Today we're here with Merrill Jencks a top agent in the Phoenix metro area and I want to talk to him about masterminds. 

Now, Merrill just for preference are you a busy agent yes?

M:  Yes, I'm a busy agent.

K: Okay, so we know that you're busy, and do you belong to any masterminds?

M: Yes I do. 

K: Okay, so I mean how do you justify the time to join a mastermind when you're so busy? 

M: First of all you can't spend all of your time in the whirlwind, right? If you want to upgrade your business you have to spend some time working on yourself and you have to spend some time on upgrading you know the framework of your business not just constantly in the world when slinging lockboxes.

You'll never really grow your business just slinging lockboxes I mean you might do a few more sales each year but can you really scale if all you're doing is slinging lockboxes the answer is NO.

So it's really important to spend some time out of the whirlwind working on yourself working on your business that kind of thing now I used to go to masterminds purely for the tactical stuff and I still like the tactical stuff like when I go to conferences and when I go to events and when I go to masterminds like I used to hate the motivational stuff like, skip the fluff and tell me exactly what to put on the postcard and when to mail it and how many to send right like I used to.

I really loved the super tactical stuff and I would go to masterminds and someone would start saying well we've got this checklist that we use for our transaction management and be like I want, can I see that?  give me the checklist.  yeah okay, not just understanding why it was important to have the process but I wanted to literally just rip off and duplicate exactly what they had and that all that stuff is really important.

But for me the real value of masterminds now is that it's easy to get a little complacent and it's easy to start to think that you're pretty awesome and it's easy to think that you're you know one of the best agents in town and what you don't really need but then you go surround yourself with people who are doing twice your production oh yeah and you're like I know nothing and you realize yeah you're a peon and you realize that you can do. I don't know what the number one agent in the world does like they must. I don't know what they just mastermind with CEOs i guess but you know as a relatively normal high producing agent I find for my mindset and for my skills I have to surround myself with achieving a lot more than I do because it changes my entire outlook and perspective on life it makes me realize that I can achieve so much more and do so much more and contribute so much more and and and literally just changes my perception on on on everything it's amazing 

K: So, for you you know just summarize why do you join a mastermind and how do you find one?

M: I mean you know most of our masterminds have come through you know like we once had a mastermind that was put together by a title company that we were worked with and they had networked with some of the other top agents in the area and it was a fantastic mastermind I've had other situations with masterminds where you know they happened through Tom Ferry you know our coaching organization and those are probably some of my favorite masterminds still because you can there are so many great agents out there just go on to one of the Facebook groups I mean how many of the Facebook groups that are out there like lab coat agents and you know one of those and say hey guys this is where I'm at I'm looking for other you know like-minded agents so this is what I'm looking to achieve and there will be people who have already done it and who are already experts at it and start plugging into that.

K: Okay, so go find yourself a mastermind.