Hey guys, welcome to electronic dance money, your number one business resource for making money as electronic musicians and producers.

Hey, what’s up everyone, welcome back to a brand new episode of electronic dance money. I’m your host, Kristen cassuto. And we’re back with a brand new episode. Hope you guys are all doing well. I’m hanging out, getting ready to actually go out to Chicago next week to go hang out with some friends. Um, some producers actually in a couple of my clients. So there’s anyone in the Chicago area that listens to this show that we’ll be hanging out and kind of free. Sometimes net sometime next week actually will technically know the episodes. I am already in Chicago. This episode’s coming out on the third. And I flew in on the second so if there’s anyone that wants to hang out, that listens to this podcast, and they happen to listen to it on Friday or Saturday, hit me up possibly even Sunday, just shoot me an email, go to my website Envious audio.com, shoot me an email Christian at Envious audio.com. Or go to the Facebook group. You can join the Facebook group and you can literally tag me there. So if you free not doing anything you want to hang out, have some fun, let me know. I’m going to be hanging out with some friends. And I think we’re actually even DJing on like Friday or Saturday night. Oh no, but you want to hang out, come on over. And we can we can chill either go get dinner, whatever. But let’s get into today’s episode. Where are we going to be talking about? Well, we’re going to be talking about mastermind groups. What the hell is a mastermind group mastermind group is one of the most powerful tools that you can utilize as just pure human being it kind of Yeah, some, I guess, a little bit of networking is involved with it in terms of like, you can add people to your network with a mastermind group. But that’s not what it’s all about. It’s a group of people who are involved in either a similar hobby or similar business where they meet up either weekly, bi weekly, monthly doesn’t matter. And you kind of discuss what you’ve got going on what you’re working on what your goals are, if you’re if you’re working towards your goals, it’s partially an accountability group of other like minded individuals in a field that you’re in, so that you can help each other out. So mastermind groups can be extremely, extremely powerful. In terms of like, if you’re stuck on a problem, you might know someone that has a solution to your problem within that group. Or they might know someone that knows someone. And it’s almost like a mentorship group where everyone stays on top of each other, you help each other out, you mentor each other. And the accountability thing is very important. So we’re gonna kind of break into the different the different aspects of creating a mastermind group or when you’re joining a mastermind group. But first, let’s keep discussing the idea of a mastermind group and why it can be extremely, extremely powerful. So think about if, and this might potentially even be you right now. And I actually made a post in the Facebook group today talking about asking other producers, why they may not be networking or connecting with other producers and had a few questions involved with that. Because I noticed with a lot of even my clients, they don’t know a lot of other producers, which I thought was really interesting. And so if a majority of my clients don’t know many other producers other than the ones that I kind of connect with each other, then there’s probably 1000s more producers like high majority of other producers don’t really know other producers, which I think is it’s weird, like work community. Most of us are in groups of other communities. The Facebook group is a community of producers yet not a lot of producers interact with each other, which I think was really interesting think about if this is you then you kind of already know know the stick. But if not, if you do happen to know quite a few producers and you’re you’re really active but you’re probably more successful than those that are kind of running this game solo because think about if you’re running this game, so what are you doing? You’re restricting yourself to so much more. Right you’ve got someone who doesn’t want to network with other people doesn’t care to doesn’t think that anyone has any value to offer to that person and they decide to just work on their own music, do their own marketing try to get signed to their own record labels, right? I guess, you know, sending all their stuff into record labels, not they don’t know anyone that could potentially get them signed to a record label because they don’t talk to anyone. They’re just wanting to do everything themselves. We’ve talked about who these kinds of people are, it’s one of the reasons why I started this podcast because producers want to do it on B at all, they want to do it solo for some reason, like they want to build themselves up themselves, they want to get their own shows by connecting with their with promoters, but they hardly talk to anyone else. While they’re there. Like, they don’t do anything to connect with any people and so that there is so much weight in their, on their back, trying to carry themselves and so much weight on their shoulder and so much pressure on themselves, to make sure that they do the thing, and no one else needs to help them. That’s like, it’s that is bananas. It’s such a stupid way to go through trying to build a music career, because you’re holding yourself back so much. And you’re restricting yourself, and you’re not allowing yourself to grow and grow really fast. So compare that person to someone who knows quite a few people have been establishing relationships over the years with different people in the industry, whether it’s label managers, or promoters, or DJs, or producers or mixing engineers, mastering engineers, they’ve been kind of building this catalog of names and people who that they can, who they can rely on for help for different piece of pieces of advice, they can get technical advice, maybe they can get marketing advice, they can get record label advice, they can get advice for all of these things. And now, they have the roadmap, they know what to do, instead of the solo person who’s like, I have no fucking idea what I can what I need to do, I’m going to kind of just blindly walk through this and see if this works. I don’t know if it works, I have no one that can tell me and, you know, I spent 20 minutes searching for stuff on Google, but no one’s posted about this very specific question that I have. So you can’t get it answered, that’s a really tough situation to be in. And it’s going to come with a lot of growing pains and things are going to take so much longer. So when you can accumulate all these names, and these people who do these different things that are kind of on your same level, or maybe they’re just a little bit more further along than you. So they’re more reliable, and they have better answers

for you, that is so much more powerful on and is going to take you to to such such a better place rather than the the solo guy just trying to do it. All right, that’s what a mastermind group is for it’s, it’s a it’s a group of people can be anywhere from like four or five plus people.

