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VIDEO - DUwHF #923 - Jay Fiset
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AUDIO - DUwHF #923 - Jay Fiset
Best selling author, student of human nature, avid outdoorsman at 5 star hotels, speaks fluent smart ass, can see and reflect your life mission in 5 minutes flat, loves having 2 sons so he can play with their toys, still fantasizes about his wife after 25 years, loves ideas, but loves results even more, can simultaneously laugh and cry for different reasons at the same time, has never been star struck (but did not get a chance to meet Martin Luther King, and there would have been teenage girl screaming if I had).
I am dedicated to instigating a global movement of Conscious Creators and supporting people to organize their life and resources around their passions and gifts.
www.MastermindtoMillions.com
Howard: It is just a huge honor for me today to be podcast interviewing Jay Fiset. His website is mastermindtomillions.com. He's in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, which I have to tell you is about a thousand miles straight north of Phoenix because, I don't know if you know this, but Phoenix - 10% of the homes are owned by Canadians. Right now it's the end of September, now it's October, and this is when all the snowbirds, so four-hundred thousand snowbirds will come down here for the fall and they'll all leave and be back home by April.
I can't tell you in the thirty years of being a dentist how many snowbirds said that that drive from Calgary down through Montana and Utah, and around the Grand - a lot of people say, "Well, why don't you just buy an extra car and leave it in Phoenix?" They're like, "Are you kidding me? That's the coolest damn drive on the world." If you're a retired senior citizen, you've got the time.
Anyway, Jay Fiset is a bestselling author, student of human nature, avid outdoorsman at five star hotels, speaks fluent smart ass, can see and reflect your life mission in five minutes flat, loves having two sons so he can play with their toys, still fantasizes about his wife after twenty-five years, loves ideas but loves results even more, can simultaneously laugh and cry for different reasons at the same time, has never been star struck but did not get a chance to meet Martin Luther King, and there would have been teenage girls screaming if I had. I am dedicated to instigating a global movement of conscious creators and supporting people to organize their life and resources around their passions and gifts.
Thank you so much for coming on the show because that is one thing you see around the world differently with Boomers and the Millennials. The Baby Boomers in Japan, they graduated from college, got a job at Toyota or Honda or Mitsubishi and stayed there for forty years and retired at sixty-five. Now you read these companies - great companies like Facebook, and Google, and eBay, their average Millennial only stays with them two years because they feel like they're just trading time for money even though they're making bank.
So talk about what is conscious creators and what is it that you do with creating mastermind groups and support for best practices and growth practice?
Jay: You bet. Well, first of all, Howard, thank you so much for having me. I deeply appreciate it. By the way, I was surprised to know that it's only 10% of Phoenix is owned by Canadians because it's like 100% of my friends all own homes there. It's quite astounding. It's a beautiful spot.
You guys, just for perspective, you think we're crazy in terms of the cold, is that we actually live exactly parallel but diametrically opposite lives in that you guys have four months a year you can't go outside because it's hot. We have four months a year we can't go outside because it's cold. But other than that same same so that's kind of funny.
This idea of our mission and our purpose and all of those pieces is that I've spent thirty years in the personal development industry. Most of that really designed to trying to get people, whether they're Millennials, whether they're Boomers, all those pieces, to ask bigger questions than just how much am I going to make, is this job going to be secure, all those pieces. Is that if we can serve and support, and this really does go across the age profiles, what's most important to me? How am I going to leverage my influence? How am I going to leverage my income? How am I going to make one of the most significant differences that I'm here to make?
One of the tools of many that we that we serve and support is this idea of mastermind groups, of bringing together peers to quite literally bend time, to create in days, weeks, and months what might have been months, years or never. One of the most fantastic masterminds in the universe to run is the same industry but different geographic area.
This is one of the reasons I was excited to come on this podcast and to talk to dentists because one of the gentlemen who years ago taught me about masterminds, he owned a dental lab, he and his dad. Actually, I think they owned three dental labs. Part and parcel of what he did and how he started was really this idea of how do I bring together a group of people, and in this case it was dentists, how do I bring them together to learn best practices, to really scale their business. That became the seed of much of what has become the Mastermind to Millions brand these days.
It just makes a monumental difference when we can accelerate our learning with a team of people, where we're not worried about competition, we're really worried about how do we do this better for ourselves, for our staff, for our clients, and for the industry.
Howard: Wow, that was a mouthful. You've got a bigger problem because when we came out of school thirty years ago, we didn't come out with $350,000 of student loans. These dentists that you're talking to right now, she's driving to work right now and she's working for some guy because she's got $350,000 in student loans. How does her journey start differently than you and me? Because when you and I come out of school we didn't have a house payment with no house.
Jay: I'm sorry for laughing, but I almost did have a house payment with no house, but that wasn't necessarily just from school. But on a serious note, I do think it's more difficult for people today. There is no question about it in terms of first and foremost, the competition, the debt, all of those pieces. But the idea to me is that we've got to figure out how we can scale quickly, and how we can learn quickly, and how we do not go down the road of the traditional job.
My standard around this would be if I was sitting under a mountain of debt, 300,000 bucks plus or minus, my first task would be to figure out what could accelerate me, what could differentiate me, how am I going to actually learn the business of dentistry because this is the big crime. It's one of the reasons, by the way, I love your site. Dentaltown, I was looking at the amount of marketing, training, and you've got some pretty significant programs in there.
But the key piece from my perspective is that we're got to tell a fundamental truth, which is this, is that the $350,000 in debt is not going to be tackled most likely just by going to work for another dentist. The truth of the matter is that we've got to figure out what it actually takes to master the business of dentistry, to master the business of customer service, to master client acquisition and retention, to master how do I accomplish.
This is one of things I admire the Millennials about. You and I were having that conversation of two years and they're out. But how do we master the fundamental pieces that move the needle to pay off the debt quickly, to position ourselves as experts in a specific arena, to create raving fans and clients that are coming back. They are not going anywhere else.
To me that's where the mastermind groups that we have run in the past, and by the way we've done it for automotive industries, we've done it for churches, we've done it for dentists, we've done it for chiropractors, we've done it in the spiritual domain. There isn't an arena where we haven't done it. But the consistent feedback that we get is it helps me to think differently. It helps me to approach the challenges in a more resourceful way.
