Creating a mastermind is a great way to surround yourself with other people that have similar goals and values so that you increase the likelihood of achieving your goals.
While you can join an existing mastermind group, another option is to create your own mastermind group.
Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to start and run a mastermind group.
In this post, we’ll outline a simple step-by-step process to help you start your mastermind group and stimulate an engaging environment.
What is a Mastermind Group?
A mastermind group is a group of people with similar goals and challenges who rely on each other for accountability, advice, and support. Masterminds groups typically have a weekly or monthly virtual or in-person check-in to discuss challenges and progress since the last meeting.
A group leader or facilitator may host the discussion and schedule the meeting, though the real value of the mastermind group is the members themselves. Research shows that the ideal group size is 8-10 people.
The term “mastermind group” was initially coined by Napoleon Hill in his books The Law of Success and Think and Grow Rich. He found that masterminds were a core aspect of the success of American business tycoons like Andrew Carnegie, Charles Schwab, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and others.
While you can start a mastermind topic for virtually anything, here are a few common types of mastermind groups:
- Entrepreneur/business masterminds
- Executive/CEO masterminds
- Self-development masterminds
- Personal finance masterminds
- Profession-specific masterminds (e.g., musicians, real estate, etc.)
Benefits of a Mastermind Group
The three main benefits of a mastermind group are accountability, support, and positive prioritization by association. We’ll discuss each of these in detail below.
Accountability
Most people know what they need to do to achieve a specific result – the problem is that they just aren’t taking the required action.
So whether you’re starting an online business or trying to improve your personal life, a mastermind group creates positive peer pressure that encourages you to execute the list of to-dos and habits you’ve outlined.
Later, we’ll discuss in detail how you can structure mastermind meetings so that each member must review their to-do/habit progress since the previous meeting and establish new to-dos/habits for the next meeting.
Support
While most people fail to achieve their goals simply because they didn’t take action on the information, sometimes members genuinely don’t know what they need to do to achieve a specific goal. Fortunately, other group members are likely facing similar challenges and have similar skill sets, so everyone can brainstorm together to come up with a solution to these challenges.
In many cases, another group member has already solved the exact problem before, and the struggling member can use their exact blueprint for success.
Positive Prioritization by Association
You adopt the habits, mindsets, and values of the people you surround yourself with, so if you want to build different habits and transform how you prioritize certain aspects of your life, creating a mastermind with other successful people is one of the best ways to do so.
For example, if you always hang out with people who order salads at a restaurant, you’re much more likely to order a salad.
So if you want to achieve a certain goal, immersing yourself with people whose “normal” behaviors, actions, and habits lead to the achievement of that goal, you’re much more likely to succeed.
How to Start a Mastermind Group
Below we’ll walk you through exactly how you can set up a mastermind group in our platform, upcoach.
We’ve tried various course creation and community platforms, though upcoach is the only one that offers all of the following (critical!) features in a single platform:
- To-do lists
- Habit tracker
- Accountability groups
- Native worksheet builder
- Content/resource hosting
- Comprehensive progress tracking
Below, we’ll show you how you can set up your mastermind in upcoach, or one of our team members can show you exactly how to set up a mastermind group in a demo now!
Formulate Accountability Groups
The members of your group are your mastermind group’s core value, so to find potential members, go into Slack groups, Facebook groups, and other online communities and ask if anyone would be interested in joining your mastermind group.
Here’s a great example:
To make sure the mastermind is a mutually beneficial experience, make sure that the other members:
- Have similar goals
- Are at a similar level of success
- Are equally committed to success
Once you have a few members, you can create an accountability group in upcoach. Inside the accountability group, members can post in the group forum or message each other privately.
As your mastermind scales, these accountability groups are helpful as you can have hundreds of members in the main program yet still retain the small group mastermind setting with private accountability groups of 5-10 people.
In addition, you can select a weekly or monthly meeting time and schedule it directly inside upcoach. Members can add the call link to their calendars or join directly inside the upcoach dashboard.
upcoach also makes it easy to store meeting recordings and notes inside the dashboard for members to refer back to at a later date.
link to join the session and where call notes are stored
Assign Weekly Tasks
Each week, members should write down their weekly to-dos (with a due date!) directly inside the upcoach platform.
upcoach’s default mode makes these to-dos visible to everyone in the mastermind, which adds positive peer pressure to encourage them to complete what they said they would do.
When members complete their weekly to-dos, they can check them off so that everyone knows the to-do was completed (and it’s very satisfying!).
Establish Habits
To-dos are usually one-off tasks like “email person X” or “purchase X tool.” However, building lasting success is usually a matter of building the right habits.
So upcoach also offers a habit tracker where members can add critical habits to help them achieve their goals.
Like the to-do list, the habit tracker is also visible to other group members by default. So as members complete their daily habits, they can check them off.
Store Content, Courses, and Worksheets
As your mastermind grows, you might choose to add courses and other content and resources.
Fortunately, upcoach makes this super easy. First, you can create and store courses directly inside the platform.
In addition, you can create worksheets and other resources (like journal prompts and exercises) using Smart Documents. This is upcoach’s native worksheet builder, which makes it super easy to create and store worksheets directly inside the platform.
As an added bonus, upcoach automatically tracks the completion percentage of each worksheet and displays the number in the dashboard. This makes tracking progress easy and motivates members to stay engaged as they can chip away at the completion percentage.
Track Long-Term Progress
Finally, it’s easy for members to track long-term progress. The client CRM tracks every to-do, habit, lesson, and worksheet completed (and the completion percentage if it was only partially completed).
This makes it easy to prove the value of your mastermind, which you can leverage to encourage renewals.
Mastermind Group Agenda
Now that your mastermind has a solid structure, most people wonder what the weekly/monthly meeting call structure should look like.
To help you out, here’s a sample group meeting structure:
- 5-7 minutes: Each person to review to-do/habit progress and wins/challenges
- 20-30 minutes: One member in the hot seat presents a challenge, and the group provides potential solutions
- 5-7 minutes: Each person sets to-do/habit goals for the next meeting
To ensure you stay on time and everyone has a chance to share, consider assigning a facilitator to each group, and that person can track time and ensure no single person rules the entire conversation.
Selecting The Best Mastermind Group Software
As you can see, starting a mastermind group is pretty easy. While many people start their mastermind groups over Slack or email, this usually leads to members showing up to calls unprepared.
For example, they might have forgotten to track habits that week or they can’t remember what to-dos they set last week.
upcoach solves all of these problems by providing an all-in-one solution with:
- A habit tracker
- A to-do list
- Private accountability groups
- Detailed member progress tracking data
- Call scheduling
- Content/course hosting
- Native worksheet builder
To see for yourself how you can create a highly effective mastermind with upcoach, schedule a demo today or try out the platform risk free today!
