Proximity Pays: Why the Right Room Changes Everything

Most entrepreneurs think community is just “networking.” They’re missing the bigger opportunity.

In this episode, Eric Berman and I break down what it really takes to build communities that actually work not shallow rooms full of business cards, but real relationship-based environments where trust, accountability, ideas, and opportunities compound over time.

We talk about how Speakeasy Mastermind grew from a small San Diego gathering into a multi-city model, what makes the right room so valuable, and why more entrepreneurs than ever are quietly paying what Eric calls the “isolation tax” by trying to do everything alone.

We also go deep on leadership, follow-through, culture, the kind of people who belong in high-value rooms, and the mistakes that can destroy a community before it ever has a chance to grow.

In this episode, Eric and I break down:

• Why great communities are built on relationships, accountability, and contribution
• How Speakeasy Mastermind evolved from an informal mastermind into a scalable multi-city model
• What the “isolation tax” is and why entrepreneurs pay for staying disconnected
• Why the right room can accelerate growth faster than strategy alone
• How to identify the right leaders when building a community
• Why follow-through is one of the rarest and most valuable entrepreneurial traits
• The difference between people who contribute energy and people who drain it
• Why not every successful entrepreneur is qualified to lead a room
• How to choose the right core members when launching a chapter
• What kinds of entrepreneurs thrive best in communities like Speakeasy
• Why ego, entitlement, and poor culture fit can quietly destroy a room
• Eric’s backstory: building an early social network, losing it in the dot-com crash, and reinventing himself
• How offering value first created his opportunity with Brian Tracy
• Why active listening and service are still underrated business superpowers
• The principle behind Eric’s upcoming book, Proximity Pays
• Why the best relationships are built by listening well, serving first, and doing what you say you’ll do

What excites me most about this conversation is that it’s really about something deeper than masterminds or meetups.

It’s about proximity, it’s about choosing better rooms and it’s about understanding that the people around you shape the speed, quality, and direction of your future.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Eric Berman’s Backstory and Why Community Matters
00:38 What It Takes to Build Relationship-Based Business Communities
01:06 The Origins of the Original Speakeasy Mastermind
03:36 Turning Community-Building Into a Scalable Business Model
05:56 What Made the Original Mastermind So Valuable
07:28 The “Isolation Tax” Entrepreneurs Pay
08:49 Why Every Business Owner Needs the Right Room
10:01 How Speakeasy Expanded Into Multiple Cities
10:31 What Makes a Chapter Work or Fail
12:50 The Business Model Behind Speakeasy
14:47 Who Belongs in the Room  and Who Doesn’t
18:38 Eric’s Early Social Network, Dot-Com Crash, and Reinvention
21:28 How Brian Tracy Became a Career-Making Relationship
23:27 How to Get Involved as a Member or a Captain
24:46 Why Follow-Through Matters So Much in Leadership
26:17 How AI Now Supports Community Notes and Shared Wins
27:33 Why Small, Intimate Rooms Win
30:20 Eric’s Book: Proximity Pays
31:20 Active Listening, Service, and Relationship Leverage
32:29 Why Doing What You Say Matters More Than Ever
34:00 Final Thoughts on Friendship, Trust, and Long-Term Community

Discover More

📘 Ai Accelerator Book: https://www.MikeKoenigs.com/AiBookFree
🎉 Referral Party: https://www.MikeKoenigs.com/RPFree
🌍 Your Next Act: https://www.MikeKoenigs.com/YNAFree
🚀 Private Experiences: https://www.MikeKoenigs.com/PEFree

🌟 Follow Mike
🎙️ Podcast: http://www.MrBz.com/CA
📺 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/koenigsmike
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikekoenigs
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/koenigs
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikekoenigs
🚀 X: https://X.com/mikekoenigsreal

Creators and Guests

Host

Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach

Dan Sullivan is founder and president of The Strategic Coach Inc. A visionary, an innovator, and a gifted conceptual thinker, Dan has over 40 years’ experience as a highly regarded speaker, consultant, strategic planner, and coach to entrepreneurial individuals and groups.

Host

Mike Koenigs

Mike Koenigs helps business owners and entrepreneurs get paid for BEING, instead of DOING by becoming Transformational Business Influencers, authorities and thought-leaders to create impact, income and a great lifestyle.

What is Capability Amplifier?

