Brad Hart spent 22 years building masterminds to fulfill a childhood wish for worldwide friendship. He runs a local group of 250 members and paid masterminds using a simple framework: gratitude, celebration, clarifying questions, solution. He sees community as the antidote to feeling separate and unworthy.
I remember sitting on the. On the swings. I was 8 years old at this point, and I didn't have any friends. I remember just praying that one day I would have friends all over the world, wherever I went. When you're a little kid, when you're eight years old, you have no idea how big the world really is or what might be possible for your life. But I remember that little kid praying and reaching out for that in the world, and then it becoming true. Only 22 years later, and now I feel like, wow, okay, this is really possible. What else is possible? I. I was craving belonging and connection because ultimately I didn't feel worthy of it. Worthiness is like a symptom of a bigger problem. It's like a fear that you're going to be alone or you're not going to be enough. You know, no matter what you do, no matter where you go, everywhere you go in the world, well, there you are, you know, and I think that's something a lot of people struggle with. Maybe they don't articulate it, or they're not 100% intimately familiar with what's actually going on, but I learned from Tony Robbins, actually, that the two things that people fear the most are not being enough, and if they're not enough, that they won't be loved. And we need love. Love is the number one thing we need as humans. Which led me to using what I learned, creating paid masterminds and groups, which I've done like five or six of them, to create a little local mastermind for just local people who want to, you know, either be entrepreneurs or whatever it is that we want to create in the world, you know, or just do a little bit better at what they're doing and didn't want to feel alone anymore and wanting more from life and not having an understanding of what to do next or where to go from here. So that's where that all came from. And now it's, you know, been a little under a year, and it's grown, ballooned to about 250 local members. Usually between 10 and 20 people show up on any given night. We've had some as large as 25, 30 people. People like, you know, they share what's going on with them and they do it in a safe space. And we are able to create a support network of different types of people and different industries and different life experiences to really get clear on what is the actual problem, what's actually going on. And then based on that, because that's half the issue, is just Understanding what's really going on. You know, you always talk about the thing, but it's really the thing underneath. You know, we talk about the presenting problem, but when you really dig, it's usually something entirely different or deeper than we ever considered. Life is a series of experiments. And the best experiments, the best hypotheses that get tested and proven to be true again and again and again for a situation should be the ones that are widely used. And there's no reason that people should waste half of their life or all of their life under a delusion of a problem or something that's possible or not possible. Because what we believe to be true is always changing, you know, up until something happens and it becomes real. It's a crazy idea. Problems are great. They're a sign of life. It's quality. You know, it's just, are you getting stuck or are you moving through them? Are you growing and learning from them? Or are you allowing them to diminish you in some way? Using this tool, this very simple framework. Gratitude. Always starting in a place of gratitude for what we have and what we are. To celebration, to what's my challenge, you know, or something. I want to move faster, clarifying questions, getting really, really clear on what it is, and then finally moving to a solution when you're really clear, that is so important. And you can use that in your daily life on your own, with people, with the community. But just having that, like, there's so much need and demand for that. What about just using that in our daily lives, you know, instead of staying stuck or being afraid to ask for the help that we need, what if we all just came to the group and realized that we're not alone? I think that's what most people get when they come to a mastermind. They realize, oh, crap, like, I didn't even think of that, but that's really helpful. Or, oh, crap, that person going through exactly what I went through or am going through, and I don't feel so alone anymore. And that's really the key here, is like, that just dissolving that illusion of separateness and realizing they're all part of the same thing. Because we are. You know, it's all the same stuff. Matter, energy, it's all swirling around. And we like to believe, because our ego challenges us to believe that we're all unique and special, and it's just, we're all human. We're all part of this big thing that I really believe has a lot of potential if we choose to use it.
