10 Powerful Lessons From Selena Soo’s Life-Changing Mastermind

Did you ever want to be a fly on the wall at an exclusive mastermind, full of 6-7 figure online business owners who are changing the world?

To hear about the things they’re talking about behind closed doors?

The powerful breakthroughs they get, that will completely change the trajectory of their business?

And the lessons they take away, that makes flying all over the world to spend a day in a mastermind all worth it?

If yes, you’re in luck.

Last week I attended an exclusive mastermind that my friend Selena Soo in NYC, and it was easily one of the BEST events I’ve attended in a while.

At the mastermind, it was me and 9 other Selena’s friends and students, all of which were incredible entrepreneurs that are changing the world:

Adrienne Dorison, Alexia Vernon, Amanda Daley, Emily Williams, Kathleen Ventura, Kimra Luna, Lisa Fabrega, Luisa Zhou and Sarah Kaler

I walked away from the mastermind with tons of amazing lessons, takeaways and insights, and today, I’d love to share them with you.

Some of these were the lessons that Selena shared with us at the mastermind (that I interpreted in my own way), and others are lessons that I got throughout the mastermind by talking to other

Let’s dive in!

LESSON #1: Focus on attracting GREAT clients to your business

Don’t try to attract as many clients as possible to your online programs. Don’t write copy like “have you tried everything, but nothing ever worked? because you’ll attract people who are overwhelmed, have low confidence, and are all over the place.

You’ll spend more time helping them out than your star students, they’ll spread negativity through your community, and it’s likely they won’t be successful with your program.

Instead, spend time attracting action takers with big visions who are willing to do anything it takes to become successful.

Attracting high level clients will allow you to charge more, get better testimonials and case studies, and they’ll value your time a lot more than the bad clients.

In case someone very toxic and negative makes it into your program or onto your email list and they start complaining all the time, don’t engage with them. Refund them, unsubscribe them, ban them from buying the future programs from you and move on to helping people who deserve your time.

LESSON #2: You need to be careful with what you give

You don’t need to respond to every single email you get. You don’t need to respond to every single Facebook message and comment in your community within minutes.

If you do, people will take it for granted and start to expect that you always respond to them in minutes, which will take the time and energy that you could spend on growing your business, or creating content that would help more than just one person.

Even though Selena is one of the biggest givers I know, she’s learning how to say no to more and more opportunities and requests for her time, which allows her to work ON her business, and not just IN her business.

Because so many people were tagging her in one of her Facebook communities, she created community guidelines where she asked people not to tag her all the time, and it freed up a lot of time for her to focus on what matters most.

Saying no to people or ignoring their messages and emails can be hard, but at one point you just need to do it if you want to create a 6, 7 or 8-figure business. The earlier you can do it, the more people you’ll be able to help.

LESSON #3: Spend more time in your genius zone

Focus on doing the things that you’re the best in the world at, and work with people who are great at things that you’re not.

If you’re a great writer but a bad speaker, don’t worry about doing public speeches and focus more of your time on writing really incredible content.

Selena’s not great at preparing speeches. It takes her months for her to prepare a public speech, so she almost never does it, and just does Q & A sessions instead that take her a much shorter time to prepare.

For her exclusive mastermind, she partnered up with someone who’s an incredible public speaker and can put together a speech and get a standing ovation in 10 minutes. They compliment each other’s weaknesses and make a great team.

Always ask yourself what you’re REALLY great at, that nobody else can do, and do more of that. Stop doing the things that you’re not great at, and either hire or partner up with people that can do the work that you can’t do that well better and faster than you can.

LESSON #4: To become a true leader, you sometimes need to ignore what everyone else says

You should always do the customer research and listen to what your market says, but sometimes you shouldn’t be afraid to do the opposite.

When Selena created her online course about building authentic relationships with influencers (INFLUENCE), all of her mentors thought it was a bad idea and told her she shouldn’t create it.

Deep down, she felt like she really needed to create that course, so she took the time to do it right. She found the right marketing and messaging for it, and now it’s one of her best-selling programs.

When she started selling premium online courses and wanted to charge $3k for them, everyone told her that $3k is the “dead zone” that will never convert well, and that she should charge $2k instead. She instead decided to create incredible programs and charge what she thought they’re worth, and her courses sold well.

Whenever doing something new that nobody is doing (but you feel is important), you need to have the courage to do it anyway and find a way to make it work, even if everyone is telling you it’s a bad idea.

That’s what it’s like to be a leader. You need to have enough courage to do the things that have never been done, or that people think are impossible, and prove them wrong.

LESSON #5: If your business idea feels “too small”, you can be the person that makes it BIG

When I heard Selena’s story about how she created her INFLUENCE program about networking even though everyone told her she shouldn’t, I could see myself in her story.

