Hey. It’s Bob, and I’m really excited today to sort of change things up in this episode of Real Retail TV. This episode’s a little longer, but with a lot of really, really great content for you.

It’s a different format. I am going to interview someone, but I absolutely guarantee that if you watch this interview, you will walk away with ideas that you can use in your business.

In this episode of Real Retail TV, you’re going to see an interview that I did with Maureen Doran. Maureen owns Skirt, two high end women’s clothing stores in the, Philadelphia area. And Maureen’s been a member of the Platinum Mastermind group for many years. And in this interview, we’re gonna talk about the things she’s learned, the changes she’s made in her business, and you’re gonna see some really, really cool examples of an she had while she was sitting in the room at a platinum mastermind group meeting and how those moments turned into strategies and tactics that you can use in your business.

It’s really, really action packed. It’s filled with great content for you. So right now, we are opening up registration for both the Business Breakthrough Accelerator and the Platinum Mastermind group. These are our highest level, most impactful programs.

Both of these are in person, live with both me and Susan there to help you with your business. The business breakthrough accelerator program happens once a year. It’s happening here in our office this year in June. And in a Buinsess Breakthroug Accelerator meeting, you will create an action plan for a ninety day sprint. This ninety day sprint will either help you overcome your biggest bottleneck or it will help you, take advantage of your biggest opportunity.

No matter what, it will help you create a business breakthrough. Now that’s the Buinsess Breakthroug Accelerator.

The Platinum Mastermind group is our highest level, most impactful group. This is a group that is application and invitation only. Meaning, if you wanna get in, you have to apply. And not everybody who applies is accepted. This is a group of already successful, really, really smart retailers.

So imagine being in the room with over twenty smart retailers three times a year with me and Susan sort of leading the charge and keeping the conversation meaningful.

That’s what the Platinum Mastermind Group is all about. Right now, we’re opening applications, for both of these groups. So if you’re interested in taking your business to another level, click down below, see what group is right for you, and apply today.

But for right now, here’s me and Maureen helping you be a smarter retailer.

We have Maureen Doran from Skirt, with us here. And, Maureen, welcome. I’m so honored and happy that you’re here to talk to me today.

Yes.

So Happy.

Good. Good. So first, tell us a little bit about, Skirt. Tell us, you know, I mean, how many stores you have, what you do. You give us a little background if you don’t mind.

I opened my store in two thousand one, so it’s just about twenty two years, a little over. And, I have currently have two locations. I did have a third, which Bob and Susan and the and the whiz bang team helped coached me through the difficult decision to close it during COVID. So I’m really happy. That was, like, great.

That was one of these moments that the mastermind changed my life.

Yeah.

That helped.

Yeah. Yeah. It was a hard decision that you just needed some help making. Yes.

Yeah.

So and so you’ve been doing it for twenty two years. You have two very successful stores. And anybody who’s watching this, I wanna say that Maureen does more dollars per square foot than anybody I know is. So I I just love how you just maximize every square inch. But let’s go back and if you wouldn’t share some insights that maybe you gained about your business, maybe it’s a philosophy or a strategy Mhmm. Or a tactic or just a moment that went, oh, I’m you know, oh, this makes sense. And then you took it and ran with it and good things happened because of it.

Okay. Well, I’d say that it’s been I can never remember the amount of years, Bob. You’ll have to fact check me on this. I think it’s seven years.

I had a brief pause somewhere in the middle there. But, about seven or eight years ago when I joined, I was the first order of business was, like, the low hanging fruit. I was closed on Sundays. I had a seven day return policy.

All those very industry standard things that go against the whiz bang philosophy. But it took a minute for me to decide, like, okay. I’ve gotta be open to thinking even though this is the way I’ve been doing it for ten years, maybe there is a better way. And as soon as I opened myself up to that and didn’t get defensive, the business changed.

So easy, easy, easy was that, you know, chain opening an extra day. And Yeah.

You get an extra fifty two days a year out of that.

That that you know, all those things. So instantly from the first meeting, it felt great because I saw those instant changes. The bigger, more long term changes came slowly and over the course of lots of years. But it does come back to being part of the mastermind makes me challenge what I have decided is my belief about a policy or a way to run my company or a way to hire.

