Listen:
(Full episode transcript below show notes)
This week, I’m talking about Mastermind groups. If you’ve never heard of these before, I don’t think you’re alone — generally, when I tell people I’m in a Mastermind group, they give me a weird look and assume I’m some sort of volcano-dwelling supervillain-in-training.
But Mastermind groups are super useful — not only to tech bros and startup think tanks, but to us writers and creators as well. In this episode, I go into how my writing career has benefited from belonging to various Mastermind groups over the years, and what it could look like for you to join one, or start your own. I hope you find it helpful!
Have you ever belonged to a Mastermind? What was your experience? Or if you haven’t but would like to be a part of one, what would you be looking for, specifically? Let me know in the comments below!
Links Mentioned:
Support The Show
I make The Write Now Podcast for free, on my own time & my own dime, so that you can enjoy and share it without ads. If you’d like to support the work I’m doing, please consider becoming a patron over on Patreon! Or, if you prefer, you can also support me on Ko-Fi or via PayPal. 🙂 Thank you!
Full Episode Transcript:
Sarah Rhea Werner (00:00):
This is the Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 166: The Power Of A Mastermind Group.
(00:27):
Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers — aspiring, professional, and otherwise — to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner, and today we’re going to be talking about mastermind groups.
(00:46):
I know with that word, immediately, many of you are imagining me standing on top of a volcano, underneath which is my secret evil lair, and there’s a whole bunch of sharks in the water below with lasers on their heads just ready to eat any of my adversaries that may drop in (excuse the pun). But like I said, this is not that kind of mastermind. It is not an evil mastermind. Hopefully. At least, the ones that I’ve been a part of have not been evil. So, joining a mastermind group doesn’t mean that you are interested in becoming a supervillain.
(01:24):
Now, before I go any further and start talking about sharks again, I’ll go ahead and define what I mean by a “mastermind group”. So basically, in my experience, this has been a small group of individuals who are interested in mentoring each other and challenging each other to grow further, develop their skills, and take risks. The first mastermind group I joined was… gosh, way back in… it must have been 2015. It was very close to when I first started the Write Now podcast. And you may have heard me mention mastermind groups on the show before. There were four of us, all in similar professions, with similar goals, although I have also been in mastermind groups where everyone is in a different field or moving toward a different goal. So you can have either of those, and this will make more sense as we continue.
(02:17):
But the four of us would meet weekly for 45 minutes to an hour, and we’d spend maybe the first few minutes chatting and catching up. But we took this group very seriously, which is another component of being in a mastermind group. Everybody was committed to being there and learning and helping each other. So after two or three minutes of small talk, we would get down to business. First. we would each go around and do a quick update — five minutes on our goals. Going into this group, we each had something that we wanted to accomplish. It just so happened that all four of us were looking to leave our day jobs and become self-employed. I was a writer slash podcaster slash marketer, and we had a couple of software developers and a marketing consultant. So the first 20 minutes of the meeting — five minutes times four people — would be each of us saying, here’s the goal that I set at the end of last week’s meeting. So for instance, I had set a goal to grow my listenership of the right now podcast by 5% or 20%, and I would come back with the metrics and say, okay, I got 7%. And maybe the next member had a goal of setting up an LLC. So their update would be either they did or did not create an LLC (that stands for limited liability company), and it was this person’s next step toward their goal of becoming a freelance software developer. Another person may have had a more sales oriented goal, and maybe their goal was to contact X number of people who might be interested in working with them as a marketing consultant, et cetera.
(04:02):
We would then spend the next chunk of the meeting, say the next 10 minutes, sharing our thoughts on the next chapter of the book we were all reading together. A lot of the books I’ve mentioned before in this podcast, such as The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, I initially read in this mastermind group. And then after we had discussed what we thought about the latest chapter in the book, we would move on to what was called the “hot seat”.
(04:27):
And I’ve seen different mastermind groups do this in different ways, and we’ll talk a little bit about that in just a moment. But my group, we focused on one person in the “hot seat” per meeting. So there were four of us, and essentially we met four times a month. And so once a month you could count on being in the “hot seat”. And you may be wondering, what is the “hot seat”? Well, for me at least, this was probably where I found the most difficulty, but also the most reward.
