It’s amazing what can happen when you have other motivated, successful people in your life.
Surrounding yourself with other amazing entrepreneurs is CRITICAL if you want to succeed and change your life.
A couple years ago, a friend of mine invited me into a mastermind group of successful online business owners.
Each year the group rents a houseboat for a few days to get away from technology, share setbacks, celebrate wins, and just have FUN.
It’s an amazing experience!
I feel truly blessed and grateful to be included in a group of such amazing husbands, fathers and businessmen.
This year was my second time on the houseboat trip.
I learned so much that I just had to share my breakthroughs with you.
Here are my 5 biggest takeaways from our houseboat mastermind trip!
Lesson #1 – To REALLY succeed, you must find your PURPOSE in your customer’s story.
When we talk about business, we usually focus most of our attention on ourselves.
We think about OUR mission.
We think about OUR goals.
We think about OUR story.
On the houseboat, my friend Bryan Harris of GrowthTools.com shared a lesson he learned from a business coach.
Instead of just thinking about our mission, we need to also focus on our PURPOSE in our CUSTOMER’s story.
Mind. Blown.
What role do WE play in our customer’s life?
For example, Jocelyn and I have a MISSION to help 100,000 families learn how to start an online business.
That’s our mission, but I’d never thought about my PURPOSE in the story of those families.
What role do we play in their story? How are we the difference maker in their journey?
I realized our purpose here at Flipped Lifestyle is to:
- INSPIRE people to start
- TEACH people HOW to get started
- And MOTIVATE them to keep taking action!
Then it’s up to them to make it happen!
It’s amazing how much CLARITY you can get from just knowing your purpose in your customer’s story.
If you are struggling with you offer, figure out your PURPOSE in your customer’s story.
It will help you figure out exactly what you need to do next.
Lesson #2 – You have to step back and CELEBRATE your successes. (“THE WORK IS DONE”)
It’s easy to go into a mastermind and be “all business.”
And for sure, a lot of the conversation revolves around entrepreneurship, scale, personal growth, etc.
But sometimes, you just have to sit back and celebrate what you have already accomplished.
Sometimes you need to focus on your present blessings, instead of your future dreams.
My buddy Grant Baldwin of The Speaker Lab said a simple and profound statement statement one night.
We were talking about the value of our yearly trip, and Grant said, “We all have done the work. This trip is really a celebration of that, not just a discussion of what’s next.”
At that moment we all decided to focus most of the rest of the trip on fun.
We rode jet skis, played cornhole on the top deck, hit the boat’s water slide, sat around, cracked jokes, and ate junk food.
It was amazing.
As entrepreneurs, we can get stuck in “work mode” 24-7; always trying to get to where we’re going.
Always trying to improve or start something new.
All of that’s important.
But it’s just as important to celebrate how far you’ve already come!
Lesson #3 – A little extra work can lead to a whole lotta MEMORIES.
Last year, our houseboat trip was mostly hanging out on the boat.
A little swimming, a lot of sliding, and tons of sitting around the table talking about life and business.
This year we wanted to take it to the next level.
Recently, Jocelyn and I bought all kinds of water toys for our lake.
We have two jet skis, ropes and tubes, and even a stand up paddle board!
I wanted to take all of the fun stuff with us to enjoy on the houseboat!
But it seemed like a lot of work to pack all that up and haul it two hours to the lake for our mastermind.
Another problem was figuring out how to tow jet skis behind the boat. I’d read you could sink them or mess up the motor if you did it wrong, so I was a little worried.
I almost said “let’s just do the same stuff this year that we did last year” and avoid the trouble.
But usually a little extra work leads to MORE fun, MORE success, and more MORE can’t miss moments!
So I took time to learn how to tow the jet skis.
I spent an extra couple of hours loading up all the stuff, getting gas and oil, and even investing in some new ropes.
We spent extra time packing everything on the boat (including multiple LONG walks from the dock to the truck in the parking lot).
It was a lot of hard work.
But it was SO WORTH IT!
We had so much fun riding jet skis, pulling each other on tubes, and took some AMAZING drone and Go Pro videos playing on the lake.
Lesson learned.
If you want to live a great life (and have great memories), always put in the extra work!
Lesson #4 – You have to be intentional about your LEGACY
One of the most impactful lessons learned came from my friend Joe Nicoletti of Learn Scrivener Fast.
Joe shared about his experience losing a loved one a couple years ago. His openness, perspective and wisdom really helped us all take a good look at our own lives.
Especially when thinking about the legacy we want to leave our kids.
We started asking questions like:
- “How would our kids grow up if something happened to us?”
- “What would they learn?”
- “Who would teach them?”
That lead to a discussion about how we were using social media, and what our adult children would see if they looked back on our lives twenty years from now.
Most people use social media to show their “highlight reel” and increase their own status.
We have this amazing tool to speak to future generations, and we are using it for cat videos and happy birthdays to strangers.
What a wasted opportunity.
We decided that we should start using social media as if the only people that would ever read it would be our adult children, our grandkids and our great grandkids long after we are gone.
We would tell the lessons we learned each day, celebrate our lives as we lived them, and speak to our children, through the digital legacy we were leaving behind.
That way if anything happened to us, our kids would still have a piece of our life they could go back too when they needed advice or help.
What a better way to use social media than arguing with others, or making everything we post all about ourselves.
Lesson #5 – You NEED other like-minded entrepreneurs in your life to succeed.
I fell in with this group of guys thanks to my buddy Jeff Rose of Good Financial Cents.
He reminded me how much I need other people that “get it” in my life.
Jeff said it best in this facebook post after the trip:
I used to imagine what it would be like if I could hang out with guys that were highly successful entrepreneurs but were also believers. Who lived each day to better themselves as a father, husband, leader and friend. Well, I don’t have to imagine that anymore. Now I get to live it. Thankful to spend a few days with these guys on a houseboat for some recreational fun and some of the most engaging conversations I’ve had.
This might have been the most important lesson I learned at our mastermind.
It’s SO IMPORTANT to surround yourself with other like-minded people, if you want to be successful.
Nobody succeeds alone, and the old saying is true: you are the average of the people you hang out with the most.
Thanks to these amazing men in my life…my average went way up this week.
I hope the lessons I learned help you succeed in whatever you are trying to do too!
How is your average? Who are you walking with?
Are you surrounded by other online business owners and entrepreneurs?
Are you masterminding with people who are working hard to be better parents, spouses, leaders and friends?
Are you making breakthroughs and experiencing epic takeaways from your conversation with others?
If not, we’d love to have you in the Flip Your Life Community!
Join hundreds of family-focused entrepreneurs from around the world, and get the support you need to Flip Your Life!
And you can join right now for FREE!
Click this link to try one month of the Flip Your Life Community at no cost!
Come join our mastermind, and let us help you Flip Your Life!
Shane & Jocelyn
Flip Your Life!
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