An Essay To Me In A Chicago Hotel at 5am

Ending two years of Roundtable Masterminds with Perry Marshall in Chicago.

It’s 4.49am, wide awake, bag packed – having just posted this to Facebook:

I stand there frozen, waiting to know. Know what? I don’t know. How to act, what to do. Write I think. So I sit here and do this. What then? Have a shower. So I will. And post it to Facebook. People already know you’re a weirdo. What the heck.

Frozen because of overwhelm.

So many ideas, possibilities. And what do I know? What do I do? Frozen. Ever been that way? It’s a happy problem in a way; yeah -  that’s a good frame. Here’s what stands out…

“That’s too granular!” scolds Patrick, a fabulously successful Austrian marketer who is killing it in the golfing niche.

That’s new I think, and it resonates.

Earlier this morning: I can’t stand the little white spot I see on the carpet as I pack my bag. “The cleaners will pick that up, leave it there. Aren’t you busy enough?” I think every time I pass it while packing my bag. Finally, I can’t stand it. I clean it up. Put it in the bin.

Granular.

Paying attention to what doesn’t matter. Acting uselessly. “Stop doing $10 an hour work that someone else can do,” Perry keeps telling us. “Better you do $1,000 per hour work so you can fund the cleaner.” Hmmm.

“Better start my brain exercises again” I think. Time to train up those focus and attention faculties of my white spot nit-picking brain…

James is in front of the room.

I think: “This guy is 5 times smarter than anyone in the room.” I am captivated as he talks about his “miracle morning” (from a book of the same name) that he implements every day, without exception: Up at 5am -> mediation -> visualization -> affirmations -> (3 more I can’t remember) + exercise. He explains how he experimented with it: “I would do a week, then stop a week, then restart – was it making it a difference? It was. Now I have been doing it for months, it’s incredible. I recommend it.”

Yes, I must. Every morning. Can I?

At the break I go over to James – I decided to stop Roundtable, looking for a new mentor. I sign up as a Private Client with James. He’s north of 2k per month for 4 x 1 hour Skypes. OMG. Yuko’s going to kill me: I am spending all of BodyChance’s profits on this madness.

Is it madness?

No.

I need someone to focus me. Too much roaring in my brain. Scattering me, leaving me frozen and useless. Here’s some of my Roundtable insights this time round:

How To Manage BodyChance Remotely

Lately I realise how scattered and isolationist my BodyChance leadership has become. It’s me. I recently hired a new COO. He tells me last week: “I think it’s time there was some more organisation.” Right. But I hate corporate meetings. Basil does too. We’re both monks from a past life, we joke about that. We are our own best company. And that doesn’t work anymore for running BodyChance…

“How can I fix this?” I have been wondering for months… I ask Basil. He doesn’t know. We’re both the problem. Or maybe not…

Bryan – Perry’s brother – is up on the final day talking about Tom Meloshe’s obsession with Ceremony.  Bryan is President of Perry Marshal Inc. and has the onerous job of holding these free shooting, wildly diverse group of cowboy entrepreneurs in check.

“Hmmmm. Sounds like BodyChance” I think, “I better listen to this…”

Byran has created ceremonies.

He talks about Boeing’s B-17 Flying Fortress, and the origin of the checklist. “The folklore is all wrong” he informs us. “A checklist is not a piece of paper, it’s a ceremony.”

After the first B-17 prototype crashed, killing everyone on board, Boeing realised: this machine is too complicated for one human being to handle. Let’s create a pilot’s checklist. They do. The checklist is born. Except it isn’t a piece of paper. It’s a ritual.

“It’s two people sitting together” Byran exhorts “It is social, interactive. They touch buttons. They listen to the other one reading a list. They look at the dials. It’s a multi sensory experience.” Then he tells us about his newly instituted bi-weekly meeting about numbers.

NUMBERS!!!

My brain jolts me awake. That’s been another running obsession of late. I don’t have timely numbers. Perry says: “You can’t fly a plane without a reliable dashboard.” BodyChance is the plane. Numbers are the dashboard.

