Unlocking Entrepreneurial Freedom: Jeremy Shapiro's Guide to Transitioning from Solopreneur to CEO

Unlock the secrets of transitioning from solopreneur to CEO in our illuminating conversation with Jeremy Shapiro, a successful entrepreneur and seasoned mentor. Jeremy takes us on his journey from high school side hustles to building thriving businesses, emphasizing the importance of shifting from a solo mindset to a CEO perspective. Learn about "entrepreneurial freedom" and how to build systems and teams that allow your business to flourish even in your absence.

Ever felt like no one can match your skill level or feared hiring someone who might become a competitor? Jeremy addresses these common fears and shares his own story of taking three months off for the birth of his child, underscoring the necessity of creating efficient systems and empowering a capable team. Understand how breaking free from a perfectionist mindset and embracing the strengths of others can lead to true freedom in your entrepreneurial journey.

Discover the transformative power of mastermind groups, a concept introduced by Napoleon Hill in "Think and Grow Rich," and how they bring together like-minded individuals to tackle business challenges. Jeremy shares success stories and actionable insights from his experiences, highlighting the importance of leadership, delegation, and continuous learning. Tune in for invaluable book recommendations and resources that have shaped Jeremy’s path, aimed at helping you achieve your business goals and thrive as a true business owner.

Explore the invaluable resources Jeremy Shapiro has curated for entrepreneurs like you. Whether you're looking to understand what happens during a mastermind hot seat, how to create your own mastermind group, or how to find the perfect mastermind group to join, Jeremy has you covered. Visit bayareamastermind.com to learn more and start your journey towards joining a community that feels like family. 

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

I am thrilled today to have Jeremy Sharpio on the podcast. Jeremy is a serial entrepreneur with a focus on SaaS, software as a service, technology and information marketing. In his role as a mentor and a coach to entrepreneurs, Jeremy has helped small business owners make the transition from solopreneur to business owner. That is an incredibly important distinction that many entrepreneurs can easily miss when working in their business instead of on it. Through structured masterminding, one-on-one coaching and consulting work, Jeremy is able to uncover hidden opportunities within individual businesses that provide the maximum profit for the business owner. Jeremy, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for having me. This is great.

Intro / Outro: 0:51

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host. Author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:04

author and leadership and executive coach, Dr William Attaway. I would love, Andrew, for you to begin by sharing just a little bit of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. I'd love to start with you sharing just a bit of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Jeremy Shapiro: 1:31

Well, I started my first businesses really back in high school At the time. That was sort of you'd call them nowadays like side hustles, but really I was bringing on clients and building up a business. As that grew when I started university, while simultaneously growing my business, I found myself at this interesting crossroads. I've been hiring and building out my team and actually brought in my first real level of management so I can have someone to manage the team, work with clients and really expand the business while I was going to university. And the crossroads I got to was that I was about 40 hours a week in the business while also trying to pursue school.

Jeremy Shapiro: 2:08

So I made the rather bold and possibly unpopular decision of putting university on hold and, coming from a family of two educators, that wasn't the most popular decision, but my view was this is a little bump in business. Let me take care of the increase here and then get that moving while I return back to school. And my wife and I had met shortly after that time period and when I told her the same thing I just shared with you, in her mind she'll say she took one look at me and said yeah, this guy's not going back to school and here we are, decades later and you know what? She's still right. I haven't returned back, but really that business has parlayed into additional businesses and over the past 20 plus years I've been fortunate to not only have entrepreneurship be my entire career, but have all my businesses really be in the service of, and support of other entrepreneurs and business owners out there.

Dr. William Attaway: 3:02

I think that's fantastic. One of the things I read in the bio is something I'd like to dive into Helping people, helping business owners, move from a mindset of a solopreneur to what I call a CEO mindset, or what you described as a business owner. Yeah, you help people make that turn. This is a huge issue in the entrepreneurial community and this is where I see so many people make that turn. This is a huge issue in the entrepreneurial community and this is where I see so many people tripping up. Is this something that you struggled with personally and that's why you're so passionate about helping others, or is this something that you just see all around you and you want to dive in, to be part of the solution?

Jeremy Shapiro: 3:39

You know it's a bit of both. There's what I call entrepreneurial freedom and I found sometimes when I say entrepreneurial freedom, people hear financial freedom and sure, that's a piece of what entrepreneurial freedom is. But really entrepreneurial freedom is about optionality. It's freedom of time. It's choosing who you spend that time with and how you spend that time, whether that's with your family, whether that's reinvesting and building a business, whether that's launching new businesses, whether that's with your family, whether that's reinvesting and building a business, whether that's launching new businesses, whether that's in your community, pursuing hobbies, passions, whatever it is for you, when you find entrepreneurial freedom, you choose how to spend that time.