Because when a mastermind is done really well what happens is that that new dentist gets access to network, resources, wisdom and experience that it might have taken them ten years of working in somebody's practice to accumulate. But that could be accomplished in six months, nine months, or a year to really get out from under the debt and begin to create what it is that they want.
That would be my first piece is use the wisdom and experience of other people to accelerate that process. Do not just follow or go for a traditional job. That's just too damn painful, expensive, and time consuming.
Howard: Let me just clarify one thing you said that might have flown over everyone's head. I agree, if you're going to use other people's money, you could have got out of high school and got a job for $15 an hour and worked for ten years and gone to dental school in cash. But you decided to use other people's money, student loan debt, because when you got of high school you're worth 10 bucks an hour and then go to dental school and borrow money because when you graduate you're worth $100 an hour.
But you can't use $300,000 of other people's money and then not continue using other people's money to buy your own business because what you said was with your student loan debt so high you can't really pay it back being an employee, especially since the difference between dentists and these other groups you talk about, auto, churches - when you look at a pastor who starts a new church, his personal spending is very different than a doctor.
If you're a dentist, a physician, a lawyer you say, "Well, I'm a lawyer. I just graduated from college. I need to drive a BMW. I'm not going to buy a twelve hundred square foot home. I'm going to buy a $350,000 home. I'm not going to go on vacation camping at the lake in a tent. I'm a physician. I'm going to go take a cruise." When they go work as an employee, they're eating out nineteen out of thirty meals, so even if they get paid $150,000 they are consuming it all. They'll be on the road to take twenty years to pay off that student loan debt.
Are you saying if you reach a certain level of debt, you've got to go all the way and go spend another $750,000 and buy a dental office and be an owner because you can't make one-fifty and pay that that off, you need to learn how to make two-fifty.
Jay: I don't think it's as cut and dry as that, Howard. But I think that the theme that you're communicating is sound. The honest to god truth is, did you ever play that that game Cashflow by Mr.-
Howard: Yes.
Jay: Yes, exactly. It was like if you've ever played that game, it is so perfect because whoever draws the doctor, they always go like, "Oh," because it's almost impossible to get out of the rat race and become financially free as the doctor. The expenses are just too damn high even though the earnings are fantastic.
To me, first and foremost I'm a huge fan of entrepreneurship, absolutely huge, huge fan of entrepreneurship. I'm also very clear that it is not necessarily for everyone, but that also doesn't mean that you couldn't position yourself to own equity in a practice. It doesn't mean that you couldn't invest some of your resources into that process. It doesn't mean you couldn't dedicate yourself to learn how to do it so that when the time was right you did it wisely.
From my perspective it's like, 300,000 bucks is a good chunk of debt, but it's going to be slow to pay off at $100 an hour, it's going to be slow to pay off at 100 bucks an hour.
I just want to give you an example. There's a woman from Los Angeles who was at our last event, Mastermind to Millions Live. She has a beautiful dental practice, just getting up and running. Her sister has just joined her and she's operating I'm going to just a couple hundred thousand bucks shy of a million bucks for the practice.
What's interesting for her is that she has noticed that there is a gap of support, specifically for women dentists, is that most of the leadership in the dentist arena is male. Most of the training is led by men, all of those pieces. She's actually building a community and a mastermind group around women dentists who want to scale their business and are doing exactly what I had suggested earlier.
Now, here's the irony to this. You guys have an incredibly expensive investment in getting the equipment, the tools, the processes, like that's expensive. What I know in terms of dollars and cents is that the mastermind that we helped position and structure in that domain is going to add as much profit to her business as her whole entire other business. Now sales are nowhere near as high but the margins are way better.
But this is just one way of serving and supporting. This is one way of getting additional access. This is just one more revenue stream that I really believe that if you are a doctor, if you're in that position, that you've got to start thinking about and how else can I serve, and what else is in line with my mission, and what else inspires me and excites me. In the entrepreneurial domain there's twelve billion choices.
Howard: What is a mastermind group and how does one of my homies listening to you right now start a mastermind group or get into this? Because I agree. When you get out of school and you're young, a mentor is everything. To come out of school and have a mentor, my God, what a gift. If you look at entrepreneuring business, for the last thirty-thousand years, how do you learn how to put on horseshoes, how did you learn to make horse and buggies, it was all apprenticeship with a mentor. Now they come out of a school, they're agnostic to their school, and they don't have a mentor.
How do they find a mentor? How do they find one of these mastermind groups who's got these women dentist in it? How does that all work?
Jay: To me, a whole bunch of things. First and foremost, I'm going to recommend a book. It's an oldie but it's a goodie. It's called "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill. For those of you who haven't read it, I'll give you the thirty-second synopsis.
First and foremost, I obviously did not come up with the word mastermind. Napoleon Hill came up with the word mastermind when he was charged by Andrew Carnegie to go and find out what was different about people that were truly successful, and moving and shaking, and making monumental difference in the world with the normal everyday average Joe. He wrote an entire book about it.
One of the most important components that he discovered was that every single one of the people who was really moving and shaking in the world, every single one of them, had a community, a tribe, a group of people that they could actually come to and ask questions. Think of it like mentoring on speed, Howard, because instead of it just being one person, it's actually an entire group of people all with different specialized skills and abilities to assist in a particular arena or a domain.
Short version if you want to know what a mastermind group is, top of the list, go read "Think and Grow Rich," it'll change how you think about mentorship, it'll change how you think about community, it will change how you think about tribe. That would be number one for me.
Number two in terms of the core of your question of how do we find these, I know you've said that many of the listeners here are sort of on the younger side of the dental practice. But honest to god, my request is this, is that if you think that you could scale your business better, if you could provide more support, if you could accelerate what it means to master the running of a practice, to master the acquisition of a client, to master creating raving fans, if you could accelerate that through a mastermind, the honest to god truth is this, for crying out loud start one.
By the way if you are somebody who's been at it for a while, I mean in large part Dentaltown and the community that you have created here is a form of access to training, mastermind, community, resources, all of those pieces.
