Ep15 Transcript: How to Start a Mastermind Group – Quick Fix Friday

Andrea Vahl: Hey, Late Starters, it’s your host, Andrea Vahl, and in today’s Quick Fix Friday, we’re going to talk about how to start a mastermind group.

Intro: Hello Dreamers. Welcome to the Late Starters Club, giving you the inspiration, mindset, and tools you need to start something midlife and beyond. Remember, it’s never too late to follow your dreams.

Andrea Vahl: In Jamie’s episode number 13, he talked about having a mastermind group that I was a part of for a long time and how that can help your success as a business owner or maybe anytime you’re making a change. I think there are four essential steps to starting a great mastermind group.

Number one is to pick your focus and what your mastermind group is about.

So if you’re looking to level up your income, you want to make sure, that everyone is on board with that goal and has that similar focus. In Jamie’s mastermind that I was a part of for a long time, he gathered speakers and authors together and we shared tips about the industry, ways to grow as a speaker, and essential resources that we thought each other could benefit from.

Number two is to invite the right people.

Now, I think this sweet spot for a great mastermind group is somewhere between four to eight people, and usually I’ve tended to be in mastermind groups that are around five or six people, and that allows everyone to have a time on the hot seat. Each time you meet unless you decide you’re going to meet for a longer period of time. I think if it gets over eight people, then you need to have some maybe different rules about how you’re sharing or what the group is going to be structured like.

The other thing with inviting the right people is to make sure everyone is pretty much at the same level or brings a particular skillset that would benefit the other members in a certain way. So sometimes you might have someone who’s an expert in marketing, maybe someone who’s an expert in finance, maybe an expert in leadership, for example. And then you can all mastermind together about how to make your businesses better.

Step number three is to set the agenda and timing for your meetings.

So with agendas, I think you want to make sure that everyone understands how the flow will go. So for example, in many masterminds I’ve been a part of, we’ve started out by sharing a quick win, then presenting the problem that we’re going to be talking about that week with the minimum information that people need to know in order to help us mastermind around that problem.

That way, you get maximum time for feedback and you’re not wasting too much time on exposition of the problem or the whole history of your business. Then we would set a goal or a commitment that we would have based on the feedback we got. And in many cases, for masterminds I’ve been a part of, we’ve set actually a pain that we would do in case we didn’t meet our commitment, and that gave us a greater level of accountability.

So setting a pain point for a commitment might be something as simple as committing to do a task for a month that you don’t like, or it could be something larger that would be really difficult to do. Like I think one of my friends actually committed to streaking through the neighborhood if she didn’t get her task done.

And believe me, she did get her task done.

And then related to timing, you need to set how long the meeting is going to go and how many times a month you might meet.

Step number four is to set the ground rules for the members.

I think you definitely need to try and require attendance as much as possible. For sure people will have some conflicts. They might be traveling, they might have something related to their family that would conflict, but if they can’t come regularly, then they aren’t going to be as plugged in with the group. They’re not contributing as much, and it might be a signal that they’re not as committed to having that mastermind.

So make sure you’re getting a commitment on attendance.

And then also make sure that you are having a cone of silence for all of the members. So that anything that is shared that is sensitive or a little bit vulnerable will not be shared outside of that group. And there may be other ground rules that you’d like to set as you go.

I’ve got a great resource for you from my friend Karen Greenstreet. We were in a mastermind group together for many years. And she is super smart. She runs the Success Alliance and she is a mastermind expert. She has tons of great resources there to start your own mastermind. She has some resources for people who want to become mastermind facilitators and all kinds of goodies there on her blog. Highly suggest you check that out. If you are interested in learning more about how to create great masterminds.

A great mastermind can really change your business or change anything that you’re interested in doing.

Outro: Hope that was helpful, and make sure you grab the free guide. Top Tools for late starters on the website at latestartersclub.com and let’s turn dreaming into doing.