The Mastermind Group
I have loved the Mastermind concept for awhile. During 2008 and 2009, right after Paradigm Life started, the economy took a nosedive and it affected me in some pretty significant ways as I broke away from a partnership and took on a ton of debt. I’ll leave the rest of that story for another day, but I was able to get through that time thanks to a few books. The most notable concept, I think, was the Mastermind concept, and the purpose of a mastermind group.
The first book was The Law of Success and 16 Lessons by Napoleon Hill. The lessons in there are profound, and I think I have read the first 6 or 7 chapters hundreds of times. The Mastermind concept is when you have 2 or more minds in a room, it creates another mind. Once that mind is created there is a sense of velocity where if you have an idea to express, it creates another idea that creates another idea and so forth. So the nature of conversation amongst groups like this creates another mind, or Mastermind. This concept goes back hundreds, probably thousands of years.
One of the participants in the Venture Alliance conference in Dubai talked about Benjamin Franklin’s mastermind group. He didn’t call it a mastermind group, he called it the Junto, which is Latin for “meeting.” As this was presented at the conference, it was profound to hear because he went through it line by line, and each of the principles we subscribed to in our group.
Let’s take a moment and talk about the purpose of a mastermind group and then get into what people should look for, and what some principles of a good mastermind group are. In our group, we have what is called the hot seats. Essentially you come up with some problem you’re struggling with whether it be in business or in your investing, or could just be in life. You take about 3 minutes and talk about what the challenge is and what you’re looking specifically for, and then the group will give you about 15 minutes worth of feedback.
The group was formed mainly to discuss real estate deals that are bigger than any single member of the group, so we could take advantage of the experience and financial ability in the room. It is a big commitment to join the group. You first have to pay a pretty hefty fee to be a part of it, then you have to travel to the meetings. This group hasn’t gone as far as Dubai previous to this meeting, but they’ve met in Rhode Island and San Diego. The next one is on the outer banks of North Carolina. If you look at the person that’s willing to make that type of commitment, it tells you something about the group.
Two of the things I value most about being in a group like this are healthy relationships and ideas. This environment creates the soil for new ideas, productive ideas, ideas that will help you progress and grow and build wealth. There is a profound benefit in collaboration and communication and ideas, and those are the things that make the Venture Alliance Group valuable to me. It has the characteristics of what I need right now in my life from a business standpoint. This doesn’t mean that this is the group you should join, but in the end I really do believe that everybody should grow and build themselves and to be better and make more money and build wealth. Mastermind groups help you do this, so I can’t see how that wouldn’t be one of the best investments that you can make.
When you understand the purpose of a mastermind group and why it’s beneficial to everyone involved, you start to see that you can create a mastermind group about anything, not just investing or entrepreneurship, or even anything work-related. You could put one together about parenting, or helping the community, or really anything you can think of. But in almost every instance, these groups provide great benefit to everyone involved.
This blog was created based on our podcast The Wealth Standard. Click here to listen to it now!
