.
Dustin: Uh, and I actually do this for every single group. Uh, so what's. The first thing I noticed in looking at this paper, this is September 2022 is the title was limitless leads accelerators actually had a different name for the very first time I did this, and it was only in running the group for the first time that we really started to focus on podcast guesting as the vehicle.
Dustin: So that was a really cool observation. The other thing that's neat on this piece of paper is to see the bottom. I still include this. [00:03:00] It's my screen saver. It's on my engraving on my phone. I can do all things through Christ who
strengthens me. And that's my core belief that through my faith, as long as I'm serving first, I can do all kinds of really cool stuff if I, as long as I'm providing a positive impact to others.
Dustin: And that was really the theme. And so, you know, this paper looks nice and clean right now. These names, of course, were not on it when I started, they got on the sheet one name at a time. I'm not going to go through every single person. I don't know that that would be that, uh, Educational or insightful, but I definitely will talk about how we got to this point and in buckets, at least where each of these people came from and how they paid us basically to get the results that we got them.
Dustin: So to do that, where I would like to start is actually the year prior. So in 2021, I was doing one on one coaching as you probably heard in my past engineering to marketing, consulting to Firecreek snacks. I got into podcast guesting coming out of COVID to [00:04:00] support the Firecreek Snacks business. And in doing that repeatedly, I started to have people ask me, how do you do that?
Dustin: How do you get leads? Uh, how do you come up with offers? How do you, you know, do all sorts of things that I had 15 years of digital marketing experience doing. And so I started taking on one on one clients, very organically and inbound throughout the year 2021. It was very much a side hustle. You know, I charge people like 750 bucks and we would work a month at a time.
Dustin: Uh, and it was very, very helpful because it gave me a coaching voice. It helped me develop a framework. Uh, and I started to build relationships that way. That's basically what I did in 2021. So that might sound familiar to you. Maybe you're doing one on one coaching. Maybe you get referrals, you get some inbound, uh, interest, you know, people in your local community and you're getting some coaching or consulting interest.
Dustin: So one inflection point was January of 2022. So nine months prior to launching this mastermind group, I thought, man, like I'm [00:05:00] doing one on one coaching. It's successful. Uh, and I think that this could be much more efficient, right? And it may be even better for the clients. I found myself just repeating the same things over and over.
Dustin: So I decided to do is run my first small group coaching program. And I did that. And again, January 2022, I believe we had about six, six people in there. It was a six week course or group coaching program. So what would happen is basically, I started to create slides week by week. And, uh, that week I would create the slides.
Dustin: I would teach it live to these six people. We would record it all on zoom. And then. I would package that up, you know, and deliver that and say, Hey, guys, you know, here's the recording. And so I was able to do that because I had a framework worked out. And now we have five P's. You may have heard me talk about.
Dustin: There's a whole episode about that, uh, you know, purpose, plan, pitch, perform profit. So the profit part didn't exist yet because I hadn't really got [00:06:00] very deep into monetization. But the first four piece did exist. And so the six weeks were basically an introduction week. Four weeks of purpose, plan, pitch, and perform.
Dustin: So it was really podcast guesting, but really this kind of whole partnership marketing idea. And then we had a week to close things out, answer final questions. I believe I charged about a thousand dollars for that group coaching program and six seats, which exactly, you know, what I was going for. Again, I'm not going to go into how I sold those seats.
Dustin: Uh, there's basically a previous coaching clients, some organic interests, some referrals. It was only six seats, but I did that and I thought, wow, this is actually fun. And I felt like the clients were getting better results because there was the energy of being in a small group. Now I make the distinction that was group coaching.
Dustin: And so for me, the way the wording I use group coaching means Dustin teaches, the client listens and they answer, you know, I asked, they asked me questions and I answered [00:07:00] them, I'm coaching them. Uh, in a group, hence the group coaching. However, that's not a mastermind. Okay, so I want to make that distinction.
Dustin: The mastermind came later as I'm going to get into. So how did I start with group coaching and end up nine months later launching a mastermind group where I charged significantly more people got significantly better results and it really became the core of the business that we now call seven bigger leap because this was all before I was calling it this.
Dustin: Well, in April. Of 2022, I actually got into my first mastermind group. So someone referred me to this group and they said, Hey, it's a group about how to launch a mastermind group. And I thought, well, that's intriguing. I just did this group coaching. I really liked it. I intended to just basically every quarter do one of these small groups, you know, five, 10, 000 in revenue.