Jeremy Shapiro: 4:16

So many business owners, especially solopreneurs going out there and hanging a shingle and starting their own business, are really stuck in their business. They've built themselves a glorified prison and have a job with all the worst parts of a job and the worst parts of owning a business, whereas when you find entrepreneurial freedom, you get the best of all those worlds. So, yes, it's a journey I've taken and I've helped so many clients along as well, and really a big piece of that is getting past a few critical mindset shifts and building out the systems and the team to run those systems and when you've got that dialed in, the business becomes less reliant on you and you start to have really a true business that can run. And the litmus test that I like to use on this is close your eyes for a moment and imagine you step away from the business for a day or a week or a month or a few months. When you come back, is your business the same or better, or do you have a dumpster fire and you're out of business?

Jeremy Shapiro: 5:18

For many business owners so-called business owners that are truly solopreneurs or small business owners they actually would come back to find the business worse off than they left, and that's a good sign that you don't yet have a true business and that you're still self-employed and building towards a true business owner, whereas when you have the right systems and people and everything else in place, you can step away from the business. No one's saying you have to right, no's sending you off to a desert island for three months, but the idea is that you can, knowing your business can run successfully without you.

Dr. William Attaway: 5:54

That is a huge issue often with the clients that I coach. They have built a business. Many of them come out of the corporate arena, they start their own business, but all they do, like you say, is they replicate the system they just left. And then they're like why don't I love this life? I thought this would be so much better. And it takes holding up a mirror and saying, hey, do you realize that you just put the same systems in place and you created what you were trying to run away from?

Jeremy Shapiro: 6:25

There's a path.

Jeremy Shapiro: 6:26

If you've read for our listeners Michael Gerber's the E-Myth Revisited, great, foundational book, highly recommended, many of our Mastermind members live by that. One of the story he tells in there is about Sally who loves making pies, and Sally then decides to go out and build a business around this. But you see, when you take something you love doing or a trade that you have and you launch a business around that, you suddenly find yourself spending most of your time doing not the core business but all the business-y things that all businesses have Sales, marketing, bookkeeping, managing, hiring, training all those things, which is not the thing you set out to do. You wanted to go pursue that passion, that interest, that expertise that you have. So if you work within a business and you just had to strike out on your own, that's great. But recognize, for that business to grow and not just be a glorified job, you're going to need to have it be more than just you. You'll need the systems and the people in place to help you to get that freedom back that comes with having a business.

Dr. William Attaway: 7:30

When you talk about this and you share these concepts with people, do you find people resonate and they agree with you, or do you get any pushback on this?

Jeremy Shapiro: 7:38

Yeah, when I'm talking to solopreneurs, meaning someone who the entire business is just them, that's where I typically see the most pushback, because there's still a few critical mindset blocks. Right. Once you've gotten over that hump of hiring one and maybe two people, things get easier with repetition, whether that's going to the gym, trying out a new diet, waking up earlier, whatever it is in life, right, the first time it can be tough. The second, third, fourth and twelfth is where it starts to get a little easier. All right. So when you're hiring, getting to that first person can be tough.

Jeremy Shapiro: 8:09

One thing that I often hear from solopreneurs, especially like in the service-based space, is that no one can do something as well as they can. Right, if the business is dependent upon your skill and you doing something, the business is your signature on it, your brand, your identity is wrapped up in this. And if you believe that nobody can do something as well as or better than you, then you've got a really self-limiting cage you've put around yourself. So recognize two important things there. One, there are people out there who can follow your systems and do things that you'd be proud to put your name on. And, as hard as it might be to believe there are folks out there who can probably do a better job than you and would much rather have a job and a paycheck from you than own their own business and take on all the challenges that can come with being a business owner. So that's one big shift is the perfectionist approach. The second big mindset shift that has to happen is this idea around hiring people who are going to steal all your ideas and compete against you. Right, this is sort of like one of those really small-minded, fear-based, you know, lizard brain things that comes up that like, look, it's built into us biologically but doesn't mean you have to be that way. Right, the scarcity mindset of there's only so much business out there and if you teach someone how to do it, they'll go and compete against you, is a really, really big self-limiting belief.

