Ep 6: Mastermind for Excellence
My whole life is about serving people and helping them to achieve any goal, building relationships on the basis of mutual value.
I love learning from others, facilitating introduction, teaching through "Edutainment" methodology and "Gamifying". Friends call me an adventurous coach, global thinker, serial entrepreneur and a passionate accelerator of people.
Gil Petersil
Podcast Transcript
Rael Bricker
Hi, I'm Rael Bricker, and I be one of your hosts with the Business Excellence podcast.
Lindsay Adams
And I'm Lindsay Adams, I'm the co-host. Welcome Gil,great to see you.
Gil Petersil
Hello. Happy to be with you guys. Absolute pleasure.
Lindsay Adams
And so you're residing in Bali at the moment. That's a bit of an idyllic location. I tell us, how did you get there? And what are you doing there?
Gil Petersil
So Bali was a vacation over December and January from our home in Singapore and, you know, the vacation was about to end and I told my wife I'd like to extend for one more month during that one month COVID hit and we understood that being quarantined here and you know, surrounded by nature, with a lot of freedom for the kids especially is better than in Singapore, even though we love Singapore very much and may time as things develop in the world, we decided to let go of our home in Singapore and make Bali a you know, indefinite not just home, but the ecosystem that we want to see flourish and prosper around us. So we've been doing a lot of things here connected to charity connected to collecting plastic and you know, supporting the different communities in different parts of Belize making sure people are eating that are around us, especially trying to employ a lot of people.
Rael Bricker
I was reading up on your profile. And I've known you and Lindsay and I've known you for a few years. But I love the line on your on your LinkedIn profile that says I love learning from others facilitating introduce introduction, teaching through edutainment methodology and gamifying. And today's chat is really about masterminding and you have over the last few years, made yourself into a global mastermind strategist and to tie in with our business philosophy of Business Excellence. I guess the first question is, you know, on a broad-brush level, what does a mastermind do to create Business Excellence for the average business owner out there?
Gil Petersil
So first of all, thank you for you know, asking that question in that manner, because you gave it a very specific niche where most people just as Gil, what is a mastermind, but you actually gave the answer within the question. So if we're looking at entrepreneurs, and we focus on them, because a mastermind can be great for you know, a single woman to a, you know, young parents to a businessperson to a young teenager, I've worked with young people, it could be really, there is a magic power for any groups of people, but as you mentioned, those businesspeople right now, that need to change your strategy now or they die.
It's like there is no chance around the world in the last nine months, the world has completely flipped around and it's not over yet, of course, and anyone who's looking to pivot, change that strategy, adjust their mindset quickly, without too much pain. without too many, you know, let's break through fears every day, which is not easy for a lot of people to break through fears, but allowing yourself to go through the change, while feeling like you're being guided. You feel like someone's got your back and for me, that's what a good mastermind is all about. You know, like, I feel like these people got my back, I feel they want my best interest and I think that when they're speaking about my opportunity, or my problem, they're doing it without a bias. They don't they don't they want to just give me what they got. You know, they're not thinking, Oh, I know him. He's my friend or he's a family member. Let me package it in the best way to not hurt his feeling or let me tell him what I think he needs to hear. In a mastermind.
People tell you like it is, in most cases, of course, but in most of the I'm around and I think that's very powerful today for the that businessperson who just needs to make it because you know, he needs to support his family. He needs to like pay his rent, like, we don't have a choice. Like my business dropped 95% I had no choice but to activate seven different masterminds at the same time, and at the same time, serve other people so they would get into masterminds. When we when we're hit against the wall, we got to push back and sometimes the mastermind is there to support us is to true guilt.
Lindsay Adams
So I'm curious, can I ask you a like a process driven question here? What's the process, what's the structure? How do these masterminds work? I mean, I love the whole concept or I've got your back and I've got your back, can you just walk us through the process?
Gil Petersil
So that's a really fun question. No, the process is something I've had to learn. I'm not that process guy. I'm not that procedures guy. I'm the Kaizen guy. I'm the guy that continuously improve things, which drives the process guys crazy, you're like, No, we just outlined the procedures, we printed them out. Why are you changing them again, even though they're like actually Gil, that's a really good idea. Like we've just improved on it. So you know, the gamification part that Rael mentioned about my life in general, is I like to see myself very young inside, you know, I believe that a lot of us men around the world still have this, you know, young kid inside of us, which is why we sometimes drive our women crazy. But for me, specifically, I allow that child inside of me to be creative, to allow my imagination to go wild. And I do that within business. Which means for me, a mastermind is a game and I really call it a mastermind game.
In many, many cases, that means that it has levels that every level, we can have a different structure or procedure. So for example, if you have a simple you know, one day mastermind, let's just say three-to-five-hour mastermind, based on the number of people you have in based in them over hours. First of all, you start to look at numbers, which is what I do. And then it's an algorithm, it needs to be a formula. How many hours do you have? How many breaks? Do you need to take? How much time does each person get? How many levels do you want to get them to? You know, so it's, it's never one formula. For me, it's something that I've not learned to do.
So if we got like seven people in the room, and we got three hours, and we want to give them maybe, you know, maybe one or two15-minute breaks in the middle, so we have two and a half hours and if you got two and a half hours, and you break it down, you're like, Okay, so how long would it take you to do level one level? One quick introduction, seven people has given a minute each. So you take that off, and then you say, Okay, and then me talking a little bit introduction explaining the situation, we'll get that three minutes and when I talk about minutes, I created this different algorithms and formulas within every mastermind in order to structure me like you guys have been speakers for much longer than I have.