(04:58):
Basically, if you’re in the hot seat, you talk about next steps. So if you’ve been busy, say, writing a short story, then you’ll say, my next step is to submit this short story to this magazine, this magazine, and this magazine. Or if you’re looking to do freelance writing, you might say your next step is getting this new customer or getting five new customers or adding ghostwriting to your repertoire, finishing the next chapter of your novel, et cetera. You’d talk about what you wanted, and then what challenges you were maybe expecting to face along the way, and why you thought this was the next best step.
(05:39):
And then it was the rest of the group’s job to ask you very challenging questions to challenge you and make sure you were really on the right path. So they might say, “Last time your goal was to finish a chapter of your novel, and you couldn’t make that happen. What are you going to do differently this time to ensure that you actually live up to your promise and finish this next chapter of your novel?”
(06:04):
And if that sounds a little aggressive to you… yes, it actually was fairly aggressive. I remember one time I wanted to commit to speaking at a conference and I really wanted to go and all of these really cool industry people were going to be there, and I love public speaking, weirdly. So I was very gung-ho, and my goal was to get accepted to speak at this conference. And my fellow mastermind members challenged me and they said, “Okay, how much will this gig pay?” And I was like, “Pay? No, you guys don’t understand. This is a really good opportunity.” And they said, “Sarah, your goal is to build up your financial runway so that you can leave your day job and support yourself. You’re talking about paying money to fly to… whatever state it was in and stay at a hotel — that’s expensive, that costs money.” And I was like, “Well, maybe I can see if they will comp my room and my flights if I’m accepted as a speaker.” And they would challenge back, “So is this a good use of your time? Is this in line with what you said you wanted?”
(07:13):
And sometimes the answer was yes, and sometimes the answer was no, but it was their job to very aggressively challenge me and really get to the bottom of why I was making certain decisions. And we all did this for each other. I remember one of the others wanted to get their social media following on a certain platform to a certain number by the next meeting. And I remember challenging them and saying, “What does your social media follower number have to do with the success of this business that you want to start?” And we had met for years at this point, and so brusque questions weren’t insulting — that was just what we knew to expect from the meeting. And he said, “Well, that’s me building my brand. That’s me putting myself out there.” And I had to tell him, “Your social media followers are not customers. How do you work on building your customers? Social media can be a part of that, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the best goal for you this month.” And then we would discuss whether it was or wasn’t or if something else should be done, et cetera.
(08:21):
After 30 minutes, or maybe 25 minutes, of grilling the person in the hot seat, we would back off and we would go around and state our goal, what we were going to accomplish before next week’s meeting. Like I said, this was a very aggressive, very intense kind of mastermind group. They really pushed me and challenged me. There was even one point early on where we talked about, what is the consequence if you don’t meet your goal? Maybe you have to donate money to a charity, or maybe you have to donate money to a political candidate that you hate. I mean, that’s a little extreme. That’s a little extreme. I don’t know if I would do that today. But this is where we were 10 years ago.
(09:06):
And while we were meeting — and we met for years — we took this very, very seriously. If we said we were going to start precisely at noon, we started precisely at noon. We had a timer. One of the people who was not in the hot seat that week was responsible for the timer. And we just used a smartphone or a watch or something, but we made sure that we were all equally committed to pushing each other to grow and to growing ourselves.
(09:35):
This group was where I learned how to start an LLC. This group was where I learned how to build my financial runway so that when I quit my job, I wouldn’t immediately fall into the gutter and become bankrupt forever. I even learned the ins and outs of opening up a business credit card, and having multiple income streams. And it was helpful since we all came from slightly different backgrounds, yet we were all sort of unified in what we were all reaching toward.
(10:07):
I was in this mastermind group for maybe four or five years, and eventually three out of the four of us left the workforce and started our own businesses. And I honestly don’t know if I would’ve had not only the courage, but the knowledge and the confidence to quit my day job and work for myself if it hadn’t been for this group.
(10:30):
There were also benefits, like one of the mastermind members would say, “Oh, hey, you’re looking for marketing clients. I’ve got a buddy who works over here and is looking for a marketing consultant. I’ll connect the two of you.” And I would say, “Oh, you’re struggling with the wording on your sales page here? I’ll look it over and give you my thoughts.” And honestly, we all just became very good friends. We started out initially knowing who each other was and trusting each other and admiring each other in their work and in their goal setting and commitment and all of that stuff.
