Bodo was invited as a guest on a Small Business Podcast. We were talking about masterminds and why they do not work.
Cathy Smith of CATCO Enterprises is a coach for Women in Business located in Bunbury, Western Australia. She runs a successful podcast supporting small businesses, provides Web Design Services and coaches women to become better entrepreneurs and successful business owners following their busy ‘time out form the corporate world’ as mums.
Listen to the Small Business Talk with Cathy Smith and Bodo Frost

As a business coach, Bodo has developed a simple 3-Step Blueprint called PLAN.DO.LIVE that puts your business on fire without burning down your life. Some of his clients have quadrupled their revenue within the first 12 months of engagement, or have achieved their annual goals already after 8 months.
Bodo is helping busy business owners to go from overwhelm and frustration to clarity and progress while adding $100,000 or more to their revenue in under 12 months (Guaranteed!), so that they have more time to enjoy a successful Work-Life Balance.
PODCAST NOTES
Personal Development Matters More
Business development masterminds are a great thing, but why don’t they work?
It’s the same concept across the board with all Masterminds. They are great for getting those little nuggets, information and ideas, what you could do to improve your business.
After attending the masterminds you go back to your business and the daily grind gets you and you forget.
Then you go to the next mastermind and the same thing will happen again. The daily grind catches you and your business is just running somewhere – you think you are in control but you are not because nothing with regards to improvement happens.
Implementation is the Key
When you get great ideas from those masterminds, you need to implement it.
When you don’t implement, your business is not growing, it stays at the same level or even goes backwards.
And that will cause a lot of frustrations.
As usual the daily grind will catch up with you and you will find yourself at the start again.
Out of those frustrations you might think that those masterminds you are attending don’t bring any value. But it is you who doesn’t create the value to your business and to yourself as you do not implement.
By implementing these ideas from those masterminds, you will grow your business.
You also need to remember that you might encounter problems along the way, so, do not be swayed to quit at the first sign of trouble.
Just keep doing what you are doing and do not wait for the next time.
Shiny Object Syndrome
Some of the ideas you get from the masterminds can be great and seemingly effective, but it might not what your business needs at all.
The ‘Shiny Object Syndrome’ is a condition on which people will try to get the idea or process that they think will work for them too. At a certain point in time, this ‘thing’, this nugget, might be great idea, but the question is, is this what you really need to do to grow your business?
Will it allow you to achieve what you want for your business?
Does it fit to your business in the first place?
Please stop and rethink what you are doing when coming across those shiny objects:
Just because everybody else from the masterminds is doing it, that doesn’t mean you should also be doing it. Do not be pressured to do the same thing because they’ve already got it. Think about your business and analyse if it will move your business forward. Do not be tempted to fall victim to SOS (or Shiny Object Syndrome).
Breakdown Your Big Goals to Smaller Ones
Question yourself first: What is your objective? What is your goal? What is your overall plan?
And then break down your goal and overall plan into actionable items.
It is important that you have a goal or objective, but do not forget to brainstorm ideas on how you are going to achieve this goal.
On a side note: this is where really great masterminds would come in handy! They would brainstorm those actionable items with you.
How are you going to do that? You can try one thing or another and see if it works – not very effective. The important thing is to break down this big goal into little milestones. That way, it’s easier to achieve the goal. Remember the proverb on ‘How to eat an Elephant? One bite at a time’.
Break it down to small actions that you can do within a couple of minutes or max. 15 minutes. When you action those small tasks, you will not be overwhelmed with the entire idea.
For example, you’ve learned in one of the masterminds that you need to develop a growth strategy anmd you get to work on it straight away. It is kind of a huge task. Well, it can be tiring to develop a full growth strategy for an entire day than just do small activities and tasks daily with some limited time allocation. It will not put pressure on you. And those small finished tasks, successfully implemented do contribute to achieving your overall goal, your objective.
Make a Plan
The problem is that most business owners don’t take the time to actually do the planning. Masterminds will give you that idea, and some of the people with go back to their business, and they just start doing stuff without ‘thinking it through’. My recommendation: Take the time to plan it out!
For example: If you come across a great marketing idea, like what you’ve just heard in one of those masterminds, think carefully. What does it do to my objectives, to my goals? How does it help my business, my objectives, and what do I need to do in what sequence? Plan it out. Take the time it needs so you’ve got the picture drawn to that level where you can see it working. If you start doing things without a plan, things will go wrong! As the saying goes: If you fail to plan, plan to fail! In other words: you need to plan anyway. So why don’t you plan for the success side of things? In short: plan for the actions that you need to do. What do I need to do to implement this idea? And next, think about what could go wrong and plan for those eventualities.
Find out what you really want to achieve with that new idea, that gold nugget, and then break it down into little action steps. Then figure out what you need to do and then implement it.
You don’t have to do it all alone. If you have a team, just delegate it your team. Coordinate the whole thing. That’s project management 101.
Remember: to be great you must start.
Pick one tip from this podcast episode, take action and implement it.
Apply here to attend the next Mega Month Mastermind – the new Actiontaker Masterminds where you will solve 4 business challenges in over 4 weeks – guaranteed!
Contact Bodo for more information by booking a Discovery Call.