Bay Area Mastermind®

Upgrade Your Systems with Tonya Aiossa

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Last time Tonya presented at Bay Area Mastermind, she shared her knowledge on developing and utilizing systems to clear your schedule for working on your business rather than in your business.

This December, Tonya is back to show you the system upgrades she’s executed at Asandia in the last two years to get more consistent results in less time with her team.

Join us at our December Mastermind and learn how to:

  • Re-home your systems so they’re easy to navigate, learn, and locate again and again, a keystone to systems adoption by your team.
  • Train thinking – not doing – and save yourself the frustration of having to make all the decisions, over and over again.
  • Consolidate feedback to better ROI your time in the manager/supervisor role and help everyone make the most of each learning opportunity.

If you’ve spent many hours fine-tuning and refining your systems, only to find that your team is still “winging it” time and time again, leaving you to fight the fires, then you’ll love Tonya’s way of training systems thinking across your team.

Tonya Aiossa presenting at the Bay Area Mastermind

Join us on December 18th to learn how to build that dream team you’ve always wanted for your business.

Tonya Aiossa is a Certified Level 7 Systems Implementation Specialist.

She currently serves as the Chief Ringleader of Asandia, Corp., and she consults to help unstick and unbury business owners from maintenance work so they can focus on their creative pursuits instead.

Apply to Test-Drive our December 18th Mastermind Meeting today!

Register for this Mastermind and Presentation

Reducing Risk While Raising Revenue with Brad Weimert

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Join us on August 15th as we hear from Brad Weimert, Founder of Easy Pay Direct.

Many online businesses are aware of the headaches that go hand-in-hand with accepting payments online, with chargebacks being one of the chief culprits. Friend Fraud accounted for $11.8 billion in 2012 (More than 4x the $2.7 billion lost to identity fraud) and has grown 41% annually since.

With the mounting costs of doing business, many entrepreneurs cannot afford to shoulder the burden of this fraud but are not aware of the available options to combat it.

Brad WeimertWith more than three decades of combined processing experience, Easy Pay Direct has been assisting online businesses resolve these issues without sacrificing their bottom line.

Brad Weimert, CEO of Easy Pay Direct, will be speaking about tools for businesses that will:

  • Reduce the number chargebacks they are receiving
  • Lower the perception of risk present during underwriting
  • Minimize ongoing costs associated with fraudulent disputes
  • Recapture revenue that would have been lost due to unnecessary declines

With these tried-and-tested strategies, business owners can realize a 40% reduction in their chargeback figures and recapture up to 8% of their declined transactions.

More About Brad

Equal parts entrepreneur and adventurer, Brad is just as likely to be taking a group of entrepreneurs on an adventure trip than he is to be building a company or giving a keynote. Founder of Easy Pay Direct; one of the foremost High Volume merchant account providers in the world.  Adventurist; Leading 8 Figure Entrepreneurs on the experience of a lifetime.

Apply to Test-Drive our August 15th Mastermind Meeting today!

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Membership Has It’s Benefits

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Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” introduced many of us to the concept of a “Master Mind” but being the voracious readers, implementers, experimenters, and lifelong learners that we are in the Bay Area Mastermind… we are constantly digging deeper, growing, and sharing the best of the best in our closed door Mastermind meetings…

What’s shared doesn’t get lost to the antiquity of time, locked away in a vault with no key, however.

Mastermind Membership has it’s benefits beyond just our monthly full-day Mastermind meetings and one of those benefits is a private secure login to our Mastermind Vault where members can access the valuable tools, shortcuts, and resources shared by members past and present.

Recommended Reading

What books have made the biggest impact for our members?

Find out in our Recommended Reading section, updated monthly with the latest best reads from our Mastermind.

VIP Speaker Recordings

When special guest speakers join us to share their expertise, we typically record these presentations for Members Only.

Consider this your Mastermind University with years of presentations by guest experts on topics from Marketing to Operations to Exit Strategies and beyond – the “soup to nuts” of creating, growing, and selling your business.

Membership Directory

Who else in the Mastermind do you need to connect with?

Access Member Bios and contact information right in our Members Vault Black Book so you can make the right connections with fellow entrepreneurs who’ve “been there, done that” and can help you “shortcut” with their lessons learned.