however many you want in the group that are really in this, these don’t have to be other producers. But with most most of you guys, I would probably probably suggest getting like a mastermind group of producers because it can be very valuable. But if you have a group of these like minded producers who want to grind, they want to bust their ass they, they’re kind of going for the same goal. Well, now you’re creating kind of a close network of friends and relationships that you meet with regularly. And you can bounce ideas off of each other not just based off of feedback for music, but like Oh, hey, what promo did you do for your last track? Because you got X amount of plays or X amount of pre saves? Like what what did you do? What have you been doing for email marketing? What do you suggest I fix with? You know, some the copy on my, on my ads or on my posts? What hashtags Did you find that are that like, there’s so many questions to be answered, there’s so many things that other people could potentially be figuring out that you can kind of get the insider scoop for. And then additionally, you guys all you want to make sure you set goals within a mastermind group, we’re going to dive into the things involved with the mastermind group, and one of them is setting goals. So we’re going to, we’re going to talk about that. But when you set goals and you tell everyone your goals, and well now you have accountability people who can say okay, how’s the goal, this goal going okay, you have a date, this is the date your goal is supposed to be completed. So as that data is coming up, you can ask more questions about it, if they’re struggling with something, there’s, there’s a team of people there that can help you work through goals and figure out answers like building a close knit community like this is so powerful and can do so many things for you. And if if you’re in a close group that gets along with each other and truly helps each other out, all it takes is one of those people in that group to start blowing up and for them to help you out with even bigger things, right. And so, in a group like this, and I do suggest a small group, no more than 10 people because you can get, you can build stronger relationships and bonds with people. I would save them maybe even no more than eight but If everyone’s helping each other out and one person gets to a, like a decent stage or they, or they’re collaborating with bigger producers will now that’s a, that’s a huge opportunity for you, potentially down the road like you can create. So you can open up so many doors by just creating this one group of, or even joining one of like minded individuals that can really help each other out. Alright, so I’ve sold you on the idea of a mastermind group, you know why they’re powerful? You know, what a mastermind group is? Well, what the hell is involved in kind of the details of a mastermind group? What does that look like? And this is for those of you who want to create a mastermind group. And this is what I’ll, what I suggest for you guys to do. When you’re done listening to this episode, post in the Facebook group, see if anyone wants to join a mastermind group, and get some heads together to start collaborating. If you haven’t already joined the Facebook community, look up electronic dance money community join, make a post in there, get a group together and start connecting with other producers. Because I know there’s so many of you out there that are not connected with other producers. And for some reason you you won’t get connected with producers not i’m not sure why I don’t know if it’s either the fact that no one’s going out and connecting with people or you’re afraid to talk to people online, or I don’t know what the hell it is. But you got to be talking to other producers in getting in with people, like start building relationships, and mastermind groups are a very powerful way of doing that. Okay, so you’re sold on that you want to make a post in the Facebook group, but you don’t know what to really say, or how to put a mastermind group together. Okay, so let’s talk about that. Two things that you’re really actually there’s three things that you really need to consider when coming up with a mastermind group. One is going to be location, where are you located? Let’s say you’re in Washington State, for those of you who don’t know much about the United States, Washington State is in the Pacific Northwest. So it’s like the very northwest corner of the United States. And it is it’s bordering with Canada, let’s say you’re in the Pacific Northwest, well, you probably don’t want to get people involved in your mastermind group that are from India, right, the time difference is going to be wildly different. And it’s going to be really difficult to coordinate a solid time where you both can get together and in discuss things. So your location really needs to be a major factor in how this group is established, as well as time like, if you can all show up the same time, that’s going to be number two. So you’re in Washington State, someone in Oregon, California, anywhere in the Pacific Northwest is probably going to be a better fit for you maybe someone in you know the Mountain Standard Time, as well. But you want to make sure that you’re relatively close to