When I’m able to sit there surrounded by all of these smart people who I trust their opinions so much, it makes me stop and think, wait. Maybe there is a different way. Maybe there is a better way to do this.

So so you got that dopamine hit from seeing an increase in sales and seeing it.

You got that dopamine hit from boom boom boom boom boom.

But then these long term sort of structural mindset pieces came more slowly because they’re they’re subtle. It’s wisdom. We don’t just get wisdom.

Would you agree with that?

I would, but they don’t they come almost almost every meeting. I get one moment like that that I bring home and really makes real change and impact in my business. Sometimes they’re personal. Sometimes they’re, personnel.

Yeah.

And sometimes there’s just generating sales and income.

Right. Right.

But every single meeting, I I leave with something a shift.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and one of the things that I’ll share with everybody who’s watching this, one of the things I love about having Maureen one of the many things I love about having Maureen in the in the mastermind is when Maureen has those moments, you you could see it.

It’s like her whole face lights up. It’s like, I mean, it truly is an moment. So so let’s go. And if you wouldn’t mind, I’ll I’ll refer you back to a couple of our Okay.

My highlight reel of my my favorite my favorite changes.

Okay.

So The first is the return policy. Yep. I had a seven day return policy, maybe fourteen days, like, if I was feeling generous that year.

And I believe that that was how you had to do it. I have I sell expensive clothes. Returns are not a small number. Like, if someone does return, it’s for several hundred dollars.

Oh, see. And this is the way it had to be, and I’m not a department store. I can’t have the same policy. All of those things were deeply ingrained beliefs of mine. And they were challenged at a meeting, and I was like, okay. I I gotta try this. Like, I gotta but what I did was I’m like, alright.

I have the personality that I’m gonna go big or go home. So what actually happened was I go home. I tell the team. Team.

We’re changing our return policy. We’re gonna make our new return policy. We have no return policy. If you don’t like it, you bring it back in, and we do what it takes to make you happy.

They were, like, appalled.

But I was like, oh, I’m You had you had your you had your beliefs changed, and then now you gotta go home and and and change the beliefs of your team.

Right?

They they caught up quicker than I did because it benefits them to have you know, they Right. Easier for you. But what we did was we, like, took our return policy off our receipts, and we, like, had this policy, but we weren’t really talking about it because we were kind of afraid of people, like, taking us up on it. So that goes on for a quarter, and I have my next meeting, and we’re talking about it again. And I’m like, what am I doing? If I’m gonna do this, I should be shouting it from the rooftops that we have the best return policy of any store in our city.

So I was like, how do I do that?

And what came about was a long standing promotion that we have now. It’s called the Wardrobe Rewind.

And I said, this is I announced, this is our new return policy.

But for this week, we’re gonna take it a step further.

We don’t care if you bought this from us five years ago, fifteen years ago, twenty years ago. We don’t care if the tags are on, if it’s been worn. If you don’t look at it every day in your closet and love it this week, bring it back in, and we will give you a store credit.

The fine print, which people don’t even care about are here because they’re so gobsmacked by me saying that, is we give it to you on a store credit.

You it’s it’s bundled in in numbers. So, like, fifty dollars for tops, a hundred dollars for dresses, etcetera, etcetera.

And we also have learned over the years that we time it. So the week that we offer this is a week right before we’re about to break sale.

And So so just for everybody who’s not in fashion no.

No. That’s okay. Just so for everybody who’s not in fashion, break sale is when you start a semiannual clearance sale. Right?

When you’re getting rid of a season’s worth of clothing. I just because, you know, like, a lot of industries don’t break sales. So good. Okay.

I just wanted to clarify.

For you’ve every season, our our goods are only good for about ninety days, and then they’re stale. They’re they’re brown bananas that you can’t sell anymore. So we run on a cadence where we’re looking at our stock, our ninety day stock, and knowing we have to move. Once it hits, you know, seventy five, eighty days, we gotta move it out.