How to Access the Vault

Our Mastermind Members Only Vault is available 24/7 for Mastermind Members between meetings and is referred to often in our meetings.

Access is granted once Membership is approved by the group following your full-day Mastermind Test-Drive.

Simply complete your Test-Drive Application, invest in yourself for the day, and make valuable new connections with fellow entrepreneurs…

You’ll see if the group is a good fit for you and your business… and the group will see if you’re a good fit for the Mastermind… Upon approval and acceptance, you’ll get instant access to the vault (along with a number of other sweet “Members Only” benefits!)

What are you waiting for? We only have a limited number of spots available…

Complete My Application…

All the best,

Jeremy Shapiro
Bay Area Mastermind™
www.BayAreaMastermind.com

p.s. Don’t just take my word for it… check out what Ryan shared with us about our Mastermind…

“Joining the Bay Area Mastermind is one of the best things I have done for myself and for my business. The one day a month completely recharges my entrepreneurial juices and I have a virtual advisory board available by email for the in between time. I take away so much actionable information that I regularly apply to my business. As a result my business has grown by 60% and profits have grown by 400% since I joined.”

p.p.s. Have questions? Want to know more about the Test Drive? Check out our Test-Drive Frequently Asked Questions or ask us. We’re here to serve.

Lessons from Village Enterprise with Lucy Wurtz

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Join us on January 17th as we hear from Lucy Wurtz, Director of Development and Marketing at Village Enterprise.

You’re probably aware of the challenges of starting a business in the Bay Area and United States; lead generation, managing teams, work-life balance, etc…

But there are a whole host of issues facing many of the entrepreneurs around the world that we never have to face; like finding a safe place to put the money your business generates.
Lucy Wurtz - Village Enterprise

Village Enterprise takes this and other major obstacles to success into account as they mentor and foster entrepreneurs out of extreme poverty in East Africa.

Lucy will be telling us about Village Enterprise’s four-pronged model that works:

  • Initial training to prepare entrepreneurs
  • Micro-grants as seed funding
  • Ongoing mentoring of entrepreneurs
  • And the formation of small business savings groups

This model has been proven successful over and over since 1987, helping to start over 25,000 businesses, 75% of which remain in business after four years.

In this talk, Lucy will discuss what you can learn from this holistic approach to entrepreneurship, as well as how you can contribute to the efforts of Village Enterprise.

More About Lucy

Lucy’s dream is to infuse the African values of community, collective responsibility, humor and perspective, and the wisdom of elders into Silicon Valley culture. When not at work, Lucy is reading novels and history, hiking in the hills, or hanging out with family and friends.

Apply to Test-Drive our January 17th Mastermind Meeting today!

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Utilizing Systems with Tonya Aiossa

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You’ve heard it many times before… You’ve probably even said it yourself.

“I’d be doing so much more for my business…if only I had more time.”

Tonya Aiossa will be joining us for December’s Bay Area Mastermind meeting to talk about how utilizing systems in your business can help you find the time to do more for your business.

How can you use systems to find more time?

Even owners and managers who agree that systems are the way to consistent results (think Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited and Gino Wickman’s Traction) can still end up struggling with having way too much to do.

When presented with this syndrome, Tonya checks for two typical cases:

1) the under-documented owner who wonders why no one on their team can do anything without having their hands held, or

2) the over-documented owner who wonders why no one on their team ever reads their 900-page tomes.

Both of these business owners suffer from the same problem; they’re micromanaging.

One is doing it by mouth and meeting, telling everyone what to do on the fly. The other is doing it with their fancy manuals, writing down everything that comes to mind. But neither can anticipate every variable of the scenarios that their team members will be faced with each day in operations.

This is why every time something comes up that doesn’t look exactly like what they said or wrote, it lands back on their desk as a problem they have to solve or a decision they have to make…themselves.

Tonya Aiossa

These problems and decisions are the time-suck that determine the upper limits of business success. Business owners can only solve so many problems and make so many decisions on a day-to-day basis, and yet problems must be solved and decisions must be made.

Without systemizing the processes of problem-solving and decision-making so they can be properly delegated to empowered and accountable team members, at a certain point there’s no room for business growth.