Join the eternally curious, interested, and interesting hosts, Mike Koenigs of the SuperPower Accelerator and Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach®, to amplify your capabilities, value, status, and authority on the Capability Amplifier podcast. Ever episode focuses on a new mindset, shortcut or deep thinking exercise that will improve your performance and lifespan. Learn more at: https://www.CapabilityAmplifier.com

Mike Koenigs [00:00:00]:
All right, this is a fun one. So before Facebook, before MySpace, before any of that social media stuff existed, there is a guy who built the original social network and raised $75 million. He grew from three people to 400 and then lost it during the dot com crash. But instead of crawling into a hole, he turned around and built one of the most powerful digital marketing agencies around. He was working with legends like Brian Tracy, Jack Canfield, Phil Town, and other experts in helping them build empires. What he's here to talk about today is something that I think is really, really cool. One of the hardest things in the world to do. It's building communities that actually work.

Mike Koenigs [00:00:38]:
And those are real thriving relationship based business communities that scale. And this is one of the masters of scale that I know, Eric Berman. So. Hey, brother, good to see you.

Eric Berman [00:00:49]:
Hello. Wow. Thank you. Great to see you. Glad you're back in town. It's always a pleasure. Thank you for having me on.

Mike Koenigs [00:01:06]:
So to give everyone a little bit of context here, before we get into it, you and I originally met. Was it before? Did you introduce me to Brian Tracy? But we met through a series of business relationships back when we started the original speakeasy Mastermind. Right. And back then we didn't call it that.

Eric Berman [00:01:26]:
That's right. It was the San Diego Downtown Mastermind Group or something like that.

Mike Koenigs [00:01:29]:
Yeah, yeah, Something very original.

Eric Berman [00:01:31]:
But that's the way. And I talk about you all the time now because I shared the story of that first meeting that we had with you, John Asraf, Darren Hardy, and kind of like the initial foundation of what has now grown, which I'm sure we'll get into. But yeah, that was probably. Gosh, I keep trying to do the math. Maybe almost 20 years ago, 18, 19 years ago. It seems like now.

Mike Koenigs [00:01:48]:
Yeah, yeah, it is forever ago. And from there we just had a natural sink. And our original mastermind that we put together way back then, we had Darren Hardy, John Assaraf, Bob Serling, you, Stephen Cox. Who else started joining and attending those?

Eric Berman [00:02:13]:
I think Greg Habsbridge was in early. Remember Greg? Back we had. And then just get that. I mean, this.

Mike Koenigs [00:02:21]:
Okay, yeah, this might be boring. Some of you don't know these names, but it was in the earlier days of early online marketing and we got together and just shared everything. It ended up being a support group, a mastermind group. And in addition to us running our own businesses, we would oftentimes bring in really interesting guests and it turned into some of the foundational work. I know. Let's see, Dan, who wrote Buy Your time back, attended one of our events later on.

Eric Berman [00:02:53]:
Yeah, Dan Martell was there. He's a big fan. Yeah. Every time he's around, he likes to come.

Mike Koenigs [00:02:58]:
Yeah. Yeah. So it turned into a beautiful boiling pot of brilliant people. And then once the big marketers started moving to San Diego, a lot of them came and attended events as well. So then let's, we'll go back and forth. You know, we always time travel when we're ever together. I want to ask you, first of all, you decided along with Glenn Ledwell to really take this and turn it into a franchisable concept. So why don't you talk a little bit about what the speakeasy mastermind is, what it represents in the pain that it eliminates for business owners.

Eric Berman [00:03:36]:
Yeah. So no, thanks. It's, it's, you know, it's funny. We, we went back and as I was looking into, you know, running an agency and kind of having my, my head's sore, my body aches and sore aches from running an agency hitting my head against the wall. It's like looking to the future, you know, what's next? What, what is going to be my next act as you teach and do such a good job of. And I think what we find sometimes as leaders, shit that we're really good at seems easy to us and we don't realize we actually have a natural skill and others do and they look at it and say, wow. And I think part of, you know, me walking in, I mean, I mean to share, you know, some vulnerability. You know, we had our first meetings with you and John and others.

Eric Berman [00:04:15]:
You know, I'm like, definite imposter syndrome. I'm like, what am I doing in the room here with these brilliant guys over here? And you know, and I quickly learned over time that the value I was providing, sure, there were shares and learns and all that. Not, not at the marketing chops of somebody like yourself or, you know, I was in a guy like Asraf sitting on stages. But other ways to contribute, including just wrangling entrepreneurs and facilitating and keeping a good, good community going and always making sure there's value every time in itself is a skill that I never really understood. And I only got credit. I kind of learned over time to take credit for that because it seemed natural. But, you know, struggling with the agency side, what is next after, you know, I mean, how many times did we have guests show up and they're like, when are you going to do this in my city? Like, this is amazing. And I think after about the 10th time of hearing that.