From my perspective, I teach people how to position, launch, and lead their own masterminds. The reason I do that instead of referring people to a whole bunch of other masterminds is that when we get active about creating the community, what transpires is that we are more committed to the process.
If anyone is sitting there like, "Well, how the hell would you do that?" if you just go to that website that Howard had talked about at the beginning, MastermindToMillions.com, there is a complimentary fifty-two page manual that you can just download. It's the actual same manual that I used to create mastermind groups for my personal development company that I literally gave to my internal team. In fact, when you see it, it will look kind of funny because it is aimed for very specific content. But we did it that way so that people can see this is a real tool. This isn't some hypothetical. Go get that manual. Go read that book.
Howard: (00:16:47 inaudible) MastermindCommunities.com?
Jay: No, MastermindToMillions.com.
Howard: Oh, that's what I thought it was. So MastermindToMillions.com.
I want to say something. All leaders are readers. The first thing that came out of your mouth is go buy a damn book and read, "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill. You were smart enough of your history to know that he was funded by Andrew Carnegie. Everybody knows who Rockefeller was, but John D. Rockefeller was the richest man that ever lived in America. Andrew Carnegie was number two. In fact, his net worth in just 2007 dollars was three-hundred ten billion, whereas Bill Gates is more like eighty. He made his money in steel and that company went on to be U.S. Steel.
But what I think is so amazing about him, not only did John D. and Andrew Carnegie give away their money, but Andrew Carnegie took his millions and built twenty-five hundred and nine libraries between 1883 and 1929 and basically that was how many counties there were. He thought to himself what's the best gift I could give America. And there were two-thousand five-hundred and nine counties and he built a library in every one. He tried to build it for the county and says I don't want this.
Him and Rockefeller didn't put their name on anything. You know gosh darn, Stanford, and Hopkins, and a lot of those guys would put their name on there, but these guys thought that you don't want credit on earth; you want credit from your maker. John D. Rockefeller built Chicago University and no one even knows that.
Jay: I didn't know that. I didn't.
Howard: They have more Nobel prizes than any university on Earth. Their number one category is in economics. He said this isn't going to be a religious college. The chapel was small. I'm not putting my name on it. But that was the first university on earth that had zero budget and they could buy anything they want. I just think Andrew Carnegie, just what a great man, what a great legend.
Jay: I'm going to go on a rant for a moment. Number one thank you for sharing that because I didn't know that he had built the university. I do know that they were unbelievable philanthropists and it never ceases to amaze me how much they gave and built like, it was pretty freaking astounding. But each of them had this incredible community of people around them.
Are you familiar - I imagine you are, Howard, given that history lesson, The Illustrious Vagabonds?
Howard: No.
Jay: No, you don't know this one. This is cool. So again all human beings of greatness are surrounded by a tribe. The Illustrious Vagabonds, between 1914 and 1928 every single summer, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, President Harding, and a variety of other select people, every summer they would go on this summer road trip which was quite literally a summer road trip and a mastermind that they called The Illustrious Vagabonds.
There's actually a very cool story. True or not, I'm sure it's much manipulated. But they're driving through the wilderness because back then we didn't have interstates and those sorts of things and they get stuck. A farmer comes up with his horses and pulls these big cars out. Apparently one of them, Henry Ford, goes up and shakes the guy's hand and says, "Thank you so much because I really appreciate this because I'm Henry Ford and I built that car that you just pulled out." He goes, "Hm, nice." Then Thomas Edison came up and introduced himself and made some reference. He had something that Thomas Edison had created. Then Harvey Firestone came up and said, "The cars (00:20:48 inaudible) but I build the wheels on that. I'm Harvey Firestone." Then President Harding comes up and says, "I don't suppose you know who I am?" The farmer says, "Well, if you're a liar like all the rest of those fools, I imagine you're going to tell me you're Santa Clause."
Howard: That is awesome.
Jay: True or not, they did have this mastermind. That mastermind, by the way, is often credited with some of the largest and most strategic thinking, including the interstate system, including how transportation unfolded over across the entire U.S., including the distribution of electricity. Those were the kind of things that transpired. Again, just if you look, every single person that has created something powerful and meaningful had this tribe and community around them.
Mastermind to Millions is a double entendre of I want millions of people to have the support, and the community, and the wisdom, and the experience around them that is becoming less and less personal and I also want people who are courageous enough to lead masterminds do abundantly be rewarded.
In this idea, the creation of a mastermind, any, any, any dentist, you have a position of influence. You have a tribe. You have families who rely on you. You have other doctors. You have lawyers. You have accountants. You have all those sorts of things. Every single one of you could create a powerful mastermind that would scale your business and serve and support your tribe and community more meaningful matters.
That would be my invitation. If I was sitting under debt and I was trying to figure out how to do this faster, it would be let's get a group of people together that can actually scale handling this and in a brilliant and meaningful manner.
Howard: Do you have a dental one going on or would they set one up in their own town or do you have one?
Jay: I don't have one. I teach people how to do it. That's my wheelhouse. I do not have one to invite people to. However, if you were interested in figuring out how to run a mastermind, one of the things that we have is something called the Launch Your Mastermind Boot Camp. There's all of the tools, the resources, the contracts, the structures, the processes that we could support people with. We also have a business mastermind, which is called (00:23:03 inaudible) that would give people a framework of what to do.
But my wheelhouse is really training the people who are willing to lead, the people who are willing to create the groups, the people who are willing to mentor and invite the tribe to put a system, a process together that is both meaningful, that they can monetize, and that complements their business.
Howard: On Dentaltown everybody is allowed to start one thread that's commercial in nature. Let's say you're a dentist and you speak around the world on sleep apnea, you can't spam all the (00:23:33 inaudible) but you could go to practice management, start a practice management thread and say, "I'm Jay Fiset. Howard had me on the podcast. I want to talk about that your wheelhouse is to create these Mastermind to Million groups.
I think that would be neat because what I'm trying to do as a leader, I'm trying to get these young kids - I feel strongly that thirty years ago you could come out of dental school and make five big mistakes out of the group. You could go to an overcrowded area, you could do so many things wrong and still make bank.
