One of the best things about 2020 was the business mastermind I created with 3 of my soul sisters — Alyssa, Sophie and Sahara.

If you’ve never heard of a mastermind before, or never experienced one for yourself, it’s essentially a group of likeminded people coming together to support each other in their business growth, cheer each other on, troubleshoot problems, brainstorm solutions, and generally inspire each other to live up to their full potential and take their business to the next level.

A mastermind can take any format you like. For us, we meet up digitally every two weeks for an hour.

Together, we chat about whatever’s going on in our businesses — what our goals are, what action tasks we’re focusing on, any challenges where we need support, any strategies that are getting good results, as well as bouncing around ideas for new books, products, live events and offerings. I always walk away brimful of energy and inspiration after our catch ups… It’s truly one of the highlights of my week whenever we meet!

I often post about our mastermind on my Instagram, and whenever I do, I get a bunch of questions asking about how I created it, how it works, when we met, what we cover etc. So I thought I would write a post on it for you, in case you want to create an epic mastermind to take your business to the next level. So let’s dive in!

Why A Mastermind Is So Powerful

There are sooooo many benefits of participating in a mastermind. Here’s a small taster of the benefits I’ve experienced over the past year:

• Major clarity — It’s amazing how I can feel confused or unsure about something for weeks, then within a few minutes of chatting it through with these women, I suddenly see EXACTLY what I’ve been missing and EXACTLY what action to take next. Clarity for the win!
• Insight and feedback on your ideas — When you work for yourself (or in a small team), sometimes it can be hard to get space from your own ideas to evaluate them objectively. Being able to bounce ideas off these ladies, get a fresh perspective, and get their feedback and input is so incredibly valuable.
• Accelerate your progress — A mastermind allows you to see what’s working in someone else’s business, so you can put it into action in your own. It also allows you to see the challenges other people are facing, so that you can either sidestep that issue yourself, or know *exactly* how to move past it if it does arise.
• Holy accountability, Batman! — There’s nothing like knowing there are three other people you have to “report” back to at your next meet-up to get you to take major action and follow through on the tasks you’ve set for yourself.
• Companionship, sisterhood and solidarity — Working from home can sometimes feel a little isolating. In a traditional workplace, you have colleagues all around you. For us entrepreneurs that work from home, it’s up to US to actively seek out a soul crew to share the journey with. (And I can tell you, it’s the BEST feeling, knowing I’ve got soulies by my side for the ride!)

Have I convinced you yet of how powerful masterminds are? I hope so! Now, as to how to set one up…

How to Start And Run Your Own Mastermind

• First things first, you need to work out what YOUR intention is for creating the mastermind — Why do you want to do it? What’s your intention? Do you want accountability, support, to bounce ideas off each other, to share resources, love, community… Why do you want to start and commit (because it is a commitment) to a mastermind?
• Next, you need to think about WHO could help you with the above. Do you want males and females, or just females? Do you want people solely within your industry, or a mix of varied areas? Write down the first 5 – 10 people you can think of who would be a great fit.
• Then think about how often and for how long you want to meet for. Like I mentioned, we meet virtually every 2 weeks on the same day and same time for 1 hour. Everyone is always prompt and respectful of each other’s time, which is super important. You need to figure out how often and for how long you want to meet and can commit to, because this will determine how many people you have in your mastermind. We do one hour, so 4 people is a great number because everyone gets 15 minutes each to share and receive their feedback. But everyone is different, so you tune in and do what feels right for you. If you want to mastermind for 4 hours, go for it!
• Once you have your time and your list of who you want to reach out to, send them an email, a video or voice message sharing your intention for the mastermind, what’s involved, why you love them and their work, and why you want them to be part of the mastermind.
• If you haven’t heard back in a week or so, you could follow up or presume they are not interested (don’t take it personally — everyone has their own lives going on). Simply reach out to someone else on your list and start the process again.
• Once you have your peeps, send out a recurring digital calendar invite with all the details so that there is no back and forth with ‘what’s the link again?’, ‘what time did we say’ etc. Let’s be respectful of everyone’s time and inboxes!
• Then, on the day, be prompt. Don’t rock up 2 minutes late, be 1 minute early to show you are keen and respect their time.
• During our very first session, we got clear about the structure we’d follow each week and the “rules” for the group — around 15 minutes “talk time” each, we start with a different person each week, what happens in the mastermind stays in the mastermind, we treat each other and each other’s businesses with the utmost respect and confidentiality, we’re each responsible for the energy we bring to our calls, and we all commit to showing up for ourselves and each other.
• We’re flexible when needed — sometimes our calls run over, and sometimes someone has a particularly juicy project that needs extra air time. But in general, we’re pretty good at sticking to the format we originally decided on.

… Then repeat. That’s it! 

If you have more time, you could start the mastermind with a meditation, an angel card, an oil or sage the space. It’s totally up to you: it’s your mastermind, so you can do whatever you want. Make it fun, supportive and loving.

I’m curious, have you ever been in a mastermind before? Or would you like to be in one? A great place to find like minded peeps to join your mastermind is in the MA Community private Facebook group. Loads of friendships, masterminds and more have been formed in this beautiful group, so come join and check it out today.