Eric Berman [00:05:00]:
And when you start to mentally decide, maybe I need to start thinking about what my next act is, you go back and say, well, wait a second, what's easy? And as Joe Polish teach, what's elf? What's easy? Lucrative, fun, potentially. Well, it was easy. It was fun for me. I didn't know if it was lucrative yet. So that l was kind of missing. And I think from there I said, all right, well, I think I can get this model. Let me run some numbers. And it doesn't take long to go beyond a spreadsheet and say, all right, well, if you can build this many chapters in this many cities at this kind of price point, wow, numbers actually could be quite interesting.

Eric Berman [00:05:29]:
And then the devil's in the details of how to go about and do that. I mean, it was like, okay, how do we take this concept and go into all these cities? And as we talk now, we're at 26 different cities now in about. Took about three years to get there in various formats. And it's. And, but there's so much we've learned, so many mistakes, and. And we're off building this, you know, not quite a franchise, but more of a. More like, like a franchise model where we do share revenue with our city captains. Our city city leaders, we call captains.

Mike Koenigs [00:05:56]:
But yeah, yep. And just to put this in perspective, the typical structure and format of this and the value of like, when we first started out and all of us contributed thinking, you know, like, how can we make a super valuable mastermind experience that encourages people to continue coming back. And what I remember of it is we'd have usually some sort of a lead share that would be kind of like a headline topic that someone would come in and deliver. And then there would be. We'd all share some big wins, some big asks, but also some sort of a contribution that everyone could benefit from. And going back to giving you some credit where credit's due, One of the things that you are always doing is taking impeccable notes and minutes from the meeting. So you know, when you'd walk away from there, you'd go, God, I know that was a good meeting, but I don't remember why. And then, boom, here would come Eric's follow up, follow through.

Mike Koenigs [00:06:57]:
And also the commitments that were made and making sure everyone fulfilled their commitments, which again, it's easy to say that isn't what matters, but it's the only thing that matters at the end of the day. Otherwise you just got a bunch of bumpkins showing up who are good at talking, bad at remembering, and even worse at following through and following up on their promises. You know, they all walk in with the best of intentions, but you turn the intentions into breakthroughs and takeaways. Yeah, to keep that headline. That'll be a good one for you.

Eric Berman [00:07:28]:
Yeah, no, thank you. And that's exactly right. And it's funny what you said. That's almost exactly what we model now. It's really that combination of, hey, let's get together, break bread, let's have the discussion topics on what's hot. Clearly, AI is dominating almost every meeting now these days, or some form of that. And other things too, of course. Roundtables, let's all share what's working.

Eric Berman [00:07:46]:
And hot seats, you know, who's got an issue, who wants it. And part of what's great about community, and I'm such a big proponent of community now, where I'm going out there and talking about it now more than ever, I will just put my fist on the table and say, it is so important now to get in a community and find the right room for you for whatever that might be. It's getting more and more lonely, you know, out there where all. A lot of us are behind desk and shit. What the hell is real now anymore? We don't even know. And things are happening so fast, we almost need to say, like, what do I do? What tool are you using? How do I do this? How do I solve that? And it's going to get worse. You talked about the cost and it's funny, I came up with something. I was.

Eric Berman [00:08:21]:
I was just working on a book for this and it came up with a thing called the isolation tax. You know, it's like, what is the isolation tax? You know, how big of a tax are you going to pay for not getting. For sticking your head in the sand and not getting out there. And it's hard for people. I get it. You know, it's comfortable in the comfort zone of your desk, your office and your home and your families and, you know, versus schlepping to another meeting and, you know, getting in the car and you're exhausted and the emails are coming in and the phone's ringing and you know all that. I understand it, but you got to do it.

Mike Koenigs [00:08:49]:
Yeah. Breakthroughs don't happen behind barricades, that's for sure. So. Well, let's. I think we're going to come back around because I'm going to ask you some questions about the business model and how that works and also the recruitment model. Because when I Think about this. I think any business. First of all, every business owner should belong to some kind of a mastermind.

Mike Koenigs [00:09:13]:
And I think Speakeasy is a really good one because it's. It's an easy lift. And the fact that you're in lots of cities right now is awesome. And one thing to do is text me a list if you have them handy, of all the cities you're in, and I'll make an image or an animation for it while we're sitting here. But that leads me to the question that is about building these, because, okay, so our living laboratory was the San Diego one. And then you and Glenn said, hey, let's turn this into something more. And then what happened next is you got your first city, and that was just from networking. And the second, and it was basically people saying, hey, why.

Mike Koenigs [00:10:01]:
Why wouldn't you do this in another city? But how did you turn it into a business? So it actually had high perceived value. You clearly exchanged the curriculum. You created the Circle group, where all of us can communicate. So there's the media community, and then there's the outreach community, but also the rules and guidelines that are working. So take us on a little tour of the. Of what makes it work.

