I bet you are thinking, “Jon, why do I need a mastermind group?” Let me tell you. You will thank me by the end of this post, so be sure to read on, listen on, and watch.
You will need mental coaches, masterminds — not necessarily plural but, even someone like Michael Jordon, a basketball player, would have had a coach.
People practice and everyone has a mentor, successful people rather have mentors. In my business I model my business on various mentors, and some of the mentors are people I use as guides but they don’t even know me.
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I feel like I know them, they don’t even know me but I follow what they do and I watch what they do. I am also in the Strategic Coach Program, and I have also been in the Emyth Mastery Coaching System which has helped me build my entire business.
That’s the reason why I am able to jet around the world into various places, why appearing not to do any real work.
It is a great lifestyle and I enjoy it. You would as well and it all helps with coaches and masterminds.
I also have mastermind groups of which I am a member. I have one with my friend Hayden every couple of weeks without fail unless we are somewhere else or we would do it the next day or the day after.
We meet up and we have a little process where we go through our problems and we talk to each other, help each other out.
I would not be where I am today without my friend Hayden. Also I am in a couple other mastermind groups and might I had, I did not start these.
Find Like Minded People
I join them and I try to be there whenever I can. Some of these are in different locations — completely different groups of people but I find them essential, because they are like minded people, people I can respect and people I can ask for their opinion on my ideas.
Who else am I going to talk to? It is a lonely world being an entrepreneur — you have your mates and they work like masterminds but if you haven’t got mates, I mean business mates who are you going to turn to, a friend and a pub?
They don’t know, they have a job, they don’t know, they are not you. They can’t help you, they are just going to tell you what you want to hear or just say don’t you worry about that it will all go fine.
It’s not going to help you. You want constructive criticism and you want your ideas to be validated and you want a sounding board.
So if you aren’t in one why not form your own. Now one thing is that being the leader of a mastermind obviously is going to give you a little cache, it’s going to give a little boost to your ego.
The whole point of a mastermind group is, it’s just not for you; everybody has to help each other so you need to pick the members very carefully. So some rules need to follow:
Rules to Follow in a Mastermind Group
Decide When You Are Going to Meet
For example if you are in one of Jaime Tardy’s mastermind group, she’s got a good podcast called “Eventual Millionaire”.
She is famous at setting up masterminds and she has been in one for years and it meets every single Monday without fail.
Wherever anyone is she can meet by Skype, you don’t have to meet in person, remember that. My friend Hayden is across the seas wherever I am across the world we will still meet and we talk.
We go to meetings and it could be by Skype, he just happens to have a go to meeting account so we use it, but you are going to decide on the day and that day is fixed.
It is in stone, it has to be convenient for everyone and there has to be rules. If someone does not turn up for two or three, they are out as they are not committed.
It is a commitment so you have to be the leader have to be there to make sure it’s going to be convenient for everyone, so agree on that, be careful when you are trying to agree make a couple of suggestions, otherwise no one will ever agree it will take forever.
When You are Picking the People To Be In
Generally you don’t want too many otherwise one session will take too long so something like five or six is a good number like I said it can be just two of you.
That’s not so easy because you really need to have solid understanding of each other so you should be able to help each other.
So with my friend Hayden we have similar types of business both online, both launching a product and so we can talk about that.
Hayden is a software engineer so if he was talking about his software consultancy I would not have the faintest idea how to help him because I have never done that and don’t know what advice to give.
For my business, say my fire safety business, you are going to think who can help you in a fire safety business, but remember it’s just a business.
This is what I want you to think about yours, whether you are a painter and decorator, a construction worker, whether you are start up software millionaire, it doesn’t matter you could be a dentist, a doctor, a plastic surgeon or you could be a mechanic.
It does not matter, it has leadership, management, staff, marketing, production, finance it’s a business you are going to have ideas you going to put them forward, people will be able to help you so pick people who are better than you.