Jeremy Shapiro: 9:33

So recognize a few things here. One, most people aren't the select weirdos that you and I are that want to have a business. Many folks want the comfort that comes with a paycheck and benefits and the limit of nine to five responsibilities and being able to leave work at work and go home at the end of the day. Most folks want all the comforts that come with a job and have no interest in starting a business like you have. So don't worry about that.

Jeremy Shapiro: 10:02

The second thing to keep in mind is that if someone does go out there and they steal your Coke recipe to go launch Pepsi, it's probably not going to happen. But there's plenty of business out there, there's plenty of opportunities and just because they know how to do one piece of the business really well doesn't mean they know your entire business right. The person who goes out there and follows your system on how to flip burgers is not the person who knows how to go out there and run a burger business or run the marketing to bring in new customers or run the managing and training or anything else. So it's okay to let go what you've got up here in your head, put it into a system and train people up on it. That's how you grow and that's how you get towards entrepreneurial freedom. Even if there's a small risk of your competition being created from that, it's not a bad thing.

Dr. William Attaway: 10:51

I love your definition of freedom, the entrepreneurial freedom that people pursue. I think you're spot on. Most people think immediately financial, but I tend to broaden it, like you do, to location freedom and to time freedom, and when we were talking previously, you shared an illustration of this that I think a lot of our listeners would have a really hard time envisioning in their own businesses, unless they're farther down the road than we are.

Jeremy Shapiro: 11:37

That is that when you were getting ready to have kids, you and your wife, you planned to take some time off, but it wasn't just a few days, right, it wasn for myself. I've always had that flexibility of time location. We've lived around the world, we live where we want, and that's a wonderful, wonderful thing that we're really fortunate to have. But as we're looking to start our family, you know I knew I'd take some time off, but I hadn't really thought about what that looked like. I just figured, like you know, yeah, I'll work, I'll be a new dad, I'll do all those things. But around the three-month mark of the pregnancy, we decided to start sharing the news with everyone. I told my team about this exciting news that, hey, in six months I'm going to be a dad and I had an incredible team. You should always hire people smarter than you and more experienced than you and a bunch of the folks on my team were parents themselves, and so they immediately were excited for me and congratulatory and all. But the next question they had was how much time I'd be taking off, and I sort of had the same answer that I just shared with you of like I don't know. Like, I'll take some time off. I'll be around on and offline, we'll figure it out.

Jeremy Shapiro: 12:39

And thankfully I had wiser people around me. They said, no, no, no, Jeremy, you need to take, like, take a take like three months off. And I was like, oh wow, like you know, I could take three months off. And the next thing they shared with me is the punch list of what was needed. They said, all right, we've got six months. Here are the systems we need that we don't know, here are the people we need to hire and here's the stuff that only you know, that we need to know as well. And we knocked that list out. We got the people and the systems and everything in place, and so I was able to be truly offline, which means like not on emails, not on Slack, not on text, not on any of that stuff truly and fully offline for three months.

Jeremy Shapiro: 13:20

And a funny thing happened, by the way not only was I able to be like 100% present with my wife and our daughter and not worry about any plans for the next day, just being there and doing all those new dad and expanding family things from the business, you get ideas, things come to you and by the end of that, three months like it was a phenomenal time, but I was itching to get back in and start implementing these ideas that I had. That I wouldn't have had if I had my nose right in the business on the day to day and that only came from having that space and that headspace and that clarity and that time to think and to be and to not focus on the business it really impresses me that you don't just talk about helping entrepreneurs to develop this sense of freedom, but that you actually live that out and you stepped into that with no guarantees that when you came back, things were were going to be as strong or stronger yeah, it's, it's uh, you know, in of these things, it's a calculated risk.

Jeremy Shapiro: 14:36

I was very fortunate with how that worked out, but, like anything in life, there's not risk removal, there's risk mitigation. So you're looking to minimize that risk and maximize your chances for success. So look, was every system perfect? Was every person perfect? Was all of it perfect? No, but it was all close enough that we're able to see success. And this is something that, when my son was born a few years later, I was able to do again, which was wonderful. Even though we had different team members and new business lines and things like that that came up, we were still set up to do that. And then, furthermore, this is something that our mastermind members have done over and over, again and again, sometimes by choice and sometimes not. So I'll share with you one quick story.

