EP 66: The Whole Human Approach to High-Level Masterminds with Chris Williams
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Hey everybody, welcome back to the Acquire podcast from the Oddphonic Podcast Network and I'm your host Jenny Wright.

This podcast is all about marketing, list building, lead generation and launches. And it is all about you getting these essential business growth tactics to grow your business. So I'm a list build and lead generation specialist, as well as a fractional CMO. And I use these skills to try and help you get to where you want to be with your business. And I'm excited because we get to talk to Chris Williams today from Group Coach Nation. Hello, Chris.

What's up, everybody? Jenny's freaking awesome, right? Like, yay. Thank you for having me. I'm excited. I'm excited, too. So you are the founder of Group Coach Nation. You and I have known each other for a couple of years. I've had you on summits. I've been, you know, we've been all over. I actually got to meet you in person in January, which was lovely. It was great. It was so fun. And your whole thing is about group coaching and mastermind strategies for people who have, you know,

coaching programs, high-end coaching programs. And what I liked about you guys and what I've always enjoyed talking to you about is the sort of the rapid clarity and creating scalable programs. And you have this approach that I really want to get into, which is more like this whole human approach. So I want to ask you like the first question off, what is it? And can you tell us more about how you actually use it and how does it impact people?

Yeah, Jenny, I'm glad you brought this up. So for me, as a person who leads group coaching programs and masterminds of our own, I did this because I'm a whole human. Like it was important to not just be in a business model. You know, we're all entrepreneurs. We want more money, time, whatever. But we end up, I don't know, I want to say kind of sacrificing ourselves on the altar of having more free time and more freed up income. And I think that's a really good point.

And here's the weird thing that happens when you kill the sacred calf on the altar, the sacred calf can't grow up and do anything for you. So you got to get yourself off the altar and you got to actually build something that's really, really like impregnable.

important to you and centered around you, like your personality, your temperament, your communication style, your expertise. You're somebody unique. And there are lots of people out there who want to know how to do what you know how to do, if that's in business or personal life, whatever. Like you can help these people and you can help yourself at the same time. I think that's at the core for me.

Jenny, I hate to say it this way because I'm supposed to be like, we're all, we're all, oh, we're all here for everybody else. But let's be honest, we're entrepreneurs and we're doing something for ourselves. We're trying to help ourselves up and out while helping others up and out. Yeah. And you got to watch out for yourself too. How does this whole human approach, like where does that come from for you? Where did you sort of feel this and bring it into existence? Oh my gosh.

Like we go super deep here for everybody here listening. And I know you all have backstories. You've all had a childhood that's a certain way or an adult that's a certain way. You've got the ups and downs. We've all had the roller coasters and several books on the shelf of your life. You might not have chosen to pull off and read, but you had to. It's what life dealt you. So the whole human approach for me really came from me being honest at some point as an adult, like in my mid 30s.

Like, okay, I'm collapsing as a human. I'm not getting where I need to get to. And a lot's going on that's outside of entrepreneurship. And I was seeing a therapist and she really started helping me like own. Here's the stuff that I need to have in my life, like painting a picture of

What's the relationship set? Like what's the living situation set? Like what are the income factors? How much time do I need? Do I need to be at the park every day to go for a walk? What do I, what does Chris Williams need to be an awesome human? Like that I'm happy with. And then building a life and a business around that. And I, I think it's interesting, Jenny, that we talk about the whole human thing or how do we, how do we function as humans and how do we coach our clients as, as real people and,

It's really not that difficult. It's just, who are you? And let's start there. Yeah, we're business coaches, but who are you? Because the business is supposed to support you, not you support the business. It makes me think about the time that you and I got on a sales call and we knew it was going to be a sales call. We were talking about me joining your mastermind at the time. And I was sitting there waiting for you to kind of go into sales speech, but you didn't.

You were doing this. I mean, you were just trying to ask me questions about who I am and what was life like and how am I doing? And none of it was really related. Now, I'm a sales expert. I know the reason behind the questions. But I also knew there was a twofold thing to it. You actually were trying to get to know me as a human because I think you were trying to build a map.

Am I right? You're trying to build a map of like, what are the core things that I need to get out of a mastermind program if I was to participate in one? What are the core things that I need to do to create a mastermind if I was to create one?