If you were playing tennis, you would play tennis against somebody every single Wednesday. You will eventually no matter who they are, you will win one-loose one, win one- loose one and you will eventually be as good as each other.
However, you then change that and you go and play someone who is better than you. So they beat you six love every time, and you will eventually start to get to six one- six two and eventually over time you will get better because you will learn what they are doing and that’s how it goes, you will grow.
If you hang around people who are lesser than yourself or just as equal you are not going to grow. In a mastermind this is an opportunity to find those, find retired, or people that have been there and done it.
People will be honored to be asked, so contact them, contact them very precisely, explain what it is for, how it is going to benefit them and what wealth of knowledge benefit they can bring to the group.
Remember it’s not about you it’s about them when they are looking at this as an offer they are thinking “Why should I? I have no spear time. How is it going to help me?”.
Play to their ego and you will be amazed how many people will agree. Don’t ask too many. If you are trying to get say five people, don’t go asking twenty because you may get twelve that will reply and then may be a bit sticky.
I would suggest that if you are trying to get the first five people that you ask, then ask ten and you can say I have actually asked a lot of people so first come first serve but we really want you, call me to find out more on this and that.
So then, you find your group then you agree, how you are going to meet: if it’s going to be by Skype online then everyone is online, if it’s going to be in person they will have to be able to get to the in person place.
I cannot really do many in person ones because I am quite often five thousand miles away either in the UK or in Vancouver Canada that does not help me.
Decide What You Are Going to Do and the Best Way to Have a Mastermind Group
It is to have a hot seat if you got say the six of you there, if you have one person because you have to be respectful of everyone’s time.
One person sits on the hot seat and they can tell us everything about their business as it stands so we get a full understanding of what they do.
Don’t forget we have no clue and it may have been two weeks since we last saw them or month depending on how often you meet.
The other thing is what have they been doing lately, what are their goals and then they can explain what they are planning to do and what they would like to talk about their particular problem.
It’s no good discussing anything other than a problem you need solving or something you need some slight advice with that’s about to launch.
Don’t go telling everyone about everything that is already working successful, you want help with new ideas then go around the room and get the feedback.
That should be in a structured manner one at a time and with the person doing the talking, you the chair doing the talking you can get everyone’s feedback, control it, one question, one answer per person.
Then go around again and possibly again until the list is exhausted. Do not let one person take it over and ask all the questions.
If you have people who have nothing after a couple of meetings, let them go and replace them with someone who is going to bring something to the table.
Guide the Time
Stick to a time format and tell people when you are getting close to the format you may wish at the end or at the beginning to let everyone else give a five minute resume of where they are at and then decide on whose hot seat it is next time.
That’s what I recommend get yourself a mastermind. It will be good, try it. By the way no one gets paid so just to remind you it’s no charge, it’s free and remember it’s your time.
Tuesday Toolbox Tip
It’s a Tuesday so I have got a tool box tip for you. Today it’s a strange one because you may not have heard this, as it is not very well publicized.
It is called lukewarmmailer.com and it is to email lukewarm prospects and how to get them working.
Now, if I explain how the guy came up with it, it is pretty one of the easiest ways. He started using twitter to identify particular potential customers and find their email addresses and it is quite difficult to find email addresses and contacts.
He then built a spreadsheet to track the progress. As he reached out to them one by one, he found that it is very successful.
He eventually tried with the messaging in his introduction email and he started to get positive responses and I have seen people on this who have gotten twenty percent responses from code list but have with everything he decided this is a bit clunky, I need a better system.
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He built bigger software using a spreadsheet and it works. There is a seven day free trial so you can try it, there is no commitment and the lowest form of payment is five dollars a month.
It is hardly anything. It is very good, it is how you contact influences and build relationships or clients.
You get people to share your stuff and comment on your post, read your blog or your podcast. It is worth a look lukewarmmailer.com.
Enjoy it I will see you in a couple of days. Actually I will see you tomorrow because we have a fantastic expert interview!