Jeremy Shapiro: 15:28

One of our members was a solopreneur, had a business that he was running and it was important to him, since his name is on this business and on this product and all of his customers know him because he's a solopreneur. There was this feeling of necessity to always be around and available to customers, which is noble, and I applaud that. It's important to take pride in your work and support your customers, which is noble and I applaud that. It's important to take pride in your work and support your customers. But this also meant that he wasn't able to get away from the business and one of his passions was riding mountain bikes and being in the outdoors, which wouldn't, you know, there's not much cell phone coverage where you do those things and so he wasn't doing the things. That brought him health and wellness, was good for his mental headspace and really took care of him as a person because he needed to be by the phone. So the first step that big hurdle we talked about, getting that first hire in place for him was a customer support person. So during business hours there was someone on the front lines able to be there and support his customers. This let him do the work on the business, work on growing the business, not worry about putting out fires and always being on watch for that. That reduced the stress. That let him get out to the outdoors and enjoy things more and have someone covering for him. So it was good for the business. Health, it was fantastic for his mental health, his physical health and everything simply by making that first hire, simply by making that first hire For other solopreneurs, that first hire is like a bookkeeper someone who's helping out with the books. Right, when we talk about hires, this doesn't always mean a 40-hour-a-week employee. This is sometimes contractors or outsourced professionals and so on. Right Another story, if you'll allow, on the other end of that is sometimes this choice isn't a choice.

Jeremy Shapiro: 17:12

One of our other members, ryan. He, had a business that was very dependent on him. He had hired a team he was doing like demolition work and so he was a general contractor and he had crews that would show up on the job sites and do stuff. But aside from that, he was the guy going out there writing estimates, doing quotes, showing up at the job site every morning to make sure his guys clock in on time and got to work for the day. So he was the foreman and all this. But he was everything in the business but some of the physical labor.

Jeremy Shapiro: 17:39

Well, one day he's out in the job site talking to a client and hears some shouting and looks up to see one of the trailers with the bobcat in the back rolling down the hill towards him, and he looks up in time to see this thing hit him and not just crush his body but drag him leading down the street, bone sticking out. It was a whole mess. And so he ends up in the ER a complete wreck. And by the time he's in the recovery room post-surgery and everything else and he comes to, he looks around and sees he's out of surgery and then his next thought is like, oh my gosh, the business.

Jeremy Shapiro: 18:14

So he had a few choices. He could just go out of business because it demanded his physicality and that was lost. Or he recognized that this is a business and starts to run it like a business, not dependent on just him. So he looked at what needed to get done and realized one of the things was being the foreman on the job site with the guys in the morning. So he found a mobile app that his team could have on their phones where they could sign in and clock in on location, geotagged to where they were and timestamped that they were at the job site and at what time. So that was taken care of. He then hired someone to get out there and do the onsite estimates and created a system for that, and so now he had someone running the sales side of it. He had technology helping out with the job site part of it, and he started creating the systems and hiring the people.

Jeremy Shapiro: 19:03

And two interesting things happened on this.

Jeremy Shapiro: 19:07

One is that his business was growing and the profitability was going up. One is that his business was growing and the profitability was going up and two, the number of Ryan hours he was putting in was going down. So when you look at the ROI as a business owner for the time he's putting in and the profits coming out, both the numerator and denominator in that equation got better. There were fewer hours and more profits. Which is a really interesting thing with the right systems and the right people is the business can grow and not block on you.

Jeremy Shapiro: 19:36

Now that first example that I shared with you, that was creating systems by choice. In the second story there with Ryan that was circumstance demanded that he replace himself in the business. So my question to you, our dear listeners, is which would you rather? Have the choice and create the systems because you want to or to have life come at you unplanned and unexpected and be forced to choose shutting down the business or creating the systems and hiring at that point, so it's a fantastic question, and these stories come out of the mastermind that you facilitate.

Dr. William Attaway: 20:15

I'm curious. We hear this word a lot mastermind. Where did that concept originate, and do you think that it's something that is used consistently in all the different iterations of it?

Jeremy Shapiro: 20:27

in all the different iterations of it. Oh, I love the second part of your question. So in terms of where this comes from, napoleon Hill, you probably know him from the book Think and Grow Rich. He wrote a number of other books on laws of success and so on, but one of his most well-known works was Think and Grow Rich and in that chapter 10 is called the Power of the Mastermind, the Driving Force, the Ninth Step Towards Riches the Power of the Mastermind, the Driving Force, the Ninth Step Towards Riches right Now. This book came out in 1938.