In this talk, Tonya will take you through the steps to reclaiming your entrepreneurial time, energy, and creativity through systemizing. She’ll cover:

  • Documenting The Right Systems The Right Way
    • Perhaps you know the “why,” but do you know the “who, what, where, when, and how” of systemizing your business?
  • Systemizing Decision-Making
    • The “governance” of systems, and how it can help you spend more time working ON, rather than IN, your business.
  • Systemizing Problem-Solving
    • The 5-step system everyone in your business should be using to keep the work off of your desk, and on the team member’s desk to which it belongs.

Join us on December 13th to learn how to get back to the entrepreneurial function in your business.

Tonya Aiossa is a Certified Level 7 Systems Implementation Specialist. She currently serves as the Chief Ringleader of Asandia, Corp., and she consults to help unstick and unbury business owners from maintenance work so they can focus on their creative pursuits instead.

Apply to Test-Drive our December 13th Mastermind Meeting today!

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Developing Business Credit with David Mostny

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Suppose you could secure capital for your business – even your start-up – without having to personally guarantee the line of credit or loan?

How powerful of an advantage would this be for you and your business?

Business credit is a critical benefit that shifts responsibility and liability to the corporation protecting one’s personal assets effectively doubling the current credit being extended to you.

David Mostny, founder of Credit Masters Corporation.

Join us for a sit-down with Bay Area Mastermind member David Mostny, the founder of Credit Masters Corporation, to discover the credit-building steps you need to know to move your business forward.

As David says: “We cut the fog that most banks put between borrower and lender.”

David will be sharing with us “What the banks will never tell you” including:

  • How to build business credit and credibility.
  • How to get approved for funding.
  • How to access your current business credit status and accuracy as is being reported.
  • How to get approved for business credit.
  • How to build your business credit from $50,000 to 5 million or more.
  • How to secure even more funding for your business, without having to put up your heart and lungs as collateral.

David Mostny, President of Credit Masters Corp is a seasoned financial strategist with expertise obtaining and development of business credit and financing without a personal guarantee. Known as a problem solver David has transformed thousands of businesses often exceeding client’s expectations.

As a cofounding member of the San Francisco Global Trade Council, with the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, David co-led a delegation of California business leaders (E & J Gallo, Gap, Bank of America, McKesson, Levi Strauss, Bechtel, Ernst & Young, Chevron) to Eastern and Central Europe providing expertise in Market Entry Distribution channels and engineering financial mechanisms to secure hard currency payments.

Thunderbird American Graduate School of International Management invited David to their campus several times to speak at their Countertrade/OffSet Program Seminar to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies through the lens of a practitioner.

David also lent his experiences/expertise in the Apple University/Apple Inc. Workshop in Non-Conventional Strategies for Countertrade and Offset Trade.

David is passionate about business financing, enjoys speaking and sharing his vast knowledge base in negotiating with financial institutions by educating business leaders nationwide.

Apply to Test-Drive our November 15th Mastermind Meeting today!

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Virtual Assistant (VA) Outsourcing with Daven Michaels

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What if you could free up your time to focus on what needs your attention most and have a “virtual assistant” handle the rest?

Imagine your assistant expertly handling your Social Media, Facebook, Twitter, Article Marketing, Video Marketing, Blogs, Social Bookmarking, Linkedin, Research, Telemarketing, Customer Support/Service, and much more…

Join us as we welcome special guest speaker Daven Michaels, CEO of 123Employee and New York Times Best Selling Author, where we’ll deep dive into the world of outsourcing overseas with Virtual Assistants – or “VAs” as they’re commonly known.

Daven will be sharing with us:

  • How to find, screen, hire, manage, and monitor Virtual Assistants
  • The big “Gotchas” and pitfalls to look out for when hiring a VA
  • How to train your VAs for success
  • “General” VAs vs “Specialized” VAs
  • Outsourcing to a VA agency vs. using a VA placement agency vs. hiring VAs directly
  • YOUR Questions and Live Q&A

Known by his peers as a genuine “Super Entrepreneur” Daven Michaels, CEO of 123Employee and New York Times Best Selling Author, producer and entrepreneur has made a career of living the American Dream. His claim to fame is his number of diverse business successes. He has been a best-selling music and television producer, author, speaker and entrepreneur.