I listen carefully, how does this work…?

Dave does the money numbers; Bryan pulls the email stats from InfustionSoft. Perry gets to report on the latest products: how are sales? What are the conversions? They have a google doc online they are all looking at. Perry in Chicago. Bryan in Lincoln, Nebraska. Dave wherever.

Ahhh, I think. That’s how I can do it. BIG INSIGHT. I need to schedule a numbers meeting. Yuko’s got to tell me: how much cash in the bank? We will make salary? What’s our annual growth…?” Bi-weekly. Wow…

Suddenly my mind flashes to another Dave. We sitting in the Casino restaurant, eating an obscenely large chocolate cake and I am asking him: “What’s your growth this year? He shoots back: “Yesterday it was 11%”

YESTERDAY!?

“How do you know that?” I ask. He looks at me as though I’m an alien. “I know what it is every day!!!” he yells at me, surprised I even ask. (That's Dave) “I’ve got the excel sheet, I put the sales in every day!”

OMG, I think. I am lucky to know it each quarter. And then it’s still a month after the fact. His company is pulling in 3x more than mine – size is no excuse. One thing about a good Mastermind – it’s humbling. Maybe you’re a big fish in a small pond (I am that) and a Mastermind quickly cures you of any grandiosity.

“I made $700,000 on that Webinar” Odin says. (What!? I think, $700,000 off of one webinar? I don’t even do webinars! Well, I won’t admit to that.)

“Who did you do it with?” I ask.

Odin can’t remember his last name. Instead he tells me: “He was an Australian.” He can’t remember his last name and he just pulled in $700,000 with him (!) I marvel. Because he’s too busy in his biz focusing on what matters most to him. I doubt he worries about a white spot on the carpet. He probably doesn’t even pack his bag.

***

This is a RoundTable. This is a MasterMind. Everyone’s smarter than you. Everyone’s making more money. You’re the kid on the block, that’s how I feel. And the insights keep coming…

I say: “How do I sell this dam thing?” in my hotseat. I am talking about Alexander's discovery of course. It’s been a puzzle for a century now. Mickie whispers to Peter who’s making notes for me. I see it later…

“Online Marketing 101:

Traffic

PPC

Facebook

Linked In”

I ask: “Who should be on my web team? Designer, coding guy, strategy – who else?” And Patrick asks me – who’s getting the traffic? What about the writing copy? Are you testing?

Oh yeah, I think. That.

Wonderful how a Mastermind brings you back to what matters in finding students online:

Micro-niched Landing Pages

Optins to segmented email series

Conversions to your service that actually pay

“How many leads a day are you generating?” Patrick asks the room during his hotseat.

60 a day. 200 a day, some entrepreneurs shout out. I do a quick calculation in my head. OMG. Last month it was 120. Basil is probably getting the same in the music niche. OK – 240. What’s that in a day? BodyChance is getting 8 a day. No-one is that low, no-one. I keep quiet. (Maybe they did too?)

And so it goes on. I am being assaulted here, humiliated.

No.

This is enlightenment. This is wonderful. This is about waking up – did you have any idea there was so much to learn? No. I was ignorant, blissfully unaware. Now I know. Now I see.

There is so much to do. Then someone says: “If you have more that 3 priorities, you have no priorites.” Who said that?

Oh, it was me. To Ken from Chile who just asked about focus. At the end, Perry tells us all:

“You won’t implement everything you learnt here. Not even 50%. Not even 90%. Maybe 2%. Take away one thing. Just one. And implement it into your business.”

Yes, that’s the way to avoid overwhelm. One thing.

But what?!

Well, I’ve got my insanely expensive Skype with James coming up. He’s more than a New York lawyer! And he’s already given me homework for the plane trip home. Right! I can do that. Sigh. Relief. Focus.

But still…. One thing.

Ok, a number’s ceremony!

I will implement that.