Eric Berman [00:10:31]:
Like anything. It's. It's. It's the starts of the leadership and the core. And the core members and one. And it's the same as it's the mistakes I've also made along the way to get there. You said some stuff earlier. There was things I was doing inherently and naturally that are just my personality.

Eric Berman [00:10:48]:
And it's what, like you said, it kept accountability, the notes, it kept us organized. You made sure we showed up. You got fined if you didn't show up. You know, little fun things we did along the way to get it going. And it has to start with the right culture and leader who is following the playbook now. Mike, one of the biggest mistakes I've made is I'd find amazing people like, let's say a Mike Koenigs I found in a different city. You know, legend, big name, huge name that would anchor the city, and that would say, yeah, I'll do this. I love to do it.

Eric Berman [00:11:13]:
And let's just say, you know, I reached out to you and you heard about this in San Diego, and I talked to you. I'd be like, well, shit, if Mike wants to do it, I'm gonna let Mike do it. And that's how it started. The reality is you and I know deep inside you'd be a horrible leader as much as I love you and do this because just all the things you're too busy. You know, you'd be bringing a great name that would draw people. So we have a role for people like you, but not the person that's being the head facilitator. And I think part of the mistakes I made early on was just that and then. And we'd have entire groups implode because we'd have a great person with a huge name be there.

Eric Berman [00:11:45]:
But like, they weren't doing the little things. The follow up, the facilitating, the making sure stuff was because they were too busy. They were doing other stuff. So I think part of it is just getting the person to follow the playbook of the things that we didn't and, and just not going too far off the reservation of what we did. So good leader. And then ultimately another. Other mistakes we would have is who is the core group outside the leader? And now the way we launched. And I know you said we'll get into later, but kind of t this question is, starts with a leader.

Eric Berman [00:12:11]:
You go get your five anchor members. And now when you walk into a city, it's already got a great base because if you start to slip and get like, well, I'm just going to buy my buddy over here this and that, and let's say I'm going to use you again. Let's say you walked into Atlanta and you were somebody looking to join the group and you're like, first question you're gonna ask is, who. Who are these people in this room?

Mike Koenigs [00:12:31]:
Yeah.

Eric Berman [00:12:31]:
And so it's obvious when you say it, but as you built it out, that was kind of like a scramble for like, we just want to get to be successful and let's just get people to sign up. And so, you know, did we take money sometimes and get people on that probably shouldn't have? Absolutely. It was mistakes that we made. We know better now as we re, you know, as we do all these chapters and we launch things.

Mike Koenigs [00:12:50]:
Yeah. Yep. And what's the, what's the sweet spot for the pricing? How's the business model itself work in such a way that you as a founder of this are getting paid and then the, the other people and you know, share whatever you're comfortable with sharing?

Eric Berman [00:13:08]:
Yeah, it wouldn't be hard to find out. I mean, I mean, the way we built this. So I mean, do we go franchise? Do we license all that stuff? I mean, for now, this might change because right now we just do more or less a net revenue share with our leaders. We say, look you're doing work, you're moderating, you're. You're running the things. Let's just split the pot of whatever's left over after we bring in membership dues and minus, you know, fees to bring the person in. We'll just split it up. You run the.

Eric Berman [00:13:29]:
You run the meetings, you pay for the dinners, and you do things on your end and we cover everything else. Pretty simple. And I. And. And what we learned. And here's another thing, Mike, that we learned is interesting, and it's about personality type. When I interview people and they start asking a bunch of questions about the money, they're not the right person. Like, you're going to make.

Eric Berman [00:13:46]:
You're going to make money, and I call it mailbox money. You're not doing this to make richer. We're not asking you to spend tons and tons of hours. We're saying spend five, six hours a month, a few hours, and you'll get a nice check every month. But if you're so worried about nickel diming, it's the wrong. It's. You're the. Not the right captain for us.

Eric Berman [00:14:02]:
And it seems easy again. But these are little tweaks I learned over the way. We want people to say, I love doing this. I just love. I wanted to build community. I've been wanting to do this, and this is great. I want to leave. Just like what happened when I, in theory, volunteered my time for the 15 years.

Eric Berman [00:14:15]:
You know, it's not like I ever made a dime for that. Right. It was just like, I enjoyed doing that. I selfishly wanted to get. I was like, I'm the smart guy in the room. I'm the guy going out there and getting Mike Koenigs and Joss Asraf and surrounding myself with people smarter than me and shit. I'd be paying to be my own room, but I created a room and offered the value. So it's like it wasn't about the money.

Eric Berman [00:14:35]:
And that's sort of what the message would be to somebody leading. Let's look into lead groups like this. It's like, think in terms of the value you're getting for being a leader amongst your peers. And then you could surround yourself with incredible peers, level yourself up.