And how would I want to approach teaching people or supporting people within that mastermind? Was that, am I on track with that? You're totally on track with that. And that there's two sides to this, Jenny. I mean, everybody listening in, I'm so glad you're here. Like, let's just be honest about all of this stuff, please. If I can just be really candid about this, no marketing, no sales, all the BS aside, we want clients like all of us as entrepreneurs, whatever coach consultant expert done for you, whatever you do, you want clients. Me too.

But we also want the right clients, which means that client has to fit what we can actually help them with. And they have to have a similar vibe that we have. There has to be a fit, right? A personality fit, lots of lots of fits. So I in asking you questions for your example, Jenny, and asking your questions and me getting to know you.

And that's really important to me and my team because we know what we can do. If you're a coach or consultant, you want to build a high ticket mastermind or group coaching program, we can show you how. We can help you do it. We'll do it with you. Whatever you need, right? That's our gig.

but there's only some kind of clients we want to work with. Yeah. There's only certain industries we want to work with. There's only certain personalities. And the flip side of that is, as a client, there's only a certain kind of coach you want to work with. There's only a certain kind of personality that jives with you and the way they teach, the way they structure. I think it's really important to let everybody go on a first date or two or three. Get to freaking know a person before you pop the question. You know, that's really, really important. Absolutely. With my higher ticket products,

I've adopted a minimum two call strategy because there, I think there's a lot to, for me to consider as bringing that person on as a client, but that person also to consider for bringing me on. So that first call is really about figuring out where the issues lie, what do they want to achieve? All those kinds of things.

If the conversation comes up to have the sales, you know, that sales conversation, great. But I usually, whatever it is, either the pricing, you know, the pricing conversations happens, that's great. But for the most part, I'll say, look, I'd really love to schedule a follow-up call with you and just follow up on this conversation and just continue the dialogue. Either I'm answering questions about the offer that I'm making, or I'm just making sure that you have everything you need to just like

you know, take the next step, however that looks for you, right? Just want to support. And that two-call process is a huge closing factor for me because it shows people that we're not just interested in the immediate sale. I want clients. I want sales. But I'm not going to sacrifice the right client. And does this come from you? I know for me, this comes from having made some really big mistakes and

and having some really big red flag clients that I should never have worked with. But also being able to identify the people that I really genuinely want to work with and the people I can genuinely help. Does that sort of... It so makes sense. Yeah. We've all had the relationships in our life, whatever genre, business, personal, whatever, who, ah, that wasn't the right person. And

And that's okay. Like, it's okay. That's humans. We're messy. Like, it just happens. And I hate to have a messy business, but...

Again, be honest with yourself, everybody. Give yourself some grace and space. Life's a little messy. Pick up where you are right now and figure out what's created that mess. And how do I build a process and a conversation and a set of questions and whatever that allows clarity to show up for you and your prospects? Believe it or not, it's easier to have sales conversations around that kind of clarity because there's no sales conversation to have at that point. It's clear. Actually, the sales conversation just takes care of itself.

I think so. So let's, I want to talk a bit a little about, so now I understand the whole human approach. Now I understand a little bit more about how you connect with people, which is great. Talk to me about why high level, like high level masterminds is the way that you chose to go. Like you could teach about anything. Like I've seen you talk about a whole bunch of different stuff. Why is the mastermind piece so key into what you want to teach and show people how to do?

It's what's changed my life. I think more than just about anything else that's both personal and professional. So for me, Jenny, I was forever a one-on-one coach consultant. I started as an entrepreneur when I was 11, cut people's grass, sold that business with three crews when I was 21. Okay. So I knew I liked entrepreneurism. Then I got into financial planning and advisory, which is very much a one-on-one sport. You meet with a client, you help them with their money, right? Right.

I sold that business in 2011 and 12. And right around that time, I was starting to go through some really hard times personally, like going in a lot of therapy programs, some residential programs, things like that. And I realized, again, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a coach. I'm a consultant. So I see a therapist and I think, hey, you're an entrepreneur. You're a coach consultant. It's just in a different genre, right? Sorry. No offense to you, therapist. Y'all are way better at all than I am. All right. So.