Dustin: Uh, yeah, it was working well. Well, I got into this group and I will withhold, uh, sharing too much about the inner workings of the group to be [00:08:00] completely transparent. It was a pretty poor experience. Uh, the, the, I felt a bit fleeced. Uh, it was, it was, there's a lot of bad things about it. However, there's a lot of good things about it.
Dustin: And a lot of it had to do with the fact that I invested. The most I've ever invested in myself and in my business, I showed up and was very engaged because of the investment I had made, I did learn some really good things about structure. I'd say the two biggest things I got out of that was. Uh, I got to see what a mastermind was again.
Dustin: I've never been in one in my life, so I started to see it was peer to peer interaction that there was this energy for all these people that invested a certain amount, they were had a common purpose and it was just a deeper experience than I had imagined before I signed up for it. Right. So that was good.
Dustin: The other good thing is a couple of key relationships grew out of this. I actually met a guy named John Meese in this group. You've heard him interviewed here. Uh, I met another woman named Brooke who, uh, basically became my top referral source [00:09:00] for everything we've done since then. So I've definitely met some impressive people, saw a lot of different business models, gained a lot of insights.
Dustin: So there's a lot of good, and I'm going to focus on the good. Uh, the other thing I guess you could say I gained from it was in seeing what I didn't like and how I didn't like being treated and some of the things that happened in there, I knew that if I ever, you know, Was going to charge a premium for my services, how I was going to show up and how I wanted to treat people.
Dustin: So, you know, when you're, when you're faced with a negative experience, you could take that and basically say, I'm never going to be like that. And it can inform you to do better. And I would definitely say that was my take. So basically, April, May, June, I'm in this group and basically the promise of the group is you're going to launch a high ticket mastermind program by the end of the group.
Dustin: Okay. And that didn't happen at all. So we got to June. I'm like, I've got zero clients actually still didn't know exactly what I wanted my group to be about. Um, and so this enters sort of [00:10:00] the, one of the most stressful periods of my life and certainly of my professional career. So. Cool. In the summer of 2022, I have put this pressure on myself that had made this major investment, went into debt for the first time ever, uh, in my business and was still doing engineering contract work at this point to sort of pay the bills, especially coming out of COVID.
Dustin: And again, if you've ever heard the story of what all that did to my marketing business and our fire, create sex business, you know, I had a lot going on in other words. And so in summer. So specifically July 2022, my
family and I were actually scheduled to go on vacation and I spent that vacation extremely stressed out, uh, thinking, Oh my gosh, like I've got to fill this group.
Dustin: I've got, I've got to get a return on all this time, money and energy I've put in and I've got zero clients. Okay. And so I felt a lot of pressure and. In fact, it sort of manifested itself in my, my chin going numb. So I had [00:11:00] this
moment in 2022 is really the low point of my professional career where I just had this experience, invested all this money, went into debt.
Dustin: Uh, had a lot going on as far as trying to like, keep things afloat with my financial situation, go on vacation, which was planned way before I did all this, uh, and I'm trying to like be unplugged and be present with my family and I'm like, I start to notice I'm shaving one morning. Like my chin is like numb.
Dustin: Like this is really weird. So we're on vacation and start Googling, you know, the Google doctors, uh, numb chin, and then do highly recommend you do not do that because it's some pretty nasty things come up, including brain
tumors. Thank God. None of that was, was my case. I came back, actually went to the doctor, got blood work.
Dustin: I was pretty good. Pretty stressed and concerned about it. It turned out it was more likely just a stress induced pinched nerve clenching my jaw, but it was definitely a sign that I was putting way too much pressure on myself. And so coming out towards the end of July, I was [00:12:00] like, well, I don't have a
group.
Dustin: I think I have a really good idea. And I knew that there was the clay here to mold into something special because I had developed this niche skill and knowledge and reputation around podcast guesting. And for 15 years, I'd done a ton of different marketing, a ton of different digital marketing and all different industries.
Dustin: I thought if I married these, this could be a really powerful experience. Uh, so I thought, well, it's not happening right now. It's July. It's also a really hard time to sell. Everyone's busy. Everyone else is on vacation. So I said, well, I'm going to do it in September. So I was kind of took the pressure off.
Dustin: So I'm going to give myself two months. I'm just going to see who I can get to sign up for this. However many people are there, we'll do it. Okay. And so it kind of set a good, better, best goal. And to me, life. The dream outcome, if I could sell 10 people into this mastermind group and give them a world class experience, like that would be a huge win.
