Interview with Liz Scully – Could A Mastermind Group Elevate Your Marketing? – Episode #14

Full Episode Transcript:

 

Kenny Soto  0:01  

Five, four. Hello, everyone and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, I’m interviewing Liz Scully, Emmy Award winning Liz Scully is a strategist that believes business should be ridiculously fun as well as highly effective. She runs mastermind groups for herself and other known coaches. She also trains coaches to run effective masterminds. Bringing skills from over 20 years working on big Hollywood films, she helps brilliant minds achieve more together rather than alone. She’s Irish nomadic, and as and as confused as everyone else as to why she has an English accent. And welcome, Liz. 

 

Liz Scully  0:44  

It’s lovely to be here. Thank you for having me. 

 

Kenny Soto  0:46  

Perfect. So, as I mentioned before doing this episode, this podcast is geared towards people who are either marketers or want to effectively market their business to their target audiences. And you have a very, very diverse and unique professional background. And I wanted to start there. So can you tell the audience, what is it that you do, and just your general background? 

 

Sure. So I’m a business strategist, I work pretty much only with entrepreneurs. And I help them build their business quickly, easily, and to have fun while they do it. But my background is in film, I spent 20 years in post production, 10 years doing TV and long form commercials, and then 10 years doing film, which means I spent a lot of time with branding agencies and creatives and specialists.

 

 And although it sounds very different between film and business strategy, it’s actually really similar. In film, it’s about telling a story well, managing a team, massive budgets, having terrible accidents, and making sure everything gets back on track as quickly as possible. And it’s also about harnessing large groups of brilliant people together. So they’re all moving in the same direction. And that is why it transfers really easily to entrepreneur life.

 

And as of right now, what types of clients do you work with?

 

Liz Scully  2:21  

Well, I work with a lot of people that call themselves solopreneurs. I work with my main avatar is mostly women in their 40s, who are really growing a second business. So they’ve had success in their earlier parts of their life. And now they’re doing more new stuff, particularly they want to work with groups. That is really my special specialization is in mastermind groups.

 

Kenny Soto  2:45  

And what is a mastermind group?

 

Liz Scully  2:48  

It’s good point. It’s a select small group of people who work together, either for one intense, deep dive like a weekend where you come together, have a transformation, learn something big, or it’s an ongoing, I suppose meet in person, if you can manage that, depending on where you are. 

 

But most of mine are run online, where you meet for maybe six months or maybe a year, working towards a specific goal. It sounds really simple. It is really simple. It’s also very simple to get wrong. Because a small group together, it’s like coaching. Yes, it’s just a conversation. But a mastermind, while it is just a group that comes together is a lot more than that.

 

Kenny Soto  3:31  

And how would a mastermind relate to the marketing aspect of what you’re doing for your clients?

 

Liz Scully  3:41  

Well, it works in two ways. Either you can add it to your product. So whatever your level of expertise, whether you’re a coach, whether you’ve written a book, whether you do a lot of speaking, whether you just have deep knowledge from years of working in that field, you can run a mastermind sharing that knowledge with your group of people. 

 

You can also focus, masterminds override masterminds, on copywriting, on business growth. And all of those things, obviously, also cover marketing. Because whatever you do, whether you are growing your business, or you’re adding a new product, you are definitely going to have to talk about it and message it and sell it out into the world.

 

Kenny Soto  4:21  

And if I’m hearing you correctly, you don’t necessarily need to be specifically a coach to create and leverage a mastermind, correct. You can be an author, consultant, etc.

 

Liz Scully  4:34  

Absolutely pretty much anyone with that there are a few requirements you have to like other humans, you have to be not while the extrovert but calm enough in a group and to be running. If you can sit happily with four or five people on our dinner table and conduct a conversation. You could run a mastermind. Now to run it effectively for business. 

 

You have to be able to market it in such a way that people will realize that your information and your way of helping them is something they need crushingly importantly, so they buy it.

 

Kenny Soto  5:08  

So considering what you’ve just said, I’m certain that you’ve seen people successfully create masterminds and sometimes stumble when creating masterminds. If I were a prospective client, how would you help me start building a strategy for mastermind? 