So we do time it so that and what one of the other things Bob taught me was, like, when you do a big promotion like this this and you’re calling, you’re saying, I’m gonna give you guys a hundred dollar gift card. It’s really I know my average sale. I know what what I my styles are capable of.

So, really, in my mind, it’s about a ten to fifteen percent coupon Right.

Right.

Is really what I’m giving them in the end. So it sounds scary that you’re handing out, but that’s really what’s happening.

But the perceived value from the customer, the emotional bank account that we the deposit we’re making in their emotional bank account to borrow your phrase, Bob, is so huge. They can’t believe that they can pick something out of their closet and come in and be welcomed to happily bring it back in and return it. And, of course, we partnered with a local charity that collects clothes for women who are trying to reenter the workforce or who are in, you know, shelters and things like that. So it’s a win win. We get the charity partnership.

We get this huge deposit in our customer’s emotional bank account, and we get to remind everyone every year that we really do in our city.

The effect is we get less returns now than we did before this return policy.

Isn’t that interesting? So to to speculate. Why does having a more generous return policy lead to less returns?

I think it’s because when they know they only have seven days or fourteen days to return it, they’ve never they haven’t, like, officially emotionally owned it yet. They’re like, they’ll have, like, seven alright. I’m gonna think about this. I’m gonna it’s like it might be in their closet, but it’s not they won’t put it on a hanger yet, or it might be and because they feel that pressure that they only have the small window of time to make a final decision. And these are expensive purchases that they’re making from me.

Yeah.

But once they know that the pressure’s off, they can have it sit there for a month, two months, three months. People are respectful of it. No one is like, they know within reason. Now look. If they I have the exception to the people that come in with something a year or two years old, and we happily return that too. But that is the exception, not the rule. Once they know that they can, like, don’t have that pressure to decide, once it’s been in there hanging in their closet for a month or in a bag in their car for a month, it’s theirs.

Yeah. It’s theirs. Yeah. Constant. Yeah. So, you know, and and I find that so interesting. And and to so many people, it’s counterintuitive.

I think that and reflect on this for me. I think that when we start re our businesses, we’re trying to protect everything in the beginning. We’re trying to protect our margins. If the money comes into our till, it becomes our money and we become very clingy. But you can’t sell through a, you know, through a closed fist. And so it it’s it’s so counterintuitive yet so powerful to shift that that that that belief. So so let me ask you this about the mastermind and beliefs.

So, you know, so you just indicated one pretty fundamental, no, not pretty, incredibly fundamental shift or change in a belief. What other beliefs have you, you know, has the mastermind has your experience has sitting in that room for all these years sort of led to?

Well, my my my current favorite is probably the most And by the way, I love this current favorite for all of you watching.

It happened a little over a year ago, and it came out of a meeting where I was listen how difficult it is to find employees and find good employees and get them to stay. And it’s like, everyone’s talking about this constantly, especially post COVID.

And I was pretty protected from this. I always had pretty good great retention and all that until COVID hit.

So I’m now kind of understanding what my peers are talking about in this group, and I’m, like, thinking about this. I’m, like, I’m, like, this is not I gotta crack this nut. Like, there is something there there are great people out there. I have a great place to work. Like, what is the problem here? And I had always had the belief that the way to get my business to succeed was to hire great employees, to pay them really well, and then hang on to them for dear life for, like, twenty years. And if somebody left after two or three years, I was, like, devastated.

Like, what did I do wrong?

Yeah.

Like, the oh my god. Like, I I valued my employees who’d been there and their tenure above all else. And while that is still a wonderful thing, this light bulb went off in me that, like, maybe it’s okay if people come and go.

Maybe what I’m really afraid of is when they go, it’s a lot of work to train them and to get them. But if I could really get my training in order, if I could really make that process documented and seamless, and that would really help. So that was, like, kinda my first light bulb. I’m thinking about, like, I have to put effort into this, like, you know, getting them to see that.

When you were holding on to people and when they understood how important longevity and tenure was to you, they, in essence, had a ticket to hold you hostage. Right?

They they they knew that you wouldn’t.

And and and that’s and and when somebody’s holding you hostage, that’s a pretty toxic thing to have in your culture.