Dustin: So this gets into how did I sell the first 10 [00:13:00] seats to this accelerator program, which is kind of the core question people in my group now ask me, because a lot of them are for the first time trying to fill a group and filling a group is just a different. Experience and different skill set in some ways, different mindset than selling one on one coaching.
Dustin: You know, if you sell one on one coaching, uh, the downside is it's not very scalable because you're selling your time for money effectively, right? The upside is you can take on a client this week, miss three weeks, take on another client, and you don't have this public pressure of like, I have a start date and I have to have a certain number of people in here.
Dustin: To legitimately call this a group. So adding a group adds many upsides. I'm a huge advocate of it, but it also makes more pressure from a, from a marketing and sales standpoint. So anyway, I had the September deadline, a
couple of key things happen. Uh, one was I had. Got it on the LinkedIn at this point. And I became, I'm not proud of this, but it worked.
Dustin: I was, I became the guy that was connected with someone [00:14:00] commenting, started having direct message conversations, and I was very quick, quick to. Invite people to conversations. Right. So I was very, what I would now call open funnel, right? I was very, very open to let's have a zoom call. So I was doing a lot of, let's have a zoom calls, connecting with people and learning a lot in the process because I knew I had this offer.
Dustin: I was not getting on and hard selling people by any means, but I was telling people about my idea, telling people about my experience. Uh, in some cases, these people knew me in some sense, cause they heard me on a podcast. Right. And so I had some semi warm connection when I get on these calls. And this is crazy to think about in hindsight, but actually the very first two people I got on a call with said, yes.
Dustin: And in fact, they said yes at what ultimately was twice the price point that I ended up charging. So coming out of the high ticket mastermind kind of fiasco that I'd been in, I was. Implored to charge 15, 000. All right. So as I used [00:15:00] to charge 15, 000 based on the promise that you're making, you could totally get that.
Dustin: And I didn't have any self belief around it. And I said, okay, I mean, I paid more than that to be in this group. I guess some, somebody will pay it, right? Like I'm feel like I'm fairly intelligent and I paid it, uh, even though I didn't feel good about the decision afterward. So 15, 000 is the number. So I get on a call, the very first guy I get on a call with, his name's Tyler.
Dustin: Uh, just one of the coolest guys I've ever met. We've met. He actually heard me on a podcast talking about Firecreek snacks. He ran a business that was sort of associated in the, in the food space. And we had our very first call and we even like openly kind of joked, he's like, Oh yeah, you're must be a Hermosi, like Alex Hermosi fan.
Dustin: Cause like some of the stuff you're saying sounds like Alex Hermosi. Cause again, I'd never been on like a sales call in this way. I didn't really know what I was doing. I kind of said, yeah, I, you know, you're right. Uh, and. Regardless, by the end of the call, he's like, I want to do this. I think, you know, I really want to do what you did with fire Creek.
Dustin: I think fire, I think podcast guessing could be a great [00:16:00] channel. And so all of a sudden I had my first 15, 000 sale and we agreed on payment terms and wow, this is great. Uh, and so the second call I had the same day I got on the call with the woman and she was the CEO of a. I'll just leave her anonymous, but it was basically a tech sort of company.
Dustin: And she said, yes, I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. She's like, you know, one caveat, you know, I have an investor. I have to, I have to go and approve major expenditures, but this should be no problem. So this is like on a Wednesday. So by Friday, she's. Sending me a message saying, Hey, still no problem. But my, my investor would like to meet with you.
Dustin: Not a problem. Okay, let's do this. So it's kind of like sales call. Number two, I got to sell one other person from the same company. And so it's kind of funny. And in hindsight, it was not at the moment. We got on a call on a Monday and it turned out her investor was a chauvinistic. Pig and, uh, it was a really bad conversation, really awkward.
Dustin: He was [00:17:00] very dismissive and disrespectful of her. And it was like, wow, this is really ugly. Uh, so kind of ended the call without really talking about my program much. And I told her, I'm like, this, you know, I felt bad for you. This seems really toxic. And, uh, later that week she quit the job. So with that good for her bad for me, I lost my second sale.
Dustin: Uh, so now I've got one person and I think, I believe I had told Tyler, Hey, we're going to start. Early August, right? And I'm like, Hey, we're not, uh, this is taking longer than I expected. And it's going to be middle September. He's very cool about it. So we did some one on one coaching to sort of bridge that gap, but I still had the one seat sold for what was intended to be a group.