each other, there’s not too much of a language barrier. And that you can meet up at the same time, make sure those are that’s involved in your decision of who’s going to join and who’s not going to join the third thing that you really want to pay attention to as well. And this will probably be one of the most difficult parts of finding a good match mastermind group. And listen, I’ll tell you right now, it’s hard to find a good mastermind group, like really hard. One that like everyone gets along, everyone is just as driven as the next person, you guys can all get together at the same time. And you all have the same career level, right? You’re at the same stage or relatively the same state, that’s gonna be the most difficult part about putting this mastermind group together is that you’re kind of on the same level, let’s think about someone who’s headlining a major festival, right? They’re headlining Coachella or tomorrow land or EDC. They’re headlining those, those places. And you’re your producer, who just signed your first record on a record label, and you got 1000 streams on Spotify. And you’ve maybe played a couple of local shows that headliner and you probably do not belong in the same mastermind group, right? Because what, what value is that headliner going to get from you? In really, what value are you going to get from that headliner? Because they can’t just like start collaborating with you. They can’t just start signing, getting you signed to big labels that they can’t really do anything for you. So this is where in this goes for you, too. If you’re like, like, like Semi Pro, like you’re you’re starting to play more shows, you’re picking up regional shows, maybe you’re getting some decent record, label signings, and you’re on the up and up. Maybe the headliner might actually have some value to you.

And vice versa, right? There might be some value there, but the smaller guy probably still doesn’t have much value to get from you or you don’t have any value to get from that. So you need to think about where are you at in Your career and where other people, and are you guys going to mesh well, and do Is there an a value to trade between each other that this mastermind group makes sense, meeting up weekly makes sense or meeting a bi weekly makes sense, everyone needs to be getting some sort of value out of the mastermind group in order for it to work. And the best way to do that is like, is making sure that you guys are all kind of on the same level, again, you don’t need to be at the exact same spot, one person can be a little lower than you or a little above you. But there needs to be a trade off a value, whether you’re small or bigger, middle doesn’t matter. There needs to be some sort of trade, okay, so you have this idea of where you’re at, in your career, where you’re located, what time would work best for you, you’re, you made a post in, in the Facebook group, and you find five other or maybe maybe 433 to five other people who want to join the mastermind group that that time works for them, their realm, in the realm, relatively the same area as you in their career, in their life. And they’re, they’re down to do it sweet. So you guys make your first meeting, and you start putting things together. Now, meeting number one is going to be setting the rules of the mastermind group in this part is so important to get right the first time and make sure that everyone is on the same page. So that we all know that we’re dedicated and we’re not flaky. And this happens. So often people hear someone’s making a mastermind group, they say, I’m interested, that sounds cool. And they don’t even show up to the first fucking meeting. Why would you do that? Right? That makes no sense. So don’t be that person. If you if you’re not going to show up to the first one, then don’t say you want to join at all. And if someone doesn’t make it to the first one, kick them out, like if they can’t even make it to the first mastermind meeting, where you’re coming up with the rules of everything, then they’re not gonna they’re not gonna stick around for the whole thing. They came choke to the first one. So first thing you want to set up is figure out attendance? And what attendance looks like, how often are you going to meet up? Do you guys want to meet weekly, bi weekly, monthly, it’s probably best to start off maybe monthly, and then you can eventually move up to bi weekly and then weekly if that time comes. Or you just start adding in more people. So figure out your attendance, and then figure out the rules for that attendance. So how many meetings Can you miss before you’re booted from the group, because if someone’s in there, and they show up to every third meeting, well, no screw that, like you’re not helping anyone out, get out, they shouldn’t be there, especially if it’s like a monthly group, and they show up essentially, quarterly, no, get out. They shouldn’t be there. They’re not they’re wasting your guys’s time. So