And, like, I have a sales driven business for sure, and we rely I mean, I work on this, but, definitely, the sales people are like the top like, they are they are revered in my company because they’re out there and our sale we’re talking about sales all the time. It’s a sales driven culture. I I work to make sure it’s a wonderful culture too, but I’m not gonna deny that it’s a sales driven culture. And I thought that the only people who could really sell, who could really achieve those big numbers were people who’d been with me for a long time. And then I thought, like, well, what if that’s not true?

Challenging belief. What if that’s not true? I love that. Go ahead.

And one of the other people in the mastermind, Misha, had talked about how she was working with local high schools for their graduates and getting them into, like, a training program and really trying to work together with the local schools to She she was creating an intern program with her local high school.

Yeah.

And I was like, so so some small light bulb went off, and that was when you definitely saw my face go like.

And I was like, I’ll tell you guys that I gotta look at the top of my head, Walker.

Like, I’ll tell you guys in a little bit. So what came from that was that I knew from interviewing and interviewing and interviewing that younger people were not very interested in coming to work and be a salesperson.

We call them stylists at Skirt.

They wanted to be the buyer. They wanted to be the social media manager. They wanted to be the marketing events planner. Those were the sexy jobs. And I had tons of applicants for them and zero applicants for salespeople. So I would hire salespeople that I kinda knew in my gut weren’t great, but I was desperate, and they would fail. And this would reinforce the belief that, like, good salespeople have to be there for ten years.

Right.

So then I decided, like, okay.

I think what would work is, like, I scratch my back.

You scratch my back. I’ll scratch yours. What if I offered some of these people who are lined up to be my buyer a program where I also started to learn that young people really want to see clearly what their next step is going to be, what their next title is gonna be, what their next promote, promotion is gonna be, their salary bumps. And in small businesses like ours, like, we don’t always have that. It’s kind of like you know, it’s just a little more it’s just a little looser than that.

Right.

I was trying to, like, force that, but it wasn’t nothing was coming naturally. So it the idea is born that I’m going to go to these people who are interviewing as the buyer and say, you wanna be the buyer? Here’s the deal. You work on the sales floor floor with me four days a week. I’m gonna teach you about our customer, our brands, what our customers like and don’t like, and you are gonna sell four days a week. And one day a week, you’re gonna work side by side with me and my buyer, and we’re gonna give give you real stuff to do. Not like if you went to work for a big you know, for Macy’s and we’re a buyer, you’d be getting coffee.

Here, that one day that you spent with us You’re gonna be buying stuff.

You’re gonna be buying. You’re gonna come to New York and go to buying trips with me.

And then it’s a three year program, and each year, they get an extra day in their concentration, whether it’s marketing, social media, buying. We also have, like, an entrepreneurship program. So, like, yes, every girl that comes to me wants to open her own boutique someday. You wanna do that? Great. I’m gonna teach you how to do it if you give me three years. And in those three years, you work on my sales floor too.

I ended up hiring three people our first year of it. They were by far of a different caliber of people who had even gotten to come in and interview with me. I’d gone to the to the college campus recruiting shows and had the table, everything. Like, I this was another level of applicants.

It’s been a a year since all three of them started. I went in hiring three thinking, okay. Maybe one will stick, and that’s okay. Right.

Maybe one day one years. And my idea was not I want these people to stay forever. My idea going into it was like, we’re just gonna do this, and they’re just gonna keep funneling in and funneling out.

And if they’re a great fit, they’ll stay in the long run.

Four days a week out of them.

Exactly.

What happened, which is still okay, This program would still be a success if that happened. So far, what’s happened is I got three. They’ve all stayed a year. They all are the best salespeople. They are selling neck and neck with twenty year, tenured salespeople.

And they’re excited about it because they still get their cup filled up that one day a week. They get to say to their friends and their parents, I work in marketing or I work as a buyer.

Or I’m in this program. Right? I’m in this career development program.

Which I get.

Like, I Yeah. Yeah. Detail is is, you know, not does not get the respect it deserves.

When your friend says she got a job at an office and she has this, you know, this and she’s posting pictures on Instagram of her cute desk accessories and you’re, like, working in a store every day, it’s hard.

