Troy Dean, Mavericks Club, and My Week in Santa Monica KDS: 032

Last week was one of those amazing weeks that leaves you both excited and exhausted.

O.K., I wasn’t exactly exhausted, but the activity in my brain was on high-speed most of the week, which leaves you needing a little ‘white space’ to bring it back to a manageable pace.

I spent the week in Santa Monica, California with Troy Dean and some of his team for his Mavericks Club event as well as the one-day event for WP Elevation on Saturday (after the Mavericks Club event was over). If you haven’t heard of Mavericks Club yet don’t worry, it’s been a little bit on the ‘down low’ over the last year but I told Troy I was going to pimp it everywhere because I was so blown away.

And no, I’m not getting paid to promote this or share it.

Troy invited me so I could present the Content Creators Planner to his Mavericks Club and help them with a content strategy (which is pretty much why we created the planner, so many people need help creating a strategy).

Needless to say, I was super honored to be asked and wasn’t about to say no.

I’m going to do my best to break down the week for you.

How each day was structured, what we did, and all my takeaways. There was a lot of information, so I don’t doubt that I’m going to miss something, but I’m pretty sure I can do right by Troy & his team (what up Simon & Max!).

Suggestion for listening and consuming this episode:

• Listen through once
• Listen again with pen & paper (or however you take notes)
• Look at the parallels in your business and where you can make adjustments
• Take action on ONE takeaway from this episode

The theme for this event (and I think I’m going to have Troy back on the podcast to go more in-depth in terms of the event), was ‘Predictable Product’.

Lastly, before I get into the event itself, I want to share why I’m doing this in-depth post and podcast (and it’s not just because #EverythingIsContent, which it is).

I’m sharing this because as I approach my 11th year in business in this crazy online marketing space, I’ve seen my fair share of things: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I’ve had a handful of different mentors, all who served a purpose at one time or another, but this was by far the most valuable, well executed, solid experience I’ve had to date.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”I’ve had a handful of different mentors, all who served a purpose at one time or another, but this was by far the most valuable, well executed, solid experience I’ve had to date.” quote=”I’ve had a handful of different mentors, all who served a purpose at one time or another, but this was by far the most valuable, well executed, solid experience I’ve had to date.” theme=”style6″]

You guys know I spent a couple of years in a mastermind, and I straight up told Troy on Thursday evening at dinner that this blew that out of the water. I had amazing experiences with that mastermind, developed some fantastic friendships, and it shifted my mindset in so many ways. However, after attending the Mavericks Club event I realized how much was missing.

I’m hoping to shed some light on mentorship and masterminds in a way that allows you to shift your expectations for deliverables and the overall experience.

This event has set the bar high for me: both in where I invest my money and what I deliver to people who invest with me.

Pre-event

The event started on Wednesday, but I drove down Monday afternoon so Troy & I could record an in-person video podcast on Tuesday (I knew if I drove down Tuesday I’d feel tired and grimy from the drive. I wanted to feel fresh! 😉 ).

I headed over midday to the Airbnb where the guys were staying and was pretty dang impressed with their video setup (I don’t know why I was surprised. If you’ve ever watched their live streams or podcasts you’ll know that they’ve gone all in with making things as high-quality as possible).

Facebook wasn’t cooperating so we weren’t able to do it live, but it was a pretty jam-packed interview. Nothing like having a conversation with a good friend to put you at ease. I found myself easily sharing things I may not have shared a year ago, which speaks volumes about Troy’s ability to conduct an interview and my own personal growth.

Wednesday, Day 1

There’s nothing like making an entrance by walking in late to a room full of people you don’t know.

Like I mentioned above, my daughter literally lives about 20 miles from Santa Monica, but it took me over two hours to get there because of traffic.

Needless to say, Southern California has been crossed off the list of potential places to move to in the next year (or ever).

The morning kicked off with Troy going over the plans and agenda for the event (and I’m assuming there were some hellos and introductions that I missed). I was excited to see someone I knew (what’s up Christina Hawkins! SO great to finally connect in person), and once I got my frazzled self situated with a nice fresh cup of black coffee, I was ready to absorb it all.