I was in a group therapy setting though in a residential program. And I remember like even in the middle of all that, right? I remember going to the therapist after one of the sessions being like, look, can you just walk me through what's happening here? Because everybody in the room is way more open than ever. And I feel like I'm getting a year's worth of therapy like every day. What's happening?

And she said, you know, Chris, this is like a really well-researched process. Group therapy, group coaching, group consulting, group change is a five times faster process for the client or patient than one-on-one. We as humans change five times faster.

When we're in group settings and communities, then we do one-on-one it's humans. We're community people, community animals, whatever we are. I've never heard this before. I know it's the documentations out there. It's fantastic. And, and we keep and retain the change of the knowledge way longer. If we've done that learning and change process in a group, there's accountability, there's structure, there's community. So then I got to go to my first mastermind in a business sense. And yeah,

all of a sudden it worked for me there too. I could go for a long weekend and then there was this monthly or every other week call or whatever it was. And I remember the first weekend I went to hang out with the people, like there's 50, I was in this group in Boise, Idaho and like in 45 minutes, they had significantly shifted my business model and it made so much sense. And then went to dinner a few times and I got all the help I needed. And oh my gosh, like it changed so much. So all that to say, I, I,

grew up professionally in a one-on-one done or consulting model. And then my life started changing way faster because of the group coaching, mentoring therapy slash mastermind stuff. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I can teach anything. I mean, I got, we have all, we all have those do a lot of skill sets, but, but this is when I'm like, no, I actually believe this and I want to do this. So now all we do is teach people how to do this process and build these, these groups. Yeah.

Have you infused group coach nation with some of these elements that you got from group therapy? Yeah. In fact, when you kind of went down the whole human side, by the way, nobody's ever asked me those questions before. So I really appreciate bringing that up. I'm sure that's from a therapeutic background because, you know, we all have our experiences in life and we bring those into the next experience and seeing people for who they really are and letting them be and letting them make their own changes. That's, that's a really important piece.

Yeah. So having, I mean, just for everybody's clarity, I did go through your mastermind and cause that sales call worked. Yay. I'm so glad. The human approach helps. And I did that, you know, I did, I did the mastermind and that was what, my gosh, it's, it's been like over a year now, two years ago, two years, I guess. I'm like, I don't know. Yeah. Wow. Great. Yeah. And one of the things that I did notice is that there was this infusion of

of a little, like a different feel, right? There was a lot of, like you were very present. Your team is very present, which is great. And, you know, we got to meet the team and, you know, if there was any questions, the team's like, sure, no problem. I'll get that for you. And so on, which is great. I mean, you expect that in a high level mastermind for sure. But there was this, I felt like there was a bit more infusion of that, which is fantastic. So you teach that model as well, which I noticed. What kind of client or what kind of person

is the best person to run a mastermind because some people honestly should never run a mastermind like ever like you should never touch it like so true let me give you one person who should not run a mastermind about a certain topic and then we'll talk about who should okay sure first of all if you you should not run a mastermind if you are healing or going through a hard time yourself

And it's too fresh. Don't go teach a group coaching program or mastermind about, let's say, hard breakups when you're in the middle of a hard breakup. Give it some space, right? Yeah. So get a little bit past the drama of a hard situation. That goes for business or personal, right? Okay. Okay.

Number two, the second half of this, who should run a mastermind? All right. We say this and we live by this. People who want to join our masterminds, we're always looking for these three things. Number one, are you an expert in your field? You don't have to be the world's leading expert in your field. You got to be good at what you do and know what you're talking about. All right. There's always someone who

like farther down the value ladder of life, let's say that needs your help to get to the next step. All right. So as long as you are a step ahead of a lot of other people, you're good. All right. It's number one. Number two, are you a great communicator? Now you don't have to be the world's best communicator again, but you got to be able to show up on a zoom call for instance, and actually be able to talk and listen and find out what's going on with people.

Otherwise, it's just not going to be any fun. That doesn't mean you have to be an extrovert. I'm an introvert. I just really like helping people. So I get excited when I get on camera. But it's easy to do that. It's easy to learn that. If that's where you are already, then great. If you're not there, go find somebody. We have recommendations for how to be more comfortable speaking, all that kind of thing. Great. Third.