 

And can you give me some examples of how a mastermind can tie to specific business objectives like gaining revenue, gaining more partnerships with other businesses, etc?

 

Liz Scully  5:40  

Sure. So, sadly, yes, I have seen many masterminds that are not so good. And unfortunately, probably the vast majority of them aren’t so good, because they do bring in a huge amount of revenue, you can get a mid-range six to 12-month mastermind, a mid-range, absolutely, sort of bottom of the mid range really is between 10 and 20,000. US dollars for a participant. 

 

So if you have four or six people in that group, that’s a nice, solid chunk of revenue. And they can go all the way up to 120 200,000 a year per person to be a no obviously at that level, you have to be a master at your craft, you have to have a name. And you have to have a group of people who are working in an industry where that’s a reasonable amount of money to drop on it. But most masterminds are between 10 and $20,000. 

 

When you join a mastermind, you instantly get a group that is with you, that is doing the work alongside you. So that’s, that’s as well as the coach, you’re actually effectively getting a little team of people that are doing the work step by step alongside you. It’s one of the little bonuses of joining a mastermind you actually get five new friends as well. Obviously, that’s not something we sell on. But it’s a wonderful thing. 

 

And I’m in many masterminds because they’re so effective. And I’m sure it’s why my business grew quickly was because I learned about the mastermind system, and then joined a few and saw the effect from the inside.

 

Kenny Soto  7:10  

Do you know when mastermind started when it became a thing?

 

Liz Scully  7:17  

Yes, it comes with word mastermind comes from thinking Grow Rich, which was published by Napoleon Hill in 1937. But what he did was he went and spoke to the then billionaires of the day, and found out what they were doing in common, what made them so successful. And every one of them had this little group of people in his list of things they were doing, I think, number eight was masterminds. 

 

And he called it a mastermind, the people in them didn’t call them that, because he believed that when a group of people come together, there’s a kind of entity that’s bigger than themselves. If you all concentrate on idea, there is this mastermind that comes out of it because we’re stronger together. 

 

But Napoleon Hill didn’t invent masterminds per se we’ve been having this kind of wonderful supportive relationship with our friends and our colleagues all the way back to the ancient Greek Greeks. And to Socrates. It’s a very long standing very human thing to do.

 

Kenny Soto  8:16  

Got it.  And you’ve just just to reiterate, and please correct me if I’m wrong. You’ve done masterminds of business coaches as well, correct?

 

Liz Scully  8:25  

Yes, I’ve done masterminds with business coaches, with entrepreneurs. I’ve done purely copywriting ones, you name it, I’ve probably masterminded on it.

 

Kenny Soto  8:34  

Great. So as a follow up, because I know some of my audience members have this question. What does a business coach do?

 

Liz Scully  8:44  

In a mastermind or just generally?

 

Kenny Soto  8:46  

Both. 

 

Liz Scully  8:47  

Both? Okay. Wow, that’s a good question. So a business coach is literally that like a basketball coach, you are helping the participants get better at what they do. Unlike say, life coaching, life coaching is a lot of reflecting, you would never give advice in a life coaching section. It’s that feeling of kind of how do you feel about that? 

 

Which is, if you forgive me, pointless if somebody is asking you how to put a funnel together, you can’t say and how do you feel about that? Because if you don’t know you don’t know, you have to be shown. So business coaching, well, a business coach will work with you to normally grow your business in some way or perhaps fix the culture in your business. But there is some aspect that you have come with a specific thing you want to do. 

 

The coach will work alongside you to develop a plan and will then help you actually hit those things. Now, sometimes you go to a consultant or a business coach, they will give you the structure and then send you off into the night to go and get on with it in a mastermind. After we have the plan. We will then support you as you do it and by Support we’ll keep you accountable. 

 

We will turn up on those because of course if you if you’re doing a big change in your business There are moments when Yes, it doesn’t matter how clear the plan is that the moments where you think, Gosh, this is hard, can I do it? I’m tired, or even just this again. And that’s when a group of people or your coach, your mastermind, that’s when people go, yeah, you always get tired at this point, or yes, it’s hard, but you’re doing it anyway. And that’s really helpful.

 

Kenny Soto  10:24  

As a follow up to what you just said, what would be the common objections that someone would have, if you’re trying to sell a, any particular mastermind to them?