Jeremy Shapiro: 20:53

So you know, we're almost 100 years ago now that this book came out, but the concept stays the same of how he defines a mastermind and in his words again, this is a little dated, so bear with me, but a mastermind is the coordination of knowledge and effort in a spirit of harmony between two or more people for the attainment of a definite purpose. Okay, so what does that mean? The way we use masterminds nowadays is we get a group of like-minded individuals together in the room and we spend the day working on our businesses and we facilitate hot seats, and so each participant in the group has a chance to focus on them and their business where they talk about what's been going on over the past month, what's working, what's not working and where they need help. And what you get is this collection of minds who are able to help you overcome any challenges you're facing, and you get this collection of minds in the room that you learn from and benefit from. So with our Bay Area Mastermind, we actually have a test drive process. So that way, for folks who are curious what a mastermind group is like, instead of just signing up sight unseen for something which would be bad business, you get a chance to try something out to see if it's a fit, and the group gets to see if you're a fit.

Jeremy Shapiro: 22:06

Now people come into the room with what they know. They know this is like their area of expertise. So the thing that their superpower right. They might be like incredible at marketing or amazing at hiring, or like a ninja when it comes to operations. Right, there's something, some part of business they're like really good at. There's other areas where they have challenges and this usually takes the form of a big question. So there's like that question keeping them up at night that, oh my gosh, if only they found the answer to would make a difference in their business. So they come into the room with that big question. That's the thing they know that they don't know. But all the big opportunities, all those big ahas, those true business pivots that we see time and time again in our mastermind group come from that third category. It's the things you don't know, that you don't know. So when you're sitting there and everyone else has their hot seat and they're sharing what's going on in their business, that's where you see people perk up that inquisitive eyebrow, raise that smile, sneak across the face that light bulb aha moment as they start scribbling notes down on their paper. And keep in mind, these aren't like one-way broadcast presentations, this is an interactive conversation during the mastermind. So when somebody else is sharing what's going on in their business, if that's an aha moment for you, you get a chance to dig a little deeper. So when someone's sharing a marketing campaign they're running that's been growing their business, you get to ask about that new channel that you don't have in your business. So I'll share with you a great example of like this kind of cross-pollination that I love. Right?

Jeremy Shapiro: 23:36

We have an e-commerce business in the room who is hearing from a retail store, a brick and mortar retail store, the brick and mortar retail store, is talking about how they use direct mail in their business. They do list purchases, they create mailers, they send them out. Customers then buy stuff. Right, if you do direct mail, this is easy peasy. If you've never done direct mail, that's kind of eye-opening. So the e-commerce business gets to ask questions and dig further into that about like, well, what mail house do you use and where do you buy your lists? And how do you know what lists to buy? And do you use a postcard, a letter, a box? Like what do you actually send out? What kind of offers work? Well, where do you drive them? How do you track them? And they get to dive deep into a whole channel they've done nothing on because they've never been exposed to it before. Right. And so then over the next month accountability is really important in our mastermind groups that e-commerce business starts working with a list broker, puts direct mail in place, sends a direct mail campaign out and actually gets results and reports back on that the month later.

Jeremy Shapiro: 24:37

And then, on the flip side, this retail brick and mortar store owner, who's used to people walking into the shop buying things at the register, is hearing from this e-commerce business about how they have an email list and they send out email and every time they send out email, people click and buy things and they look at things like open rates, click-through rates, earnings per click and all these things that, if you have an econ business, is like your KPIs you look at all the time.

Jeremy Shapiro: 25:04

And when you have a retail store not doing anything online like that, this is a whole new world you knew nothing about. And so that retail store owner gets answers to all those questions and over the next month, starts asking customers at the counter for their email address, starts offering a VIP rewards program, starts sending out emails and starts getting new sales by people clicking on the links in their email and buying online or coming into the store. And so suddenly you have members adding entirely new sales and marketing channels to their business that they knew nothing about. And they got to ask people who are doing this the questions they need so they can start implementing it in their business as well. It's so cool to see those aha magic moments in the room, those aha magic moments in the room.

Dr. William Attaway: 25:49

Do you find that people will enter that type of an environment feeling stuck or stalled out in some area of their business or some area of their idea, their vision? Yeah, is this a way to get them unstuck?