You have to be a natural giver. And if I was going to put a percentage on these three things, I would say expert is 10% valued communicators, 10% natural giver is 80%. 80% of what matters in building a really good mastermind or group coaching program comes down to you being a natural giver. You will learn how to communicate and how to bring your expertise and how to build and grow your community if you actually love helping people.

And if you hate that part, there's nothing wrong with you. Like if you're a computer, like a software engineer of some sort, or somebody who loves coding, you like sitting behind the screens and that's more your gig, then do that. If people bug you, then don't do coaching or mastermind building. Absolutely.

I don't know if you've ever had this question asked. I want this episode to basically be a primer if somebody is thinking about running their own mastermind, right? So I'm trying to get these questions that are a little bit more deep. Everybody can go and Google how to start a high-level mastermind and find out step A through Z. That's fine. But this stuff, this is kind of like the deeper thing of what is going to make it work. And one of those is group dynamics, right? So that's really tricky, making sure you have the right people in the room

so that people will actually mesh. Because you know this, one person can ruin it for the whole group and set everybody on edge or everybody off and just completely turn them off. And that happened to me in a previous mastermind I was in. Everybody actually made a separate Facebook group just so they didn't have to deal with that person. It was horrible. I know, it was so bad. But that person was toxic and they were going through some stuff and they never should have been in that mastermind.

How do you avoid it? How do you how do you like what would you tell somebody when they're setting up their mastermind so they don't make those mistakes? Because that can be just so derailing. That's a really good question. Here's what I'd say to do. And any of you are welcome to go and experience this live with us. We host weekly, sometimes monthly group calls for prospects.

Before we ever get on a one-on-one call or have any kind of conversation about should they join our mastermind, where we can see these people and see all of you in a group context, because it's pretty easy to spot in a setting of 5, 10, 15 people, whatever, how people interact. Can they share the time? Are they respectful? Are they, you know, all the things, right? Yeah.

And we're looking for, are these people who would fit at our private dinner party? We think of our masterminds as private dinner parties. We have, you know, 10, 15 seats at a table and we want to make sure everybody's having a great time and they're all getting the same benefit out of this. And if we wouldn't invite them to that dinner party, then we wouldn't invite them to the mastermind. By the way, I'll go a little deeper there, Jenny, too, but this has nothing to do, and I think this is critical,

Maybe. Let me give some caveats here. This will be fun. This has nothing to do with anybody's race, religion, ethnicity, background in any way, language, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever. Religious, political views. I don't freaking care. What I care about is, is this person an expert, a great communicator, which means they're typically going to be great at a dinner table. Can you talk when everybody else communications both ways and a natural giver? They have those qualities.

I want to talk to them and I want to introduce them to our friends. And that's a great dinner party. Okay. Caveat to that. If any of you are out there and like, let's say you're building a group coaching model, you're a coach consultant in a space. And you're like, I work with this type of person who ascribes to this type of belief system religiously, let's say that has, this is their first language and English is their second language. Let's say great.

then you need to segment the population you work with. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's not a bad thing. That's helping people who are going to have similar topics at the dinner table get together and get to go deeper on those topics. That's great. That's every university in the world. You want to be an engineer, you want to hang out in an engineering class where we talk about those topics. Pick your genre, but ultimately make sure you're looking and screening for the qualities and the characteristics that

the character of the person because that's what makes them an awesome mastermind or group coaching participant is who they are on the inside. And that's a wonderful treat. That's like the highlight of my week is those group settings where we get to talk to a bunch of people because we rarely find someone that's, oh, we're not working with them. Almost always we're like, this is the coolest group of humans ever. Aren't they fun? You know? I agree. I agree. I'm always amazed by

how we can tell something about somebody like in that group sort of setting, you can see who's going to be the talker over person, right? Like I'm going to talk over everybody. I got to like set my, you know, I got to set my position in the room, got to make everybody know who I am and stuff, all the different dynamics, right? And finding out who the people are, which is funny. And I think a skill of an introvert

is you recognize people's energies pretty quick. Right? Because you're always protecting your own energy as an introvert. But we won't go down that rabbit hole too far. But I think it's just really interesting to sort of discover that. I want to talk to you. Yeah. Let me say it about you, Jenny. You're wonderful at that. And for all of you introverts out there, like Jenny and I. Jenny, are you truly an introvert? I'm an ambivert, really. I'm not a true introvert. I'm an ambivert. I get...

