How you do anything is how you do everything, and that includes mindset. But how do you achieve that mindset of success, especially towards investing? In this episode, Michael Silvers interviews Randy Tate, the Co-Founder and CEO of iFlip, to elaborate on how you can have that mindset towards bringing your business to the top through masterminds. Randy is an educator, coach, and entrepreneur who has spent over ten years on stages, in workshops, and as a one-on-one coach teaching small business owners about sales, marketing, and the mindset of success. He explains the beauty of mastermind groups and differentiates it from networking groups. Join Michael and Randy as they dive deeper into the dynamics of masterminds, leadership, working with groups, and understanding money rules.
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The Mindset Of Successful Investing With Randy Tate
We’ve had our guest before with his partner in business, your partner in crime. Randy, it was a great call last time with what’s going on. The market had crashed. We hit it that day when the market crashed for a couple of days. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself again and what you’re going to cover? The biggest is the mindset, how masterminds work in their businesses and how they can use them. You’ve done so much with business. Tell me a little bit about your background.
We won’t go all the way back, but I’m an entrepreneur at heart. I started in my first company many years ago. I ran it, built it, sold it to a big billion-dollar publicly-traded company, then went out and started doing the things that I love to do, which is teach. My first profession, I was a high school science teacher. That’s what I like to do. I like to teach. Unfortunately, there’s no money in that world. I took that teaching skill and put it to work, teaching small businesses all over the world. I’ve spoken on every continent except Antarctica. I’ve coached thousands of small businesses in both masterminds, one-on-one settings and workshops and all different types of training. There are some fundamental things around being an entrepreneur, running a business that have to happen and that are consistent.
I’ve coined this term myself. It’s pretty professional. I call it Widget Agnostic Rules. Every business has to follow that if they want to be successful. That led me into working with a company called Infusionsoft where I was one of their vice presidents there. I ran all of the small business education and training components of the company and the externals training as well for the internal employees. Along the way, I’ve worked with the Gerbers, Assarafs and all the people that talk about mindset. Your mindset is consistent across all the genres of the things you do.
It’s not just about your mindset around investing or your mindset around your job or your mindset around the thing that you’re passionate about, your hobby, your family. How you do anything is how you do everything and that includes mindset. That’s my background. I’ve ran an executive coaching company as well. It’s still in existence. It’s doing very well. I do some of that from time to time, but right now my energy is completely focused on disrupting the financial services industry with a software company called iFlip. That’s a little bit about me.
We did a lot of work with you when you were in Infusionsoft. With what you’ve created, one thing you always had was the teams and the team concept and how important that was, and you created early on in Infusionsoft masterminds. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Infusionsoft has a lot of programs for varying size of businesses. They still do various mastermind groups. Some people think, “What would I need a mastermind for? That person doesn’t do what I do, so why would they have any input on my thing?” Those are the common objections to masterminding. What we did at Infusionsoft, and I spent a lot of time with the elite group, people who had million-dollar and up businesses, one thing they all had in common is they all were part of not one, but multiple mastermind groups. When you hit into a safe environment where you can have a conversation about a problem you’re having and be open to the reception of others who don’t see it the way you see it, they’re in front of the different arena. You might be a lawyer, they might be a
doctor, one guy might be a roofer. You still all have employees. You still all have accounts receivable problems. You still have, “How am I going to grow? What am I going to do next?”
When you listen to the way other people are doing, and that’s the way you can start to get outside of your own head and get out of your own box and find things. Masterminds, they’re one of, if not the most powerful way to grow quickly. The reason being is because anytime you can get like-minded individuals, especially if they’re from varying fields of business and study, different genders, different ethnicities, even different religions, people looking at the world differently. I used the word occurrence a lot. They have a different occurrence. When you can start to get a perspective of that wider range as possible in a narrow focus on your problem, your thing, then you will grow exponentially faster because you’ll start getting those moments. I’ll put it like this.