I'm still a junior this and, you know, in my first 100 plus speeches, which only happened five years ago, six years ago, I did five speeches, and they were all for free and they were not really speeches like 20 or 30 people, and over 25 years ago that I stepped out of my shell and I went directly into 120 speeches in the first year and my team still laughs to me today saying that well, but 100 Gil, you did really badly. And what does it mean? I went over time, I forgot to play with the slides, my slides didn't work, I made all these mistakes. I was super unstructured I was all over the place. I was the artist and that Lindsay is when I started to create these formulas that would structure me, I needed. I needed to be told when to stop speaking and it worked for others as well. People like to have those rooms with a mastermind. How do you get?
Rael Bricker
I mean, how do you get buy in? In terms of people? You know, when they come into a mastermind? Let's just say it's a day or it's once a week for a month or once a week for six months? Are you getting people to open up and share their problems in a closed confidential environment? That what gives them when you running a mastermind? That that moment of confidence that said, Yep, this is great and I can share my problems, because I'm hoping to find a group of people who will help me find the solutions.
Gil Petersil
That's a really, really powerful question. I'm just gonna thinking about, you know, I do an average of two masterminds a week, one offline one online. I don't always I'm not always the host. I'm sometimes the host and the facilitator, for example, sometimes I'm just amazed and invited experts, as sometimes I invite a host, I invite my assistant to actually be the one the timekeeper and I might just be the expert on the call, you know, I break them up and you know, Rael, it's a really powerful question when you're asking because it's very, very personal. It's like, not everyone always opens up in the first five minutes, you know, not everyone, but three things I find that important.
Number one walk them through the process as early as possible, and just ask them to trust the process. Say, guys, let's break down our time today and let's take a third of the time that we have available and just trust the process. If it doesn't work during the third of a time, tell me I can give you your money back. You can give me feedback, we could change the rules, which is something I allow participants to do. So I'm like, Listen, these are my rules.
However, at any given point, you can choose to break a rule But you must replace it with another rule and offering that to participants has blown my mind in many cases, because they've given me some awesome rules like, I love them and you know, I'd say that usually, as soon as the process starts out first person who says, Okay, I'll be in the hot chair, I'll go first, they're my hero. Because we're using them as a case study, it doesn't matter how many examples I can give them. That is the hero on that call that says, Okay, let's go and then depending on how open they're willing to be, they tend to set the standards.
So what I try to do my best is I try to read everyone's profiles before, in my introduction, I try to, in a way hint with subliminally and I tend to usually get it right with a person I kind of hint to, they will be the one that raised their hands, so I know who would be willing to be more vulnerable, and then they'll set the standards. And then everybody was like, well, I can't be shallow, like, you know, I can't be that one. That's like, boring. I got to like, step it up a little bit and be a little bit more vulnerable, a little bit more open.
Lindsay Adams
What would be a typical issue that someone would bring to the table? I know it's a big question but give us give our listeners an idea of some of the kind of things that you might work on in one.
Gil Petersil
Sure. So coming back to Rael’s question on the actual format, we can have a one day mastermind a one week like I used to do one week masterminds on yachts, like we used to take like, like 30 yards and go sailing for a week and imagine how much you bond and you build trust and loyalty and everyone is complete strangers. Remember how we used to do masterminds, you know, over a course, like one year or six months where you'd connect once twice a month, it's a different level of relationship that is built these days.
I love the one time masterminds, you know, two hours, three hours, sometimes you'll see those people again, sometimes you don't and the main reason is, I'm a huge believer in serendipity. Similar like yourself, Lindsay, you know, the art and science behind human networking has been something I've been studying for a lot of years and I believe that if these people came together, and if I can create that space, if I can hold the space for them to share, then I believe that they need to be listened to each other and I need to be there hearing this as well. So what I've seen that's happened very successfully is people come in with short term challenges, not like I don't know what my dreams are, which has happened before, like, Well, you know, I lost mobile motivation in life, and I don't my goals are, you know, that's okay. He's like, Listen, I've made my millions I've got over $100 million in assets right now. I've lost all passion life; my son doesn't want to talk to me. I have no idea what else to do. You know, and after that one mastermind, the child within him was born, he started going to the gym, he started working out and wanted to start dating younger women, something developed that sparked up you know, we have people showing up and saying, Listen, I've been working on my own for so many years and I think it's now time for me to hire someone else.
I don't know who to hire, where to hire, how do I start managing? How do I let go, people are afraid to let go responsibilities, what I hear often, which I love is I'm in business with my wife or my husband, I love that couples doing business together? We cannot be doing business with my wife for 10 years that well, nine and a half years we've been together and the relationship for 10 years and I love him when that one comes up, you know, there's tension in the family or like it's only the two of us. I think that speakers and coaches who want to build a real business should never be just the two of them.
Husband and wife, they should always bring third. So that shows up a lot, how to raise money for investments, how to get my book published, how to start a podcast and how to I'm getting into quarrels with my business partner. Like I do a lot of things with startups, like I used to be very active in Silicon Valley and in Israel, the whole startup nation. So I attract a lot of high-end startups like hey, we just raised $2 million. Oh my god, what do I do? My partners and I are fighting should we raised our salaries should we not? Like very practical, very action oriented, clear challenges and opportunities are brought up.
Rael Bricker
That brings us to the end of the first part of our episode, interviews with Gil Petersil mastermind strategist. Join us on the next episode for part two of the interviews with Gil Petersil so we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Business Excellence podcast.