I need my downtime away from people to just kind of like build up my energy again. But I do like being around people, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So for those of you out there like Jenny or I, who are a little more on the introverted side of things, it's okay. It's okay. Absolutely. That's why I like Sam. And you're probably better at feeling another human's real state than the extroverts are. Completely. Yeah.

And you know how it is when we go to a life, we go to like a big party, we want extroverts around, but we're going to be like, this is really hard for me. I'm struggling today. Honestly, an introvert is kind of a nicer person to talk to. Our mutual friend, Katie Brinkley.

When I went to the event where she's so great with the event that I met you in person in January, which was Cap Show Vians, which is a live conference held by Cap Show. And I was getting a little overwhelmed a little bit by like day two. Right. And Katie Brinkley's like, do you need hugs? I'm like, I can we mandate a morning, midday, mid afternoon post event hug, please. So she's like, sure, no problem. And she would do that. And I'm like, OK, I feel better now.

That's so perfect. Oh, that's so great. Shout out to Katie. Yeah, she's pretty awesome. She's pretty awesome. Okay. So when it comes to masterminds, I mean, you've been doing this for how long now? Oh gosh. Like eight or so years, I guess. I'm not very good at the dates, but yeah. In the group teaching group settings in eight or so years. What's changed? Oh, this is cool. Yeah. Okay. So, well, there was this pandemic-y thing in the middle, right?

So that's a small thing. Yeah. So there was like for all of you starting this journey now, or if you've been doing it, like, like everybody is so over and like used to the virtual setting. It's so easy to run groups now. That's been phenomenal because everybody kind of got past it. Yeah. We like the in-person stuff. So if you want to throw an in-person or two meeting in a year or whatever, but people like,

We get how convenient it is to meet right here on Zoom. It's brilliant. I think that's been a significant change. I think another thing that's been a significant change is watching how people develop in communities based around technology. I really don't think that much of masterminding has changed in a couple of thousand years. The first mentions of masterminds that I've ever found anybody talk about are back in ancient Chinese culture.

I think they got it done first. Like three, 4,000 years ago, they were meeting as groups to solve big problems in regions. That's a mastermind. That was new. Like people were tribal and running around all over the place and just taking care of the ones they love, right? For a long, long time on planet earth. That's a new thing. So other than how we meet and what makes gathering and sharing information easy, which is tools and technology,

The need to do it either to learn a task, which is what you go to a group coaching model for, or to join a community that's going to be more of a home where you can share ideas together. It's more of a mastermind. It just comes down to technology. And even in the past eight years, it like, like, is it Facebook groups or Facebook chat groups, or is it WhatsApp or is it Twitter or X or is it LinkedIn groups or is it on some private platform or is it WhatsApp? Like,

when I first started doing this, we were doing everything on Skype. Oh, gosh, I can't even remember my I don't even know if I still have a Skype login. I probably have someone somewhere. Did you ever do a cam for Mac to like, yeah, absolutely. I was one of those people too. Yeah. Yeah. I think if everybody could just take a big deep breath on the whole technology thing,

And the AI thing and all the stuff, right? All those things are super important. You got to have somebody on your team or whatever to figure it out. But when it comes to helping humans solve their problems and be in community, that is something uniquely human. Solving a problem like, hey, an electronic device, how do I do this or that? Sure, that's answers and information. But making real transformation is done in communities of people.

Completely. I like to crowdsource my problems. I think everybody does. Okay. So talk to me about, and this is my kind of like wrapping up question here, but talk to me about the future goals that Group Coach Nation has. Like what are your plans to keep making this positive impact? How are you going to continue to move this forward? Obviously there's going to be some sort of evolution that continues to happen because you're, you know, you've been doing this for eight years. What's going to happen? Like what's, what's the future look like? We love being

in an advisory role for some of like the best masterminds group coaching programs out there. That's super fun. I'm so grateful for our clients. I'm not minimizing any of that because that's our roots and that's what we've been doing. We love the education side of what we do because not everybody starts with some huge mastermind already and comes and says, hey, can we make it 20% better or double it or like, how do we do this better? Whatever.