Before I get into the content (and obviously I will have to be somewhat cryptic because it’s proprietary information that isn’t mine to share), let’s talk about the event space and general set-up of things.

The first thing I noticed when I walked into the room was the set-up. 

The branding materials and layout of the room were done in a very strategic manner. I told Troy I was impressed with it and he shared a little bit of his strategy with me, which was fascinating.

There were banners on either side of the screen (which was huge, so that was helpful), and then there were posters (think these were printed on foam board) on easels to either side of the banners. It was spaced out in a way that made a larger space feel intimate (the room was used for the WP Elevation event on Saturday which held 50 people, whereas the Mavericks event was a little over 20 people).

Outside of the room was the registration table with workbooks and lanyards (which you know I love… branded #swag makes me happy).

Everything was done with the Mavericks branding and theme.

The Training

The training started out by going over the Mavericks Model and the Mavericks Scorecard (which are both included in the workbook). I’m assuming the members of Mavericks have seen this before, but they were new to me.

The three core areas of the Maverick Model are:

1. Profit
2. Elevate
3. Grow

Each of those 3 areas is supported by specific elements, then have intersecting areas that define a core piece of their model (sorry to tease you on the pics, but again, not my IP).

From there you move to the Mavericks Scorecard, which allows you to look at the elements on the wheel, rate yourself, and see where you stand after rating yourself. The goal of the scorecard isn’t to be at a level 10 with each element, it’s to make sure your wheel is even (this is a circular scorecard for those of you listening).

I won’t go into detail with everything in the workbook (will focus on highlights), but these two pages set up the rest of the workbook and the flow of the event.

The rest of the Day 1 training was:

• Standardizing Your Business
• Get Rich in the Niche
• The Hollywood Blockbuster
• Film School 101

The workbook supported the training in each of these categories. As they presented the training, we had work to do in our workbooks. We would do the work and then have discussion/sharing on what we did.

Because they were recording the event, they had a mic they passed around to everyone who shared. It was shaped like a ball and was tossed from person to person (you’ve probably seen some of these at events now, they’re usually shaped like a cube but I guess the cubes are all on backorder. Who knew?!).

The Standardizing Your Business was then broken down into 5 main areas (I believe they call them Levers).

We took the 5 Levers and drilled down deeper.

Whew!

Now repeat that for the other 3 topics for Day 1 and you get an idea of the depth of training. The training was taught by both Troy and Simon Kelly, then one of the Mavericks, Greg Koorhan, taught the Hollywood Blockbuster & Film 101 (he’s a filmmaker, and I believe the only other person in the room who doesn’t run an agency. And let me clarify, ALL of this training is relevant to any business… which is why I told Troy I was going to pimp this out).

Greg also gave us a copy of his book, Don’t Sell me, Tell Me (thanks Greg! and yes, I’ll be scheduling a podcast with him too).

Troy also touched on elements of the Brand Story by Donald Miller (which is an absolutely fantastic book).

The day ended with a summary of the training and a quick overview of the next day.

Day 1 Takeaways & Thoughts

• I need to standardize my business
  • Processes
  • Templates
  • Frameworks
    (which excites me because I’m in the early stages of what I’m doing, so I don’t have to go backward and clean anything up)
• Massive Clarity!
  • Drill down deeper
  • Simplify more
  • Create the plan from the clarity
• Stories are where it’s at! Which I already believe, but this was massive validation
• Mavericks is a group of high-caliber people

The execution ran like a well-oiled machine.

Everything had a time limit, they stuck to the schedule, and kept things moving.

*BONUS*
They did a great job of keeping the coffee, tea, and water fully stocked!

Lunch and snacks were brought in. The food was great and was intentionally kept on the lighter side so people wouldn’t feel sleepy after lunch.

Thursday, Day 2

GAME ON!

Thursday was the day I got to speak 🙂

Fortunately, the morning traffic wasn’t as bad, so I ended up getting there early (which works for me, I’d always rather be early).

Troy kicked the day off with a recap, some open discussion and asking for shares/takeaways from the previous day.