Dustin: So, okay, now what? So, you know, as I look back and I look at these specific names, I've put myself two years in the past, I can tell you where. The momentum kicked up. Uh, so the very first week of August, I've been doing contract work off and on in the engineering space to pay the bills coming out of COVID after I'd quit, you know, several years prior.[00:18:00]
Dustin: And so I, you know, contacted them and I said, look, you guys are amazing. This has been a great opportunity. I can't thank you enough, but I need to quit. Like I need to cut this stream of income off because it's a distraction and it's keeping me from being fully committed to doing what I want to do, which I feel now called to do is this, this mastermind program.
Dustin: And so I did that without having a full group and, but the full faith that like somehow this isn't going to work. I had about 45 days before this group was going to start. And I really feel like in hindsight that that's when the floodgates opened a bit. Uh, the, the second person officially that actually joined was a good friend and he joined.
Dustin: And so if you kind of do the math, I ended up with 10 people in this group as a 7, 500 price point, ultimately, and I had 51, 000 revenue. So that doesn't add up. And that's because not everyone paid the same or really not.
Everyone paid the same way. I should say, so I have one person. I'm like, Hey, you've been in my corner for most of my career.
Dustin: I think you get a lot of benefit and I also think you'd be a huge asset. And I need someone else with [00:19:00] experience in here to serve the group. And he said, I'm, I'm there. And so, um, That helped because I had two people. So I felt like even if I got one more person, like we have a group, at least there's four of us with me included in it will feel more like a mastermind experience than if I had one or two people.
Dustin: So that was kind of the next move I made. And I'm like, okay, when I got. Some more people. And then I actually went back to one of the people from that January group. And I said, Hey, I know you already paid me. Um, I've got a much deeper experience. You seem like you've got a ton of great results. Would you be open to being in this mastermind?
Dustin: And I will credit the difference. So basically whatever you paid before, actually I doubled the credit. So whatever you paid in the, in January, I'll take. We'll double that and I'll take that off the price. And he said, yes. I'm like, awesome. So now I got three people, three humans in a group that I'm going to lead.
Dustin: And it really, the momentum kicked up from there. And so I, at this point probably had a hundred to 200 people on my email list, uh, for this like coaching email list. Again, I had, More people with fire Creek and my marriage [00:20:00] businesses, but they were completely irrelevant to this, but I had started to build a very small email list as I started to do podcast guesting about marketing and not just for fire Creek.
Dustin: And so I did have a few people and so I reached, I started putting those feelers out what we would now call hand raisers and saying, Hey, I've got this group coming up. If you're interested, I'd like to have a conversation. So I just
had a lot of one on one conversations with individuals. And so between the people off that very small email list.
Dustin: The conversations I was still having on LinkedIn and that one past client, that one friend, I started to sell more and more seats. I don't remember the actual like sequence of how all these people came to be. Uh, but as I look at the list, one was a contractor that had served our company at fire Creek. So he was a marketer for fire Creek.
Dustin: And I said, Hey, I think I can help you grow your marketing agency. Would you like to come do this? He not only said yes, but he said yes. And can I have a discount if I pay it in like prepay? Yes. So I kind of skipped over this part, but you know, I went from 15, 000. I [00:21:00] had the first client say yes. He was already put on payment plans for 15, 000.
Dustin: And about the time I said, you know what? I got to switch the date. I got to switch. I'm going to turn off the engineering income. I'm like. I just do not feel comfortable selling something for 15, 000. I've never done it. I just don't, this is not right. So I settled on, I think 7, 500 is a much better price point for me, but I couldn't even use the words.
Dustin: Like I cannot say it's 7, 500. I seem so out of my league. So what I started to say is it's 2, 500 a month. And that's really how I sold this group. So the very first person had paid double that. So I went back to him and I said, good news. Uh, well, bad news. We're delayed. I can't start yet, but we're going to get this done.
Dustin: Good news. You're done. You don't have to pay any more. You've already, you started payments and you're like, you've already paid up. I've cut the price in half and you're good. So he was done paying. That was good. Um, again, I, I used 7, 500 or three times 2, 500 and I gave that, that credit to one of the [00:22:00] previous clients.
