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April 18, 2023

Networking and Mastermind Groups for Growth Minded Entrepreneurs Ep. 116

Networking and Mastermind Groups for Growth Minded Entrepreneurs Ep. 116

Natasha Miller is an award-winning, Wall Street Journal best-selling author. She is the founder and CEO of Entire Productions, an event and entertainment production company based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Natasha is a classically trained violinist and celebrated jazz vocalist. She is a graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10ksb program and has studied entrepreneurship at Harvard and MIT. Natasha is a 3x in a row Inc. 5000 honoree for having one of the fastest-growing businesses in the US.

She is an advocate for homeless youth programs. Natasha is a proud mother of her daughter, Bennett, and lives in Oakland, CA.

Where to find the Effective Groups


Where to find Natasha Miller

Website: www.therelentlessbook.com


SPONSOR

This episode is sponsored by Entire Productions- Creating events (both in-person and virtual) that don't suck! and Entire Productions Marketing- carefully curated premium gifting and branded promo items. 

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Transcript
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You're probably an entrepreneur and it's likely that you work a lot of hours, and even though you have friends and family, you can't always be as open and honest with them as you wish you could be. You can't talk about your fears, imposter syndrome, or potential failures easily. You also can't share your biggest wins or financial successes so as not to appear like you're bragging. You likely started off creating your business because of a passion or a problem you knew you could solve and might not have the foundation of a good business laid out right from the start. So how do you go about alleviating that void of communication and lack of knowledge? In today's episode of Fascinating Entrepreneurs, I'll share with you the most effective groups I've been a member of and give you options and ideas for organizations you could consider for your personal and professional growth with like-minded people. The first one, Is Entrepreneur's organization. It's also known as eo, and it was one of the first networking organizations I joined for entrepreneurs. But it's much more than a networking group. They have over 16,000 members all over the world. It's a group comprised of owner, CEO entrepreneurs that have a minimum of 1 million in revenue annually. And EOS core values are trust and respect. Thirst for learning. Think big, be bold. And together we grow. When you join, you agree not to solicit business to any other members. Now, that doesn't mean you can't do business with other members, but you have to let them come to you and you really have to make sure that what you're offering is the best fit so that there's no friction in the group. The most revered element of EO is the Forum, which is a group of up to 10 people that meet monthly for about three or four hours in a structured way. They also go on mini retreats and longer retreats a few times a year, to bond. It is completely confidential. And EOS appreciate and honor this idea. You swear that you will not bring anything outside of Forum to your significant other, your business partner. You won't talk about anything that you learned in that forum in front of other entrepreneurs in EO. So it sounds a little strange if your friends and family know about this and you're sworn to secrecy, but you can understand. Most chapters host various learning events as well. The various regions hold an annual event, and EO also offers the annual Global Leadership conference in cities all over the world. And this year it's in Cape Town at South Africa. I joined the San Francisco chapter of EO about 13 years ago, and even though I live in San Francisco, I'm in both the Los Angeles in the EO West Bridge chapter, which is mostly virtual. And for me, the best part has been meeting and getting to know the most incredible people. I've also really dived deep into their learning programs, including the entrepreneurial master's program at MIT. An entrepreneurial program at Harvard and the Global Speakers Academy. If your business isn't quite to the million dollar mark, but at least making $250,000 a year. Some chapters have an accelerator program, which is sort of an incubator with EO members teaching and coaching you to get up to the $1 million mark. The next group I wanna talk to you about is one that's new to me. I was introduced and referred to the Genius Network and joined in January of this year, 2023. It's led by Master Marketer Joe Polish. This is a group of, I think about 150 members who meet monthly either online or in person for two full days at their Tempe, Arizona Space, and it's every month it's action packed, incredible learning and networking and experience sharing. At the end of the year, they have this bigger blowout event with very interesting speakers at a hotel in Arizona. I have not yet attended. However, I attended virtually for the first three months and found a lot of value in it and met some great people with insightful and useful experiences, but nothing compares to the in-person experience, which is not very surprising. So I flew over there last week and I met no less than 15 incredible people that I want to get to know more, and I'm already in the process of communicating with. I met more people than that, but I didn't have as much time in those two days to really bond or have a conversation with everybody in the room. That will happen over time. The sessions are part learning from Joe, learning from each other, using prompts that Joe and his team give with the idea of giving first and asking for help with what you're focusing on. Sort of secondarily, they also have 10 minute talks by members, and I think I counted three each day. The talks are focused on one very specific topic that, that member chose to speak on, and those members are coached by the incredible Joel Weldon of the ultimate speaker system, we're treated to a delicious breakfast and lunch, and members typically go out to dinner with each other as well. People do business together. People have started businesses together, but I'm just starting to learn about the power of this group. I'm not sure what the qualifications are, but you do have to be, I believe you have to be referred and also screened by their team. The next group that I'm in is a group that I don't believe you can belong to unless you have applied and landed on the Inc. Magazine, Inc. 5,000 list. So I'm in the Ink Masters Group, another group of great human beings. I met about 17 of them in January of this year at a retreat in Mexico in Baja Mexico called the Modern Elder Academy that is run and led by Chip Conley. I can't tell you how incredible that six day experience is, and this is a tightly bonded group. We were bonded within 24 hours. If you looked at our WhatsApp channel, it's very congested of ideas, inspiration. A lot of joking around and connectivity. We also get together once a month on our own, and this is sort of like a little subgroup of the Greater Ink Masters program that they are developing and expanding. Now, the next two groups that I'm gonna talk about are female focused. So if you're a woman in business, you can look at Dreamers and Doers. Now this is targeted toward solo entrepreneurs or new found entrepreneurs. I don't think there's a limit at how big your business can be, but that's kind of the gist of you're working in a silo, you're working by yourself, and you wanna be with like-minded, entrepreneurial-minded women. Gesche Haas runs this group and this is a really, really well community group. They also do an incredible amount of PR for their members, so there's a lot of publicity and media opportunities that you can opt into doing. I was able to speak for the NASDAQ Entrepreneurial Center and be featured in the NASDAQ magazine, because of this group, and I've met some really great women with great ideas that are growing incredible companies and some of them are taking funding. Some of them are bootstrapped, some of them may be under a hundred thousand to start and some of them are probably over. I don't know, 500 million in revenue. The next group, which is actually how I learned about Dreamers and Doers, was founded in part by the fashion stylist and designer Rebecca Minkoff. And I met re Rebecca after buying purses and shoes and jewelry from her for years before at the Inc 5000 Conference and that was in 2019 I believe. Anyway, they started a group and it's called Female Founders, and that's for any female founder and it's their free group. You can uplevel and apply to be a member of their 10th house, which is a paid group, so is Dreamers and Doers. So is Inc. Masters, so is Genius Network, and so is EO, but you can get more information on the websites that will, I'll leave in the show. The 10th house has been really great. They really talk about scaling and growth mindset, work-life balance. A lot of parents, mothers are in this group and, and are trying to run businesses. So generally these groups are just so great for all the things, networking, relationship building, learning about business potential partnerships. I highly re recommend that if you are an entrepreneur of any size of a business, that you find a group or maybe even more than one to seek out, test out, join and really dive in and give of yourself first of all of your knowledge and all of your experience, and then be ready to receive a great experience back. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what groups you are in or if any of these resonate with you. If you wanna talk to me more about my experience with any of them, just reach out.