Mastermind Your Way to Entrepreneurial Success
In this episode of Entrepreneurship Simplified, host Mike Michalowicz and co‑host Amy explore the concept of mastermind groups and how they can accelerate entrepreneurial success. They begin by defining a mastermind as a small, diverse collective where the combined intelligence of its members exceeds that of any individual. Historical precedents such as the Inklings, Benjamin Franklin’s Junto, the Vagabonds, and Napoleon Hill’s Invincible Counselors illustrate the timeless value of peer collaboration. The conversation moves to practical design: an optimal size of 7‑9 members, the importance of diversity in experience, age, gender, and background, and the need to avoid direct competition among members. They discuss accountability mechanisms, emphasizing co‑accountability and the power of probing the “why” behind actions. Personal anecdotes – a homeless talent‑show revelation, a “martyr” insight from a peer, and how a mastermind inspired the design of Mike’s family home – illustrate the deep trust and vulnerability fostered in these groups. The hosts outline concrete facilitation tips: face‑to‑face meetings preferred over Zoom, rotating roles (facilitator, secretary, budget keeper), establishing a facilitator‑elect pipeline, and maintaining confidentiality. They highlight the network multiplier effect (Dunbar’s number) and how a 10‑person mastermind can expand an entrepreneur’s reachable network to thousands. Benefits such as emotional support, resource sharing, creative problem solving, scaling strategies, and long‑term relationships are detailed. Modern mastermind platforms (EO, YPO, Vistage, TAB, etc.) are mentioned, along with the optional fee‑based Essent Collective. The episode closes with a brief discussion on autonomous taxis (Waymo) as an example of collective intelligence improving safety, reinforcing the broader theme that collaborative minds solve problems faster than individuals. The hosts encourage listeners to join or create a mastermind, stressing that value comes from both giving and receiving.
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Entrepreneurship is hard, but the process can be simplified. You can achieve success faster, sooner, and easier. I'm Mike Michalowicz, and I'm on a mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. My goal for this episode and every episode is to serve you on your journey. Let's start right now on Entrepreneurship Simplified. You know what's great, Amy? What's great? Since we've been doing this podcast, this is episode 14 that we recorded. We're getting more fluid, me and you.
Getting there.
The cameras are going. It's always a clunky start. Yeah. Last week we talked about failure. Like, could you imagine that first one where it was kind of clunky? We're like, oh, I guess we're not good at this.
We're done.
It's just like, that wasn't perfect. Let's try another version of it. And we're getting there.
Yeah.
This camera right here in front of me sucks.
It just wants to stop constantly.
But once you have a couple of wins under your belt and you navigate through failure, it's like, we're going to stick with this thing.
We're good. We're all right.
We got a new camera.
We got this.
What are we talking about today?
So I want to talk today about masterminds, of which you know and have experienced many and run many.
And run many.
And run many. So I want to give you a little history on some fantastic masterminds. There was one called the Inklings, which was an informal literary group at Oxford University, and it had notable members like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, and their stories such as The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings have sold sold millions of copies globally and remain highly influential in modern literature and media. So they met from 1933 to 1949 to share and critique each other's work, and it allowed each member to receive feedback improving their writing and gain fresh perspectives from peers who shared their passion for storytelling and language. So, um, I love that it went back that far, um, and it shows the value of a peer group for creativity, for feedback, for collaboration, for outside perspective.
Yeah.
Yeah. That was your— that's been your experience.
It's been my experience. And yeah, masterminding has been around probably since the advent of humankind. Maybe it wasn't— the label wasn't that way. I know we talked about— maybe we'll bring it up too— is the round table, King Arthur's round table, right?
Yes.
But we can go back to people around the fire pit and sharing stories.
Right.
The essence of a mastermind is the power of the collective mind. That 2 human minds working on one challenge is more powerful than one. And therefore 5 or 6 is more powerful than 2. There is a point where the communication stuff starts to break down. So you could have like 100 people working on one problem in a group and it becomes actually very difficult to coordinate.
Disjointed.
Disjointed. Exactly. I'm not saying that isn't effective. There's ways of managing that. But generally people work in little tribes independently or as individual standalones and then come together on a periodic basis. In the masterminds I've participated in, the ideal number seems to be somewhere between 7 to 9 folks.
Oh, really?
Yeah. It seems to be the perfect number for everyone gets a balanced ability to participate and there's enough minds working on that you can get many perspectives. The most I've ever worked at where it still is kind of fluid is about 12 people.
Okay.
And then it's just like there's a rush or a panic and the balance gets lost.
Right.
The other realization is everyone, every human being has something to contribute. Everyone is smart. So mastermind does not have to be what we perceive to be notable names. C.S. Lewis, J.R. I wonder if those people became those notable names after the mastermind and the mastermind elevated them.
Right.
So I think the mistake for some entrepreneurs is like, well, if I want to be successful and in a group that inspires and supports me, I gotta be in a group that's already this wildly successful group. And there is value to being the worst player on the court because you have to elevate your game.
Right.
And there's a risk to being the best player on the court because you may devalue your game or play down.
Ah.
But a favorite story I have, and I don't remember this individual's name, there was a radio show, like one of these shock jock radio shows in New York. And as a joke, they decided to go to homeless people and they called it like the Homeless Talent Show. Pretty freaking nasty because you know what their motive was. But that's what these shock jocks did. And they found a person who was unhomed and brought this guy to the studio and said, what's your talent that you're going to demonstrate? And the guy had a hardcore alcohol addiction, so forth. He's like, I'll play guitar. And I said, oh, okay, what are you going to play? And then he's like, there's a song called Creep. And he starts playing this thing. And at first you're like, okay, here comes this weirdo. The guy nails it. And there is this sadness. The song is about being the outsider, right? There's this sadness and rawness that the performance was mind-blowing. It was better than the original band that created it. Because here's a person that in this perverted way was, was living it and saw it in himself.
Right.
And came and rocketed to fame because of this. Every human being has something extraordinary to contribute. We got to watch out in a mastermind saying, here's the people that I think can contribute because of certain qualifications or where their status is in life or what their experience is, as opposed to What's the diversity of experience I want? And when you intentionally bring about a diverse group, you get the strongest mastermind possible. Now, you do have to have some common outcomes and goals. I can't go into one mastermind saying, "I want to improve myself physically," and everyone else is like, "Oh, I'm all about—" Spiritual. Spiritual, right. Spiritual. And, you know, another group's like, "Oh, I'm all about exploration of drugs," or something like that. I'm not saying— I'm not placing judgment on any of those things, but they may not be complementary. The best groups I've been in is where everyone has a general common goal. But what's interesting is then you explore the outer fringe too. So diversity, common goal, and then a depthness where you're willing or demanding of each other to explore the outer fringe.
Right. Let's talk about the accountability that a mastermind offers. How much, how good is the accountability you get at a mastermind?
My experience is you get in You get out of it what you put into it. So I was in a mastermind with entrepreneurs. That's my thing. I love entrepreneurship. So I joined a mastermind, and in my group is a guy named Larry. It happened to be all men at the time. Joe, Kieran. I'm picturing some of the guys. RJ, some other guys. And there, what we tried was the traditional expectation of what accountability is. I'm going to complete XYZ tasks by a certain time, right? So you set this— the expectation, the output and timeframe. Okay. And then you tell the group, you know what, we're going to meet on that day as a group and I'm going to tell you what I did or didn't do. And then if I didn't do it, drill sergeant me into doing it. And if I did do it, give me a high five and let's set the next goal. That's kind of the traditional approach. That does not seem to work well. There's always an excuse. There's always a reason. It's very awkward for other people to hold you accountable because they don't have equity in it. Right. There's two things that have worked for accountability. One is where there's co-accountability. So I say, I'm going to complete a new book or something, my manuscript. I'm going to finish my manuscript by the end of this month. But to get there, you, Amy, agree to review my manuscript. So now I have an accountability to actually deliver this to you. So you can sort of co-accountability. And you say, my commitment is to clean— I don't know why I was saying clean my house. Because I know you— you have like one of the cleanest houses I've ever been to in my life. So I'm just going to say clean my house. Yeah. But what I have as accountability is that I agree that I'm going to come to your house a certain time and do an inspection of the bathrooms or to do a swab test of the refrigerator or something like that. Right. So there is a kind of a co-accountability. I committed to you to do something, but actually fosters you in doing it and vice versa.
Cool.
The second thing, and this is probably the best form of accountability, is asking the why. When I failed to do something or succeed in doing something, instead of my team, my mastermind saying, "Why didn't you do that, Mike?" They said, "And, you know, you should have done that." They said, "What was the reasoning that went through your head? Let's explore what the emotion was." Right. And so they're asking the why behind my thought. Right. And when I achieve something, they didn't say, "Good job, Mike. Next thing." They said, well, why did you achieve it? And let's explore that. That has been the biggest forms of accountability and self-exploration.
So bringing light to the friction and the grease that gets you to do the things that you say you're going to do.
Good term. Thank you. That's going to be— that's going to be on social media. So my one group I'm in, her name is Christina Harbridge. We are meeting and I've been in masterminds that don't last forever, the ones that last for a couple of years, one that may go for a lifetime. I've been in it for about 10 years. And we've committed to go longer. So they morph and change. But one mastermind I was in, Christina said— she asked me the why about something and she goes, "Oh, I got it." And I said, "What?" She goes, "You're a martyr." I'm like— You're a martyr? Yeah. I'm like, "What?" What? She goes, "You're a martyr." She goes, "Look, I want to show you something where you set yourself up and you fail and you say, 'Yeah, I was destined to fail. That had to fail.'" She goes, "You're playing the martyr game." And I'm like, "Huh, that hurts." Yeah, I was going to say, "Ow, I don't like this." I don't like this.
I feel like Yeah, I want to pull that off of me.