Jeremy Shapiro: 26:05

Yeah. So typically what we see in business is growth happens in S-curves, right, yeah, you're sort of slowly growing, slow growth or flatline, and then boom, you hit some inflection point and you get the proverbial hockey stick. But, like, the thing no one wants to talk about is that hockey stick doesn't just go to the moon, right, like that levels out at some point and plateaus again. So your goal in business, here one of your goals is to stack those S's. So before one starts to level off and plateau, you're riding that next one up. But that takes careful strategic planning, getting exposure to things you didn't know existed, so you can plan them out, put them in place and do them right. So people typically come to us because they're at one of those plateaus and they're feeling stuck. They've had some success in the past already, right? People coming to us aren't just thinking about a business. They have some traction already, but they're typically plateaued or stuck and they want to get unstuck. And so by getting exposure to those other ideas, that gives you those S's. You can start to stack, because you can look at new channels, new business ideas, new approaches to solving the problem you'd never considered, and so on.

Jeremy Shapiro: 27:16

We had one business owner who had a very traditional software business right, they did old school, like software licensing you have on-premise software, you install and you buy a license to it. It's a great model. It's worked successfully forever right. But this had a few wrinkles. One was each year you had to send out new contracts and then wait for those to get reviewed and approved and then a PO created and the invoice and the payment coming through and so sales was constantly going back to existing customers asking for money and new contracts all the time. It also was challenging to support. It was challenging to onboard and came with a whole bunch of sort of a technical debt and legacy problems that were there. But it was a successful, growing business nonetheless. But facing some plateaus.

Jeremy Shapiro: 28:00

From conversations in the room, the idea came up of putting together a software as a service business. What we now know it is is commonplace. You sign up online for something self-service on your own, you plug your credit card in, you're off and running. It doesn't involve a salesperson, doesn't need to. It doesn't involve any in-depth training in an onboarding team. It doesn't involve accounting or invoicing or any of all these other things. It was a whole new business model. It's also an entirely new software stack and, in fact, an entirely new company.

Jeremy Shapiro: 28:30

And so what this founder was able to do was start a second company from a pivot that came from the conversations in the mastermind group and seen the success of others who are building similar SaaS businesses. That new business doubled year over year over year, while the other business stayed plateaued and, in fact, started to take that nosedive as customers migrated, moved and everything else. So you have one idea that comes up that gets you unstuck, coming in with this frustration of a plateaued business, and what came out was an entirely new business launched. And we have tons of stories around new businesses being launched by our members, because most everyone, if they weren't a serial entrepreneur when they came in, usually end up being a serial entrepreneur Launching a new business to fill a gap in the marketplace, launching a new business that fills a gap that that business owner had in their own business right and creating something entirely new within their business a new channel, a new product, new service and so on.

Dr. William Attaway: 29:32

You know, I think this really highlights what I think is a flaw amongst the mindset of so many entrepreneurs that they think they can do it all alone, that they think they can just, you know, like I don't need anybody else, I can just do that, I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. How many times have you heard that?

Jeremy Shapiro: 29:52

So many, I mean part of the reason that you got into business. For most people is they're a problem solver. Where others see problems, entrepreneurs see opportunities. Yes, and not only do they see the opportunity, they have the guts to get out there and do something about it. So yeah, that's in our DNA. As entrepreneurs, we're problem solvers. So, yeah, that can also be weaponized and used incorrectly in the business, assuming I can take it all on my back and I can do everything myself, which goes back to some of that flawed thinking. Like my blood pressure went up when you said that like, oh, I can do all of it right and and yet it's so prevalent.

Dr. William Attaway: 30:33

But, I think what you're describing and the value of the mastermind is that you don't have to figure it all out. No, In a community of people who are for one another and encouraging each other and helping one another to think thoughts they haven't had yet, to see things they haven't seen yet, that you're actually going to help one another to go farther than you ever would on your own. Well, as an entrepreneur, faster right.

Jeremy Shapiro: 31:00

Absolutely On the faster side, but also, just, you increase the possibility we're talking about risk mitigation before you can also stack the odds in your favor for success, right, and a mastermind is one of those tools that can help you to do that. And like, look as an entrepreneur. Mastermind is one of those tools that can help you to do that. And like, look as an entrepreneur, it's lonely at the top, right, who do you get to talk to about the challenges and the wins and the successes that come along with being a business owner? Right? Like are these conversations you're comfortable having with your employee, family, friends, vendors, customers right? You want to share all the big wins. That can be an awkward conversation. You want to share all the big wins? That can be an awkward conversation. You want to share all the big challenges you have. Like, that typically doesn't go well, so instead you just pile it on your back and you say, yeah, you know I can do that, I can do it all, but that's a big burden, right, and it's lonely. So when you surround yourself with like-minded individuals, they can be there and celebrate the successes with you and celebrate your wins.

