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Every time I get in a room with entrepreneurs playing at a higher level, it shifts my perspective.

Last week, I was in a mastermind with people doing $3M all the way up to $100M-plus businesses. And the biggest takeaway from the room was so clear it almost felt obvious once I saw it: Brand outweighs everything.

In this episode, I’m sharing my personal takeaways from that experience. What stood out. What challenged me. And what made me realize there are areas where I’ve still been playing smaller than I thought.

Key Takeaways

• Why attention is the number one currency
• What $100M entrepreneurs prioritize over funnels and ads
• The mindset required to actually hold that level of success

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh: 

It’s not even about how do I stand out. It’s about how do I have such conviction in my messaging and in my brand of my business that you feel my brand in every sense and every interaction that the noise doesn’t even matter anymore. The noise doesn’t matter ’cause you’re playing a different game than all of those others.

If you play small, you’re gonna have a small business. Embodied CEOs don’t chase trends. They pave the way they lead from within. Move by purpose, unshaken by noise. When you are the source, you do not need permission. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I am so excited for this episode. We’re gonna do a just a little coffee chat.

I just wanna brain dump my takeaways from last week in the Mastermind that I got to be in and I am in, and I cannot emphasize enough to every one of you listening, the importance of pulling yourself as the CEO out of your day to day and getting into a room with people who think so big who. Challenge you and challenge your perspective and make things that maybe today you would go, wow.

Like I can’t even imagine that. And they’re like, done. I already have done it. Like it’s possible and at every single level you need this. I am so grateful to be in this group. It is a group of all, the minimum amount to get in the group is you have to be a $3 million business. And not that it’s oh, that’s so cool.

The mindset and the strategy conversations and the way that these guyses look at business. It’s just so important for me to be surrounded with it. There’s people in there doing eight figures, doing $50 million a year. And then we got to go into Cody Sanchez’s headquarter, who is a hundred million dollar business, and it’s just a different level to the game.

It’s not that they’re better than anyone, but it’s a, you have to become a certain person to be able to hold that level of success. And if you haven’t done it yet, you need to surround yourself with people who show you that it’s possible. And so I can’t emphasize this enough. I have invested in masterminds and coaches since.

The beginning of my business, as soon as I started getting to be a legit business, and I was like, okay, I don’t fully know what I’m doing. I would invest like without even really thinking about it very much. I dropped 25,000 to be an inner circle back in 2017 and the connections that I made in that group and.

And again, the biggest thing is just that it challenges your perspective and your perspective, meaning your thoughts and your beliefs, and what you think is reality is the one thing that holds you back without you even realizing it. So when you get in a room, you go, oh, I have been thinking this way for the last year and not even realize that I’ve been thinking this way, and that is a roadblock to where I wanna go and to where I am going.

So we got to go to Cody Sanchez’s headquarters, spend half of a day there with her and her team. For me, it was so incredible for all of us. It was incredible, and it’s fun listening. We did everyone’s takeaways after. And it’s also fun for me to listen because everybody has different takeaways. And different things that like stood out to them and then we masterminded as a group, different hot seats, different, topics, workshops of just different people doing different things that are working and bringing value and so grateful to be in that room.

So grateful to be able to then. Bring my takeaways here and to my mastermind girls and in my coaching. So I wanna share with you guys like a brain dump of my biggest takeaways, which means that I’m bringing all of that into my annual planning, my own business’, annual planning, and then the group’s biggest takeaways and where people are focused.

So I would say the biggest takeaway, there’s two. I’m gonna do two biggest takeaways for me, for the group. It was the importance of brand because now we’ve had two meetups where the last time I came on here and talked about this we got to meet with Dan Martel, another big entrepreneur. So we met with Dan Martel, this time Cody Sanchez.

And the one thing that if you extract out that these guys are doing 100 outta 10 well, is they have a brand, meaning they have a massive. Following of not just followers, but true believers, they have left an impact in. The industry with their name, with what they stand for, with the content they create, the volume of the content they create, of the good content they create, the message that they have, the mission that they have, the problem that they’re here to solve.

And at the end of the day you realize ’cause we got a behind the scenes in her company, like we got to meet with. The her president, her sales, head of sales and head of marketing. And you realize like their business operation is not perfect at none. No businesses are. And that’s one of the things I said is you expect and you idolize these people and then you get behind the scenes and you realize no, they’re facing similar problems to all of us, but they have such a solid brand.