My session was called “Scheduling Sales” since content can and should be driving sales for your business (here’s to hoping this post & podcast drive some interest in Mavericks).

Let me just say that I had a TON of fun speaking.

I’m sure that comes as no surprise to many of you since I podcast and live stream, but outside of doing a few WordPress meetups, this was really my first time in this speaking in this setting. More speaking is definitely on the agenda this year.

Troy has a framework he uses for presenting (and running the event), which is “Problem, Promise, Proof”, which is how I structured the presentation. I also handed out the planner to everyone (actually Troy handed the planner out since I hadn’t quite planned on when I would do that) so they could reference it when we go to the planner pages in the presentation.

The samples I included were specific to agencies. I filled in the Monthly Campaigns page and the Content Strategy Map page so show that progression and talked through the rest of the pages.

*BTW, if you’re a customer waiting on your planner, have no fear. These were quickly printed at a lower quality due to turn around time so I could hand them out. Your planners are coming SOON!*

Comic Relief

I also realized I’m pretty good at thinking on my feet.

I had used Troy’s master slides and thought I had deleted the slides I didn’t need.

Wrong.

Troy had also made a couple edits ( not to my copy, just the layout) so I had a little ‘Oh!’ moment, but no biggie.

As I got towards what I thought was the end up comes 3 slides that say ‘Outcome #1, Outcome #2, and Outcome #3’.

I looked at Troy like, um… what would you like me to do here? Long story short, I created outcomes. haha…

It was one of those moments that validated what I believe: Everything Is Content and you need to Just Show UP.

It also connected me with the audience and provided a little comic relief (I think at one point I said “I kinda want to punch you right now”).

I’ve also accepted that I need to practice speaking more. I’m SO animated that even though Christina was kind enough to snap a zillion pictures for me (see below), it’s hard to capture one where I’m not doing something with my face or hands. I also need to slow down.

The rest of Day 2

• Panning for Gold (which was a hefty session)
• Your First Draft
• Flight Plan
• Live Linkedin Expert Session (this was done via Zoom and broadcast)

I’m probably not sharing these in order, but the Flight Plan piece I’m referring to is two-fold: the Dashboards that are created for Mavericks when they join (which I’ll explain in a minute), and The Flight Plan (you see the theme here with all this right?).

When people join Mavericks they set up a business dashboard. It’s a Google sheet that connects to an actual online dashboard where they can see if they’re making progress and focused on their goals (side note: the dashboards and flight plan were shared on Day 1). The Flight Plan maps out your projects and incorporates the dashboard (which is revenue based).

 

Day 2 Takeaways & Thoughts

I won’t repeat what I need to work on with speaking, but those are definitely a priority.

I also got great feedback on the planners.

Not simply that people loved them (they did, so that was great to hear), but that it was a little overwhelming. Based on my conversations with a lot of the Mavericks, they’re not creating much content right now (which will contribute to a feeling of overwhelm when presented with the planner).

For my business:

And this is pretty phenomenal to realize (which literally just came to me as I was writing this), was that I had the same takeaways from the first day, but in how it applies to my products as opposed to my business as a whole:

• I need to standardize my products
  • Processes
  • Templates
  • Frameworks
    (which excites me because I’m in the early stages of what I’m doing, so I don’t have to go backward and clean anything up)
• Massive Clarity!
  • Drill down deeper
  • Simplify more
  • Create the plan from the clarity
• Stories are where it’s at! Which I already believe, but this was massive validation

And of course, more validation that Mavericks Club is a group of high caliber people (they’re action takers, smart people, and a ton of fun).

Troy summarized the day and did another preview of what was coming Friday.

We all went out to dinner Thursday night, which is when I told Troy that more people need to know about Mavericks.

Friday, Day 3

Friday was all about Implementation!

And because I’m sure you’re curious, traffic was also better on Friday morning, so I ended up arriving about an hour early again, but grabbed my coffee and relaxed a bit.

Troy started the day off with a recap, some updates, passed out the calendar (see below) of the Mavericks events and training, then we literally worked the rest of the day. I had some great conversations with people, almost completely mapped out my upcoming content course (see below, and yes, I used WriteMapper.io to create this), and just soaked everything in.