So we love the education side of this. We love empowering people to really understand you actually have something valuable and it's not the kind of value that you want to swap hours for necessarily. This is something you could actually disconnect and scale and get your actual calendar back and your income up.

By just sharing your knowledge. The trick is you got to figure out how to get people to acknowledge that it's your knowledge they want and need and join your program. But that's a nuts and bolts issue. The getting people to recognize they can do it. And there's an opportunity there to see their life freed up like, like mine has for sure. And all of our clients, like it's so cool. That's,

There's lots of ways we can label. What does that program look like? What are we building? What book are we writing? Where are we speaking to do that? But that's the premise of it. We just want to see people get free. And Jenny, one more layer of that. I want to see all the experts that we work with get free. All of you out there listening right now. But the reason for that is for us is I want to see the people you serve get free. I'm not their expert. All I do is teach people how to build scalable coaching programs. That's all I do.

Your expertise, all of you listening in right now, your expertise is the expertise that your audience needs to change their life and physical health, mental health, relationship, health, business, health, whatever it is, that's going to like set them free. They need you, not me. I'm just here to like, show you the path, go change lives. That's, that's the real, that's like what actually makes me want to do this more and more and more and scale up. Absolutely. And

Your freedom that you've been able to achieve allows you to do some things that I think are really, really cool. Like, I know that you do...

ultra marathons or you have I'm not sure if you're still doing I know you love to ride bikes and go on like insanely long bike trips and whatnot are you still doing those yes we still travel a ton still run a ton bikes electric skateboards shark diving mountain climbing a buddy of mine and I were talking the other day about hanging or skydiving I'm not skydived yet I've done I've jumped off of all kind of things but never skydive that sounds like fun um I you know

I think, again, Jenny, for all of you out there listening right now, many of you are adventurous people. That's kind of part of the DNA of an entrepreneur. So yes, my playtime and my work time, they have a consistent theme. I love experience. I love trying new stuff. And I love adventure. And that's what entrepreneurism is. So find your version of adventure that makes you laugh and play,

And it gets you the freedom and time that you want in your professional life too. I love that. All right. Thank you so much for sharing that. How can people get in touch, find you, find Group Coach Nation, get all those good things? Super easy. Go to this thing they call Google or ChatGPT or pull up your Internet Explorer, whatever you use.

Netscape. Netscape. And just search group coach nation, group coach nation. You'll find us. And we, again, we do these periodic calls where we put a group of people together so they can, so you can find out and ask questions about us. We're talking about, and that lets you get to know more about this model as gets to know you a little more. And there's a whole bunch of free resources. You Google group coach nation. There's a bunch of resources on our website, our YouTube channels. You'll find the stuff you need, but reach out to us and just tell us, okay, I heard you on Jenny's show. Here's what I'm trying to accomplish. Like so,

Should I show up for a call or would you point me in a different direction? And we'll just do whatever we can do.

Amazing. And I'll make sure those are in the show notes so everybody can find it. You are really easy to find. It is like, it's the only thing, Group Code Nation. So super easy. Make sure everybody can find you. Thank you, Chris. Really appreciate you doing this. I'm glad that we've been able to continue to connect and, you know, you're on summits that I get my clients to host. You're on my summit. We stay in touch, run, you know, podcasts and so on. And it's just been great to just kind of keep this thing going.

Thank you so much, Jenny. To all of you out there listening in, Jenny's your person. You're here. If you think about why you listen to this, it's because you've gotten to trust Jenny. It's not because I'm here. If you're trying to figure out this growing your business or marketing, obviously that's Jenny's wheelhouse. Lean in, ask her questions. I can answer any on my stuff, fine, but she's a phenomenal expert. So well-connected. You're in a good spot. So Jenny, thanks for hosting this safe place for all of us to be better. I appreciate that. Thank you, Chris. And for everybody listening,

I couldn't say it better. So I really appreciate that. For everybody who wants to get more of this podcast, I just want to say thank you. The Acquired Podcast is always brought to you by the Oddphonic Podcast Network. And if you found this episode to be valuable, please don't forget to hit subscribe or like or rate or whatever it is that you can do to kind of get the word out and share. And I'd love to hear what you think. So there's lots of ways to get in touch with me. They'll be in the show notes as well, or you can go to JennyWright.com. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon.