Why Masterminds are So Valuable to Entrepreneurs!

Alright guys, welcome back. I'm Dan from millennialmotivator.ca, helping you learn how to create, engage, and inspire. If you're new to the channel, we go live here Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at noon Eastern Standard Time, usually about 10 minutes, just helping you guys with a business point, personal fitness, some health, some wellness, some family, really just trying to help you guys out in the entrepreneurial life as a whole. Today what we're looking at is masterminds. Masterminds have been a bit of a buzzword for a little while for entrepreneurs. This idea that you get a group of people together that are like-minded at similar stages in their journey as entrepreneurs. And the purpose of the group is to bring your current goals, struggles, trials, hurdles. You bring it all. You bring the whole shebang and you have an accountability within the group. You create measurable targets for you to hit and the group comes alongside, helps push you towards those goals. As well as if you're not quite cutting it, if you're slacking off, if you're not going in the direction you want, It's important for them to be there as well to give you a bit of a wake-up call. So what I wanted to go over today was why masterminds bring so much value and some of the things that you can grab out of that. So let's get the ball rolling here. First and foremost, guys, what we are looking at is this: if you are going to be in a mastermind, it is essential, absolutely essential, and I touched on it briefly at the beginning, but it is absolutely essential for you to have Like-minded people from like-minded stages of your journey. Now, what do I mean by that? It would be of very little value for a guy like Mark Zuckerberg to be in a mastermind with me. Why? The journeys are too different. You're at too different of a stage in order for— I could probably get quite a lot of value out of having him in my group, but I would be able to provide very little value To Mark in regards to where he would go and what he would do. What a mastermind should look like is a group of people that have very similar places currently with their business, and you each help boost each other up from that point. So that is so key and so essential when selecting a group or looking to join a group, or somebody, somebody has invited you into a group. Make sure that the other businesses and the other entrepreneurs in the group are at a similar threshold to you, okay? Don't go joining blue-chip Fortune 500 CEOs if it's your first year in business. You'll get a lot of value, but you'll drag the group down and you won't be invited to come back most likely, okay? So that's the first thing that you guys have to remember. Groups that are at that same level bring a lot of value because you're having similar struggles. You can give feedback, you can get feedback from people that are at a similar place to you, and it will actually help grow you better overall. What's next? The reality is this, guys. When people come into a mastermind, often they are expecting the wrong thing. And I want to make sure that you've got the right mindset as you plug into your mastermind. Okay? The number one thing you should be looking for as you join a mastermind isn't a bunch of yes-men that are gonna just tell you you're doing a great job. That's not helpful. It's not gonna get you to grow. It's not gonna get you where you want to be. What you do want to look for is a group that you're willing to take criticism from. What do I mean by that? When I was selecting a Toastmasters group to join, this was essential for me. I had to ensure that while the group had a bit of diversity in its skill set with public speaking and leadership, I wanted to make sure that there were members of the club that were a little more seasoned, had a little more experience than me, that could give me critique, and I would openly accept it without fail. The reason for this line of thinking is this: I know that I have experiences from my business world that I can bring and give value, but in specific to that group, I know that there are people that have been involved with public speaking for much longer than I have that can provide me insights into mistakes they have made in the past, trials they have overcome in the past, and failures they have overcome in the past, and they can provide that to me. So the reality is, guys, if you're looking around at a mastermind group and you think, man, I really couldn't stand to take criticism from anyone in this group, avoid the group. Don't join it. It's not for you. If you can't take positive or negative criticism from somebody within that group, it's not the right group for you. You're looking to grow, and the only way you're going to grow is if people are there that can point out what's going wrong in a way that you are willing to be receptive to that, consume that criticism, and actually put it to use. Okay, the next point that I want to give you guys that is so essential with masterminds is target setting. If you join the first mastermind group and nobody is talking about targets and goals within the first 15 minutes, You're in the wrong group. Absolutely, hands down, no question in my mind, you have joined the wrong group. If you are not actively discussing targets and goals, metrics that you're moving towards, it's going to be a flop for you as a mastermind. What you've joined is actually a beer league or a coffee league. You're not learning how to grow if you're not constantly discussing where you're aiming and how you're getting