 

Liz Scully  10:39  

Or even a high end, high end mastermind? Well, normally, it depends how expensive it is. But often, there’s the cost, obviously, now, as with all objections, that is often just the first way to push you away, because you’re not interested. It’s so easy to say, Oh, it sounds like a lot of money. 

 

And what you really mean is I haven’t understood it, I don’t really care, you haven’t leaned on to things that I really care about. So by the time people speak to me, they’ve been through my entire marketing funnel. I’ll, I’ll just let that pass. Sorry. So. So by the time people get to me, my brother, by the time I speak to them on a call, they’ve already been through my marketing funnel, they’ve probably downloaded some ebooks, they maybe watch some video blogs, they’re aware that I can help them. 

 

And I think that’s really important with pool marketing that people will have already got a flavor of you, I’m sure you’ve talked about this too many of your guests, this is the way that people can kind of try before they buy. By the time most people speak to me, their objections are very small. They’re normally about isn’t exactly what I want. And hopefully the sales page and the videos that go with that have answered that. 

 

They really want to do it because they’ve actually applied and they’ve got onto a call. And they’ve made all of those little steps towards that their problem is normally cost. But if you don’t have a car, a clear and mature funnel that is going to do that for you, then you’re likely to hear objections around. Does masterminds really work? Which obviously, you’d have to be pretty brave face to ask me that because my entire business is mastermind based. 

 

So if you have no history of doing masterminds, they might say, Well, why this, why not coaching. And you can do both you can be in you can be coached in a one to one, and also in a group program that’s going to support you, they might ask you, do you actually have any ability at doing this if you’re brand new. And of course, that’s where you would show? Well, I’ve never done it in this form before, but I have five years, 10 years, one year, this is all I am doing right now, I am regularly I’ve done this, this and this kind of work. 

 

And that sort of clarity will help. The other thing you hear just before they buy, is sometimes people say, I’m a bit worried that I won’t have anything to add. Because what we all want as buyers is not only to get value, but to get it right, to not upset other people to not offend anyone. And for that to happen. 

 

Obviously, that’s the point that you would say, and that’s why this is a facilitated mastermind, I’m there to make sure that everybody gets a fair, the best side is shown to the best advantage. And also you do have things to say. And then you pointed out some I found often with people who change careers. It’s at that point that people are like, but I haven’t got anything say they’ve retrained as a health coach.

 

 I haven’t got anything to offer this mastermind in this way. Yes. But didn’t you spend 10 years in corporate life? Oh, yes. Would that be useful? Yes. People forget how good they are people forget. And that’s your job is to remind them, particularly in a sales conversation. And if people are asking those questions there, they’ve already made the decision to buy. They’re trying to think of ways that it won’t work.

 

Kenny Soto  14:10  

I like how you went in detail of that. And there was one specific word that stood out to me when you were explaining the process, which is funnel. So for the listeners that may have some idea of what a funnel is, but want to get a better explanation. 

 

What is a funnel and how does it relate? I know that answer is supposed to answer some of the objections and questions prior to getting to the sales call before they convert into a mastermind member. But what what would be like the overview of what a funnel is and how it works?

 

Liz Scully  14:48  

Sure. So a funnel in essence is just a very simple way for people to get to know you. Because as far as we’re concerned, a funnel takes people from never having met You, two buying from you. So from our side, from the from the people selling things side, it is something that will entice the buyer step by step into the process. 

 

So it might be, they can watch a free video, a video blog, they can read something you’ve written online that cost them nothing. If they want a little bit more, a little bit more depth, they might buy that with their email by dropping that in and joining our newsletter and getting a free ebook. 

 

So that still hasn’t cost them anything but apart from their time and their email. And then as they get deeper and deeper into that you might mail them and say you you looked at this ebook, have you seen this video? Are you interested in this? Can I help you in this way, and each one of those touch points moves people towards trusting you a little bit more to taking more of your idea and ethos of the world into into how they think of you how they view you. 