But today when dental fees, due to insurance companies, are 42% lower than they were thirty years ago. Imagine that. Thirty years ago I got a thousand for a crown; today I get six-hundred. Thirty years ago I got a thousand for a root canal; today I get six-hundred. If you are coming out with 42% lower fees. They've opened up seven dental schools. When I got into Phoenix they didn't have any dental schools or fluoride in the water. Now they have fluoride in the water and two dental schools and these are big dental schools cranking out a hundred a year. I want them to come out of the group and find a mentor and starting a mastermind group. That would be so cool.
Back to your Illustrious Vagabonds. I think it's so ironic they call themselves vagabond because the definition of a vagabond is a person who wanders from place to place without a home or a job and then he said on (00:24:55 inaudible) the second word they would have used is Gypsy. I wonder why they called themselves Illustrious Vagabonds, people without a home or a job, when these were some of the richest, most successful industrial captains of our time.
Jay: Well, I think from the research that I've done because I do think it's quite entertaining and cool, the research I did, I think that they all had a pretty good sense of humor about themselves and about the world and about their sort of role in it. I think that the paradox of illustrious and vagabonds and what they were creating and how they were actually shaping not just North America but the world, I don't think was lost upon them. I really don't. I think they were pretty sharp characters.
Just another little interesting pieces is that Benjamin Franklin actually was a very early proponent, creator, and participator in a mastermind that he called the Junta. He actually would hand select into communities in which he was around, a couple of tradesmen, a couple of thinkers, a couple of educators and they would come and they would meet on a weekly basis, where they would have a drink. Somebody would report on something they had read and they would have a fervent debate about whatever the topic of the day happened to be. That actually turned into and evolved into the American Philosophical Association that is all over the United States.
The thing that surprises me, Howard, is I actually think we're entering into the golden age of masterminds. I think we're entering into the golden age of masterminds because it's easier now to find our tribe. It's easier now to communicate with people using technology like what we're doing right now which is pretty astounding. It's easier to sort of plant our flag as the leader of a particular community and have people find us.
But it still sort of surprises me that we have people who are - and by the way I'm so sorry I have a new puppy and he's a little crazy. His name is Lou and he's a Hungarian Vizsla and we just call him crazy. But we have all of this access that we still lean a little too much or perhaps a lot too much to our independence. It's like I'm going to figure alone. I'm going to do it my own way. I'm going to reinvent the wheel because my wheel will be rounder or I'm going to reinvent fire because my fire will be hotter. It's like for crying out loud, the path has been blazed, the wheels are there.
Let's just build community and greater access to wisdom, experience, network, and resources and let's knock it out of the park. Quit wasting time spinning around the same old same old. If the most intelligent and wisest captains of industry used it in everywhere we look, everywhere we look. Roosevelt had the Tennis cabinet, by the way, which was nothing more than a large mastermind group. In fact the United States of America, by the way, the Founding Fathers that actually crafted United States was fundamentally a mastermind, just fourteen guys.
Anyway, it still shocks me how people want to do it on their own. I guess this would be part and parcel of my invitation to anyone listening, particularly if you're relatively new, particularly if you're coming into a competitive environment, for crying out loud, you don't have the time. If you've got that kind of debt, you don't have the money. If the plan is a fifteen-year plan, that's not going to be so inspiring to chip away at that. Bring together the best and accelerate that process because what we call it is we bend time and we can actually bend time. We do it every day in masterminds.
Howard: You know we were talking about the name being vagabonds, a guy who travels from place without a home or a job and their backup name was Gypsies, same thing. You said they didn't take themselves serious. When you're flying on an airplane, turn to the person next to you and say, "How would you describe a lawyer in two words? How would you describe a physician? How would you describe a dentist?" Dude, humble never comes up ever. Know it all, arrogant, thinks they're all that.
I have been watching successful dentists come out of the gate and who crushed it, and I always say that the top two things is they're humble and they're hungry. They're humble. They're going to listen to their staff, their patients, their customers. They're going to devour.
See, that's why I'm doing this free podcast because my God, I think it's so cool that on your hour commute to work, you're hungry enough to listen to each show. What you're telling me on the e-mails and e-mail me at Howard@Dentaltown.com and tell me who are you, how old are you. It always blows my mind.
It's about 25% are still in dental school, which I think is so damn cool that they're in dental school and they're already realizing that someday they're going to have to dive in the deep end of that swimming pool and they know while they're sitting there in class learning calculus, and trig, and geometry that none of that stuff is going to make it. There in labs right now listening to this we have to make a crown or a denture or a partial and they know the minute they get out of school they're going to send that to a lab.
They're already starting to be humble and listen to these guests I bring on the show like yourself. Then they're hungry. The ones that take 100 hours of CE always crushed it. That's why we do a daily show. They listen to this every day on the way to work. I mean we've been nine-hundred and fifty shows.
Jay: That's so cool.
Howard: You do nine-hundred and fifty shows, you're going to know what to do.
You say your wheelhouse is helping one of my listeners set up the mastermind group. What does that cost? How long does that take? What are other people's success? Has anybody made money on this?
Jay: Oh, substantially, substantially. Let me describe that.
Howard: This is dentistry uncensored, so get to the nitty gritty, get to the money, cost, revenue, all that stuff.
Jay: Okay. Those are, by the way, my favorite conversations because particularly in the online marketing world there is a fair amount of, shall we call, it puffery and distraction.
On a serious note though two parts to this question that I want to answer. I spoke just two days ago at an event in San Diego called the New Media Summit. The New Media Summit was a very interesting event. One was people who were trying to get ready to get their podcasts up and running and other people who were already quite successful podcasters and they would do meetings for bookings and guests and all those fun, wonderful things.
It never ceased to amaze me, as I was doing more and more work with the podcasters, of what I'm going to call the latent demand and sometimes the untapped influence, which, Howard, I would wager you have in spades given what we're talking about here, like you've really got that nailed.
One of the key pieces that I want you to consider as I answer this question is that honestly, Howard, you should probably be running a mastermind. You are already a mentor, you're already man of influence, you're already contributing to this community in powerful and amazing ways. But there's a whole bunch of other people who should too.