Daven Michaels, 123EmployeeDaven Michaels is known for his New York Times best-selling book “Outsource Smart: Be Your Own Boss … Without Letting Your Business Become the Boss of You“, is considered to be the “Father of the Electronic Music Scene” in the United States, was named the biggest club promoter in the nation, throwing parties for as many as 20,000 people a night, has shared the stage as a speaker with such notables as President Bill Clinton, Mark Victor Hansen, Brian Tracy, Dean Graziosi, Les Brown and many others, and started a telecommunications company, which expanded to 60 cities in the United States before being sold.

In 2006, Michaels founded 123Employee, an overseas outsourcing firm based in the Philippines that offers virtual assistants to small and medium-sized businesses and is a sought after expert in the world of outsourcing and virtual assistants (VAs).

Ready to find out about the Magic of Virtual Assistants and how to outsource to VAs? Want to have a chance to ask Daven your live questions during our Mastermind Q&A?

Apply to Test-Drive our September 20th Mastermind Meeting today!

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Building Your Brand Through Storytelling with Paul Wood

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In Marketing 101 you are told to tell a story to create your brand. The story creates the visual “why” and puts meaning behind your product. It worked for Disney right?

This technique is so successful because is applies to everyone! Everyone can relate to an effective story and more importantly remember that story and pass is along.  The important, and most difficult part, of creating a story to improve product awareness and sales is to determine what story you want to tell.

Some key questions to ask are:

  • What makes your product different?
  • How does it help solve a problem?
  • What are the benefits?

Want to learn more? At our upcoming Mastermind Meeting, Paul Wood will be guiding us through the storytelling process in a not-to-miss workshop covering:

  • PMWood PortraitPix1 Storytelling 101: Let’s see how you are telling your brand story today (with tips to improve it).
  • How telling your brand story provides ultimate competitive edge and essential differential to gain profit.
  • Structuring your story for maximum impact using your own brand story as example.
  • Defining the media best suited to tell your story; steps that will help you make the right choice.

Now, let’s meet Paul Wood!

Paul is an award-winning Writer-Director of both theatrical and corporate films and videos, and President and Founder of AE35Media, a digital media production house. Paul created films and videos for over twenty years, working up through apprenticeships in commercial editing and theatrical camerawork on multiple feature motion pictures. Paul also worked in theatrical film distribution and exhibition to round out full production experience. For the past eight years since moving to San Francisco Bay Area, Paul created over a hundred corporate and music videos in 35mm film and video.

Apply to Test-Drive our August 18th Mastermind Meeting today!

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Make Your Customers Stick with Lance Shuldberg

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You worked hard and spent time, effort, and money to acquire each prospect and customer.  The key is making them stick with top notch customer engagement. 

Have you made the shift from transactional and mass marketing, to personalized and meaningful individualized engagement?
This is about connecting with customers over time in a multi-channel method that speaks to them uniquely based on their business.

Lance Shuldberg
Lance Shuldberg, DilogR

Today, more than ever before, this includes social media. The days of touch-point contact are gone, and here to stay are social media conversations surrounding your product.

Furthermore, the customer decides when, how, and if to communicate. They are in control. This means that the tools you use should not only be highly visible; they should be fun!

One content platform is DilogR that enables marketers to generate leads, segment prospects, and engage customers using surveys, quizzes, video, and other interactive content.

Lance Shuldberg is a true marketing technologist. He is an expert in video technology, interactive content marketing, and marketing automation.  As Product Strategist at DilogR, Lance specializes in creating Wow experiences for customers, prospects, and partners.

At our upcoming Mastermind Meeting, Lance will be joining us as a guest presenter and is going to show us how to use their video technology, slides, assessments and quizzes to…

Make Customers and Prospects Stick

Of note, Lance will share with the Mastermind:

  • Best practices for engaging  and segmenting prospects and customers with quizzes (including BUZZFEED style persona quizzes).
  • How to integrate quizzes and surveys with Infusionsoft.
  • Best practices for effective video marketing campaigns.
  • How to create more engaging video content that actually gets through to your potential customers.
  • How to use video effectively inside of your membership site.
  • How to add interactive content (quizzes, questions, branching, chaptering, etc.) to videos and dramatically improve audience engagement.

Apply to Test-Drive our June 16th Mastermind Meeting today!

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Think you’re a fit for the Bay Area Mastermind? Find out today and apply for a full-day test-drive!