That was the same thing that happened with me and Ultimate Guides. When I started working on Ultimate Guide System, my course on creating Ultimate Guides, a lot of people told me that they can’t see how they could grow their online business with them.

A lot of people even told me that my idea isn’t a good one and that I should stick with something else that’s already out there. Nobody ever created a course on Ultimate Guides before, so that means that they can’t be that important.

I knew that there was some truth in this. When I did my research I saw that most people didn’t really think that creating Ultimate Guides was the best use of their time. But what I did see is that a lot of people cared about growing their email lists, getting more clients and getting their online business off the ground.

I knew that Ultimate Guides could help with all of those things, so I bridged the gap between Ultimate Guides and getting those results with personal stories, as well as case studies from friends and experts that created Ultimate Guides.

During the mastermind, I realized that compared to businesses from the other people in the room, my Ultimate Guides idea felt small to me. I felt like nobody cares about Ultimate Guides because teaching health coaches how to get more clients sounds a lot better and more impactful.

I reframed my thoughts and realized that that’s what people CURRENTLY think about them. But it doesn’t mean that people would never care about them.

My friend Navid Moazzez essentially brought the concept of Virtual Summits to the online business industry and built a 7-figure business around it, and there’s no reason why I wouldn’t be able to do the same with Ultimate Guides. I would just need enough case studies and success stories to show people just how important they really are.

If you’re ever feeling like nobody cares about what you do, don’t let that hold you back from pursuing your big dreams. Even if people don’t care about the specific thing you offer (yet), they probably do care about the results that you can bring them if you take their advice.

If you know that what you have to say is important, connect it to what people want. Commit to MAKING it big and important. Get enough case studies and success stories that people won’t be able to ignore you any more.

This is your hidden opportunity to establish yourself as an expert on something that nobody else is doing or teaching, so take that opportunity and use it to your advantage!

LESSON #6: You ARE good enough, even though others are more successful than you

Some of the mastermind attendees ran businesses that were 10x bigger than my business, and yet they’ve been running them for half the time that I ran mine.

When I first learned about that, I felt like a failure and like I’m not good enough. I thought that their ideas were so much better than mine and that I’ll never be as successful as them.

Then I changed my mindset, and instead of feeling shitty I started talking to them, learning from them and asking them for advice. It turned out that those were some of the most helpful conversations I’ve had all week.

They even told me how much they loved my idea and how amazing my story was, which I never expected to happen given how far ahead of me they were.

There will always be people who are better and more successful than you. But comparing yourself to them, feeling jealous of them or thinking that you’re not as good as them won’t get you anywhere.

Instead, spend the time talking to them, learning from them, and figuring out what they’re doing differently than you are so you too can become as successful as they are.

If your business idea doesn’t sound as cool or as fancy as another person’s business idea, that’s normal. They probably feel the same way about ideas from other people to some extent. Remember, the neighbour’s grass is always greener.

LESSON #7: Your environment is the #1 thing preventing you from thinking big

In Slovenia, the average salary is $1k/month. If you make $3k/month, you’re considered a tycoon that must be doing something illegal. If you make $5k/month, you don’t ever need to worry about making money again.

For me, that’s a blessing and a curse. It’s nice to not have to worry about making money, but it also prevents me from thinking way bigger, because I simply don’t need to in order to make ends meet.

If I lived in Manhattan, I would need to make 5x more money to have the same lifestyle that I have right now. And I would need to think way bigger to make it happen.

Every time I go to NYC, I come home thinking WAY bigger than when I spend all of my time in Slovenia. It’s because I spend a week surrounded by people who think big, and it’s contagious.

Now I know I need to surround myself with more people like that and keep in touch with them, and make it an even bigger priority to go to the states more often.

If you ever find that you’re not thinking big enough, try to change your environment. Read books by people who accomplished big things. Listen to people who talk about accomplishing big things. Connect with people that think way bigger than you.

The more time you spend immersed in an environment that brings you up rather than brings you down, the bigger you’ll be able to think, and the more your business will grow.

LESSON #8: You don’t need to find a personal brand, because you already have one

The biggest thing I wanted to get out of the mastermind is to get clearer on how I should brand myself. Should I be the Ultimate Guide guy? A business coach? Something completely different?

When I started talking about this in my “hot seat”, someone asked me what’s my motivation. Why am I even doing what I’m doing? What’s the story?

I shared my story with them about how I went from being a college dropout who never fit in with people around me to working with Ramit Sethi and building a successful online business out of Slovenia.

Everyone at the mastermind loved that story, and told me to stop looking for my personal brand, because that story IS my brand. That’s what makes me unique and different from everyone else. And the more people that hear about my story, the more my brand will grow, and the more people I will reach.