So I try to respect that and put myself in their shoes and try to give them I I think that’s okay to have a little bit of an ego about your job and Yeah.

You want. Anyway, it’s been a great success. We’re gonna we’re gonna keep hiring more.

We’re gonna hire a fourth, hopefully, in May when the new graduates start interviewing. And it has been brought so much life and energy to the store. Three brand new, young, smart, ambitious people mixed in with the people who’ve been there fifteen years has been the best thing that’s ever happened to us. They’re happy. It’s like, I I’m so happy about it. I I could boast.

Yeah. Well, you know, it’s kinda like a sports team.

You know, the best teams have that that that nice blend of, you know, young enthusiastic talent and the veterans who are kinda showing them the ropes and and all of those things.

And so, you know, going back, so one of the things I remember you saying is that you thought you had sort of capped out your sales and that, you know, that was another belief that, you know, I mean, we’re we’re sort of where we are and then you did a a major six you closed the store for six weeks and and did a remodel. But what you’re finding was that belief wasn’t quite true also.

I mean, you’re seeing Yeah.

Out of the same space, we’re doing well, even since, you know, I had speaking of egos, I was hesitant. I didn’t wanna close that third location because my ego was gonna get a blow. And I remember calls with you, Bob, where you talked some sense into me and made me see things from a totally different perspective and encouraged me to, you know, let that store go and focus, put my energy on to my, you know, main store. And now that we’ve done that, what are we three years post COVID? Yeah. Not quite.

I have one less store and almost double the sale company sales. Yeah.

Just shy of Wow. So And it was a and it was a prestigious location too.

Yeah. Yes.

Yes. Yes. So Yeah.

We were in, you know, the the nicest neighborhood in Philadelphia. So Yeah. It definitely was an ego blow to let it go because I liked I mean, if I’m being honest, I liked saying I had three stores, not two. I like saying I had, a store in this, you know, illustrious neighborhood in the city.

And that’s another idea that got turned on my head because I realized, like, what? What? Like, that is so silly. And I’m here to make as much money as I can with as little stress in my life as possible.

I love creating jobs for people.

I’ve been able through closing a location, I created more jobs because we just Because you were able to focus on what you do best.

You know? So there’s another member in the group, Kim, who you know, and she’s got and now she has two stores. And what she shared with me, she said, Bob, if I wanna she said, if if I would have joined the Mastermind before I signed the lease on the second store, I would have waited to open someone who is already successful? Right?

They they have a successful business. You have to be successful to be accepted into the platinum mastermind group. But, you know, there’s always you know, it is not inexpensive and there’s a commitment of time and there’s money involved with travel. So we meet three times a year, you travel and do all those things.

But and so it’s not for everyone. But for some people, some people like you who had a really big upside and, you know, you’re open to new ideas. What would you say, to someone who might be interested in joining the platinum mastermind group, but says, you know, it’s really a bit too much, too expensive. I think I can spend my money better elsewhere.

Mhmm.

I used to think of it when it came time to renew and write the check and remake the decision because I do think I do think about it every year. It is a decision I make for myself every year that, you know, this is a luxury. This is a gift I’m giving to myself, and I wanna do this. But now I think about it differently.

It’s not a luxury. It is a necessity.

It is my for me, it’s the only way as an entrepreneur I can force myself to take time, refocus, work on my business, not in my business, and be held accountable by people that I love and respect and who are kind, but they still hold you accountable. And when you’re the boss, there’s no one holding you accountable. So these things, I think, are necessities of my business now.

And I I couldn’t I couldn’t grow I I couldn’t grow the business without without this.

And you have the kind of business. So, you know, the the the investment is fifteen hundred a month or fifteen thousand a if you buy it for the year plus the travel, but you have the kind of business where fifteen thousand dollars, one idea, you know, pays for itself, you know, one great idea pays for itself multiples of time. You know, just your wardrobe rewind. I’ll I’ll just share something that I that I loved from, one of our meetings for everybody who’s watching this. So Maureen was sitting and you were sitting next to Hope Bursch, and it was the beginning of the the first day.