(11:08):
Now, this was not the only mastermind group that I was ever part of. I was fortunate enough to be invited to join a women’s small business owner mastermind maybe a year or so after I struck out on my own to start my own business. And this was a little bit of a different experience because it was different people and we had a little bit of a different structure.
(11:30):
We were still all extremely committed to showing up — and showing up on time, to starting on time, and keeping an eye on the clock. And instead of a hot seat, we made it more of a communal challenging session. So we would start — maybe five minutes and just kind of go around the table and review what our goals were for the week, and then each person would get 10 minutes to talk about a problem they were facing or a challenge in their business or something they needed help with, whatever it was they were struggling with that week. Within those 10 minutes, they would get feedback from the rest of the group. And… I think there were five of us this time; I don’t know if that math works out, but I think we each got… yes, I think we each got 10 minutes — and then we had a five-minute bumper on either side to make an hour meeting.
(12:21):
But yeah, we would go around and each person would essentially be in… not necessarily a “hot seat”, so much as just in the spotlight, going through what it was that they were dealing with — a failed business launch, having to fire an employee, not understanding how to file their taxes for the quarter, et cetera, et cetera. For both of these groups, there were consequences that we all agreed on ahead of time if you couldn’t make it to the meeting. We took this very seriously, and before we joined and before we created these groups, we said, “We want to be committed. And so you’re allowed one absence and then after that, if you skip a meeting, if you miss a meeting, then you’re out of the group.” Again — very, very aggressive, but it also worked. It helped us come together on time when we were supposed to, and it kept us really dedicated to each other.
(13:15):
If you start one of these yourself, you do not have to go this hard. You don’t have to have consequences and strict timers. But I did find that that was very useful, that that structure kept us all moving forward together. We had accountability and trust with each other. I don’t know if this makes a difference, but they were also both within my own community, so I was physically present at these meetings. Again, this was before the pandemic. I know that today a lot of mastermind meetings happen on Zoom or whatever other digital platform you may have access to.
(13:52):
Now, eventually, both of these groups stopped, each for a different reason. The first group stopped when the leader of the group — who sort of had the most de-facto business experience and had initially formed the group in the first place — he announced during one of our meetings that he was going to start charging for membership. And we all knew that this was part of his business plan — he wanted to mentor other business owners, et cetera. But it made things feel a little bit weird, mostly because the price tag was a thousand dollars a month. And I suddenly could not afford to be a part of this mastermind group anymore. I remember we pushed back a little bit, but the justification for the price tag was, “Oh, if you have a really solid investment in it, then you’ll really take it seriously.” But… we were already taking it seriously. And also I did not have an extra thousand dollars a month conveniently laying around. And so my time in that mastermind group came to an end.
(15:04):
And I ended up taking away a lot. Again, I would not probably have left my job to start my own business without that group, without their guidance and mentorship and encouragement. So I am very grateful today that I got to be a part of that.
(15:21):
The second group sort of disbanded over time. One person stopped coming to meetings, or only came to one a month when we were meeting weekly. And then another member started to not make meetings consistently. And then Covid hit. So I guess that’s the main reason, but I noticed a trend. I think that when the group starts to wither like that, it’s time to either double down on committing to the group or disbanding the group, starting a new mastermind somewhere — whatever would work best for you in that situation. But I learned a lot from both of these groups, and I made some excellent close friends who I still talk to today, and who I still ask for business advice today.
(16:09):
“Now, Sarah,” you may be saying, “I don’t want to start a business. I don’t want an LLC or maybe even I don’t want to quit my day job. Why would I join a mastermind group?” So let me tell you about my third mastermind group.
(16:25):
And this one I formed with three other writers I knew who were sort of on the same wavelength as me, in a way. They wanted sort of the same things, and they were all very hard workers, and we got along well, and we all had something different to offer. I had over a decade at that point of marketing experience, one of the members was an editor for a publishing company, and the other two members were six-figure selling romance authors. We all had something to learn from each other, and we all had something to give.
(17:01):
This was my first mastermind group that I did over Zoom, and we would meet in the evenings for two hours. It was a little bit more laid back — there weren’t penalties for missing it or anything. It was more just for writers talking about what they were dealing with, what challenges they were struggling with, and then what could be done about it. Overall, it was extremely helpful, and also I became better friends with the other three writers.
(17:28):
So if this is something that sounds interesting to you, something you’re looking to explore, I really encourage you to either start your own mastermind group, maybe talk with some other writers about possibly starting one or looking for a mastermind group to join.
