TIP 48
CREATE YOUR OWN MASTERMIND GROUP
CRYSTAL: Do you realize that most people use two percent of their mind’s potential?
The more you want to accomplish, the more help you’ll need. Successful people don’t get there all by themselves. You need more support, help, advice, and encouragement than you think you need, especially if you are going to do something big. The most successful people have a team to help them, to give them sage counsel—a mastermind group. The president has his cabinet to advise him. CEOs have boards of directors. If you want to accomplish something that looks too big and difficult to accomplish, why not create your own mastermind group? This special group of people with different talents and backgrounds will help you brainstorm ideas and provide suggestions on how you can reach your goals. Left to our own devices, we can quickly get discouraged or succumb to the “Oh, I can’t do this. Who do I even think I am to even attempt it” mentality. A support team won’t allow this to happen and will be able to play devil’s advocate, possibly preventing costly errors on your part. These are the people who love and support you and who are not afraid to tell you the truth. On your part, you must be willing to hear what they have to say and willing to hear the truth, even if you don’t like it. However, make sure these people really want to see you succeed.
Just to give you an idea, on my mastermind team, I have people who help me when it comes to specific questions and ideas on many different aspects of my life. I have a magazine editor who gives me feedback on my writing and ideas. I also rely on the insights of the president of an advertising company when it comes to growing my business. A good friend of mine has worked in marketing and public relations, and I always go to her for her great marketing ideas. Another friend is good with computers and helps me when I’m having system problems. My coaching colleagues are always willing to share their experience and provide suggestions. I hired a producer to help me create an audio program instead of trying to do it all by myself, and now she is a ready source of new ideas for marketing my business. Instead of trying to figure out the Internet myself, I hired a great guy to design and set up my company website. Another friend works in publishing and has been a great help throughout the process of getting my own book published. I have a mentor who is a self-made multimillionaire and regularly gives me advice and encouragement to help me avoid costly mistakes. And of course, I have a coach to help me work on improving my own life and business. I constantly rely on my own family and friends for love, support, and encouragement.
All of these people make up my network, and each person provides me with a unique outlook on different parts of my life and work. Their expertise helps me to understand things from a different perspective that I would never see on my own.
The bigger and scarier the project you are working on, the more support and advice you will need. Most of the people in my mastermind group are friends and colleagues and offer their advice for free. However, don’t be afraid to pay for services that you need. If you expect friends to provide their professional services for free, you’ll soon find you are setting yourself up to lose a valuable friend. More often than not, people are willing to give you great information, advice, and feedback on your ideas if you simply invite them to do so or invite them to lunch. Sometimes people are willing to barter. Your skills and services could be of great value to the other members of the group.
A mastermind group can be an informal arrangement in which you call people individually, or you can set up a regular monthly meeting in which all the members of the group support each other. If you start a formal mastermind group, the purpose will be to support everyone in the group, not just you, so don’t hog the time. Each week or month that you meet, ask who has an issue or problem that they’d like to resolve and brainstorm from there. The most effective groups include people with very different backgrounds—a lawyer, an accountant, a marketing person, an artist, an entrepreneur—so that everyone will benefit from the synergy of the group and have a different perspective to share.