Your mindset is consistent across all the genres of the things you do. Click To TweetAnytime something has occurred to you that previously did not and you’re like, “I didn’t get that before,” if you can think of a time like that when that happened to you, it might have been when you learn how to tie your shoe, you’re like, “That’s how you do it.” All of a sudden you now know something you didn’t know or you see something that you couldn’t see. Masterminds put that process on steroids. That is why you get the ability to grow faster, and not just faster, more efficiently because you’re getting perspectives from people that have different occurrence and different things. Does that mean everything that comes to you in a mastermind is going to be great? Is it a bunch of people telling you what to do? No. It’s a bunch of people giving you perspectives to help you shift or grow your occurrence. That’s why. We find a lot of different types in different businesses. A lot of masterminds that I have found out there have moved towards the networking model. It’s become much more of a networking group. Can you talk about the difference?
There’s a huge difference and they’re both good. I don’t want them to think one of them is better or different than the other. The idea of a networking group is where you’re going to go and meet people to do business with. That’s a simple definition. Either stuff that you need or stuff that they need that you have. You helped them serve them. When you shift into a mastermind group, you’re being served when it’s your turn. You’re not being served by somebody buying your wares. You’re being served through knowledge, ideas and occurrences that are shifting back and forth between the group.
The working from home and everything, is this the best thing that’s ever happened? There are more experiences like the guy who was doing a business call and his little kid walked in. It’s got ten million views.
That’s not uncommon. I was listening to my wife. She was on a call with her company and it’s a big call. All of a sudden, I hear her calling for our dog. “What’s going on over there?” Apparently, they were all showing their dogs. It’s a different way to do stuff. It will never go back 100% to the way it was, but it will not stay 100% like this.
What were you saying about masterminds?
The difference between a networking and a mastermind is networking groups are great. They have an awesome place for what we do. I go to them all the time. In the networking group, I’m there trying to find new customers or find people that have a service or product I can use. That’s networking. Mastermind, I’m trying to solve problems in my business. If you don’t have problems in your business, you don’t have a business. We all have them. We’re all looking for ways to solve them. Masterminds are about solving problems inside your business that you’re struggling with. There are two different objectives. You are correct. The good mastermind groups, there are not a lot of them left anymore. They’re not as easy to find.
People don’t get the value. They’re caught up in the, “I want to meet a bunch of people and pitch my stuff,” model versus “I actually have a sales issue or an employee issue or I’m struggling with how my payroll is set up or I’ve got product development.” There are all kinds of things going on inside your business that you’re going to need help with. It’s not just business. I know I focused it on that, but you can have masterminds in professional developments, in the mindsets phase, how to look at problems differently, how to deal with family or friends. They can help you with everything. The big difference is networking is about you growing your group of people around you and the things that you can use or things people that can use your stuff. Masterminding is about a laser
focus on a problem you’re having inside your business.
The biggest piece there that we sometimes lose too, which is great about this. Everybody wanting to build a mastermind for your business, a big factor in that too, is you’ve got to be a service. You’ve got to want to do it more for them and dive into their business. In a way, you take all your business skills and knowledge, but you forget about your business. You’re like, “I bring my business to you, not because I want to prospect you or bring you in my business. I do it because how can I be of service?”
A properly run mastermind group generally has around 4 or 5 people. Don’t get too many. If you get many, then it becomes too diluted. If you think about a weekly mastermind call, you’re going hard. You’re going an hour or two people for 30 minutes each. You’re now only going to get the focus on you one out of every four weeks. The
rest of the time you’re there to give. I’ve also been a part of mastermind groups where people only show up when it’s their turn to get help. That’s not helpful. They’ll type in, “I don’t have any problems,” then they vanish. The foundation of the mastermind is the service. It’s you wanting to serve other people and give them back to them based on the experiences you’ve had in life. You can share stuff with them and they’ll be grateful that
you did if you can give them something that has not yet occurred to them.
Talk a little bit about iFlip again because there are going to be new readers. Talk a little bit about how you used what you’re talking about to actually build the company.