Here's how we go about the process. There are two ways in which people can actually dive fully into the process of running a mastermind. The first of which is an event that I quite literally just finished but it's coming back to Phoenix, by the way, June 1, 2, and 3 in 2018 and that's called Mastermind to Millions Live. It's basically a three-day training on how to position, how to launch and how to lead a mastermind.
Howard: Did you already pick the hotel, the conference space, you have all that?
Jay: We're at the Embassy Suite.
Howard: We have an annual meeting every year where these people talk to each other all day long on Dentaltown and all they know is your name is smiley face. They might know you're from Canada. They don't know who you are and they want to meet in the flesh.
Well, we have that annual meeting every year. It was in Las Vegas every year for the last fifteen years. Since I'm a selfish bastard and now have grandchildren, who want to go to Disney World, we're moving it from drinking and gambling in Vegas to Mickey Mouse in Orlando. That will be the next two Aprils. But that department has nothing to do in between those deals, so they put up little regional meetings and they put them up here.
But if you had your girl e-mail me Howard@Dentaltown.com, they might be able to help you with some co-marketing or help you with getting some dentists there, what you're talking about. Because I'm sure if some of these listeners here knew that it's going to be in Phoenix next June, will be wondering if anything comes of that. Then when you start that post on Dentaltown, you can say it's going to be there.
But there's thirty-eight hundred dentists just in Phoenix.
Jay: Seriously?
Howard: Yeah.
Jay: That's astounding.
Howard: Yeah. Well, then we'll get some dentists in there because like you say, a big passion of mine is to get these kids mentors because they can't come out of school deaf, dumb, and blind like I did. Their first four or five moves need to be at least a C grade or higher. They can't come out of school and their first five decisions be D's and F's. They need mentors.
Jay: There is no question about that.
Howard: Okay, so June 1, 2, 3, you're going to have a mastermind group at the Embassy Suites by the airport in Phoenix.
Jay: I assume. I don't know which one is which, but apparently it's a nice spot. Yes, there is that. The next piece is this is that if they want some complimentary resources, just to sort of feel the thing out, they can certainly go to MastermindToMillions.com they'll get a manual.
There's a sort of one time opportunity to do something called Mastermind Essentials, which is just a high level training about the six pillars of running a mastermind, which I'll share with you guys. Then I'll tell you how we do the rest of it. Is that they've got to have these six pillars in place. If these six pillars aren't in place, the truth is the mastermind can't work.
The first of which is perfect positioning. What is the promise of this mastermind? Is it a mastermind for other dentists? Is it a mastermind for business scaling? Is it a mastermind for driving sales? Is it a mastermind within the organization that actually helps the organization run more efficiently? All of those are masterminds that we've helped set up in those industries.
So perfect position. Then the next is this idea of personal evolution, of we've got to be the leader that people want to follow or we've got to be humble enough to bring together a group of people that we learn with and from that we are not sort of the guru, taking on that role because it gets in the way of true evolution of a mastermind.
The third is Fill Your Mastermind with Ease, how to put people in the chairs, the right people in the chairs to have this synergistic experience.
Those three modules are all about launching a mastermind. Then there's three that are important about keeping it running. The first of which is commitment because it's easy to say yes to something and then have the commitment fall. How to get commitment, how to reset commitment, and how to maintain commitment because that is one of these processes.
Then there's facilitating skills. How do we handle the small group management process because masterminds are filled with these crazy things called people, which take some management. Then a little bit of compelling content. What is the educational processes that are not going to turn it into group coaching or training but educational processes that move the group along with the promise of the group? That by the way might be to build a seven-figure dental practice. That would be a hell of a piece. Or it could be how to build a practice on your terms that pays off your debt in five years or less. Or it could be - you figure out what the promise of the mastermind is.
We teach people all of those pieces. Frankly, you can get the big picture overview. I think it's for as little as like 97 bucks so cheap, cheap. But if you want the full comprehensive training then we have this Launch Your Mastermind ninety-day boot camp. That is a $2,000 very comprehensive course complete with the contracts, the applications, the positioning worksheets, all those sorts of things, and a bunch of coaching for you to get really clear about what you're going to do and how you're going to do it, like the woman in Los Angeles who's launching the women dentist practice growing group.
Now 2000 bucks, whatever, small amount of money for an incredible skill. But let's talk about what people make out of these sorts of things.
I have a friend and a client. His name is Jay Rook. His mastermind, and just to be clear about this, we teach a process about how to fill a mastermind, which is like a little mini mastermind piece. Our sort of code name for it is Wine, Conversations and Cash because we hand select people we want to build relationships with, drink some wine, have some meaningful conversations that we step you through, and then if they're fit for the mastermind, then we talk to them further.
Jay went from fundamentally a standing start in the mastermind world to nine months later, he has about $110,000 in sales and virtually no costs. Please hear that. That's a really important part if you're running a practice. He runs simply two small groups of entrepreneurs who are interested in both building a life and scaling a business. That's one example.
I'm thinking of another dear friend of mine, who runs a mastermind that is aimed at women specifically. Hers is more of a chapter two of a woman's life, so kids are gone, reinventing self, all of those pieces. Sandra runs two mastermind groups, generally both seven people each. Those people are in for $7,000 plus or minus, so she's at $50,000 per mastermind. Again, she's got a retreat in there, so there's a little bit of cost, but highly, highly profitable.
Here's the key piece to this is that depending on the positioning and the promise of the mastermind, you could do something for as little as $97 a month. You could do something like I have a program that I charge $100,000 a year for. That is the seven-figure business breakthrough. It's aimed at, generally speaking, coaches and entrepreneurs who are doing three-hundred to six-hundred, that have hit that plateau. I just hold their hand all the way past seven figures. Now, interesting thing on mine, I guarantee it. You either break seven figures or you have your money back. Super simple.
It really depends on the promise, but the honest to god truth is I don't think that any person of influence, meaning that if you have a dental practice, if you have people who are counting on you, if you have a community around you, if you've been doing something right within your practice, that should add six figures to the bottom line.
I have a chiropractor in the midst of doing it right now. I think that he's just a hair under one-hundred right now, but he's pretty darn new. A year of work around this, it's six figures to your bottom line.
Howard: How many dentist mastermind groups do you have right now?
Jay: Only one.