Dustin: I had my friend in there who was helping, um, I got this, this other contractor. He said, how about if I pay you 6, 750 one time, instead of paying the three payments of 70 of 2, 500 each. And I said, Beautiful because I actually have some like money because I just cut off most of my, my, uh, my extra income.
Dustin: And so he joined, uh, and then, yeah, as I look at this list, almost everyone else came from podcast, guesting slash LinkedIn. There's some blurry lines there because sometimes people would connect me on LinkedIn because
they heard me on a podcast and we would have conversations there, but it was basically a lot of that.
Dustin: I'd say 75 percent of the group was podcast, guesting leads and LinkedIn conversations. And. Pretty much. They're all kind of, you know, one in the same, uh, basically podcast guest and got them either on an email list or got them to follow me on LinkedIn. And then I'd have conversations from there, invite them into the group.
Dustin: Um, one exception, two exceptions. One was another person I'd actually met [00:23:00] in the mastermind. And he was launching his own group coaching program. I was very interested in it, and he was really interested in mine, so we ended up swapping. So, it certainly wasn't a free entry, but it was a straight barter. So we basically traded seats, which actually served us both really well.
Dustin: Uh, and then one other kind of unique thing is I found a software company that I really Admired and they no longer exist, but at the time they were doing really cool stuff with LinkedIn and I hadn't gotten to a conversation with someone who worked there and he was really into this. We both saw a very clear path.
Dustin: How what I was teaching would really help their company. So I'm actually talking to an employee of a company, not an entrepreneur, which was awesome. In hindsight, not a great fit. And I've learned that, you know, in doing this multiple times now, but on the surface, it seemed like a good idea. So he got me hooked up with his boss.
Dustin: He goes to me several times, but ultimately while I was in a hotel room in Bentonville, Arkansas, waiting for a fire Creek meeting to get into Walmart, [00:24:00] I had this meeting trying to sell the seat for my mastermind. And what ended up happening there was they did pay a deposit, which was great. And then basically all the revenue Beyond that was going to be on based on affiliate, an affiliate relationship.
Dustin: So basically they pay a thousand dollars. They put the person in my program, he's the salesperson. So as he and his team are making sales of their software, I get a cut until I make my actually 10, 000, we said. I'll make more, but it's going to be, it's going to take longer to collect. That all sounded great, except the guy who entered the program, who I love, and he's a wonderful guy, we're still in contact, made a career change.
Dustin: And so he left that company. So like my ability to collect the affiliate payments went completely away. And I didn't make hardly anything from that seat. So you can kind of see how the 10 seats, which would presumably be 75, 000 actually became a little over 50. Uh, yeah, but everyone else, you know,
was on payment plans and I was extremely happy with how this came [00:25:00] about.
Dustin: So I ultimately ended up selling 10 seats. I think the last two came in the day before we started. Uh, but I had 10 seats and again, I was really comfortable after three. And then once I got to five, I'm like, well, This is awesome. Now I've like sold almost as much as I did in the spring. My price points almost, it was eight times higher.
Dustin: Um, and, and then, you know, the momentum continued. So what happens then when you start the group? I'd never done this before. So it was really nice because I had two effectively two friends in the group. One was, A true friend who was basically helping me coach. And one was this barter situation. And so I had some comfort that like, I had some goodwill in the group.
Dustin: And as we got going, this is actually really important to my overall entrepreneurial journey, because what I found out is actually really good at this. And if I'm, if I'm being honest, like I. I knew I could coach. I knew I could do group coaching. I'd never ran a mastermind. But what I found is it was a pretty natural facilitator.
Dustin: And I think that came back to some experiences I had in my professional career as an [00:26:00] engineer and working with the public. And so a couple weeks in, it was really obvious to me that, like, this is awesome. Like, I Yeah. Was so excited by every call. I got amazing feedback. The peer to peer thing really took off where people are doing one on one calls with each other.
Dustin: The members started to collaborate with each other and launch new workshops and initiatives. Um, the very diverse crowd. This was before I really knew I was working with coaches and consultants and service providers, which is who I work with primarily now. But at this time I had e commerce, a couple e commerce.
Dustin: I had this software salesperson who wasn't even an entrepreneur. I had a. Performance coach. I had an e commerce marketer. Um, I had someone who was a nonprofit consultant, like broad diverse group, which I've learned to
embrace. I actually think that that for me and my style is the way to do this. And so, you know, I've now now my 10th group.
