If you are reading this blog, chances are you like to challenge yourself and you are likely in a situation today where you are being challenged.

I am the founder of Week Plan, and running a business is a continuous stream of challenges. When you are working on the same thing day in day out, you start losing perspective on what you are doing and it becomes hard to figure out what the best next step would be.

When I started feeling I was the limiting factor in my business, I looked for external help. First I asked for feedback from my direct friends, but realized that most of my challenges were so specific that they couldn’t relate to my challenges and couldn’t offer me any relevant advice. This is when I decided to surround myself with people who were in a similar situation to mine.

My story with mastermind groups started in 2010, when I started a founder mastermind breakfast where we would meet over breakfast and chat about our challenges and try to suggest solutions for others. I also wanted to be able to share my progress with people I knew from France (I am French but I live in Australia) so I also developed a web application that allowed us to reproduce what I was doing during the mastermind breakfasts online. Later on, I joined forces with the excellent coach James Short to help organize mastermind groups around the world. Nowadays I am not involved with this anymore but James is still at it and reports great results from his participants.

In this article, I would like to offer a practical guide on how to start being part of a mastermind group.

What is a mastermind group

Napoleon Hill popularized the concept of mastermind groups in his book “Think and Grow Rich”. He described mastermind groups as being a key component to success. Here is a video where you can see him explaining the concept:

A mastermind group is a regular meeting of people who share a common goal and are looking to encourage and help each other improve.

Why it works

  • Accountability: You are held accountable to the achievement of your goals. Just knowing you have a regularly scheduled meeting will internally drive you to make progress. Nobody wants to be seen as lazing around while others are making huge progress in their business
  • Perspective: Each individual has a unique history and set of skills. When you expose your challenge to someone else, you are likely to get a solution you may not have been able to think of.
  • Synergy: The interaction of several trusting people can produce a combined solution greater than the sum of their separate solutions. The explainer effect: When you have to explain a problem to someone else, often, the solution becomes evident to you as you are explaining the problem.
  • Resources: By being part of this group, you gain access to everyone’s personal network.

How to be part of a mastermind group

Online

If you want to join a group online, you can check out Fizzle (for entrepreneurs) or Online Peers.

Alternatively, you can create a private Facebook group and invite people to it. The benefit of the Facebook group is that people are more likely to interact with the group because the messages will appear in their Facebook feed.

Offline

Check out the website Meetup.com. You will likely find groups around your area that meet around your topic of choice. You can go there and recruit people for your own mastermind group for example.
Starting your own meetup group is also possible but may take a bit more time and effort to put in place.

Week Plan

I am considering organizing mastermind groups from within the Week Plan application. If you are interested in giving it a try, please drop a comment to show interest.

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