Howard: And that's that woman dentist
Jay: Yes.
Howard: Did you share her name or is she below the radar?
Jay: I don't have her agreement to do so. That's one of those pieces I just can't say. I would love to get it and I'll post it in Dentaltown, but I don't want to do something that is untoward.
Howard: Yeah, and have her email me. But I'll tell you what, there are some people who took mastermind groups, it was their whole key to success. There's one in Arizona, that Joe Polish guy. Have you heard of him?
Jay: Polish, yes. He was a carpet cleaner for Christ's sake and now makes like mid-seven figures running masterminds. He's a smart dude.
Howard: Yeah, I've met him and I've talked to him and he has people that come down, what is it - Abdul, that singer Abdula.
Jay: Yeah, Paula.
Howard: Paula Abdul. This can be a business bigger than owning a large group practice.
Jay: Oh, hell yes. And just to be clear about this, is that when he started the masterminds, the masterminds were aimed at carpet cleaners trying to scale their business and learn best practices from one another. That's how he started. Now it has grown into something far, far more significant than that.
But the truth of the matter is this, and here's where I think the big opportunity is for people who are in the dental realm is that you spend a significant number of years and a hell of a lot of money to become a qualified doctor to take care of people, yahoo, but that doesn't scratch the surface of what it means to run a business, what it means to actually acquire a client, what it means to read a P&L sheet properly, what it means to position marketing, what it means to communicate deeply so that we get a yes to that work.
That's where this game is won or lost and that is where I think any one of you who has some experience and some skill can bring tremendous value to the tribe and to the community of doctors because honest to goodness with margins getting tighter, with more competition entering the fray, we've got to get smarter at the actual business of dentistry, not just the technical skills.
Howard: Mastermind, I want to see a couple of other things about that. What I did thirty years ago when I got to school, which would be called guerrilla marketing before anybody ever said guerrilla marketing, I moved out here, Ahwatukee. It's Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix is a weird deal, but it has a park that goes from Forty-Eight Street to Fifty-First Avenue. It's a hundred blocks long. Phoenix is the largest state capital of any of the fifty states. The city of Phoenix has one point four million. It's the largest state capital.
But this little sliver behind this Mountain Park between the Mountain - it's the largest city park in all of America. It's like several times bigger than Central Park in Manhattan. It's the largest park. But there's just a little sliver of Phoenix between this South Mountain Park and the Indian reservation, where there is just eighty-thousand people down here. It's technically Phoenix but everybody down here calls it Ahwatukee because it was called Ahwatukee before Phoenix annexed it.
But anyway, long story short, when I opened up my practice, I went door to door on Saturday and Sunday and knocked on every single door and shook their hand like I was running for mayor of the city council. Probably two out of three people thought, well, that's kind of weird/strange, a solicitor at my door.
One out of three would actually stand there and pull back their mouth and show me their broken tooth. I'd pull out my gloves. I had a flashlight and a mirror. Then in my backpack I had my scheduling, which had no patients in it, so every time I'd pull out my schedule and I'd say, “Well, Jay Fiset, when do you want to come in? I have an opening twenty-four hours a day until the end of time. Does any of that work for you?
I would not stop Saturday night or Sunday night until the next week, Monday through Sunday seven AM to seven PM, every new patient had an hour and a half to come in with me and Jan and do that. It was just hustling.
Jay: I've got to stop you, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't think that's hustling because I have a little rub with what I think some people call the hustle. That was you were building relationships. You were being proactive enough to go to somebody's home, to actually put yourself out there to build the foundation of a relationship.
You were working hard. Make no mistake about it. But there's a difference between what I think the busy work of what most people call hustle and the strategy, and the connection, and the relationships that you build that filled your practice. Those are two different things.
Howard: Yeah. But I want to tell you another thing I did. You said building relations. My old man's advice, he said, "Howie, get out there. You're running for mayor. You're a twenty-five-year-old dentist. Just get out there and run for mayor.
But the other thing I did, which is kind of a mastermind and I did it back then and I even do it now. When I got my first computer and I got Microsoft Outlook and everything, I entered the name and business of every single doctor, physician, chiropractor, pharmacist, the lady who owns the workout place. What is that one workout place? Crossfit. The gym. Across the street from me is Greulich's auto mechanic.
I invited every single one of those people to my house for dinner. Do you want to go to a restaurant? I prefer you come to my house. That was a mastermind group because when I was twenty-five and these fifty-year-old physicians would come to my house for dinner. He sat down and told me the story about Ahwatukee and how it works and this and that.
I did it with psychologists and psychiatrists. Those psychologists come to the house and by the end of dinner they'd say, "Well, I actually have patients that have told me that they need to go to the dentist and they can't because they're too afraid." And then I said, "Well, last night I had the pharmacist over, Brad, and his wife and what medications do you think?" It was always your network equals your net worth.
There are kids that go to a town and the dentist will work there thirty years and retire and half the town didn't know he ever lived. It's mastermind. Getting with people, going through your journey, sharing, and being humble enough to not walk out of law school and say, "I just graduated from Harvard Law School. I know everything known to man," That kid is going nowhere. It's the kid that comes out of law school and says, "I just got out of legal kindergarten.
The kid that comes out a dental school and comes up to you, "Yeah, so I graduated in the top five in my class and I was accepted to this GPR," of who gives a shit. That guy never makes it. It's the humble guy who's going to get out there and hustle.
Then when he gets to town he thinks he's a dentist and all that, so why would he invite the auto mechanic across the street for dinner at his house. Why would he invite the pharmacist when he's a doctor and this guy is just a pharmacist? It was networking with every one of those businesses.
I literally can say that thirty years ago and today you can't walk in the zip code of 85044 Ahwatukee and go to the owner and say, "Hey, have you ever heard of Howard Farran?" And they'll just crack up laughing and say, "Dude, I had dinner at his house. I've been to his home.
Then other things like so many times when I was leaving the Mexican restaurant, Macayo's, or leaving Bennys and you see sitting over there is that chiropractor and she's with her husband or whatever the hell and you call the waitress over and pick up their tab. I learned that from when I got my MBA when they were talking about that book "Influence." Who was the guy who wrote that book?
Jay: Robert Cialdini.