Mike Koenigs [00:14:47]:
Yeah. And what have you found are the types of people who should not be there. You've had to drop the hammer down. So you got the ones you want, you got the ones you don't want. So I'd love to get your column of both. What you want, what you love, what you don't. Want and then what you're willing to tolerate because sometimes there's a toleration factor as well.

Eric Berman [00:15:15]:
Yeah, well, for, for, I mean, I would say I'll make that a macro micro question. I, I think for anybody looking to join a community in general, I think this is a really important question. Whether you're looking to build or buy is spend the time making the checklist of what your, what your non negotiables are, what you want, what kind of people you want. Be crystal clear on that as well as if you're looking to join a room. For us in particular, it just happens to be the flavor we play with. You know, we're looking for entrepreneurs, we're looking for people that are actually in the trenches. And I like to call it a little bit more point of the spear is what I call marketing centric or market driven entrepreneurs. Another way of saying it is we're growth minded.

Eric Berman [00:15:46]:
We're the guys that are guys and gals are rolling up our sleeves. We're into the tactics, we're into the latest trends, we're hungry for knowledge, we're growing quickly. Oftentimes the unhirables, the ones that couldn't go into the corporate job, are who we are. And it's a little bit easier to say who we're not, I should say, and we're also successful. Meaning, you know, if you look, you know, we don't have a, we don't have a send us your tax returns, we're going to, you know, grill you on your numbers. It's more of a, you know, is this somebody I'm going to want to connect with once a month as a guideline? Are you doing over a million dollars? If you're, you know, revenue, you know, usually 1 to 50 if you're running a company, if you're a solopreneur consultant, are you doing a quarter million or close to that or on your way, you know, the smell test. Bottom line is do I want to be in a room with this person every month learning from them? Are they going to be taking energy away and just sitting around and yeah, I'll pay my money to be in a room to learn from people like Mike and other people, or am I going to be somebody who's going to give and take equally? That's, that's the kind of person, and I think a big no and sorry to some of the listeners out there, but it's just who we are is we're less professional home services companies. This isn't a room of real Estate agents and lawyers.

Eric Berman [00:16:52]:
You know, more like people that are in like the BNI crowd that are doing professional service type things or, you know, home services, plumbers and H Vac, you know, it's, it's not that I don't love them and they're. I'm an E.O. a member and they're in my E.O. kind of groups. This is, this is the roll up your sleeves kind of grinders that, that, that we bring in. Yeah, sorry. And one part of your answer, no, no, A holes, like there have been people that walk around like, yeah, I heard about this thing and sure, Eric, almost like they're doing me a favor for putting themselves in the room. As soon as that happens, I'm like, you know what, it's okay, we don't need you.

Eric Berman [00:17:24]:
It's like, you know, we don't need the ego and people walking in talking about how great they are. If you've been invited, you're probably pretty solid already. But if you think you're that great, then you don't need us. Then just go in a different room. Then you've already served your time.

Mike Koenigs [00:17:39]:
Yeah. Yep. No, that's great. That's really good. And then what do you think? So, looking back at your history, so I'm going to brag about you a little bit because this will explain, you know, how we met, which was you were working with Brian Tracy at the time. And because of that, I mean, really, it's because of you that I built a wonderful relationship with Brian. And over time, I think through some other means, I ended up meeting Jack Canfield, but we crisscrossed paths over a lot of big name authors, et cetera, and you had your agency, but if you go back further, you started the social media company, you raised your 75 million, your brother was one of the original founders of MySpace. Talk a little bit about what from your past really made you exceptional at what you're doing right now.

Eric Berman [00:18:38]:
Yeah, well, thanks. Yeah, no, the company called College Club way back then for anybody who wants to go into the annals of history to look that up or whatever that word would be. Anyway, so it's, you know, I was a 21 year old kid coming out of UCSD and just, I didn't realize I was an entrepreneur. Had that gene until you just get out of college and for some reason you're not attracted to that big corporate job that you're getting recruited for. I wanted to go build something and the first person I walked in there was building something with a vision. I'm like, that sounds cool. Where do I sit? And that was a conversation when there was three, four of us and big backstory. I don't even know you might know this or not.

Eric Berman [00:19:12]:
I didn't even get paid for the first 18 months. So here I am building something without out of college, you know, UCSD degree, you know, 3.6 out of UCSD that could have gotten a job anywhere, decided not to take a salary. I didn't give a shit. I was about building something. And to me, that was so cool. And I remember, like, talking to my parents one day, and they're like, what are you doing? I'm like, you understand, I can go out and get a job for way more than I ever thought because look at all the skills and stuff I'm building. So you know what that taught me to your question is, you know, a. You don't know what you're good at when you're.