there. Most mastermind groups will have a session at the start where we are clearly reviewing each person's targets or goals and allowing people the time to say how they're moving towards those targets or goals. Now, whether that's an extremely structured meeting process or it's a little more flexible in a conversation format, that doesn't matter. That's suiting your preference. What does matter, and it's so vital, is that that meeting has that component to it where you are constantly revisiting goals and targets that you have set and somebody else in the group is holding you accountable to that. They are waiting to hear your update. This brings me to my next point that is so crucial with a mastermind group. There has to be a— if not a mentor position, there has to be an accountability partner specifically within the group. How's it going, Aaron? Yeah, it just has to be specifically in the group, somebody to hold you accountable. Now, it doesn't need to be somebody necessarily in a mentor position. I often find that is helpful to have Veteran members of a mastermind come alongside new members of the mastermind in order for you to find that mentor-mentee relationship. It allows criticism to flow more thoroughly, as well as it allows them to hold you accountable to targets in a very serious way. Now, if that mentor role isn't quite what you're looking for, at least somebody can hold you to accountability. That's crucial. Somebody that can look at you and go, you said you were going to do this last week. You didn't do it. What's the deal? And to call you out in front of the group. This is so crucial, guys, and this is why being comfortable to open criticism from the group is key. That when somebody's there holding you accountable, you don't get defensive. You realize you've been called out because you fell short on something you set out to do. It's how you grow. We don't— we're not hard enough on ourselves. We aren't. We may think at times that we are great critics of our own work. We are not. There are things that people see and hold us accountable to that that we are completely oblivious to, which is why having external eyes on you and what you are doing is so crucial. People pay all kinds of money for professional coaching, and that's literally what a professional coach does. They just don't receive any criticism in return. They aren't growing from that relationship. It's a one-sided relationship. Masterminds provide you that ability to not only receive professional coaching, but to also help someone else receive professional coaching through through your experiences and your knowledge. So grasp onto that, nail that, hold onto it, okay? Now, mastermind groups, where do you find them? That's probably the last thing I need to throw out there. Honestly guys, it's simpler than ever to find a mastermind group. It all depends on what you're looking for and what you're open to. If you're somebody who's open to an entirely digital standpoint, then Twitter has all kinds of mastermind groups. Facebook has all kinds of mastermind groups. Those groups are out there, they're mostly text, people are constantly messaging back and forth, there's posts on a page. That may be for you. Now, that being said, that may not be for you. You may be somebody who prefers to get into a conversation space. Live video is a great way that's enabling these kinds of groups to work. Again, Facebook is the threshold for this. You could do a private live here on YouTube. That's another way you could run a mastermind. The reality is those live options within Zoom meetings, meetups, all of those digital options are there and they provide a bit of a, conversational mastermind, but you don't have to leave your own home. You could stay in this space. Those work. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. I find the more distant you are in your mastermind from an actual face-to-face with someone, the more difficult it's going to become. When I wanted to improve my public speaking, I could have easily just found an online group, plugged in, and talked to people that way. But I knew if I wasn't meeting with somebody face-to-face on a weekly, biweekly basis to improve that skill set, I would essentially negate any criticism that came. For me, it's very crucial, and I highly recommend you find a group locally that is like-minded people that you can get into a physical room with and have conversations. It's a lot harder to BS somebody when you're sitting face-to-face with them than it is to do that over a messenger or even here live on the internet. Okay guys, so hopefully— and like I said, I didn't want these to go more than 10 minutes. These are supposed to be lunchtime snippets. You plug in, you grab some knowledge. If you guys have any questions, feel free to ask them in the chat throughout, and at the end of the video, I will do my best to answer those questions. That's always open to you guys. I hope this was of value. Question of the day for this bad boy is going to be, are you in a mastermind? What value do you get from it? And if you're not in a mastermind, what kind of a mastermind group would you be looking for? Let me know in the comments below if you're watching this afterwards. You can let me know in the comments now if you're watching live. Thank you so much for watching. Make sure this out to anybody you know that may be considering getting into a mastermind group, and I will catch you Friday, noon Eastern Standard Time, with another live. Thanks for tuning in. Jarhead, Aaron, you guys, live, love it. Thanks for watching, guys. Catch you Friday. See ya.