Joining an existing Mastermind group can save you a lot of time and effort. The members of your group can help you prevent making costly mistakes.
The key questions someone should ask about a group before thinking of joining a group are:
- What can you contribute?
- How can the group help you?
These are very simple questions, the story is in the details. Be choosy when selecting any group. You may find you can contribute, and that the group could help you, but the group is not a good fit in other ways.
For example, consider how the group governs itself, not just it’s “technical” capacity.
Consensus-based groups run at the speed of the member who says “No.” That is, the power in a consensus organization is held by the person who must be pleased or mollified in some way, as they hold all the power to stop everything. So unless you really like consensus building, be careful of attempting to accomplish anything in a consensus-based group.
Other groups may be clustered around a leader with a strong personality. In such cases, you need to establish rapport with the leader.
Finding Value to Offer
In the most desirable case, you want to find a mastermind group with people whose skills are greater than yours. But you have to offer value. For example, I helped run the web site for http://opensocial.weekendapps.com/ which is run by very talented social media software developers. Websites are a low grade hassle, and I was only too happy to handle these chores while learning new skills with this group. As a result, I gained some excellent contacts as well as learned new technical skills.
Whatever your skills and talents may be, it’s important to ensure you are a good match, as best you can, before approaching a group.
Purchase highly targeted membership
I recently joined Yaro Starak’s Membership Mastermind and Blog Mastermind programs. I got these combined for a price discount. The amount of material is large, more than anyone can go through in a weekend or two. Yaro recommends taking about 6 months to get a grip on it.
The program has a private forum as well, which I really appreciate. If you’re starting out, it’s a great place to meet others just starting out as well. The value I find is in the emphasis on business aspects. Long time readers know I have the technical aspects of blogging with WordPress pretty well nailed.
I don’t like that the Mastermind programs have everything online only. A couple of years ago, I purchased Eben Pagan’s Altitude program. One of the biggest benefits to the Altitude Program for me is that all the material comes on DVD. It took me about 8 months to go through the whole program (25 hours of video), but I took extensive notes, and I consider it very worthwhile. It would have been nice to have had Starak’s program on DVD as well… which sounds like a market opportunity for Mr Starak!
Joining an existing Mastermind group
Personally, I don’t have much experience joining an existing group. I haven’t found one that aligns with my interest, and I have been busy building just such a group myself (Stirfry Startups, the subject of a future blog post in this series).
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
It seems like the must successful people I know make good use of mastermind groups.
Causation? Correlation?
Either way, it seems to work.
Sean´s last blog ..The Schedule of a Productive Morning
@Sean –
My SWAG (Scientific Wild A** Guess) is that it’s correlative… but combined with a large number of other correlative habit (e.g., speed of implementation), consilience makes correlation and causation indistinguishable.
David M. Doolin, PhD´s last blog ..Advanced SEO IMG Element Handling For WordPress (Part II)
How would you tell if a group is consensus based before joining ?
I recently joined a group for internet marketing in which members share ideas and support each other in individual and even group projects. Definitely not concensus based, everyone there to help others and themselves.
The 2 questions you mention were easily answered in this case.
Pablo
@ Pablo – Could be difficult to determine in advance. I’ve been surprised in the past with groups I’ve been associated with. A typical scenario is hours of discussion leading to an ad hoc agreement, which then – surprise, surprise – has to be approved by an absent member! I don’t stick around in such situations anymore.
Some friends and I have also created a group we call Stirfry Startups. We meet for a weekend roughly monthly.
David M. Doolin, PhD´s last blog ..WIAW Week in Review: September 26 – October 2, 2009