How to Set Up a Mastermind Group

If you’re a small business owner who’s looking for ways to take your business to the next level, then one unexpected strategy that we highly recommend is joining a mastermind group.  We say unexpected because it isn’t the kind of thing that’s immediately and obviously a tactic designed to grow your revenue as soon as you implement it.  It’s more about the long game.

All right, let’s back up.  Just what is a mastermind group?  The concept made its first appearance in Napoleon Hill’s 1925 book The Law of Success.  When Hill interviewed steel magnate Andrew Carnegie to understand the secrets of his success, Carnegie credited his success to the collective efforts of the minds of the business team that he assembled around himself.  Carnegie believed that the presence of great minds around him produced a synergy, something greater than the sum of its parts that Carnegie called a master mind.  Hill later expanded on it in his 1937 book Think and Grow Rich.

Since Carnegie’s day, plenty of business owners have found lots of value in joining mastermind groups.  The basic premise is that two heads are better than one, so meeting regularly with a consistent group of peers can help you solve problems, network to helpful new contacts, set more aggressive goals, hold yourself accountable, and reflect on how well you executed on your plans as a business owner.

The one problem with a mastermind group is that you aren’t likely to be able to find one to join.  A really good mastermind group will think self-critically about the skill sets of its members and try to fill the holes as quickly as possible, so you aren’t likely to find an open seat at a poker table that already has a game going.  And that means that if you want to join a mastermind group, what you’re really going to have to do is set up a mastermind group.

Based on our experiences in mastermind groups–yes, we follow our own advice here–here are some basic considerations to keep in mind when setting up a mastermind group.

1. Get a critical mass.

Make sure that you recruit enough people to your mastermind group to make it worth the effort.  Carnegie’s definition of a mastermind expressly refers to the synergy that results from “two or more” minds working together.  But we’d set the minimum threshold just a little higher than that at at least three.  Take our modest disagreement with Carnegie with a grain of salt if you must–Carnegie was so successful that he managed to give away roughly $5 billion in today’s dollars to philanthropic causes, and we aren’t exactly there yet–but we vote for at least three people to a mastermind group.

Here’s our rationale:  With only two members, there’s a risk that you’ll associate with someone who’s really close to you on lots of dimensions, and that can lead to both of you inadvertently exacerbating your worst instincts.  For example, let’s say that you’re a total pessimist.  You might have a close friend or business contact who’s also a pessimist.  When you both get going, do you lead each other down a really negative path?  Unrealistically optimistic people face a similar risk in the other direction.  Either way, if you have at least three people at the table, the probability of everyone suffering from the same blindspots goes down.

2. Don’t let the group get too big.

While you want to get enough people in the door to get some value out of your mastermind group, at the same time, don’t let it get too big.  When you have so many people at the table that the conversation can’t be a free-flowing conversation anymore and someone has to start directing traffic, you’ve got a problem.  Each person won’t get to actively participate in the conversation for very long, so their contributions will be limited.  And time will be at such a premium that when one member wants the floor to talk about their business or a problem that they’re facing, then it’ll be a while before they can have the floor at another meeting because, in fairness, others will expect a turn, too.

There’s no hard-and-fast numerical limit here, but we’d suggest an initial target of five people.  That will bring enough people to the table that you might be able to get a good variety of skill sets, experiences, and insights without bogging the conversation down too many people who all want to justify their presence by tossing in their two cents.

If you think you want more people at the table, then make that decision on an incremental basis.  Run the mastermind group with just five people for a while, and then as the group starts to feel like a particular perspective might be missing, thinking about what the ideal candidate for Spot No. 6 at the table might look like.  You might not find someone whose particular mix of skill sets, experiences, and insights checks all of your boxes, but you still want to maximize the benefits that you get for the cost of adding one more voice to the conversation.

3. Look for complementary skill sets.

We’ve already hinted at this consideration, so now let’s make it express.  Both when you’re inviting initial members to join your mastermind group and when you’re debating whether to extend an invitation to a new member sometime down the road, you want to make sure that each person brings something to the table that the others don’t.  It’s that differentiation that really adds value.  If you already have a couple of bases covered and a potential new member focuses on one of those areas, then even if he’s really good at what he does, he doesn’t actually bring anything new to the table.

To start, think about the functional areas that you might like to have some expertise in.  For a business-oriented mastermind group, that might include someone who’s a big-picture, visionary thinker, someone who’s highly logical and interested in strategic thinking, someone who’s great at marketing and can sell anything, someone who’s operationally minded and can think through logistics and processes, and maybe someone who’s been around the block so many times that they’ve just seen it all.

4. Manage differences.

Differences in skill sets, experience, and insights can be super helpful, but not all differences are good differences.  Sure, you want some differences in areas where they add value, but in other areas, you need to have some commonality.  If you don’t actually like all of the people at the table, then you won’t gel.  So you need to have some common interests, senses of humor, and general behaviors.  Try to find people with whom you’d willingly spend time even if your mastermind group never existed or never developed an actual business purpose.  That kind of glue will help keep everyone motivated to keep coming to meetings and helping each other.

5. Build the group’s skills over time.

Each person in your mastermind group has their own skills, but your group itself has skills as a collective entity, too, and you can sharpen up those skills over time.  Some of the major benefits of joining a mastermind group include problem solving, networking, goal-setting, accountability, and self-reflection.  But those are just names.  What’s important are the actions behind them, and your mastermind group has to take those actions on an ongoing and repeated basis in order to be able to say that your mastermind group provides those benefits.

When you first start a mastermind group, don’t bite off more than you can collectively chew.  We recommend committing to regular meetings at which everyone gives an update of what their business is working on and any problems that they’re facing and having a hard time solving.  Then let members of the group offer advice on how best to get past each member’s respective roadblocks.  A simple sounding board that gives each member some feedback can be a valuable thing.

As you start discussing other business owners’ problems, the group will naturally start to get better and better at helping each other solve business problems.  That will start to involve introductions to people outside the group who can provide a particular solution.  And then over time, group members will start to lift their gaze to longer-term goals and after-action reviews when a group member makes a particular business decision and then wants to analyze what worked well and what didn’t.  When that happens, then you’ll see the real results and be very glad that you invested the time to get it going.