I think you remember.

At me and you said, you know, Bob, every time when I come to a meeting, I think I’m too busy. I don’t have time. I have shit to do, all these things. And so I always think about not coming.

Until I get on the plane, I think about not coming. Mhmm. But then when I come into the room and I sit down at the beginning of the first day, I realize this is exactly where I need to be.

Yeah.

Yeah. That was a moment that, I mean, it made me very, very happy. So so so let’s sort of expand on that real quickly, and then we’ll wrap this up. So, yes, you there’s a financial return. And, of course, you know, we’re all business people. If we’re investing money and time in something, there needs to buy be a financial return.

But I also know that, you were a, a self professed hot mess Yes. When you joined the Platinum Mastermind group. And there’s been a number of things that have happened to your mindset and the way that you think and the way that you work that has kind of well, before we started recording, you said that your things are under control.

So don’t worry about that.

Which is a rare thing for an entrepreneur to say, I think. I think that it changed. What what it gives me changes each year or every few years.

In the beginning, I was a lot of what I learned from talking to and being challenged by the members of the group was a lot of my anxiety and my stress and my, inefficiency in in how I worked, how I spent my time working was, like, my, fear of confrontation, fear of having tough conversate tough, honest conversations with the people who worked for me. I wasn’t good at it. I didn’t like it.

And I would just ignore it. And I’m the one who suffered, not the employees, not even the the business. I would put put that and make sure it didn’t affect the business. It affected me, affected my life, my time with my family, and my not just my time with my family, but the mood I was in when I was with my family.

So one of the first things I had to force myself to get better at and it wasn’t just, like, I I still am that person. I still don’t like those things. Right. But I’ve learned how to make them work for me and what tools and processes and procedures to put into places so they’re much easier for me.

That changed my life, my my stress level, my my mood.

Being able to feel like I could have these conversations and I could do these hard things was majorly life changing hired and get the right people fired and was such a release and a gift for me that I think, like, the big celebration of it was I went from being being so overworked and stressed and working so not smart hard, but not smart. When I finally felt like, okay. I can do this. I announced at one of the meetings. I’m going to Italy for a month. I’m leaving for an entire month into a different time zone.

I’m taking my family with me, and I’ve done some form of that trip every summer since that that year where I was kinda shift that.

Well, and so reflect on this because, you know, I mean, you know entrepreneurs, you know retailers, you have other people in your industry, friends in the industry. I mean, I see it happen all the time where as an entrepreneur myself, you know, I was a retailer for nineteen years, so I know that drill. But we’re so achievement driven. We’re so beat last month. We’re so beat this thing. We’re so we’re always we’re always looking towards an unrealistic ideal that we’re not enjoying what we’re doing at the time and we’re not doing the work that we’re supposed to do to enjoy what we’re doing at the time.

And I think, you know, this this whole idea of your presence that you are not letting all these things stress you out, that you just sort of walking through it, solving problems, making it happen really contributes to I mean this opportunity.

You say all you say all the time you say it to me often when I you know, because it’s not like I’m this perfectly unstressed person all the time since that day. No. Of course, I get back into that, cycle. I get I go back down that hole sometimes, and I have to be pulled out of it.

And that’s what meeting three times a year does to you. It forces you because your peers are calling you out to pull yourself out of it. And Bob reminds me, it’s just business. This is just your business, not everything.

It’s not your leg. It’s just your business. And it’s just a you know, these this is just a problem we’re gonna solve. Yeah.

And that, as simple as it seems, when no one’s telling you that.

When when no one’s telling you that. You know, one of the things that that we all know and that people who are watching this might relate to is this whole idea, you can’t work yourself out of the weeds. You know, everybody thinks that they can work themselves out of the weeds, but to to mix the metaphors, it’s kinda like quicksand. The more you struggle, the faster you sink.

And so Oh, true. One of the things that I love about the mastermind for for us too. I mean, we love leading it. Susan and I love leading it.

Is this idea of an anchor. In that three times a year, you have an anchor, you come back to Yeah. The you you come back to your best self as a business person. You come back to, people who love you and support you, and you get a chance to love and support you.