Monkey see, monkey do. Practice what you preach. I’ll give you a perfect example of how we built this. IFlip, as a company, we’re a software company that’s disrupting the financial services space. We’re an AI machine that allows the average Joe to participate in the soft market with the effectiveness and efficiency of an institution. There is no other product like it in the industry. We are the first to market with a true AI product. The reason we’re able to do that is because of my business partner who was on last time, Kelly Korshak. He’s a guy who went to Stanford’s Physics Program when he was sixteen years old. He’s managed billions of dollars for big institutions. He knows how it works.
When I was still at Infusionsoft, after I’d met Kelly and we started kicking this idea around, I was running my own mastermind education event with my executive coaching company. It was for small executives and one of the things that I required was that he attend and spend three days up to his eyeballs in mindset, leadership and
masterminding. He needed to come out of there with an understanding of language and how I do things and how we work so that he can determine if we could or could not work together. Luckily, he did. We used everything I talked about. One of the things that we talk about is mindset around money. As a company, one, we communicate very well. That’s extremely important.
There’s no such thing as silos. The customer service guy never talks to the sales guy, never talks to the product development guy. We have weekly calls with the whole team. Everybody is on there. I give them updates of what’s going on. They know where we’re at in our fundraising and they know where we’re at in downloads and sales. Everybody knows all the pieces of what we’re doing and we share that very openly. We also treat these little masterminds. I take my five key people and I’ll have a call with them and ask, “What’s going on with you?” They might not know they’re in a mastermind, but they’re in a mastermind. “Our customer service guys are having a problem here. I need some thought partnership.” That’s the way I always do it. It’s a process I use inside the
company.
It’s language around what I use with our group. I’m the CEO. I can say, “I’m a CEO, that’s why.” That’s not an effective way to build a company. I say, “I’m in the discovery process, so I’m trying to figure some stuff out.” I keep the words right here. I need your best thinking because I’m trying to determine what to do. I haven’t made a decision. We’re in the decision-making phase. They give me their input, then we talk about it. I get input from multiple people that it might impact and then I make a decision. I call it my mastermind or by committee. When you’re doing this and when you build your company from that perspective and everybody feels safe with that and have a seat at the table. They can tell you when they think you’re wrong. They can tell you when they think you’ve got a bad idea and believe me, they are not afraid to tell me. We work very well together because of that.
We think about the mindset around money and a lot of it has to do with fear in investing in things like that. Your job as a leader as you’re growing your company is to be in a safe place. Make sure your place is safer for everybody there. The minute somebody works for you and they feel afraid to have a conversation with you, you truly lost. It will become very difficult. I talked about that a lot. I practice it a lot. I do my very best. Do I get mad sometimes? We all do. However, I’m very intentional about that because at the end of the day, and I’d like to teach on this a lot, every single person here, when we wash it all down, we get paid to have quality conversations. Our ability to have quality conversations is what we are paid to do. We can only do that in a safe environment. Otherwise, I get into a world of telling and dictating and that doesn’t work. It will work for a minute. It can have a season. You might have to say, “Team, for the next 30 days, we’ve got to get some stuff done and we’re going to go a little harder.”
If you’ve done a good job of creating a safe environment, they’ll respect that. They will absolutely be good with it. They’ll have no problems with it and you’ll be off and running. The last thing I’ll say about that, one of the things that I insist upon, and I do this with mastermind a lot is, are you able to disagree and still commit? It’s not an easy thing. A lot of people will scratch their heads. I get asked this question a lot, “When you’re hiring, how do you do this? What do you look for?” A question I will ask is, “Are you able to disagree and commit? We don’t have a dictatorship.” I’m able to disagree and commit. If four of the team thinks we should go one way and I think another, and I’m like, “I’m leaning on the fence,” I might not agree with them their way. They would think of it, but I’ll commit and go full throttle. That disagreeing, committed mindset is very important to grow.