Eric Berman [00:19:41]:
That you know when you start off. So it's just like getting my hands dirty and everything. And I kind of ran every department, built every department, learned a lot of skills, how to hustle. I mean, that was seven days a week, sleeping in mattresses kind of thing back in those days and just figuring so much out. I was blessed that I got introduced to Brian Tracy and Tony Robbins during that phase where we were listening to them every day to learn life skills and business skills, because you don't get taught that stuff in college. So I was fortunate to do that. But ultimately, and a lot of that is what helped me get through the goods and the bads. I mean, just the grind and the skills and how to set goals and how to manage time and how to have communication skills really was foundational to learning.

Eric Berman [00:20:19]:
Listening to Brian a lot and Tony, of course. And then when things dissolved and we imploded, when the market crashed in 2000, two months before going public and me being retired at 27 or 28 years old, it was a tough time for sure. But, like, you know, I think the mentality what got driven in my head was always grinding. And I remember, you know, just listening to Brian and others, it's like my favorite quote, I am responsible. I am responsible. And I just kept saying that. I'm like, you know, what am I going to do here? Like, sit on the ground and mope like nobody gives a shit beyond, you know, the close families for about a few days, and it's up to me to pick up the pieces and say, wait a second, what's positive? Look at the shit I just learned. In seven years, I wouldn't have gotten this in MBA at any other, any other company.

Eric Berman [00:21:03]:
I would not have gotten this through college. I learned so much about business. I'm super, I'm rich. I'm rich in information. I'm rich in knowledge that more than any 28 year old or most 28 year olds would be at that time. And so what I mean, I say, it's always say it's harder to lose money that you actually have in the bank than lose many. That was a piece of paper on a stock certificate that I ever had. So it was like, okay, well you can't take this away from me.

Eric Berman [00:21:28]:
Let me just take this knowledge and go build something else. And that led to the conversation with Brian where a family friend said, hey, Brian, Tracy needs help with this website thing. We're talking now, 2001 1. He needs help with the Internet. Can you help him? And I walked in his office, you know, trying to hold back the drool of seeing my legend and my hero, and said, Brian, I could, I could, I know what you need. I could do this. Here's my background. And by the way, don't pay me till I make you money.

Eric Berman [00:21:56]:
Which is another one of the biggest tips I offer when I, when I'm on shows like this is like, you know, look, if you have the balls and you have the time to do it, no better way to get your foot in the door than offer your services and say, I'll take it on the back end. You know, I'm so confident I'll be able to do this. Then let me show it. You know, what was Brian going to do at that point? You know, a kid that had had this experience, 28, and said he'll do it without paying him. He was like, he's like, eric, great, you're my kind of guy. Let's go. And that was a relationship that lasted. Here we are 26 years later.

Mike Koenigs [00:22:21]:
Yeah, yeah, no, it's, that's, it's really awesome. I think that if there ever were a career maker for you, that's absolutely one of them. And then you look at the other, other people too, who still to this day, you know, are very much handshake based, business owner leaders, you know, they don't make them like that anymore. And I want to get to the, the action part of this, which is getting back to speakeasy. So you are always on the lookout for captains in specific cities and also you're looking for people who didn't invite. So what's someone who's really interested in getting involved. What's the action to take and what's your recommendation? And then I'm gonna show something to you also while this is happening.

Eric Berman [00:23:27]:
And I have actually a page which says, what's it like? What are we looking for from leaders? Which I'll just drop to you somewhere. I'll just, you know, I'll send it over to you so you can share that. But I mean, for, for leadership. You know, I mentioned some, some of the things we're looking for. You know, ultimately, if you're out there and often the, the best thing we hear. And it's funny, earlier today, literally right before this call, I got off the phone with somebody from Dallas who went to an Alex Moscow event and said, and one of the messages was, you know, he, he talked about putting on events and building community. She's like, I really want to be building community out in Dallas. And I said, well, you found the right home home.

Eric Berman [00:24:02]:
And for her it was like such a magical conversation that happened out of nowhere. Which is if you have that desire to say, wow, I, I want to go out there and find, oh, that's funny. If I want to go out there and, and build something in my own city and I want to surround myself with some incredible entrepreneurs, that is what we're looking for, you know, a. Do you fit the, do you fit the profile of what you and I talked about earlier as far as the avatar person? And then are you good at, you know, can you find four or five leaders now? If you're introverted, that's okay. You know, do you know a few people you could bring out there? You don't have to be making tons of phone calls. Who's your core people? Can you invite a few people? And then from there we build now some of the skills. I'll say, hi, you said it earlier. I am a big high follow through guy.