Come back to, you know, to a a place where people understand you. Because to your point, you know, I mean, it’s Susan coined a term that I love. It’s called business lonely. You know?

We’re we’re we’re business lonely.

I was just gonna say that. I mean, a big part of it one of the joys of it when you put the other you know, the return on your investment, all that aside, one of the joys of it is, you know, being an entrepreneur is business lonely. Like, no one really understands what you do. Your friends don’t get it.

If you don’t work with your family or your spouse, they don’t get it. No one can really understand what the life of an entrepreneur is like, except I get to walk into a room three times a year with, like, twenty people who do understand it. And they understand when I wanna brag about a success, and they don’t judge me for that. And they understand when I wanna cry about a huge failure, and they hand me a tissue.

Like, they are kind, supportive people who really understand what I do. So when I bring a problem to them you know, sometimes when you bring a business problem to, like, your friend who isn’t an entrepreneur, you’re like, they don’t get it.

They’re No.

They don’t get it.

I’m like, they get it. I’m like a sponge to their insights because they’re the experts. They’ve lived it. They’ve made the mistakes too. And I also wanna say, like, while I, feel hugely successful in my business, we are riding a huge wave of success right now. This is the most profitable I’ve ever been.

I have the mastermind has been with me through tough times too.

Yeah. Absolutely.

And they have gotten me through that and never judged me and helped me get out of some really bad decisions I’ve made and, you know, that that it’s there for you for those times too, not just for the good for the good times.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. That is so great. Because, you know, and and so for me and for Susan, every time, it seems as if every meet meeting gets better and better and better.

And the group just gets stronger and stronger and stronger, which of course just fills us with gratitude. But, you know, one of the things that especially after our last meeting in Nashville, it was we made the we commented that, you know, in the early days of the mastermind as you could attest because you’ve been with the group, you know, you had that space in the middle for a long time.

There were so many tears and there was so much stress and there was so much anxiety because everybody was, you know, now the group, everybody sort of there’s this whole it’s just business. We’re all here to support each other, you know. This is no social crisis. It’s just another tricky day.

It, you know, I mean, we just sort of all are just sort of matter of fact and, you know, Beth Staley went to Africa for a month. Then Ryan went to Italy for three weeks and, you know, fell in love with his wife again. And all of these stories that come from your ability to step away from your business or to have that sort of matter of fact positive perspective on your business. Because your business should bring you joy, not stress you out.

Does that sound right? Does that feel right, that statement?

A hundred percent. I mean, if it’s not bringing us joy, why are we doing this? We should go get a desk job.

But there are comments. Like, everybody knows that. And sometimes those moments, you just have to remind yourself, like, okay. This too shall pass. You know? And that that’s what the group, you know, helps remind you.

Sometimes when you feel like it’s never gonna get better, they know that it always That’s right.

That’s why I post that, song from I bet that that song by, Pete Townsend, another tricky day. I bet I posted that on our Facebook group page a dozen times. This is no social crisis. It’s just another tricky day for you.

So That’s right. Yeah. You know, we get to do this. We don’t have to do this.

I mean, Maureen, you’re doing big things. You’re doing big things. And when you do big things, you’re gonna run into bumps in the road. So Yeah.

So, Maureen, thank you so much. You know, I I I so appreciate your transparency and you’re being willing to share with everyone here.

And, you know, so even if somebody watches this, even if they choose not to join the Platinum Mastermind group, I know that if they were paying attention, they got some real value from your insight.

So Givers get. Yep. Givers get.

That’s right. Givers get the rule of reciprocity, baby. Thank you, Maureen.

Bye, Bob. Thank you.

So there you are. I hope, I assume that you took something away from the interview with Maureen that you can use in your business.

So if you did, I hope that you apply it. But really what I hope for some of you is that watching that interview with Maureen got you thinking about what it would be like to have that sort of get out of your business, work on your business, step away, and think about your business in a different way. And you can see what it’ll do for you, your future, and your business.

So I would encourage you to click down below, take a look at the two programs, figure out which one would be the best fit for you, and, again, assuming you wanna take your business to another level, apply today.