Jeremy Shapiro: 31:54

Right, you know, when you're able to share about an incredible vacation you just came back from and how you got to unplug and what a tremendous time you had in this luxury thing you just got to do.

Jeremy Shapiro: 32:05

It's not bragging right. You get to share and people you know can give you the travel tips and provide you know that kudos for like good for you, for getting away and enjoying it Like you deserve it, like you've earned it. Well done, because they've seen how hard you've worked and they've seen the blood, sweat and tears you've put in and they can acknowledge it and appreciate it. And when you've got like a really big problem or challenge and like we've seen some rather big problems and challenges and you don't know where else to go to talk about it, you quickly find out that you're not alone and you find resources and support right in the room from others who can provide the context for who you should talk to that can help you through whatever the challenge is, who can provide you their stories and their expertise from when they went through the exact same thing but maybe didn't want to talk about it. And here's that safe space where you can talk with other entrepreneurs and really share in that journey and both the fruits and also the labor of it.

Dr. William Attaway: 33:02

So let me ask you this like your business is going to need you to lead at a different level a year from now, three years from now, five years from now, and you have to constantly stay on top of your game. You have to level up with new leadership skills. How are you doing that?

Jeremy Shapiro: 33:23

Well, one of the beautiful things about being part of a mastermind group is you're surrounded by individuals who've been there and done that. So for me, I get to connect with business owners who have created much larger businesses than mine and I use that term you can define larger or successful, however you like right as well as helping out others along the way. But what I find is, everyone has those superpowers, those areas of expertise and those areas of weakness, and so we're able to level each other up, and so there are certainly people who I'd look to who are much better leaders than I am, and those are the resources where I learned from, and you'll also find that even the best coaches and consultants out there typically a little insider secret usually have their own coaches and consultants too, too. So for me, I have business coaches and consultants that I work with and have for decades, and these are the people in my back pocket who I get to reach out to to help me level up and help me be a better leader, help me to run a better business, help hold me accountable, and so on. So surround yourself with like-minded individuals who want nothing but the best for you and be willing to invest in that.

Jeremy Shapiro: 34:39

And when I say invest in that, I don't just mean writing a check for it or putting a credit card down. I mean like investing the time, because there's a big difference between showing up for a mastermind meeting or showing up for a coaching call and hearing things and then actually implementing it. I was at a conference a number of years ago and the person running it said something that I loved and the visual always sticks with me to this day. He's like look, you can take all your notes and all your best intentions and all your excitement and enthusiasm and we can put you in the corner of the room in your chair with all of that and a year from now we come back and check on you. The only difference is maybe you'll be covered in cobwebs. Like difference is maybe you'll be covered in cobwebs. The ideas don't do anything. It's the implementation of the ideas which is the game changer. So invest in yourself and put the time in, not just to be somewhere, like at a mastermind or on a coaching call, but then put the time in to actually go back to those notes, action those items and get stuff done.

Jeremy Shapiro: 35:36

There was um, one of the best illustrations I have of this that I love is there was, um, there was a mastermind group that I was part of, uh, for quite a long time. That was one of like those really high end groups, you know, the kinds of groups where you write like a five to six figure check a year just to be in a room with a few folks a few times a year, right. And so sitting across the table from me was this one grizzled veteran of business who'd been around decades longer than I had and had all the outward measures of success but still showed up with an open mind and an open heart and asked questions and took great notes. But here's what I loved Every time we'd take a break between members' hot seats, he'd step out and again, this is a much older business person than I was would take those notes, hand it off to an assistant to fax, right Fax back to the office and he'd come back in with a clear notepad and an open space and an open mind and be ready to take on new things.

Jeremy Shapiro: 36:32

Meanwhile, while he's back in session, his office that received this was scrambling. They were tasking things out, they were speccing things out and it was all being delegated. So he went in his case, not taking the entire burden on himself. He got the ideas in, wrote it out enough that his team could run with it and start working on things and start the implementation. Then he could come back in with that open mind again and receive more ideas and then have the team go execute those. And I thought that was like such a brilliant example of not just leadership but also delegation and, most importantly, implementation.

Dr. William Attaway: 37:09

That's so good. Well, information alone never, ever yields transformation. Right, you have to act on it, you have to implement it, and I love that. I think that's so spot on. You're a continual learner. I mean, I think that's evident from anybody who spends more than five minutes with you. You're always learning and listening and growing. I'm curious Is there a book that has made a really big difference in your journey that you would recommend to everyone?