That’s perfect because that’s such an important piece that we sometimes don’t have that kind of communication. We don’t have the communication as a team. Either I’m afraid of you or I’m afraid of going up or up doesn’t even want to talk to going down. Sometimes you have the leader that’s afraid to talk to the team because they’re afraid of what might be said or what might come out. They’re like, “I need to be liked.” What does it do from a business position? You’ve got a lot of solo entrepreneurs that are going to be reading this. That’s probably where we’re having it. People in entertainment, we have the other side too, but there are all solo entrepreneurs. Can you talk about the need to be liked a little bit and what that can do to an organization?
If you need to be liked and that’s your motivation for doing stuff, get over that. It doesn’t work. Also, in the world of solopreneurs, the greatest solopreneurs in the world have the most dynamic teams. You’re not going to do it. You’re not a master bookkeeper, accountant, tax specialist, marketer, salesperson, creator, executioner. It doesn’t matter. You might make the best pie in the world. Independent contractors that are serving you and your cause are as good as employees and you’ve got to have a big group of employees, but you have to have a team. If you can’t identify the team that you need, then you’re not doing it right. You need to get on a mastermind. Start having some conversations with some people because it’s so important.
When you think about it, all the work gets done, but no one can do it all themselves. Gerber talks about that a lot in his little email. You can’t do it all yourself. You also can’t sit around and daydream about it. Simon Sinek and the Why, it’s a great concept, a beautiful idea. There’s something as important as why. People always look at me a little funny when I say this, and it’s another word. It’s called How. Sitting around in your garage chanting, “Maserati,” does not make a Maserati show up in your driveway. You might have a picture of it and you’ve got a vision board. I love all that stuff. I do all that stuff, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to roll up your sleeves and go to work. To that language piece, you have to have an understanding that language builds and creates team. From that team, we’ll create the vision of you’re a solopreneur. You’re your own CEO. You’re your own boss and be all that stuff going, “The tribe’s going to help you get the work done.” That’s the key piece. I hope that was what you were looking for there.
That’s that critical piece. I don’t need to say anything on top of that because that’s exactly what I was looking for without looking for it. It’s the kind of thing too. I know that I’m always learning. Everybody has to remember this. Ten percent of the workforce at the moment, and it’s even a little bit more, might not be working, but the rest still are. We have a tendency of looking at what’s not instead of what truly is. It’s sad, the ones who are not working. I have to be honest. Everybody I know is working. They’re either been deemed essential or they’re home-based businesses that shifted when they saw things happening.
They did a shift or they were able to pause or there’s enough financial reserves where they could take a pause. It is that mental attitude that you keep going and now there’s so much going on virtually. Less people are showing up for this and this call because they’re like, “If I have to sit on another Zoom call,” and I keep saying I understand that. What you do is don’t take yourself out of the game that was working just because there’s another Zoom call, whatever that is.
That’s avoiding the how.
Everybody who knows me, the ones who knows me well, smile at this, but I always say, “Buy every course and read every book.” You’re always investing in educating. That can never stop. What happens is we get into fear that stops and now within weeks, you can stop the momentum. That takes another year to get
going.
You can stop it that fast. When you asked me to come on in and weave in this conversation, you talked about the mindset of investing, and I’ve done lots of teaching on this stuff and that’s not where my brain was originally. I started thinking about it. Whydo people invest? Why would you invest your money? It’s funny. It comes right back to it’s not for the money. It’s for all the other things. There’s usually about 4 or 5 levels of separation down to why you would invest your money. Why would you put money in someone else’s small business or in the stock market or in a piece of real estate?
Is it because you want to get more money? No, it’s not. It’s because you want some more things or more stuff. If you boil it down far enough, it has to do with legacy, family, and lifestyle. You can put it into those three buckets. In service to that, people don’t invest for money because they’ve got some money and now they’ll give it to somebody else. You get the process. What we don’t do very well in the investing world, as Americans in particular, and the rest of the world doesn’t do a very good job either. Believe me, I’ve spoken all over the world on this. I’ve talked to lots of people.