Eric Berman [00:24:46]:
It's one of my pet peeves. It's a rare trait for an entrepreneur. You gotta have some kind of high follow through and be responsible as a leader. I know it's easier said than done, but I've learned to find that most entrepreneurs are shitty at that skill on their Colby. On the, on the Colby, what is it? The second number, I think is usually really low and we need a high Colby second number there. So if you're taking that test, or I would say on a Myers Briggs, you need to be a J. A rare J as an entrepreneur would be helpful. So that, that's, you know, that's what we're looking for.

Eric Berman [00:25:16]:
I mentioned again, you got to be doing it for the love of building community and growth and learning. Now, internally, we do. We do a lot to try to elevate our leaders. Every time there's an event, every time there's a speaking opportunity, we're finding those around us that we know, which clearly are the leaders, to say, hey, we'll get you in front of people outside just your city, as we do virtual events, things of that nature. So there's great opportunity there for that. And if you're somebody just looking to join a community and you're like, this sounds pretty interesting. Yeah. Check us out at the website.

Eric Berman [00:25:42]:
And you know, Mike is showing off all the 26 different chapters that are out there in various, various stages. And we also have. We also have what's called a global membership, meaning if you're out in South Dakota somewhere where we don't have a city, it's no offense to our South Dakotans out there. Come call me if you're interested. But if you're out there, we do have something called a global membership, which means you still get access to all the community, but you just don't do the local meetups yet. But one of the cool things we did. I'm going to kind of do a tie on this. We took what Mike talked about earlier, which is the notes.

Eric Berman [00:26:17]:
And every time we took notes. Now, thanks to AI, it's replaced me. Thank goodness on the ability to take notes. And so now every chapter is actually taking really good, prompt AI notes from all the meetings, and all of our members get all the wins. So, like, Mike is literally sitting there every week and getting all the wins from Miami and Boca and all his friends across the different cities, those are coming to him every. Every, every week, all the time. So, like, global members also get access to that. So you can take a look and see what we're doing.

Eric Berman [00:26:47]:
Welcome to stop by to our big annual event coming up in San Diego. But by the time this comes out, might be gone. But we have an annual event once a year.

Mike Koenigs [00:26:54]:
It'll make it out. It'll make it out. Yeah.

Eric Berman [00:26:56]:
So there's April 16th 17th in San Diego. Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:27:00]:
Yeah. Oh, so there you go. There we go. Look at that.

Eric Berman [00:27:05]:
Look at that. There he is. Look at that. You're like, I didn't say that, did I? Yeah, no, you did.

Mike Koenigs [00:27:11]:
And then.

Eric Berman [00:27:12]:
And then what's not on that list, which is fun. Mike, you don't even know this yet. We actually are about to launch, I think others that are not on There is Dubai. Pretty pumped about that.

Mike Koenigs [00:27:20]:
It was on the list. Yeah, it was on the little thing that made the animation. It didn't do them in the right order that, but yeah, it built an animation that was Claude working in the background. But yeah, this will be fun. Yeah.

Eric Berman [00:27:33]:
So I love seeing these global chapters go out there. I mean, closing in on Portugal. That'll be fun. I know you head out near that area once in a while, Mexico City. So it's, it's, it's exciting. And each, you know, another key thing is we only limit, we limit about 30 per, per city. So we keep it intimate. This isn't about us saying, hey, let's go chase down as much money as we can.

Eric Berman [00:27:55]:
We're like, hell no. It's all about creating the experience. What's going to get a Mike Koenigs to come back into the room? You know, that's, that's kind of our mission. You know what's going to get a John Asaraf? You know what's going to get high level people to come back every month. We got to keep the quality high. So try to cap about 30 people.

Mike Koenigs [00:28:10]:
Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's right, right size. You know, when we're meeting, we're meeting at someone's house or when I'm in town. We've done a few over here and it's, it, I think you said the right word, which is intimate. You know, everyone. That is at least until very recently I've gotten to know every single person on a deep, meaningful personal level. And, and this is very compatible with any other kind of an organization or group you belong to. This is not designed to supplant it. It's more of, to create the deep, meaningful relationships that you build outside of the business connections and the relationships, I mean real friendships are born out of this and continue.

Mike Koenigs [00:28:54]:
I'm still in touch with the majority of everyone from our original mastermind. I mean we're talking about lifelong friendships like you and me. So besides just going to speakeasymastermind.com to learn more and if you're interested in coming to San Diego for the annual event, it is super worth it. You'll meet some really good people there. And joining a chapter or potentially being a captain, where do people go? What else did I leave out or should I have asked you that? I didn't.