make sure you figure out some sort of attendance. And you can again, you don’t need to be super strict on this stuff, you can be kind of loose, like, you can say, Well, if you no call no show for two sessions in a row, then you’re out. Obviously, if there’s an emergency that’s different, or there’s some sort of plan vacation like you can, you can put some wiggle room with these rules. But this is to make sure people are accountable to so when someone breaks a rule, stick by it, like everyone needs to stick by it, everyone’s agreeing to these rules. And this is essentially an accountability thing to make sure, like you’re staying on each other’s assets, you don’t want to get kicked out of the group to show up. Because you never know the kind of value you’re you’re going to get out of the group and you’re probably going to get a lot of value out of it. Alright, so we’ve set up the attendance rules, which is probably like the most important one and the biggest one. Now you want to figure out the layout and the structure of of everything who’s going to keep attendance because you want to make sure you keep attendance, who’s going to be hosting the meetings. In terms of like on zoom, where are you Where’s your central hub going to be is it going to be discord is it going to be slack is it going to be a Facebook group will be just Facebook instant messenger. And then you’ll also want to figure out who is going to be kind of tracking all the goals for everyone as well in terms of like keeping a sheet for where all the goals are. And all this stuff should be written down on some sort of Google Doc that you can share with everyone. Because once you have everything written down, you want everyone to sign it off. Again, this is for accountability stuff. When you put your signature on something, it solidifies this idea of you actually going to you’re actually going to stick to your word, you’re going to do this thing. Now obviously, the first hour or so of the meeting, the first meeting, meeting, maybe even the first 30 minutes you’ll everyone should probably introduce themselves talk about what they do in terms of production, what genre they’re in how long they’ve been working for, maybe something that they’re struggling with. But everyone should get to know each other and then you can kind of dive into setting up the rules of the mastermind group. Now once you’re done here, you’re Depending on how long you’re planning on meeting up for whether it’s an hour or two hours, you want to figure out if if you have enough time to stick around to start setting goals. Otherwise, that can be set up for like the second meeting. And you guys want to kind of work together and string up some ideas with some goals that you want to set up. And remember, we want to be smart about our goals. So we want to make sure that the goal that we’re setting is attainable, like we can actually achieve that goal, we have a time restriction on that goal when it needs to be completed and steps to actually achieving that goal as well. So once you have all these goals set up, and whoever your goalkeeper is no pun intended, but whoever your goalkeeper is, can kind of track all that stuff, put it into a file that is shared with everyone. And you can figure out okay, when are we going to update each other with goals is it going to be monthly is it going to be every meeting is again be every other meeting. And that may depend on the timeline of your goal. And again, we want to make sure that we’re all keeping each other accountable for that stuff. And so essentially after that, and once you have those first two meetings done, and you have the whole outline of everything, you guys each sign, the the, the the outline for the group, now you can start making action. So start meeting up, discuss what you’re working on stuff you’re struggling with. If you need feedback, or advice with anything, it’s essentially just a group of people who are being accountable with each other and helping each other out. There’s a great book called thinking Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It’s a pretty old book. It’s really, really old. It’s almost 100 years old. And it’s a very, very famous book and it got a lot of really good information in this book in one. One of the chapters is all about a mastermind group. And I can’t remember if it was Henry Ford No, I don’t think it was Henry Ford. It was it was Andrew Carnegie who had something like 50 people in a mastermind group that he had a lot of people in the steel industry for both Mark I think like producing steel and like marketing it or something. He had a bunch of people but Napoleon Hill talks about this and thinking grow rich and he actually sat down with Andrew Carnegie and talked about this stuff with him. So mastermind groups are an old thing. They’re an old idea they work they’ve been done forever by the most successful people. So I strongly suggest you check out thinking grow rich and I’ll have that link in the episode show notes for you at Envious Audio comm slash Episode 61. So go check it out, buy the book, read it, lots of value in it. But that’s it for today’s episode, guys. I know it’s a fairly short one, but it is a very valuable one with a lot of great information for you guys to set up.

Like I said, Go to the electronic dance money community on Facebook. Join it if you haven’t already. You want to start a mastermind group, make a post in there, see if you can get a group of people together and set something up. Other than that, head to Envious Audio comm slash Episode 61 for the show notes and I’ll see you guys next time. Take care