An Introduction to Business Mastermind Groups

What is a Business Mastermind?

A mastermind is a group of individuals who share a common goal: working together to contribute their individual badass skills to help the group members succeed. In a business context, a mastermind is a group of business owners dedicated to helping each other with their individual businesses.

A business mastermind is like a really involved advisory board that provides mentorship, accountability, and sometimes a kick in the pants.

It’s also sort of like having a group of business-oriented best friends who know you and your company extremely well. These are trusted people who can point out blind spots and be honest with you when you need some tough love.

Members receive guidance and feedback from other business owners who have complementary skills, knowledge, and experience. They commit to contributing to what they know to the group to help empower the group’s members to succeed. And vice versa.

Who Should Join?

Don’t join a mastermind group before you’re full-time in your biz. You won’t have much to offer and the group’s advice to you won’t be of much use. Masterminds full of new business owners miss the entire point of masterminding: sharing first-hand experiences and hard-won lessons with each other.

But if you’re full-time in you’re full-time business and these statements are true for you, you should join a mastermind:

• Wants to take your business to the next level
• You’re open to listening to and accepting the ideas of others
• You want to support other entrepreneurs by sharing what you’ve learned
• You’re not sure which way is up or down in your business and are struggling to make the next move
• You are sick and tired of trying to figure everything out by yourself

Benefits of Joining a Mastermind Group

Joining a business mastermind group can be the difference between feeling blah about your business and feeling ready to take on the world.

There are many benefits of joining a mastermind group including:

1. Clarity: When you’re having trouble seeing the forest from the trees, your mastermind people will be there to bring things into focus and help you recalibrate.
2. Structure: Having structure helps keep our eyes on the prize. It keeps us organized, on-track, and moving in the right direction. A mastermind can help you find that structure again.
3. Community: Your mastermind homies quickly become friends you can lean on. They actually get what you’re going through since they’ve been there. Stuff like sharing insider biz knowledge, publicly supporting each other, making introductions to other people in their network, being a confidante of secrets, and even giving emotional support.
4. Resources/contacts: When you join a mastermind group with the right people, your network is immediately expanded. Your rolodex now includes everyone in the group and everyone they know.
5. Business Solutions: Instead of working on the problem yourself, you’ll have a whole team of wicked smart leaders working on it with you. And you don’t even have to add them to your payroll. Win!

What to Look For in a Mastermind Group

A good mastermind needs to have three specific elements in order to be most effective: curation, facilitation, and methodology.

Curation

Curation is all about putting the right people together in the group. Do not take the curation of the group lightly. Mixing the right people together to get that right group dynamic is so incredibly important. The group needs to avoid issues of mismatched levels of experience, incongruent trajectories, and incompatible personalities. Members need to bring complementary things to the table.

Facilitation

A real mastermind is facilitated by a person who professionally facilitates these groups. Keyword being “professionally.” There’s plenty of well-meaning people who are pulling mastermind groups together, but they lack the experience of managing group dynamics and ensuring groups are effective.

Methodology

There’s not one right way to run a mastermind group — there are several right ways and plenty of wrong ways.Real masterminds have no curriculum. There are no classes or specific training that comes with being a part of a mastermind group. If a mastermind group definition includes a training component, it’s not a true mastermind. A true mastermind is based upon what the individuals need at that moment in time, and that is a really important piece.

How to Find a Business Mastermind

Before you look for a mastermind, you need to determine what kind of a group is best for you. There are three different types of business mastermind groups and each one is quite different.

The three types of mastermind groups are:

1. Coach-led groups. Usually a group coaching program that’s been dubbed a mastermind.
2. Do-it-yourself (DIY) groups. When a well-intentioned entrepreneur pulls friends and acquaintances together.
3. Professionally managed peer groups. Analytically matched and professionally managed groups.

Each kind of mastermind group type takes a different approach to selecting its members and running the group.

Once you’ve determined which is best for you, then you can find a group that can help you grow your business to that next level.

Before you join any mastermind group, however, make sure you ask questions so that you get into a group that’s an amazing fit for you. Click here for a list of the questions to ask!