Jeremy Shapiro: 37:36

listening. There's a short list. In fact, I even have published I call it our Mastermind Master Reads. This is sort of the foundational group of books that, like everyone who joins our Mastermind, should have read or should start to read. Wow, beyond that, we have a list of, like our recommended reading on our website at bayareamastermindcom. I'm surrounded by bookshelves of books here, but it structure and getting you out of that technician role and into having a truly systematized business is a phenomenal introduction and a great parable about Sal Right. Second is Robert Kiyosaki's Cashflow Quadrant. He's the one that introduced that whole concept of moving from being an employee to self-employed right or solopreneurur, to cross that big chasm and becoming a business owner and then an investor right. That concept alone. I just gave you 80% of that, but like the book dives deeper into that. It's a fantastic framework.

Jeremy Shapiro: 38:46

Traction by Gina Wickman is outstanding. I heard forever about this idea of like you should have core values, you should have core values and I was always like, yes, I agree. And now how do we figure those out? And everyone would just like, yeah, yeah, go read books on core values. And like it was so unhelpful until I found Traction. Traction was the first book that gave me. I'm a tactics guy. I'm like, okay, what do I do? Point me and I'll get it done. Traction was the first book. That was like here's the meeting to have the questions, to ask the process to go through to figure it out, and I could share with you some other times for the journey we went on with that. But it was so, so powerful for figuring out mission, vision, purpose, core values and all that so good.

Jeremy Shapiro: 39:27

Fourth is the goal. It's all around the theory of constraints and the way. I mean you can apply it in so many places in your business, um. But it's also one of those parables where you follow along with, like you know, your main character in the story and you're learning lessons along the way through their journey. So it's a very easy and enjoyable read, um. But the whole idea is of the theory of constraints as you find like where in your your in this case it's a manufacturing pipeline like where the bottleneck is. You fix that bottleneck and as soon as you do it uncovers the other bottlenecks and then you go fix that bottleneck and so on.

Jeremy Shapiro: 40:00

It's an iterative process. So I use this all the time with businesses when we're looking at their funnels. I ran a whole funnels workshop. That again bayareamastermindcom slash funnels. You can just go watch the video. It's posted there. There's nothing to buy. Just go watch the video, get the worksheets, it's great. But we use this iterative process to look at your funnel because step one is actually track your funnels and I don't just mean marketing, by the way. There's tons of funnels in your business, right, but we traditionally think marketing. So start actually tracking your numbers through your funnel. And then we apply this theory of constraints, that is, from the goal to the funnel, and we start fixing your worst converting part and as soon as we do something else, we'll raise its hand as the worst converting part. And we just keep iterating on this again and again and again. I could go on, but like that's a good short list for you, so good.

Dr. William Attaway: 40:53

I could go on, but that's a good short list for you so good. This has just been an astounding display of generosity, Jeremy. I got to tell you that you have shared so freely and so openly with our listeners. From what you've learned so far in your journey, I know they're going to want to stay connected with you and continue to learn from you. What is the best way for them to do that?

Jeremy Shapiro: 41:15

Yeah, you can find me and a lot of the stuff we're talking about the books, the articles with you and continue to learn from you.

Jeremy Shapiro: 41:19

What is the best way for them to do that?

Jeremy Shapiro: 41:20

Yeah, you can find me and a lot of the stuff we're talking about the books, the articles, the interviews, the workshops all that is freely available at bayareamastermindcom.

Jeremy Shapiro: 41:25

I also have up there great resources for you and we can put this in the show notes what happens during a mastermind hot seat, how to create a mastermind group if you want to do that, how to find a mastermind group and all those resources are available. And for anyone who's curious what our mastermind group is like, at the Bay Area Mastermind, like I shared earlier, we have that test drive process. It gives you a chance to invest in just one day and get a feel for what the group is like and for the group to get a feel for what you're like, and that way we can see if there's a fit and if a mastermind membership makes sense. Or, worst case, you meet some great business owners, some like-minded individuals, get answers to your questions and have a really great day with us. But best case and it's normally the case you find this is the family you've been looking for all along, and so all that is at bayareamastermindcom.

Dr. William Attaway: 42:10

So good, so good. Thank you so much for sharing so transparently and so openly today. Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Dr. William Attaway: 42:54

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader. I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Intro / Outro: 43:38

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.