Marketing Mastermind Group

One of the most common challenges that Mastermind Group members have is how to effectively market their business. This is often the main reason that the members sign up for a group - to learn what is working for other business owners and what best practices can be learned.

This morning I found a blog called The Marketing Mindshare Project. They had an interesting post on 7 Key Steps for Bringing Your Information Product to Market, Faster and Better.

Their 7 steps included:

• Take one giant step backwards by writing down your goals.
• Set a launch date for your information product and make it public.
• Listen to audio. You can advance your education by listening to audio from information marketing experts on CD or via a MP3 player.
• Take action everyday.
• Make a list of skills and knowledge that you'll need to bring your product to market, then create a plan to how to acquire some of knowledge and skills that you are lacking.
• Create an environment of productivity and positive energy.

And...

Form a mastermind group with 1 to 5 other entrepreneurs with similar interests and needs. Mastermind groups are terrific for exchanging best practices and resources, but their greatest value is as an "accountability partnership". Ask your mastermind partners to keep you on course by challenging you when they see a deviation from your original plan. If done in a positive and constructive manner, this will provide balance to rationalizations that you come up with to justify your delays. The best place to find mastermind partners is at information marketing seminars.

5 Steps To Creating A Mastermind Group

Brian Bartes is a business coach who posted an entry discussing Mastermind Groups to the Networking Business Talks blog. It included 5 steps to creating a Mastermind Group and I thought I would share it for those of you considering creating a group of your own:

1. Form the group. Contact a number of prospective members. They should work in non-competing fields, and be people that will contribute to the synergy of the group. An ideal group size is 4-6.

2. Create a systematic schedule. Monthly seems to work well, and a systematic day and time is best. All members should be dedicated to this schedule.

3. Formulate a plan. A set format causes the meetings to run more efficiently. For example, the first 30 minutes could be open for general discussion. Then, each member could receive an allotted quantity of time (15-30 minutes, depending on the size of the group) to discuss his or her "issue of the month."

4. Include an occasional guest (optional). Some mastermind groups include guests as part of their format. These guests could be invited to speak on a specific topic (e.g., an attorney who specializes in estate planning), or could participate in the deliberate format.

5. Take action. One of the benefits of a mastermind group is built-in accountability. Be certain to take action on the ideas that were generated at the meeting. Furthermore, develop a support structure that includes follow-up reporting at the next meeting. Be certain to report both your successes, and your challenges.

Have you found success creating a group? I would love to hear your story.

Mastermind Ideas Flow Through to Action

Guest Contributor: Damon Clifford
Damon's Posts - Damon's Blog


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.