You should not stop investing in education. Click To TweetThey don’t even understand how the investments that they’re doing works. They don’t take time to learn how. They throw a blind faith behind a why of greed, which is where it usually lands, and they let it go. They let it fly. They don’t create money rules. They don’t have the methods of investing. They don’t understand what’s going to work. What happened in Robinhood, and this is not a negative towards Robin Hood. It’s the online trading app. It’s our competitor with a little different than what we do. They talked about an oil fund. The oil was so depressed, and I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but it was like 200,000 people without understanding that there was a contango spread going on. It was designed by hedge fund experts to prey on retail investors, which is exactly
what it did.
One hundred ninety-seven thousand people put their money into that fund and it’s worth zero now. No homework, no understanding, no paying attention. They got excited, they got emotional and they took a swing. That’s how people invest or they take their money down to hand it to a professional that’s going to charge them so much in fees and the system itself preys on that person. “I got your house. You lost.” First, you’ve got to know your ‘why’ then you’ve got to know how. Does that mean you’ve got to be an expert? Do you have to be like Kelly, my partner? No, but you have to at least understand the deal. Maybe buy some real estate. What are your money rules around the deal? I bet you there are people that have invested in some real estate deal or real estate fund or something somewhere without a clear understanding of when they would be paid, how much they would get paid, and what would happen if they didn’t get paid. They don’t know. We get excited. Our how is rooted in our emotions and our excitement about something we solve. It’s unfortunate because it doesn’t have to be that way.
It’s the emotion. It gets you every time. Everybody I know, it’s like the emotional intelligence went away. This has been great. Go out and get Randy’s app. It’s awesome. I’ve used it and it rocks. It’s all I use now. We’re not financial planners. I’m not anything like that. If you want to use the software, it’s awesome and it’s an app now, so it’s even more awesome.
They can download the free app, which is the easiest way to do it. You have a text code for them.
What’s the text code again?
It’s Mentor.
Where do they text the code? What’s the number?
It’s (480) 418-0300. It’s free. It’s a different app compared to what we talked about. It’s not emotional. It’s completely rooted in mathematics, algorithms, and AI. There are three portfolios in there. You have three groups of stock, three collections of different stocks that have different algorithms attached to them. You can literally point and click and it executes for you. It buys and sells and holds and does everything completely for you. It’s super easy.
I decided, “I’ve got to look.” It pulled almost all my money out of the market. It did what it was supposed to do, which didn’t happen to us back in 2008. That did not happen with another company. I’m like, “It did what he said it would do.” We had to prove it on a bad sequence. Any advice for new investors? Randy, this is Misty.
I am a new investor and I love downloading the app. Do you have any advice for me and new investors of where we could start or an amount to start with or a routine?
Everybody’s got to have their own money rules depending on how much money you’ve got. If you’ve got a couple of million dollars in there, you’re different than if you’ve got a couple of hundred. What you’ll notice in the app, here’s what I always tell people. We’re not advisors, but what we’ve done is we have three collections of stock that are in there. There’s one called Spy-Plus, one called Spy-I, and one called Red Oil. Those are all collections of stocks that Kelly has put together with algorithms on them that’s fully automated. That means your how becomes the mathematics and the algorithm. You also have the ability to buy and sell your own if you want. Again, there’s no cost to it as long as you keep your investment under $6,000. If you go over $6,000, they will charge you $10 a month. We want to make sure that you understand we’re not advisors not giving you advice on what to do, however that platform is designed for the person that doesn’t know what to do and can let the math work for them.
Thank you.
Misty, welcome again. I’ve known Misty, but she’s a brand-new member. Randy, any last words before we let you go?
Thanks for having me. It’s always a pleasure to come and talk with you. I’ll promote whatever you need me to promote for you. You let me know what you need and I’ll drive traffic for you.
Randy, thank you so much. We’ll talk to you soon.
Important Links
- Randy Tate
- Infusionsoft
- iFlip
- Kelly Korshak – previous episode
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