Hidden Masterminding Benefit

Guest Contributor: Doug Emerson
Doug's Posts - Doug's Blog


I discovered a hidden benefit of being a member of a four person mastermind group last week. It happened outside of our regular mastermind meeting. The hidden benefit is-

Fast Forward

Let me explain that I'm not talking about a time travel machine. Mastermind group member Paul and I traveled together to listen to business consultant Alan Weiss, author of "Million Dollar Consulting" give a presentation to a group of 40 in Syracuse, NY. If you are in the consulting business and you don't know of Weiss, you should. His books are great value about pricing consulting services based on the economic value delivered to the client rather than priced as a commodity or calculated with a clock.

The two hour drive to the meeting and the return trip gave each us plenty of talk time for our businesses. As mastermind group members, both of us know a fair amount about the goals of the other's business, the business structure and the business history.

The drive home after the meeting was a discussion of how Alan Weiss's concepts could be adapted to our businesses. Having a mastermind group history with each other, we were able to "fast forward" and focus our discussion quickly.

Had we been traveling with others not as well acquainted with our businesses, much of our time would have been spent (wasted) on individual business history and explanation of the present position. Just like an instructional tape or CD recording, without our mastermind background, we would have been immersed in a chronological step by step discovery process: Track 1, Track 2, Track 3... yawn.

We mentally pressed the fast forward button to get right to the present in our discussion of the 3.5 hour talk delivered by Weiss. With the freshness of the information, both of us found fantastic value from our follow up discussion and instant gratification from our investment of time and money to travel to the talk.

There Is No Fast Forward For Business

Guest Contributor: Doug Emerson
Doug's Posts - Doug's Blog


My last post was about my mastermind group starting an experiment to review and study a popular internet marketing manual we had all purchased previously. Another form of a study group, the plan is to cover a chapter a week to take advantage of the wisdom printed on the pages of our only slightly used and slightly dusty three ring binders chock full of just under 300 pages . The discipline of the weekly mastermind group meeting is the force designed to pull us through the pages.

Here is the update.

We've made it through the first two chapters and will be discussing chapter three in our meeting this week. I expected us to be further along in the manual at this point and I'm disappointed in our progress in fast forwarding through the manual and putting more of the material to work for our businesses.

So what we have we been doing in our weekly meetings?

• Discussing cash flow crisis
• Announcing member's new book release and publicity
• Website makeover advice
• Pros and cons of various shopping cart providers
• The merits of starting a membership site
• Taking summertime holidays
• Regaining focus on the important things and ignoring the trivia
• Analyzing blog and newsletter numbers and their importance in marketing
• Speaking fees
• How to organize workbooks to accompany workshops
  

While I'm disappointed that we haven't been able to cram more marketing information into our busy brains, a review of the list above reminds me of the value each of us is getting from our membership in the mastermind group.

At first glance it may seem we have distracted ourselves from our earlier "chapter a week" goal to review the marketing material. But, since the purpose of our mastermind group is to be able to freely bring up topics for input, guidance and how-to at our meetings, my thinking was naive to assume the normal business of our meetings would be kept on hold while we dedicated ourselves to massive marketing efforts.

Our experiment proved what has been proved many times before. There is no fast forward in business. Just like building a wall, businesses are best built one brick at a time.