Because of my gushing about how phenomenal I thought everything was at dinner the night before Troy asked me if I’d be up for sharing that with the group as well (keep in mind they were already members, but I wanted to share my experience in having been in another mastermind and really drive home my impressions), which of course I was delighted to share.

WP Elevation LIVE

This wasn’t part of the Mavericks Club event, but all the Mavericks stayed through Saturday, so I got to hang with my new pals a little longer.

I’m not going to go into as much detail here since many of you are familiar with WP Elevation (and if you’re not, there’s plenty of places to get more information), but this was structured in a way to provide additional training to members of WP Elevation (I’m not sure if this was open to people who aren’t members but are interested) and give them more information on Mavericks Club (which was done brilliantly).

The Mavericks branding was left up (smart and looked great) and they provided workbooks and lanyards for all the attendees as well.

Troy kicked off the morning, did some training, and had speakers throughout the day.

Chris Lema spoke on selling through stories.

Dana Malstaff spoke on growing a Facebook group organically and gave us some great tips (that I’ll be implementing) and Adam Preiser spoke about growing his YouTube channel to 96k people and sharing some of the journeys in launching CartFlows.

Both Dana & Adam’s sessions were done in an interview style (sitting in chairs in front of the room) and ended with Q&A.

All three speakers were fantastic! Troy also had a few of the Mavericks members get up and share their experience throughout the training, which I have no doubt helped position what happened at lunch.

Lunch was on your own unless you wanted to stay and hear more about Mavericks Club (Troy let me stay in the room and unbeknownst to him I also piped in with my experience over the last few days as an outsider).

I think there were probably about 20 people who stayed in the room at lunch to learn more about Mavericks, a few of whom pre-qualified themselves as not being ready for Mavericks and politely excused themselves. A group like Mavericks isn’t for someone who is in the early stages of their business. Clearly Troy and his team did a great job in positioning Mavericks for people to be able to identify that they weren’t ready. 

I know a handful of people picked up applications for Mavericks (it’s not an automatic ‘in’, there’s a strategic process for vetting people interested) and it was a privilege to be able to watch and experience the process.

Saturday ended with a VIP dinner out, which was a great way to end such an amazing week.

Wrapping It All Up

It was an AMAZING week!

I have a completely new set of expectations for mentors and masterminds.

First and foremost, I want something tangible (which Troy & his team completely over-deliver on).

I want to know that people are getting results, there are a solid plan and framework for growing your business, and the right support is provided when needed.

If you’re thinking about joining a mastermind or hiring a mentor, come up with your own criteria (we all need different things at different times), speak to people who have gotten results (or if it’s new, make sure you know exactly what you’re getting for your money) and really trust your instincts.

Heading home…

I drove home Sunday morning (it’s about a 5-hour drive) in sort of a dazed state.

I can’t tell you how many different things I tried to listen to on the way home. I had started re-listening to Brand Story on the way down (have listened to it before), but I think my brain was just tired. I may have gotten through one complete podcast, but spent the rest of the time hopping around from podcast, to book, to music.

Outside of the business takeaways and clarity gained (which is pretty priceless in and of itself), I felt some HUGE personal wins.

First, I continued with only black coffee until noon all week (I officially made it 30 days! I broke that on Sunday morning on the drive home, but jumped right back in today, so I’m not beating myself up).

As much as I’m not where I want to be with my weight, I know I’m on the right path and didn’t let it get in the way of this opportunity or stop me from “showing up”.

I was also reminded that it is SO vitally important to connect with people in person.

In addition to new friendships, there’s something so powerful about connecting with like-minded people and getting an outside perspective on what you’re doing (even if it’s just to validate that yes, you’re focused and on the right path, which is what I experienced).

To borrow from Oprah, here’s what I know for sure:

• My pivot to Content Marketing is absolutely what I’m supposed to be doing
• People want help with content strategy
• Showing Up really is the first step
• People don’t care what you look like when your heart, intention, and energy is right
• The easier you make things, the more successful you can be (clarity & simplification)
• Stepping out of your comfort zone usually pays off
• It’s going to be a great year!