 

And that moves them step by step towards buying. But I think what’s really important and isn’t often, as often discussed, is that that’s our view of it. We see people, the many people filtering down to the to the one or two people that you’re speaking to on a sales conversation, that’s where the funnel is from many to a drip of regular people. But from the clients point of view, it isn’t like that. They see themselves not as in a funnel, but having a question or a problem right now. So today, I don’t want like, I don’t know how to slice lemons correctly. As far as you’re concerned. You are funneling people towards your expensive funnel, your expensive 

 

Kenny Soto  16:41  

Lemons slicing class. Yeah. 

 

Liz Scully  16:43  

Yes, exactly. That’s what you’re going. But you’re starting from the, as far as the clients concerned, they have their lemon, and they don’t know what to do with it. So they have their lemon, and they don’t know what to do with it. At that point, you answer their problem, here is the best way to slice your lemon. 

 

And then the next piece of information you give them might be was it the best lemon you could have had? Do you have concerns that you weren’t buying the right lemon? Here is the lemon Buyer’s Guide. It’s free, it’s for you. Here you go. 

 

And then once they’ve learned how to slice a lemon, and they’ve become a connoisseur of the right sort of lemons, then maybe you can send them another free thing. Now they’re on your newsletter, that is the best three lemon groves in your area. And you’re step by step, you’re moving them towards where you both want to go. 

 

They want to be better at lemon slicing. You want to sell your lemon slicing course. But as far as they’re concerned, each time you just answer that one question. Well, this is great. Now I know where the lemons are. And I know what a good lemon looks like, what do I do with bulk lemons, then you can sell them the next section. And that can be just with their attention. It’s not necessarily cost that they’re spending when they’re spending with you time, money, attention, that all kind of the same thing.

 

Kenny Soto  18:04  

And it seems that the best way to optimize any kind of funnel for any type of business is to really get a deep understanding of what the questions are going to be for your particular client. What is your process for finding out what those questions are?

 

Liz Scully  18:27  

Well, it’s very complicated. I asked people, and I asked people a lot. Now one of the joys of being in a mastermind is that I hear my clients talking about the troubles in their business and where they have where they’re stuck all the time. 

 

So basically, I’m continually in a test environment for that. But if you were just starting out, obviously, it’s frustrating to see your clients but not know what their problems are. So there’s two places I suggest you look, first of all is the obvious get into a Facebook group, and just look and listen to where people are complaining. 

 

The other place is less obvious, but it’s almost more useful, which is get on to Amazon and look at the reviews of similar things. So in our lemon slicing example, you would look at the big book of lemon slicing and the lemon slicing for dummies. And then you look at the reviews. And you look at the five star and the one star reviews because pretty much any other review, people aren’t angry enough or happy enough. 

 

But you’ve got to be a pretty strange human being to to write a five star review about lemon slicing and not care. So you might well in both of those say something along the lines of this is the best book since the lemon slices guide from 1970. And you can go back and look at that you could look at your competitors. And the one star reviews will often say things like this is rubbish. It’s not a patch on Dave Smith and his full lemon slicing guide and you can immediately go to that at all, it can look at things like, This is rubbish, it was fine for lemons, but completely useless for oranges. And then you can know what people are worried about. 

 

But this was fine, but it didn’t cover my entire issue with knives. And it once you know those pain points, because you said you got to be pretty angry to be typing an Amazon review about anything. And anger and pain go hand in hand. Really, they’re very useful for marketers. But big warning, you are going to be on Amazon for a longest period, try not to buy anything very difficult to avoid.

 

Kenny Soto  20:34  

Very important. No, certainly. And you’ve also mentioned previously about opt-ins and free offers to convert users into a newsletter, for example, what best practices can you think of that our audience should consider when it comes to creating an offer for someone to convert into a newsletter?

 

Liz Scully  21:00  

Sure. So the most important thing is that it’s something that your clients want, not something you want to produce. And remember, it’s it’s to fix their current problem. They’re stood there with a lemon, and they don’t know what to do. And they’ve walked over to Google with help to look for something that is specifically going to help them right now. 

 

So you might well want to sell them the I don’t know the give them, you might want to give them something of the 12 best lemon groves as discussed. That’s not their current problem. They’re stood there with a lemon. So you’ve got to think about exactly what do they need right now, don’t advance them straight into slicing and dicing, because that’s going to be too far for them. I often see this with, say, running opt-ins health coaches that will teach you how to get ready for a marathon. 