Such a solid mission and following and impact and just imprint on the industry that it doesn’t matter the things, I mean it matters, but the things that are, not working as well or they’re working on, or they’re fixing or they’re growing pains or whatever, the brand outweighs it. And I think if you have a brand to that level and then deliver a great product, you have a hundred million dollar business.

But when I say. That all of these players are going all in on their brand. It is a huge priority for them from content creation to the actual brand messaging and what they stand for. And I’m not talking about the colors and the fonts. Yes, that’s a part of it, but it’s like when somebody comes across this brand, what do we want them to feel?

What are we standing for? What are we standing against? What are we taking on? What are we taking a stand for? What are we going to change this industry? And so Cody asked this question and she said, solve a problem so big that it scares you. And what is that problem for you? And she said, for us. At her company.

We’re taking on and we’re solving the problem of the fact that traditional business school sucks. We’re taking on Harvard, we’re taking on Yale, we’re taking on these big colleges that suck, and we’re saying, no, that’s not teaching you about real business. And then she also has the credibility to back this up because she was on Wall Street, all these things.

And she’s built all these companies. But that’s a big problem you’re taking on. You’re changing. The dynamic of traditional college education for entrepreneurs and basically taking a stand and saying, traditional school business, school sucks and it doesn’t teach you anything that you need to know.

That’s a big problem you’re solving, right? Like when you, if you were to think about that problem, you’re gonna go, how the heck am I gonna make a difference in this decade long, way that we look at education. And when she asked that question, I wrote it down in my notebook and I put a huge star next to it.

Then the whole group, the mastermind that I’m in, went around and shared their takeaways and that was my biggest takeaway, but it wasn’t anyone else’s. And I was like, here’s why it’s my biggest takeaway because. If I sit with asking myself that question, and then I also look around the room to most of us, I don’t think we’re playing that big.

I don’t think we’ve defined a problem that’s so big it scares us to try to make an impact on, because I think we, we go who are we? Who are we to solve a problem at that level? Who are we to solve a problem to that magnitude? Then you get into this idea of becoming a category of one. Who cares about the noise?

Who cares about, people saying, oh, the online space, oh, the coaching space, the, programs done for you, services, all of that. How do you make all of that irrelevant? Because you’re your own category. You are not even in the same playing field as all of those. And so that was my takeaway of.

I am not looking at it like that. Like I am looking at my business from this viewpoint, which, yes, I have big goals and a big mission dah, but what if I came above the clouds a little bit and was like, no, what’s the problem I’m solving that’s so big? It scares me. That’s going to change this world, and it should scare me because it should go.

Who am I to think that I can solve that and then solve it and align the mission? So we ended up, the day after Cody Sanchez, we ended up doing a workshop where we looked at all of our businesses and we like would talk to our chat GPT and create this whole kind of concept of if we were all becoming a category of one, what would that look like and what are we taking a stand for?

But also what are we taking a stand against? Because any mission that you look at, historically it stands for something, but it also has to stand against something. Not in a negative, like a mean way, but in a, if you wanna get here, this is not the right way anymore. This is dated, doesn’t work, you’ve been lied to, whatever, so what are you standing against?

And all of that combined into becoming the leading voice. For that messaging. And I would say every business, a matter of the size, 3 million, 50 million in that room was like brand, your brand, your messaging, your reach. And Cody said, what? Something I say, which is attention is currency. Attention is the number one currency.

Period, and we’re gonna continue to see that. And so how do you garner the most attention, quality, attention through disruptive, valuable, taking a stand content. And so 1000%, I said this when I came back from the last retreat with Dan and I really didn’t do it very well, and six months went by way too fast.

Content at the level that those guys are creating content. Is my North Star. And when you look at it like they are posting, I think I saw that Alex or Moey said he, he posts 450 pieces of content a week. Now yes, there’s some repurposing in that, but that’s insane. And so when you look at the fact that he’s grown millions of followers and just a handful of years, and then you go, oh, that’s so nice.

How has he done that? I wanna be able to do that. Actually, how he did it is written right there for you. He’s just playing a bigger game. He’s playing a bigger game and he’s committed more than all of us are and like that’s it. And so that is a number one way far above anything else priority for me next year.

