Twenty

This is 20, a podcast mini brought to you by the Business Leadership Podcast where I, Edwin Frandoso, share my top five things that I learned this year in 2020. A pivotal year where we all experienced a global pandemic along with shared emotions of being socially distanced, wearing face masks, and learning how to connect virtually. And on this episode, I share the importance of connecting and having the right people around you during this pivotal year. COVID 19 quickly became a global pandemic early in 2020, and, being a global pandemic, the first in my lifetime, the first in many people's lifetime, it brought on so much, emotions, fear, scarcity, anxiety. I mean for me I was like thinking, man, if people are going crazy, buying and hoarding toilet paper, rubbing alcohol, n 95 masks, and just buying all kinds of stuff, and seeing the ugly side of desperation, and high hysteria.

I was, you know, questioning like, can I protect my family if the world goes into shits? If it goes into the dark ages? Like, seriously, that was stuff going through my mind. I was like, man, I got nothing to protect my family. Not that, I was forced or thinking about that, but that's like where we were at the beginning of the year.

All these emotions and thinking about as I came into 2020, I had big goals. I had brought in a new partner in slingshot to manage the sales growth and scale that operations. I was working with a speaking consultant who runs a, you know, speaking agency, a bureau to help my brand, my Flashpoint Global brand and platform and talks. The podcast was getting, new partnerships and new programming, so it was a big year. I was focused on stepping out, stepping up, and stepping out as a speaker and really putting myself out there.

But this COVID 19 just spun it around. And luckily for me, I found myself in a mastermind group. I was actually part of 2. I was it's not not actually part of. I'm part of 2 masterminds, but one that I primarily was engaged with.

Right? I mean, for those who are on the inter net, digital. I mean, there's so many places that you could be chatting, talking online, Discord, Facebook Groups, LinkedIn, whatever, but this is in real life. It started at the beginning of 2019. Brainchild of my friend, Teresa Lorico, we had just finished a planning session that was hosted from another friend of mine who, funny enough, Tuan, Nguyen, who's another mastermind group, came from that as well.

But she had brought everyone together. So, k. Why don't we all get together in the new year 2019 and talk about how we're gonna plan and grow and scale? So I had rented out a room, and we all got together. Fast forward 24 months, literally, as I record this, I had the opportunity to go deep with these dozen or so humans, heart centered humans who believe in doing and dreaming and giving back.

So when COVID 19 hit, we had to flip our structure around because of what our structure ended up being and we cocreated this was let's meet monthly, 3 hours. We'll go around the room. Everyone share what they're up to, what their challenges are. And at the end of the the second half of the meeting, we will do, basically, hot seats for those who need extra support to get extra time. And sometimes, we would have, you know, some type of quick session or a learning session either from the other member.

And in the past, we've had other people outside of the group come in as well. But with COVID, we switched virtually, and we had our very first Zoom meeting on it. And it was actually it worked out. I think it worked out in retrospect is because we had spent a year together learning each other and knowing at knowing everyone. And at that time, I think it was March with, you know, me launching Flashpoint Global, I was already having anxieties about self worth or the courage of who am I to become this leadership keynote speaker given all my experiences there.

Yes. I'm a tech. Yes. I'm comfortable and I'm, you know, I'm likable, but I was really challenged with that. So one of my those earlier meeting meetings, I had shared this with the group and it was like my first hot seat and one of the members, one of my friends there reached out to me later.

I don't know if it was that week. It's like, Edwin, man, what I heard from you, you need to come with me to this virtual event. It's hosted by, Giovanni. He's the founder of Archangel. And it was called this online summit.

It was 2 day summit, and it was called Beacons. He's like, you know, Edwin, what I hear from you is you have this light. You have this voice. You have this message that you wanna share to the world. You are a beacon.

You knew to come to this event with me. So, I did it. I mean, this is early March. I believe this is late March or early April now. And, I went to it and it was just eye opening.

I saw, like, Seth Godin speak. I learned about Jay Abraham and what he does and other thought leaders in this space and it just inspired me. I was like, okay. I see I see where it is. I see these people.

I understand the path of becoming a beacon. And, you know, that came because I was part of a mastermind group, because I was sharing and being, vulnerable and sharing to people that I trust and having this close knit groups. You know, whether it's a formal mastermind group or informal, which this was an informal one because you could find a mastermind group and pay for it and really get the same benefits. But I was lucky enough to find this one, which is crazy because being an entrepreneur for 15 years now, it took me 13 years to find a mastermind group or be in part of 1 or invest my time and resources into 1. So that's really good, but I also, during this time, was had other friends that are maybe not masterminds, but people that I trusted and shared my anxieties during these times.

People like Dave, who is my run account running accountability partner. I guess someone I've known, like, 9 years, and we, we run together. We train marathons, spend a lot of time together. And this was interesting time because, you know, I was training for the Toronto marathon, and I still had hope that it was still gonna run, but it eventually got canceled. I have my friend Coppell, who I met, older gentleman.

He's close to 80. And we had met in, Toastmasters, like, 5, 6 years ago, and we're still friends. So I had that good friend, Derek, who's an entrepreneur, you know, best friend Jody, like all these people that, you know, are your advisory group, I guess. So ensuring that I surrounded myself with these people really helped during this time. So, one thing I'm grateful for, one thing I really learned is the value of relationships, the value of mastermind groups.

These closed groups where you could trust and be vulnerable, about yourself, about your business and be heard rather than just being inside your head and bouncing things around. On the next episode of 20, I go down deep and talk about relationships, personal tribes, networks and masterminds, and how it allowed me to stay focused and fall into the mass hysteria that COVID 19 brought to the world.