(17:47):
If you’re starting your own, I would definitely recommend that you keep the group a little bit smaller and maybe even hand-pick who you’d like to be in a mastermind group with. Make sure when you set out that you have very clear rules and expectations for either being in the group, staying in the group, or simply existing within the group. You want to make sure that everyone joining is at the same level of commitment and that they’re there to give you advice and to challenge you, and not just take.
(18:18):
Maybe you want to have a timer running, maybe you don’t; maybe you want a weekly or monthly hot seat, maybe you don’t. Maybe you want to do the book club component. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you even want to add a critique exchange component, where you give each other sections of your work to look at, to criticize, to mark up with a red pen, to talk about, to analyze — whatever it is that would be most helpful for you.
(18:44):
I think most importantly, though, know what you want out of the experience. I definitely encourage you to go into an endeavor like this with clarity and purpose. If you want to start a writers’ hangout, that is also equally fine. Or a writing group, which I’ve talked about in a previous episode of the Write Now podcast — episode 35, “The Power of a Writers’ Group.” But I think most importantly, if someone wants you to pay a thousand dollars a month to be in their mastermind group, say “no” and walk away. Unless you’re really independently wealthy and you don’t know what to do with all of your cash, in which case, please also find a worthy cause in your community to donate to, in addition to joining the thousand-dollar-a-month mastermind group.
(19:33):
A lot of my success today as a writer, as a small business owner, is due to the series of mastermind groups that I’ve joined over the years. So I’m curious: have you ever been in a mastermind group before? If so, did you have a positive experience? What did you benefit from? What did you dislike? What did you love about it? Or if you’re thinking about starting your own mastermind group, what do you want it to look like? What kind of people do you want beside you? How strict do you want it to be? What is your overall focus and how can you do the most good for each of your fellow members?
(20:13):
I would love to hear your thoughts on mastermind groups. You can comment on today’s episode — so this is episode 166 — over at sarahwerner dot com. That’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R dot com. Scroll to the bottom of the post— it’s underneath the transcript and everything, so you might be scrolling for a while, and there you’ll see a comment section. I do read and respond to every single comment I get on the website, and I would love to hear your perspective.
(20:44):
One of the reasons I am able to create and produce this show is due to the generosity of my patrons on Patreon and donors on other platforms like Ko-fi slash “coffee” — I still do not know after all these years how to pronounce it. Now, Patreon has made a change. So it used to be, if you wanted to support this podcast, you would do so per episode — so you would pay a dollar per episode, $2 per episode, $5 when an episode came out. Patreon has shifted and pushed everyone (willing or not) onto a new rubric, if you will. So basically, they’re shifting from per-creation to per-month. So if you would like to support this podcast at a dollar per month, at $2 per month, et cetera, I would encourage you to do so. You can do that by clicking the link that says “support this show on Patreon”, or by going out to my Ko-fi page. I’ll make sure both of these are linked in the show notes for this episode.
(21:50):
Just another small caveat — another change was made with Patreon where if you sign up to be a Patreon patron using specifically the iOS Patreon app (so, the app in the Apple Store), then 30% of your donations go to Apple. It’s a policy that they’ve had for years with app developers, and Patreon was able to skirt around that issue for years until now. So, thank you Apple for taking money from small creators who are otherwise struggling. … Sorry, that sounded really bitter. I don’t mean to sound bitter. Now, if you are already donating via Patreon, your payment will shift to per-month instead of per-episode. And even if you are already donating via the Patreon app on Apple, I believe you get grandfathered in so that 30% of your donation does not go to Apple. But if you are a new fan and want to become a donor, then yeah, please join my Patreon.
(22:56):
There are also other ways to support the work that I’m doing here at the Write Now podcast, including Ko-fi slash “coffee”, and I also have a PayPal dot me. So whatever works best for you would be deeply and truly appreciated.
(23:12):
Special thanks. Go out to Laurie, Regina Calabrese, Amber Fratesi, Charmaine Ferreira, Kim, Mike Tefft, Poppy Brown, Summer, Tiffany Joyner, and Whitney McGruder. Thank you all incredibly so much for your ongoing support. It means the world to me.
(23:34):
And with that, this has been episode 166 of the Write Now Podcast, the podcast that helps all writers — aspiring, professional, and otherwise — to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner, and I’m cheering for you.