And I’m telling you, every business owner, because it’s not even about how do I stand out. It’s about how do I have such conviction in my messaging and in my brand of my business that you feel my brand in every sense and every interaction that the noise doesn’t even matter anymore, the noise doesn’t matter ’cause you’re playing a different game than all of those others.

So that’s one big takeaway. And then the other takeaway is really the way, the mindset, the way that these entrepreneurs think at a different level, and I think this becomes true at every level, which is they play such a bigger game. Like I sometimes still find myself, thinking about a problem or even operating from a scarcity mindset of oh, we don’t wanna spend that or do that. And if I challenge that and I think okay, but where are we going? Then I would probably make different decisions. And every successful, very successful entrepreneur I’ve ever met, I’ve ever talked to, I’ve ever, interacted with all say the same thing, which is the team you surround yourself with is the most important thing.

And when I was at the event, I saw this video from Alex, her Moey, that was like, these big players like Apple, they can pay so much. You’re talking million dollar a year salaries, massive, amounts of capital to dump into their business. And what that does is just attracts a whole different level of talent, right?

Like one that we can’t compete with, that he can’t even compete with. And the smaller the business you are, the less you can compete with that talent, but you also really need the good talent. And so you have to win on character. And I really liked that of like, how do you become the company that the big players wanna work for?

But also, you’re not gonna get apple level executives. But also, something Cody said to me when I asked a question, when she said, hire the people who have already solved the problem you’re trying to solve a hundred times. And I was like, how did I forget that? You get stuck into this mindset of I have to bring someone in at this certain level and teach them and train them and build them up and promote them.

And it’s no. What if I just in certain roles invested and brought someone in who’s already done, who’s already scaled my business from where I wanna go to where I’m going this year, who’s already looked at this problem or these problems, or whatever the problems are a hundred times. And solved them.

And I remember I’ve had these realizations before as I’ve grown my business and I always forget them. And I think it comes from this scarcity mindset and like your brain can think it sounds better to hire somebody at this lower salary and just train them and build them up. But it actually costs you so much money.

Hire the experts. Hire the best, pay it, pay for the best, and you’re gonna grow so much faster. And that’s what they’re all doing. Like Cody, the president of her company was the president of Mr. Beast, and she just brings in people that are like, they do it better than her. She gets to stay the visionary.

And so that’s the other thing is like brand and. If I was to put two things together of the most important pieces to scaling your business next year and to growing your business and to not playing small. And it’s like if you play small, you’re gonna have a small business brand team. Those are the two big things.

And when I personally, when I walked in her headquarters, I really was like. I want this, like I want a headquarters, I want a brand this big. I will not, I want I will build that. And so for me, like I’m so dialed in and focused on what I have to do to take a massive leap in that direction and go all in with that.

So brand and then team, then it was really interesting because we got to hear from all these members of her team and the different departments. Again, like I, I said a few minutes ago you idolize these people and so you think like they’re doing it way better than me, or, they have a whole different level of marketing or sales.

And the reality is for a lot of us in the room, like we were doing marketing just as good if not better than them, but because she has the brand that’s 10 times any of ours, she’s crushing it way more than us. Their funnels and their marketing and like their strategy. Honestly, we could have given them some advice.

And again, yes, they had it in place and they have good strategy, but they haven’t needed to have 10 outta 10 marketing strategy because their brand is so solid, their product is so solid. The foundation, the structure of their business is so solid. And that’s like the most important thing.

And so it was interesting because you idolize these people and then you realize, oh no, like they’re facing. Similar problems to us, they’re facing similar decisions, similar like shifts in the market dealing with, cost of ad spend or whatever, like funnel metrics, sales teams. They’re dealing with the same problems at a different scale.

They’re handling them maybe different, but they have the brand that outweighs everything because when you have millions of followers. And that’s growing on a massive scale and people are consuming your content. You’re just hard to catch. And Dan Martell said this six months ago when we got to meet with him, it’s building a moat around me that no one can touch, no one can get to me.

And it’s exactly right. So what I would say on that is if you are like, I’m going all in 2026, I am going all in then. It’s the brand, it’s the messaging, it’s the mission, it’s the content. It’s how big are you going to go with the ability to capture attention, and are you gonna play to their level?

