Here’s another concern I hear from entrepreneurs all the time: “Big A! How do I start up an online mastermind group when I don’t know for sure if people will even show up?”
Well, there’s the obvious truth: if you give away your membership, don’t expect it to last. The old saying goes, “People who pay, pay attention.” Commitment isn’t as hard to come by as you might think. One time, Dave Ramsey and I had a conversation just like this. I was going to teach his Financial Peace class to some people in church for free, and he told me, “Big A, don’t do it for free. You won’t even get half of them to show up.”
Dave was right about my first class, and I’m telling you what he told me, because it’s the same principle. Not only do you get people to show up when you charge a fair price for what you do. You also tend to get the right kind of people. You don’t want to do business with cheapskates who think your knowledge should be free, just because information is cheap. Knowledge and information aren’t the same thing anyway. You are selling access to applied knowledge, and that’s not anything like a Google search.
A VISION OF COMMITMENT
Guys, have you ever noticed how attentive to detail your wives were about your weddings? All you had to do was show up in a tux and say “I do,” but you know that isn’t the case for the bride. There’s a powerful principle at work there, and almost every girl does it - they spend many years waiting and visualizing their wedding days.
They know the color, length and look of the dress they want. They choose the menu, the wedding cake, tablecloths, decorations, bouquets, you name it. Depending on how detail-oriented your wife is, she may even pick out the suits she wants you and the groomsmen to wear. They go to these lengths, not simply because it’s a “girl thing.” It’s that serious; they appreciate the significance of the agreement taking place on that day.
So if you want to pack your mastermind group with committed members, you should have a tool to help you name and account for every detail, particularly your time. That’s the miracle of The 12-Week Year, a book by Brian Moran that we use in Iron Sharpens Iron. It enables us to go into specific detail about our goals, breaking them down into daily steps if we need to.
One other lesson to be learned from a healthy marriage - our wives celebrate the process leading up to the wedding as much as the wedding day itself. Most of this is lost on us men as we stride up to the altar. I point this out because each leg of the journey toward your 12-Week Year goals needs vision as well. If you don’t learn to visualize ordinary tasks like sales calls, outreach or setting up processes and systems, your mastermind business can become a headache.
Luckily for you, we’ve created a tool that gives you much of the visual elements you need. I want to invite you to check out The Mastermind Playbook to see how many foggy, unclear parts of the process get cleared up when you invest in a done-for-you program to build your own group.
In the very early stages of the Playbook, you’ll learn how you can arrive at a vision of your ideal client. You can become specific about who you want to target and why. You can approach creating business masterminds without giving up in advance because of people’s fickleness.
TOTALLY COMMITTED
If we’re being honest here, you know asking someone to spend several hundred to several thousand dollars on a mastermind group implies a lot of value in exchange. Your members are going to expect a steady stream of return on what they invest. Among other things, they’ll want to see evidence you can manage the clock like an NFL quarterback.
If you can consistently churn out a high degree of value-rich content, you’ve found a way to distinguish yourself. One reason I’ve been able to build ISI at such a clip is podcast interviews. We build them into my schedule like clockwork, and that’s how I average more than 300 interviews per year. It’s an example of being as committed to living on my 12-Week Year cycle as I am promoting it to the members.
The good news for you is that the 12-Week Year is “overlaid” into the systems, processes and strategies we’ve assembled for you with The Mastermind Playbook. All you have to do is open it up and begin using it, and you’ll soon discover the depth of commitment you need to start, grow and scale mastermind groups. You can rest assured - if you’re a totally committed type of leader, you’ll attract like-minded members.