Eric Berman [00:29:31]:
I think those are the main bits. I mean there's individual city pages that's hard to find. So I think you just go to the website, you'll Be able to easily find out where to apply if you're interested. And then we'll kind of route you to the, to the appropriate city from that and you can meet the city leader, make sure it's a fit. We even do 90 day. We do 90 day. 90 day trials for everybody. I mean, you get in if you're unhappy.

Eric Berman [00:29:51]:
It's obvious for us, we're not about locking people in. Like, look, if this is not the right fit for you, then just, just great. You know, it's, it's got to be mutual. We want you in there for a long, long time and for the same 18 years that you and I've been playing. That's, that's the goal here. Yeah. And I think just, I mean, I'll just round it back to the point I made earlier. I think everybody needs, that's listening, needs to sit here and think about the communities, analyze the rooms they're in, ask themselves the question, do they give you energy? Do they take away energy? If they're taking away energy, you might want to think about swapping it with something else.

Eric Berman [00:30:20]:
Find the community for you. There are a lot of them out there. You know, do your research and, and, but, but get in something, you know, you got it, you got to do it, got to get in there. And hopefully Mike will be sharing my new book. I just told him we'll talk later or now. The process now of writing a book is so interesting. And I'm not talking about just saying having a three minute interview with AI and telling it to spit out a book for you. I'm saying yes, using AI to help you with certain structural things and some of the skills you can do with Claude and everything else.

Eric Berman [00:30:53]:
It's just insane. And I'm pretty excited that I get to get my first book out after all these years. Talking about the three phases of community and the structure really is find the right room. Start with the community and then once you're in the room, how to have proper relationship or leverage. How to work, how to be good and how to be right in the room. How to learn how to. And I'll just share a couple things too, a couple nuggets for you. You know, how to.

Eric Berman [00:31:20]:
One of my favorite things to learn from Brian Tracy is active listening. Listening how to shut the F up. Initially when you walk into a room and observe and learn. And the only question you should be asking is how can I give value to these people? Especially when you first meet people, stop worrying about, bragging and telling about how great you are. Think about what you could do to serve. It'll all come back. The law of reciprocity works, works in amazing ways by you serving others. So shut up and listen and get there.

Eric Berman [00:31:44]:
And be insanely good at follow through. If you say you're going to do something for somebody, say, especially early on when you meet somebody, there's no better way to create a positive relationship than listen intently, show that you care, say, find something that you can serve them, make a note for yourself, and then actually serve them the thing you did. Immediately they're like, holy shit, what a cool guy I just met. Or gal I just met them. They just did this thing. They actually followed through and they sent me that. I mean, how often does that have a mic? It's so rare that people do the simple things like that. And that's what's memorable.

Eric Berman [00:32:17]:
And so, you know, I talk about that and then ultimately, you know, once you're in the right community is what can you do to lift the community? What can you do to make it better? And so that's a little bit what I teach in Proximity Pays. That's going to be coming out.

Mike Koenigs [00:32:29]:
Oh, that's great. And it's a great title for a book, too. I really like it. Proximity Pays is awesome. I think when I, you know, it's one of Dan Sullivan's great sayings is. And I'm going to frame this because I can't remember if I remember the last one, but this is the Dan Sullivan saying is say please and thank you. Show up on time, do what you say you're gonna do. And I know there's one other thing, but I can't remember what it is.

Mike Koenigs [00:32:57]:
But I just popped that into Claude to find out what the hell it is. And it's the fourth principle. But anyway, I think you're. Oh, finish what you start.

Eric Berman [00:33:09]:
Finish your stuff.

Mike Koenigs [00:33:10]:
Yeah, that's. Those are. Those are two things that you're exceptional at, you know, is. Is do what you say you're going to do and finish what you start. And yeah, it's really, really good. So one more time. Speakeasymastermind.com is where you follow Eric and

Eric Berman [00:33:28]:
find out if you want to find my link. Yeah, I got a bunch of links on LinkedIn too. You could find me there as well.

Mike Koenigs [00:33:33]:
Yep. Yeah, sorry, He's. He's easy to track down, easy to follow and easy to like. After all this time, I still like you and I love you, so.

Eric Berman [00:33:42]:
You too, brother. You too.

Mike Koenigs [00:33:44]:
Yeah. Yep. No, it's been a hell of a ride so with that, I will. I'll finish this up by saying, this is Capability Amplifier. This is my friend, Eric Berman. Follow him. Get to know him. He's really well worth getting to know and.

Mike Koenigs [00:34:00]:
And spend time with. And I hope you enjoyed this episode. So share it with someone you know, like and, yeah, just like. And comment and I'll see you in the next episode very soon. Eric, appreciate you so much. It's great to be home.

Eric Berman [00:34:13]:
Yes. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate you. Love you, brother.