Dustin: The price has increased since then. Every group's been sold out and now sold out means 12. [00:27:00] So every group said 12 people in it. And so, you know, we've had multiple seven figures of revenue. Growing out of this initial experience. So this was September, 2022. Of course, this took us right up to the holiday.
Dustin: What was amazing to me was in January. So just a few months later, I sold the next group out and. You know, I think at least 25 to 30 percent of those seats came from referrals from this group. So I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. Like I had such a headstart. Um, and then the group after that in April actually sold out in February.
Dustin: It was more referrals from each of these groups. And so what I started to build was a compounding effect where I learned to keep doing lead generation the way I teach, which is a podcast, guesting, partnership, marketing, of course, some LinkedIn activity in there, but then referrals within the group or within the alumni.
Dustin: Really became a big thing. And then I started to learn that, Hey, if you're actually good at teaching live and facilitating, there's lots of these groups you can go plug into. And so I started to be a guest trainer and other [00:28:00] people's mastermind groups. And that started to generate sales. And of course, since then, I have my own podcast that you're listening to.
Dustin: I've been on stages and there's other ways that lead generation has been Uh, evolved and grown, which I teach all of that now in our core accelerator program, but this is how it all started. So as a quick recap, group coaching, got into a mastermind, had a mixed experience, came out of that with a lot of stress, a lot of, uh, a lot of tension, but also a very deep conviction and a, in a different mindset.
Dustin: And that I am not only. Can do this. I must do this sort of mindset, then made some really fundamental changes to create an abundance mindset, such as cutting off the engineering income and just being very open and having lots of conversations with people and um, Realizing that there's many people who could use my help that I would have never thought on the surface could use my help and also getting creative [00:29:00] with how we structured and sold some of these spots.
Dustin: Anymore, we do very little bartering. Um, again, the price has increased where we obviously have a higher demand now, but when people are selling their first groups, I mean, I think it's a sprint. To two to three members, get two or three members in it's a sprint. And if you need to be creative, you need to do some bartering.
Dustin: You need to do some partial bartering. Um, of course treat everyone fairly. Like I wouldn't charge one person, 2000, one person, 10, 000. That's completely immoral. That was happening in the other experience I had. Um, however, if it's a 10, 000 price point, for example, and you do a swap of services for part of it, or someone.
Dustin: You know, prepays instead of a payment plan, like there's ways to be creative and make people feel like you are meeting them where they're at without. Discounting or degrading the value of the program. So anyway, I obviously you heard some of that, and then I think the other thing people are really interested in is the lead generation sources.
Dustin: And I said, podcast guesting was by far number one. [00:30:00] Number two is linked in again. There's some cross pollination between those two channels and the way that we like to use podcast guesting and linked in is a really powerful combo. Number three was referrals. And yeah, and that was really it for that first group.
Dustin: And as I mentioned, it's evolved since then. And then the final thing I think people are really curious about is like, what did this call sound like, right? Like, uh, and we teach how to do high ticket sales in the fun way as part of our accelerator program, and I still do it the same way. Uh, it's, it's very conversational.
Dustin: It's very much what, what John, who I mentioned earlier, we call it serve call. My whole goal is I get on a call or now someone on our team gets on a call. It's not to sell. It's not. It's not to sell. It's just, frankly, that's not the outcome that we're looking for. Primarily, right? If that turns out to be the case, and it's the right fit, 100%, we want that to happen.
Dustin: But, you know, now we have an ROI guarantee. We have a lot more behind what we do that we didn't have in this first group. But even going back to the very first group and that very [00:31:00] first conversation where the gentleman bought, uh, At a higher price point, uh, than I ended up actually selling it for. It was all about discovery and service.
Dustin: It was like, tell me where you're at. What are your goals? How's that going? Where do you think you're getting stuck? What have you tried that didn't work? And it's just literally hearing them out and then being strategic and saying, Hey, if I was in your shoes, I think this could work way better. Or I think this would be a way to address that constraint.
Dustin: Uh, and in some cases we say we don't do that. Uh, and so here's a resource or here. I love to make a connection for someone else who does that. Uh, but you know, obviously if it's something we do like, well, this is what we do. I love to send you more details about our program. If you have time right now, we can spend 10 minutes.
Dustin: I'll walk you through it and let them say, is that something you'd like to do and then let them ask questions. And answer the questions. This is really that simple. I mean, we don't we haven't going back to the old days in the beginning. We didn't track like quote unquote close [00:32:00] rates, but I got to think it
was 80 percent of the people I talked to in that that 2022 calendar year from summer till September said yes.