Howard: He taught at ASU where I got my MBA. He's a teacher there.
Jay: Oh, fantastic.
Howard: He actually lives up the street. My dentist friend all the way from Creighton now, Tom (00:48:09 inaudible) and his wife knows him well. But he said we're social animals. If I give you a treat, you're hard wired to give me back a treat.
Jay: Reciprocity.
Howard: Reciprocity. That's why the insurance guy always wants to take you to lunch. Well, when you invite every single business owner in your city over to your house for dinner they want to reciprocate. I guarantee you the next time they ever hear someone say, "Do you recommend a dentist?" They're going to say Howard.
They don't want to hear that. They want to hear that well, they'll just put a Facebook ad up, they'll just tweet something on Twitter. Well, I'll just have them like my Facebook page. That's not a relationship.
Look at Facebook. The average person has one-hundred and forty friends but the average funeral is twenty-two people. A hundred and twenty of your friends on Facebook, they won't even go to your damn funeral. How good of a friend is it if he's not even going to go to your funeral.
They want to hide behind a smartphone, an iPhone, and a Facebook page. I'm old school, dude. I'm fifty-five years old. I've got grandchildren. I say get out and press the flesh, wine and dine, go to lunch with them, have them come to your house. That's part of being humble, that you can have the guy from - what's that auto place? Graylick?
Ryan: Greulich's.
Howard: Greulich's. You think to yourself, well, why would you have Greulich's auto mechanic come to your house for dinner. That dude fixes four-hundred and fifty cars a month you're telling me he's not network in this community. There are dentists listening to this that aren't going to see four-hundred and fifty patients this month.
Any time that engine light goes on - and your Canadian friends, they're the ones that left their cars in their garage. Guess what they're going to come back to after they left their house in April and come back in October and that car sat in the garage for six months. What do you think happened to the gasoline? How much of the water evaporated in the gasoline? How many of them do you think aren't going to start? The list goes on and on.
How many senior citizens need a dentist down here for half a year? How many of guys at your age don't need implants and bridges and partials and dentures?
It's all about networking. You're a social animal. You've got to get out. This Mastermind to Millions, that's a great idea. Again, I know guys who have made these ten million dollar companies so there is a business in it. And more importantly to your sacred sovereign profession, dentistry, you need to be pressing the flesh with other doctors.
I would think all of the specialists would want to start one of these up because their business instead of coming B to C, their business is all coming from dentists. I would think if you were an orthodontist and you started one of these for all the general dentists in your area that could be a great referral business.
Jay: Or if you had a lab. I've got to share a resource because you and I are brothers from another mother I think. One of the prime ways in which we teach people to build masterminds is something that we call Fill Your Mastermind with Ease, which is WCC, a Wine, Conversation and Cash event.
It is literally exactly what you have done for years, Howard, which is we specifically target and invite a group of people to our home to find out number one what are they working on, what their goals are, what support do they need, and to be able to provide both connections and relationships and resources to one another that are incredibly valuable. We do those things for free for the express purpose of building equity in the relationship, creating value, being known, developing intimacy.
For lots of people, you're right, today's world wants to hide behind the screen and the Facebook likes, but here's how I look at it. There's actually a four-stage process, which I think would apply to any business in the universe but we use it specifically for masterminds.
The first of which is to become relevant, to become relevant. The truth of the matter is the world keeps getting noisier and noisier and noisier and just because of clicking a goddamn like button does not mean you are relevant in any way shape or form. But how do you become relevant? That's question number one.
Then the next piece is a relationship. It doesn't hurt to invite somebody for dinner. Suddenly you're relevant. You're going to get fed and now we begin the foundation of a relationship.
Now, when we actually get close enough together, we can understand what somebody is working on, what are they trying to build, what are they excited about, how old are your grandkids, all of those pieces. When we begin to understand that, every single step of those, brings our influence up and as we go through relevance, relationship, intimacy, then we get to influence which is Cialdini's book, and by the way if you haven't read that everybody should.
Relevancy so getting the attention, so there's something that's important to me. Then relationship. After we have the relationship, we move that relationship up with intimacy. This is discovering more and more about what somebody is up to, how we can serve and support them, what's vitally significant to their heart, mind, and soul, what they want to create.
Then the last one is influence. Most of the time in today's world, and I'm going to pick on people who want to hide behind their computers, is that they confuse a Facebook like for influence. It is not the same. If you're going to get to influence then you've got to go through those steps.
That is just a huge component of what we do. By the way there's a twenty-two page manual stepping you exactly through the process of what we call these WCCs. If they want to go to our Facebook group, they can just get it for free. It's just a complementary resource. And that's just Mastermind to Millions community on Facebook. Complimentary resource. Just download the Fill Your Mastermind with Ease. You can just have it because every single person if you are attempting to build a business, should understand those four steps and be actively engaged in the process.
Howard: Dentaltown has fifty categories: root canals, fillings, crowns, one's practice management and one of the sub-forums is called practice management discussions or ideas to make your practice grow.
What I always tell dentists is I know what they're doing. They're listening to me and they're saying to get accepted into law school, med school, dental school, engineering school, any of that stuff, you're the introvert, shy geek who sat in the library studying calculus and geometry and all that stuff.
They're listening to this saying, well, that's just not me. I don't have the personality for it. Then I always say, "Dude, go Hollywood." These Hollywood actors, they can play a murderer, a love guy, a villain, a good guy.
There are so many introverts who when they get to work or they're going to their mastermind or they're calling up the chiropractor across the street who's advertising their treating migraines and TMG and all that, they just put on a Hollywood actor style. You can just turn into a Doc Hollywood. What was the doc? Doc Holliday. That was the most famous dentist of all time down here in Tucson, Arizona that shot a bunch of people in the O.K. Corral, so I didn't say Doc Holliday.
Jay: He was a dentist?
Howard: Yeah, he was a dentist from Georgia.
Jay: I did not know that.
Howard: Yeah. He's the most famous dentist in the world. I think he's more famous than G.V. Black or Pierre Fauchard. His tombstone is so cool. But yeah, he was a gangster dentist. You pretty much did what he said or he shot you. I stood in the O.K. Corral graveyard and there's like a whole row of bodies that he shot in one gunfight.