 

Well, that’s fine. If you want the advanced runner. If people are still at the what is the best shooter by I’m thinking of taking up running tomorrow, you need to start with a guide for that. So you need to find out exactly where people are exactly what their current problem is. 

 

And the other thing with opt-ins is you need to make sure that you I mean, there’s very nicely need to leave them so that you’ve answered a problem. But their next problem is something you can also help them with. And that might be sorry, go on. 

 

Kenny Soto  22:20  

Yeah. Can you explain that in more detail? How would you lead them to the next problem?

 

Liz Scully  22:25  

Sure. So without lemon thing, it would be you because there’s many ways you go with that. Okay, so slice the lemon, they have looked at your lemon slicing video, and now they want more the six fancy techniques for lemons at dinner parties. 

And so with that, they have to opt in, they give you their email, you send them the next thing, and that next thing. So now you know, they know how to slice a lemon, you know, they have a lemon, and you know that they have an interest in lemons. But the testing point would be is it all citrus fruit? Are they entirely lemon focused? Are they ever going to advance to your grapefruit course eventually. 

 

So that would be a place to test. They’ve looked at some stuff, you could then send them when you send them your first ebook on slicing lemons, you could send a question at the bottom saying, are you exactly that? Are you interested in other fruits? Or are you just interested in more information about lemons? Ask people they will be only too keen to tell you normally.

 

Kenny Soto  23:30  

Perfect. And another question I have because I definitely want to go over this as well. Is, what,  in 2020, this year, What is the main challenge that you see reoccurring amongst all of your clients, regardless of industry or what they’re providing?

 

Liz Scully  23:54  

Sure. So when the lockdown happened worldwide, many people stopped spending. And a lot of my clients and my client’s clients got very worried about that there was a lot of discounting, there was a lot of people giving freebies away. And there is now a caution about maybe my clients aren’t going to spend now. 

 

Because obviously, there is a lot of people there are unfortunately a lot of people losing their jobs. People are getting laid off. There is a big recession happening. But there are good things that have come out of this lockdown from a coaching point of view and obviously, is not in any way to set aside the dreadful things that have happened. 

 

But for us as people that work online, millions of new people have suddenly moved online and realize that Zoom calls and you can create strong relationships. You can make friends this way you can stay connected people that have been hold out for years are now happily zooming along with no problems at all. 

 

So millions of people are at home and now work Going online, and they need connection. And that’s what coaching and that bringing people together and community can do for them. So people will spend money, they are in need of connection. And you can provide that because no matter how big your community is, everybody’s got a community of some sort, and a specialization. 

 

And you can bring people together to discuss that, who thought half the world would be eating breakfasts together or chopping lemons together, I’ve seen more than a few cookery or yoga classes where people like that someone’s living room, what is going on here? That’s changed big time.

 

Kenny Soto  25:39  

Perfect. And my final question for this interview is, as of right now, what are any new tactics, strategies, or tools that you’ve been looking into and or have been using, specifically with your marketing?

 

Liz Scully  25:59  

In my marketing? Well, I think it’s basically the same, except what I do believe is that people need more persuasion. Now, copy needs to be better, you need to go into more detail about why it’s a good thing, just because there’s a big recession coming. 

 

People are cautious about spending their money, but people are spending their money. So I’m making sure that the detail is there that I’m fleshing things out that I am taking people by the hand, step by step, and making it crystal clear for them in ways that I thought I’d done before, but when you go back and review, you’re like, No, I can make this clearer. 

 

So where there’s questions, I want to answer all of them where there is any kind of ambiguity about the results you’ll get. I want to be clear about that. Because right now, people are being really cautious about spending cash. They will do it. They need a lot more clarity to make sure it’s going to work.

 

Kenny Soto  26:55  

Amazing. Thank you so much, Liz. Where can people find you online so I can put in the show notes?

 

Liz Scully  27:01  

Sure you can find me at Rethinkcentral.com/kenny I will make a welcome page for you.

 

Kenny Soto  27:08  

Perfect, thank you. That’s awesome. Thank you to Liz thank you to the listener and we are going to sign off again. This is Kenny Soto and this is Kenny Soto’s Digital Marketing podcast. Have a great day.