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Today we’re going to talk about how to organize a mastermind meeting. In episode 21 I talked about the benefits of being in a mastermind group, but setting one up is a totally different story.
- If you’re organizing a mastermind group, the first thing you need to do is recruit the right people and agree on criteria. Then organizing the group is up to you. [01:22]
- The first thing you need to figure out is how long you want the meetings to be. Typically 1-2 hours is good enough. [01:40]
- I’ll walk you through the agenda. [01:49]
- We start with a one-word opening about how we feel to see how everyone in the group is doing and set the tone for the meeting. [02:20]
- Then we do updates, which might take anywhere from 3-5 minutes for each person. Make sure you have a timer for the people who have a tendency to talk over. [02:39]
- As you’re doing this, you might want to put this into a table: the first column has the time limit and the second column has discussion notes. [03:05]
- You can add accountability updates once you start to get a little deeper into the meetings. These are things you tell the group you want to accomplish so they can keep you accountable. If you don’t live up to it, people will call you out for it. Again, this is 3-5 minutes per person. [03:33]
- I recommend the mastermind to be 6-8 people. Beyond that, it starts to drag on and takes forever. [04:07]
- Then talk about the big wins you’ve had: marketing, sales, etc. You can go into your process for a little bit to give others some takeaway value. Besides a win, you could talk about something you’re really struggling with so others can give you advice. [04:17]
- Then people can ask clarifying questions: this is advice-giving time. [05:16]
- Pick one presentation that is urgent from the updates, or from your parking lot. [05:36]
- The parking lot is where people put certain issues or topics they’d like to learn about, and you can pull something out from there. [05:48]
- There’s only one presentation from one person, for 10-15 minutes. After that, the rest of the group can provide advice and feedback for another 10-15 minutes. [05:59]
- If people don’t want advice, you can play the Gestalt role where you share your stories. From these stories, people can figure out the direction they want to go in. [06:14]
- After the presentation, you can take 10-15 minutes for someone to teach something. [06:36]
- If you’re going for two hours, you can stop at the one-hour mark for a 10-minute break so people don’t get burnt out. [06:47]
- Discuss what you’d like to accomplish over the next month and how you’ll get there. Take notes on this for the next meeting’s accountability. [07:25]
- In the last 5-10 minutes, go over housekeeping, organizing the next meeting, or obstacles the group might encounter. [07:00]
- This is a general mastermind schedule you can adapt to your group’s needs. [08:10]
- As the group leader, it’s up to you to hold members accountable for showing up on time, actually coming to meetings, etc. You can set rules so you don’t have to take busyness as an excuse for missing meetings an simultaneously hold up the integrity of the group. [08:23]
Selected Links from this Episode:
- Episode 21: The Benefits of Joining a Mastermind Group
- YPO: Young Presidents’ Organization
- EO: Entrepreneurs’ Organization
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