They have whole content teams. Massive content teams. So if you’re gonna build to that point, where are you starting and how do you make that a top priority? And how do you become the category king of your industry? It trumps everything hands down, like you can have everything else mediocre, but you’ve got the brand and you’ve got a good product, and you’ve got a hundred million dollar business.

Hands down. So those were my big takeaways. If I think about the group mastermind, I think a big thing that we were all focused on was our messaging. How to make it more stand out, how to tweak, the marketing strategies to be really innovative. I think there’s little things that you can do in terms of not saying the same thing over and over again.

Standing out authenticity, was a big focus for a lot of people. But the biggest thing I’m walking away from. This width is the brand, and it’s the exact same thing I walked away from with Dan Martel is they are playing, they’re the NFL, right? And I’m the middle school football player when it comes to content and when it comes to building a brand, garnering attention at a whole different level.

And all it takes is adjusting the mindset. To be able to look at yourself as that’s where I’m going. And I think a lot like for you guys listening with content creation, it’s like we just have to get over ourselves and commit to that level and realize there’s one girl in the group.

It’s so cool because I actually have followed her account and now she’s in the group and I told her I’ve mentioned you on my podcast for being a really good content creator and creating disruptive content. And she went from, I’m gonna get the stats wrong, but maybe like 300,000 followers to 1.5 million in a matter of a few years on Instagram.

And she’s done it through content. And what she did was she posted three times a day for a year. And I’m, I, you know what? I’m gonna do some experiments and come back to you guys on how I feel about this compared to paid ads. I think ultimately you probably need both if you wanna play that level, like if you wanna play that level.

You look at Cody and they’re creating a ton of content, they’re also spending a ton of money on ads. But she did that and now she’s this master at content creation. And someone else she was teaching us in the room was like, she makes it seem so easy. And I said, yeah, because she did three times a day for a year.

She made herself an expert through experience. She did it enough to where there was no option, but she got better at it. And in business it’s like that’s how we learn doing. We learn by that repetition, that doing, it’s like there’s no way you won’t get better if you commit to creating this level of content.

And I’m not saying you guys have to do three times a day for a year, but like maybe it’s once a day. I don’t know. I know that you’re like, Emily, what you’re you are saying we don’t have to post a lot of content if we run ads. Now I might be saying, I think you have to do both. If you want that level of a brand or even want to, you wanna jump ahead that much.

And so I, it is, you’re gonna see my content game change, and I’m gonna run these experiments and I’m gonna come back to you guys and I’m gonna let you know what I think. But they’ve shifted my perspective a little bit on content. And I’m not saying, it’s ads or it’s content. It’s both, they’re, everyone in that room is running ads and also creating content, but it’s the level.

So if you look at content creation is time, ads are money. If you’re gonna scale your ads and spend more money, do you also need to scale your time and spend more time in content creation? You’re gonna see my game change and I’ll be reporting back on all the things. I just, I look at what people did to create the success and the mindset they have and the way they look at their business and the way they look at all of it.

And it’s okay, if I want it bad enough. I gotta play at that level. So I cannot recommend enough getting yourself in a room with people who challenge your perspective. And the bigger you get in business, the harder this is, because the bigger you get, the less people that are playing at that level.

And you can start to think that you’re dreaming too big or you’re wanting too much, or, without realizing that you’re settling. And for me, it lit every time I go to one of these meetups or I’m around entrepreneurs playing at a way bigger game than me. I’m like. It lights a whole level of inspiration of I forgot what’s actually possible.

I forgot this game, and I got stuck again in. The loop of the day to day. So come to Embodied Marketing Live. I’m gonna be bringing so many of these things, including the brand, lots of things to Embodied Marketing Live, but pull yourself outta that day to day. Get in a room with entrepreneurs who inspire you if you don’t have regular entrepreneurs that you allow, challenge you and question you and allow you to dream.

It’s so hard because 99% of the world around us, they do not get it. They’re like, why are you doing this? I don’t understand. It’s not safe. It doesn’t make sense. S get it yourself in the room because it I really believe the people you surround yourself with are one of the biggest contributing factors to the growth of a human.

It’s so important. All right, everybody, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you guys got some value out of this, and I’ll talk to you next week.