Dustin: And part of that was, you know. Being genuine being open. It was a great opportunity for people to kind of get on the ground floor. And of course, we've treated everyone extremely well. And I said, the people on that sheet are 80 percent of them are very active right now. And are now we have an amazing community.
Dustin: We have circle. We have like so much more than we had back in the beginning. And those people have been around for two years as loyal customers. Several of them are in my mastermind. As I record this, I'm heading down in a few days to Nashville to host a retreat for our seven figure lead mastermind members.
Dustin: And it's really, really cool to me that several of those people came from this very first group. Uh, and it shows me that we're doing things, right? So that's it. That's the story. That's how we sold our first group. Uh, I hope I gave you some insights into the emotional [00:33:00] rollercoaster that this was, uh, Uh, and, and the lessons learned.
Dustin: So I feel now that I'm much better equipped to help people avoid having a numb chin and thinking that they, they're going to die. Um, and, and giving people proactively this competence, this abundance mindset, this, this sort of milestone approach. Like, Hey, if you want to sell 12 seats, that's amazing.
Dustin: You're not selling 12 seats. Despite the on the first call, so it's all about getting the first person enrolled in your vision and get them committed. Right? And then it's the second person. And then it's the third person. And then that pressure starts to ease. The momentum picks up. And the final thing I would say, which I did not do with this first group, but I learned very well.
Dustin: And subsequent groups is when you're selling a group program, especially a mastermind. There's huge value in the names on this sheet for each of the other people. Cool. Cool. On this sheet, right? It's ultimately a peer to peer program led by, you know, a facilitator that hopefully has an amazing system that everyone's working towards.
Dustin: So [00:34:00] when you get someone who's amazing, and you're like, Oh, my gosh, you know, say john Meece. Oh, Joe, I'm like, what you're sharing, like, my friend john Meece is an expert at that he's going to be in this next group, like you, you got to be in this group, because you're going to learn from john or, hey, you know, Carol had the same kind of constraint.
Dustin: And She's gonna be in your group as long as you join. Right? And so the people in the group actually become a huge selling point for people enrolling in that group. So that's kind of the last thing I'll share with this episode. I went a little longer than I expected, but there's a lot here to unpack. My encouragement with all this is doing a group program.
Dustin: Doing a mastermind program is, I think, the most effective thing you can do to serve your clients. If you can do it well, you feel called to do it. The number one job that you have in doing this, though, is curation. You have to have the right people in a group, because one bad person, one misaligned sort of intention can screw up the whole group.
Dustin: And of course, you as the leader have to have [00:35:00] a servant's heart, be a giver, know how to lead people with enthusiasm and transparency, and you got to be able to like walk the walk with them. Okay, and so that's part of what I learned with my bad experience was how to have how to provide an exceptional experience for people moving forward.
Dustin: So if this is something you want to experience. That's what we do in our podcast profits accelerator. We're heading into our 10th cohort here, uh, going to be sold out very, very proud of the fact that we saw it every group weeks, sometimes months in advance. And, you know, in the early days, it was all about, Hey, I need leads.
Dustin: Can I come in your mastermind and learn how to get leads? And of course we, that's still the core thing that we deliver, but we have many more people now who say. Hey, I've heard amazing things about the experience you provide. I want to do this for my clients. Can I come in and kind of see how the sausage is made?
Dustin: Can I be in your group? So I can not only get the leads and be part of your network and be part of this amazing community, basically model what you do so I can do that for my people. And. [00:36:00] 100%, 1000%. Yes. I feel passionate that part of my calling now is to like train the trainers, lead the leaders and help other people provide this experience for the people they love to serve.
Dustin: So if you're interested in that, hit us up. You just go to seven figure leap dot com. Book a call. That's going to be with me or someone else on my team. Everyone who's going to get on a call with you is actually an alumni of seven Our experience, so they can tell you firsthand what it did for them, what it did for their business, what they learned, what they observed on.
Dustin: Yeah, and we're all about serving. So I can't wait to talk to you guys. If this is of interest to you, if you have other questions about this experience, something I might have missed. Definitely feel free to book a call and ask us. Ask me about it. Uh, hit me up on LinkedIn if you want to talk to me personally with the DM about maybe a, a nuanced question about how I approach some of these conversations.
Dustin: Um, I'm an open book and here to serve. So until next time, we will see you right here on the seven figure lead podcast.