If you’re like me and you spend hours and hours thinking about how to change the copy on your website and create a message that really connects with the people and makes you different, remember that you already have your own brand.

Your story is your brand. Focus on putting your story in front of more people, and your brand will slowly grow by itself. You can later refine your messaging and your branding, but you don’t need to spend months figuring out how to “find” it, because you already have it.

LESSON #9: Strive to be the least successful person in the room

This mastermind was the one that I participated in the least. I rarely had good feedback to offer to others, because we were talking about things like branding or building a large team that I wasn’t an expert on. I just sat quietly, took notes and soaked in all the information I could.

In the moment, I felt guilty about that, and I wished I could have contributed more. Then, the next day, I realized that this was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. It was the mastermind where I learned the most, out of all the masterminds I attended.

Usually, when I’d be in a mastermind where I was one of the most successful people in the room, I’d give a lot of advice and feel good about that, but I wouldn’t feel like I’ve learned a whole lot from it.

During this mastermind I was surrounded by people more successful than me and felt like the least successful person in the room. Because we talked about things that I wasn’t good at, I was able to learn a lot of new things and concepts that I never would have on my own.

I know that I’ll take their advice, put it into action, then let them know about how I did it a few months from now, and I know they’ll be super excited to hear it.

It’s always nice to give back and connect with your students, readers and people that you’ve met over the years. But if you want to uncover the biggest business breakthroughs, make sure you put yourself in situations where you’re the least successful person in the room.

And just because you spend a lot of time quietly listening to people who are more successful than you are, it doesn’t mean that you can’t add value to them. Successful people love people who listen to them, take their advice and let them know about the results they got with it. It always makes their day!

LESSON #10: If you want to build a business that impacts millions of people, you need to think BIG

As I spent two days around all of these incredible entrepreneurs, I noticed they all had one thing in common. They all had HUGE visions, much bigger than most people I usually hang out with.

I also noticed that they were leaders by choice, not by accident. They had an idea of what the world should look like, and about what needs to change about it. And they weren’t afraid to let the whole world know about it and make that change happen.

That big vision then spread into everything they did and talked about. From thinking about the level of people they wanted to have as clients, to which media they wanted to be featured in.

In that room, it was ok to say “I want to work with celebrities and raise awareness about using less disposable bottles”. It was ok to say “I want to be on Oprah in the next 1-2 years”.

All of these incredible women believed that they could work with the most successful people in the world, and that their message is so important that it should be all over TV, all over the magazines and even all over the Instagram accounts of celebrities.

That’s one of the biggest mistakes I made in the past. I never thought big enough. I always set small goals for myself that would slowly grow my business, but wouldn’t change the world or create a true movement or a revolution. Which is already changing.

If you want to build a business that impacts millions of people and changes the world, that surely won’t happen over night. And if you always think about how to just get 100 more email subscribers or how to get one more client or how to make $1,000 more, you might never get there.

If you want to build a business that impacts millions of people and changes the world, you’ll need to think BIG. Perhaps 10x bigger than you’re thinking right now. Or 100x bigger. And then you need to go out, play big, and hustle to make that big vision happen.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. I know you do, if you put your mind to it. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be happen overnight. But with the right vision, the right drive and the right strategy, anything is possible.

What’s next?

Well, those are all the lessons that I wanted to share with you today, and I hope you enjoyed them. If you did, I would LOVE if you shared your favourite lesson in the comments section of this post. I’d love to hear what resonated with you most.

I would also like to thank Selena Soo for hosting the event, and Adrienne Dorison, Alexia Vernon, Amanda Daley, Emily Williams, Kathleen Ventura, Kimra Luna, Lisa Fabrega, Luisa Zhou and Sarah Kaler for sharing their awesome wisdom with me at the mastermind.

I really had a blast during it, and I can’t wait to hang out with you all in the future!

One last thing. If you came to my website and don’t know who I am yet, and aren’t one of my readers yet, here’re a few things you can check out:

• If you want to learn more about me, what I do and my story, click here.
• If you want to get more lessons like this, sign up for here. I only create super long, comprehensive and valuable pieces of content like this that will help you build an exceptional online business, and there’s a lot more coming (plus, you’ll get the exclusive Ultimate Guides I only share with my email subscribers).
• If you want to get your online business off the ground (or get more clients for your existing business), then Ultimate Guides are one of the best ways to do that. You can download my 47-page Ultimate Guide Checklist where I’ll show you exactly how to create them yourself, as well as 9 different ways in which you can use them to grow your online business.

That’s it! And remember to share your favourite lesson in the comments below :).

-Primoz