Don't turn into Doc Holliday but you can turn into Doc Hollywood. You can sit there and be the person who wines and dines and networks and drag your spouse with you, and get everybody pressing the flesh and all that stuff. Then when it's over, you can go home exhausted and pass out on your couch and read a book with your cat.
Just because you're an accountant or an engineer or a scientist or a dentist or a physician or a lawyer, obviously, if you went to school and you were well-rounded and you were in a fraternity, and you had a lover and all of that stuff, obviously you would have never made the grades to become anybody that's listening right now.
Me and my friends after class we'd go to the library, then we'd go eat at the cafeteria, then we'd go back to library. Every single night at Creighton, I'd hear the same thing every single night, ding 'the library will be closing in ten minutes.' Then you'd walk back to the dormitory and here is all those drunk, hedonism, playing pool and drinking beer, and sneaking girls into an all-Catholic male dorm, Swanson Hall.
Jay: Those Catholics.
Howard: Those guys never got into med school. You know what we called them? We called them forty-nine fifties because Creighton Dental School would get five-thousand applications and they'd accept fifty. So the forty-nine fifty that didn't get in, when we would see them getting drunk the night before the test with some hot babe (00:57:14 inaudible) we'd say well, it's forty-nine fifty. You can either be drunk tonight with a hot babe or you can be a dentist someday.
I got accepted at dental school and med school a year early. That's how nerdy, geeky, stupid I was.
Jay: Or smart.
Howard: I know my homies are listening. They're saying I don't have the personality for that. Well, you don't have the personally for Doc Holiday either. You're not a gangster murderer. You're not going to do that. Can you name an introvert movie star that would be a good example? Have you ever heard of some movie start that's introverted and shy?
Jay: Well, Woody Allen.
Howard: Woody Allen that's a strange dude. I don't want to use him.
Ryan: Mike Myers.
Howard: Ryan is telling me that Mike Myers is a shy, introvert, quiet guy and just comes alive on the scene. Yeah, Mike Myers. I love his films. He's a funny guy.
By the way, I've got to tell you, Canada is very different than the United States. I've lectured there I don't know, twenty - thirty times. I love Canada. But in Phoenix, Arizona - they're just nicer. They wave more. They're just nicer, more polite people. They're so amazing.
I also have one big plug for Canada. It wasn't in Calgary. It was Winnipeg that had the Human Rights Museum? Did you go to the Human Rights Museum? Last time I lectured in Winnipeg, they just spent half a billion dollars on a Human Rights Museum.
Jay: I've heard of it but I have not been there.
Howard: I went there and I even taped a podcast from there with a dentist that took me there. I thought that was the neatest Human Rights Museum.
When you think of human rights you think of American slavery, American Indian, the Holocaust. Everybody knows those big stories, but there were so many stories. Again, even at a weird level, like the thing that blew my mind the most was after I was born in 1968, there was this girl that every year would run the Boston Marathon but it was boys only. Here's these six fat Boston Irish cops with their belly bouncing, running down the street, trying to chase this little gazelle, then they body tackle her. She would go to jail every year, after year, after year before finally a bunch of men said, "Well why can't women run the Boston Marathon?”
Who was the last country yesterday to just to approve women to drive cars?
Jay: Yes, I heard. Isn't that crazy?
Howard: Saudi Arabia. You think of that and you think well, what the hell would they not let women drive cars for. Dude, I'm only fifty-five. When I was born women couldn't run in a Boston Marathon. The world is a race. It's a distribution. There's the first country that lets them drive and there's got to be a last country, but it's just amazing.
The reason I'm making this point to you is you don't realize, I know you're listening to this and you're under thirty, you just don't realize how many thoughts are in your head that are total bullshit. I've always told everyone that the biggest enemy in their life is those demons that live in your head telling yourself you can't do that. Or what if I own my own office, I might go bankrupt. Or what if I learn how to swim, I might drown.
You have so many self-limiting beliefs and it's a mentor. Just think of your favorite coach as a little kid. I didn't join any sports. I was too small for football, basketball. The only reason I joined wrestling is because the coach made me. I walked into high school and he said, "Hey, how much do you weigh?" I said, "Ninety-three." He goes, "You're going to join the wrestling team and wrestle ninety-eight because that's the hardest position to fill. I don't have anybody that little. It starts at this time. You're going to be there.
Here I grew up with five girls playing Barbie dolls. I was scared to death. I had to join a wrestling team. I wasn't even smart enough to know I could tell them to go fly a kite.
It was the biggest part of my high school life. All my greatest memories of high school were wrestling. Then I pass that on to my son. All four of my boys wrestled from age five to fifteen. They all did it year round for a decade. They are amazing wrestlers.
But the point is you need a mentor. You need someone that says, "Hey, you've got to start your own practice." Hey, you're going to do this. Hey you're going to go to a Pankey (01:01:24 inaudible). You need a mentor and hell, you might just make money off your mentor and start a mastermind group.
Jay Fiset thank you so much for taking so much valuable time out of your day to come on my show and talk to my homies. I truly appreciate it.
Jay: Howard, I really appreciate you as well. If I can just echo that one piece for dollars and cents that you'd asked earlier about, which is this the first time my business broke a million dollars in sales, I did it on my own. It took me fifteen years. Fifteen years to break a million in sales annually, obviously. It wasn't cumulative. But when I started opening myself up to be coached, the second time it took about three years. The fastest I've done it is three months all with the support of mentors and mastermind groups.
So if any of you are the Lone Ranger out there, for crying out loud listen to what Howard is saying and find the support that you need, hire the mentor that you need, create the group that you need because honest to god you're wasting time and money trying to figure it out on your own. It's been done before. Let people help.
Howard: Okay, you've got two homework assignments. You're going to go under practice management and post some links to this.
Jay: Absolutely.
Howard: Number two you're going to go next door to the province next to you and see that human rights museum. It will blow your mind. It's a half-billion-dollar museum. Blow your mind.
Jay: Yeah. It is on our list for next summer already as a matter of fact. We do big road trips.
Howard: Okay. Thank you so much. I hope you have a (01:02:54 inaudible) day.
Jay: Thank you Howard.