My mastermind group started in January 2014. That's almost 7 years of consistent meetings even through marriages, babies, deaths in the family, major business changes, C0VlD-19, and more.
It's a free, self-run mastermind.
There are five of us in the group. Four of us met at a one-day workshop by Pat Flynn. A few months later, we pulled in our fifth member, when the original fifth & sixth team members didn't work out. Two of us had met him at another related conference.
We gather every other week for one hour. The meeting day and time is the same. In our case, it's Tuesday at 10am. Sometimes, if people are traveling, we'll push our meeting out another week. We never let it go longer than 3 weeks without a meeting.
Every other week is our sweet spot. We tried weekly at first, but it seemed a little overkill with everyone's commitments.
Format
Our standard meeting is a modified "hot seat" format, by Jaime Masters (SPI podcast 098):
- 15-20 minutes: Update - Everyone gets 3-5 minutes for a quick update (except the person in the "hot seat"). Usually, this includes sharing one business "win."
- 30-40 minutes: Hot seat - Whatever the person in the hot seat wants to discuss or get feedback on.
- 2 minutes: Accountability - Everyone states, in one sentence, the One Thing to be accomplished by next meeting.
1) Five people is a good number. If it comes down to it, there's always a majority vote. If someone's missing or can't attend, there are still enough people around to give feedback to the person in the hot seat.
2) We always start and end on time. Everyone's time is valuable.
3) We meet by Google Hangout (Meet now), but we have a secret FB group for sharing files, meeting minutes, or issues that come up between meetings. In this day and age, there's no excuse not to require it be a video meeting. Otherwise, you're missing the non-verbal cues of a conversation, which are the most important part!
4) You need someone to moderate and herd the cats... someone who can schedule the calendar invites, make sure everyone's online, ensure nobody hogs up too much time, and that you stick to the agenda. You need someone who's not afraid to have a discussion with or kick out members that aren't a good fit. In the beginning, that was me, but now we pretty much self-regulate. I also write up a meeting minutes after each meeting, which I post in the FB group. It's just fun to look back and see how much we've all grown over the past 6+ years.
5) Keeping it to the "hot seat" format makes it feel like we're all giving and receiving value. It's focused, with a clear objective -- Help the guy in the "hot seat." Otherwise, you could spend the whole hour just "catching up," with no results. In the long run, that's not very helpful, unless you just want to use your mastermind as an excuse for a social happy hour. We did diverge from the "hot seat" format for the first two meetings after C0VlD-19, because there was a lot to be discussed with the changing landscape.
Other Thoughts
1) I know a lot of people use Slack, and I'm in a Slack server with a few people from this forum. The problem with Slack is that it's not consistent, it can turn into random banter, and it's pretty time consuming. This one hour, virtual face-to-face is much more effective. There's a clear objective that's time-constrained.
2) You want to make sure everyone's on the same experience level. For our group, we wanted to make sure everyone was working on their business full-time, and required at least a few years of online experience. One of our members did have to take a job. No shame in that, we just changed the meeting time to work with his schedule.
3) We're not all in the same industry, but we all have online businesses (FBA, e-commerce, podcaster, author, speaker). I think it's better this way, because each of us have different sources of news or people that we follow. There's actually a lot of crossover in areas such as marketing, SEO, and PPC.
4) We're all super open with our financials. I think that the transparency and vulnerability make the group more tight-knit.
Entrepreneurship can be a lonely road, but it can also be a fun-filled adventure with friends. I finally feel like I'm having some business success, and it's due in large part to my mastermind group and to the friends I've made on this forum. Sincere thank you to all of you... you guys know who you are.
