As an entrepreneur, you have no boss to pat you on the back in your successes and no boss to discipline you in your failures.You are completely responsible for the success of your business.
On of the major benefits of a Mastermind group is being accountable for your actions.
Your Mastermind group should motivate and inspire you into action.Reaching out beyond your comfort zone and achieving more than you ever could alone.
When your Mastermind group challenges you, they will hold you accountable for your actions.This is very important to your business because when you succeed, they will praise you for your success.However, if you begin to fail, they will give you constructive criticism so you can reorganize your strategy or method so you will begin to succeed.
There are few places an entrepreneur can find himself accountable for his actions, a Mastermind group is a great place to receive the benefits of accountability.
Mastermind groups come up with new, fresh, thought provoking ideas that sometimes make my head swivel.
Some ideas are small, some are big, and some of them are off the wall!
Out of all of these great ideas, very few Mastermind groups follow through with their ideas. What? Isn't a Mastermind group supposed to come up with new ideas?
Yes. However, once you have all these great ideas, you have to act on some of them and develop them into your business or business model. I have seen too many groups not do anything with them. They just sit there on a sheet of paper, never to be looked at again. But all the members will go home and say "Man, we came up with some great ideas today..."
Here's a simple guide to what my Mastermind groups go through:
1. Brainstorming: Come up with 20-30 ideas and write them down on a sheet of paper. It doesn't matter where the idea came from, what it's about, or how silly it seems. All ideas have a place in business, it's just finding where they fit.
2. Think it through: Take some of the best ideas and develop them more. After you have your list of 20-30 ideas, agree as a group to evaluate 3 or 4 of the ideas. Find out how it can be implemented into someone's business by either a new product, a new service, or a new process to make business easier. Write this down and incorporate it into one of the group memebers business plan.
3. Take action: Finally, you have this new idea and you've put it into your business plan, what to do now? Take action! Utilize this new product, service, or strategy. That's what this is all about! See how it works for a month. Then evaluate if it's working as planned. If not, go back to the group and let them have feedback and modify it a little. If it's working, let the group know and everyone will be excited that their idea brought results.
Too many times I have seen Mastermind groups not do anything with the ideas that they've thought of and discussed. The best groups follow through with their ideas and turn them into action and results.
Mastermind Groups are a great way to meet creative, innovational, and thought provoking people. You bounce ideas off of each other and collaborate and elaborate on each of the ideas. Some of the best discussions have come from seemingly "ridiculous" ideas, but once you start going through the process and discussing the idea, it actually creates a positive and energizing dialog.
What happens after you've been in the same group, with the same people month after month?
It starts to get boring!
There are a couple of things you can do to prevent this problem.
The first is to make sure your mastermind group is constantly introducing new people each month. With these new people coming in, there are constant streams of new thoughts and ideas. In larger groups like this, there are people from every industry that can bring in fresh perspectives.
I belong in one group that has only five people, and it will always only have five people. Once a month, we invite someone to come join us for a meeting. This type of meeting is just to let the guest come in and inject us with new ideas and playing devils advocate.
This allows our group members to think in new and different ways, keeping us sharp and focused throughout the year.
I've been involved with another small group like this (that didn't want to grow its membership) and it failed. It failed because after some time, we couldn't come up with more creative ideas to bounce off of each other. We had all come to "think alike" and in any mastermind group, this is not good.
Whichever type of Mastermind Group you join, you must make sure that they have a process of introducing fresh ideas. Hopefully these two tips will help you achieve just that.
EvanCarmichael.com is the world's #1 website for small business motivation and strategies. Evan also runs a series of successful Mastermind Groups in Toronto for entrepreneurs.
Guest Contributor: Damon Clifford