I don't want to be a martyr. And then I'm like, oh my God, she just opened my eyes to a pattern. I play the martyr game. Right, right. And that moment has radically improved that. I play it subconsciously, kicks in. It's like, but way, way less. I'm so grateful for Christina. And it was very— it could have been a very hard conversation. Right. Could you imagine my wife's like, Mike, you're a martyr. You are like, you know, or one of us saying that like, no. The awkwardness, right? A mastermind is not a collection of friends. It's a collection of colleagues who are better than friends because we don't have social consequence. We don't know each other's networks, right? We're not competing in that capacity. I am here to gain support, and the best way for me to gain support is to give you support and calling you on your BS, right? Is part of it. It's part of it. And sure enough, she called me out and I'm like, Christina, not in that moment. I was pissed. I was upset. I was hurt. Yeah. And then it's like, oh, that hit a chord. Yeah. It took me a few days. I called her, said, my God, that was the best thing.
Usually if it hurts, you have to realize that it's true. And that's the crappy part, right? Yeah. If it hurts, because if it's not true, it doesn't land and, you know, you move on.
It really doesn't, right? Yeah. It's— you can't dent something that is bulletproof, right? But you can pierce bullets into something that, you know, shatters. That's glass. Yeah. It's so interesting.
Um, let's talk about support and encouragement. So entrepreneurship can be isolating, so having a peer group provides emotional support. And, you know, when members are facing similar challenges, they have other people to go to, to, you know, talk these things through. Have you found that to be true too?
Probably the best aspect, particularly I think for men. I, I suspect for women— I think women, the women I know, naturally have their she-groups. Um, and when my wife has a struggle of some sort. She goes to her group. It's Renee, it's Tam. I actually know the people, right? When I have my struggle, my default is not calling individuals. It's now my mastermind. But before that, I didn't have that. It was like just swallow it and shut up. Yeah.
Not even the poker guys you're going to see tonight?
No, I got— yeah, not even the poker guys. No, this is a new group I'm forming. Maybe it'll become that, right? But no, those are the guys I'm like, hey, how's the football game going? Right. A mastermind is a very deliberate formation of a group that you can go with this challenge. There is inherent confidentiality, meaning because we don't have a shared social network, we don't impede on each other's social network. The people in my mastermind are not friends with my friends, and I'm not friends with their friends. Right. So therefore, what's shared inherently will stay in the room. But there's also the expectation that's set. Yeah. And I've seen people who outwardly you think are sitting on top of the world break down. And that's their most human moment. And that's their strongest moment because they have a community that just embraces and says, let it out and let's discuss this.
Yeah, it's a safe place. It's a safe place. Side question. So when the person who's forming these masterminds, are they actually making sure that, hey, we don't want to have too many common— we don't want to be, you know, too many degrees away from any one person. All, you know, everybody has to be pretty alone in what they're doing. Yeah.
A well-facilitated or managed mastermind is intentionally built that way. Each, each individual is considered. What do they contribute? What's their backgrounds? Where's the diversity? I think a good mastermind won't have competition because if I feel threatened in some capacity, if you and I are the exact same business, say, serving the exact same customers, can I really be raw about my business? Right. And vice versa? No.
You protect yourself to some degree at some point. Yeah. In an entrepreneurial mastermind, I don't think we we do business together.
Can you imagine, uh, you're my client and I screw you over by accident, and now we have to help each other? So you gotta watch. I think a great structure for masterminds, if it's a business one, is no competition, uh, so diversity there. Secondly is that we do not do business together and agree to that, even though it may feel like there's great opportunities, right? We don't do it. Uh, thirdly, uh, it's a mix of men and women. The best masterminds I've been in, not completely, but for the most part, have been a mix of men and women, a mix of ages. So I'm in a mastermind where we have a millennial, some millennials, we have middle-aged folks, and we have a couple of people that are retired out. And the perspectives are unbelievable. Diversity in color, ethnicity is probably a better choice of words, which often indicates perhaps a different upbringing, different expectations, a different culture. Those elements. Different religion or non-religion. Like, the more diversity you can bring, the better. And the best stuff you'll ever get is the stuff you never would have thought about. If I had 10 Mikes in a room, it'll be a lot of like, "Oh yeah, man, yeah." Like a lot of support, but it's a bunch of 10 idiots.
Yeah, yeah. It's not idiots.
I don't want to hear— it's a bunch of 10 dudes saying the exact same thing. I'm like, "Here's my idea." And they're like, "Oh, that's good, Mike. I was doing the same thing." I want someone as painful as this challenge and say, let me give you a different perspective.
Yeah, there's another benefit. It's access to resources. Mastermind members often share contacts, resources, or tools that have been successful for them. This includes introductions to potential business partners, clients, and even funding sources. A network.
Yeah, a massive network. So I think it's Dunbar's rule. There is this concept that any individual human can maintain about 150 relationships at a competent level. I recognize you, I know a little bit about your family and stuff. 150. Sheesh. That's at max. Then it reduces down to an outer circle, I think about 30 people where I'll recognize you for your birthday. I'll actually come to your birthday. And then there's a 7 close confidants. Like, that's called the Dunbar Rule, I think. There's 150 max. If I want to expand that network, it's outside my mental capability to maintain that relationship without some kind of artificial support mechanism, a CRM or something like that. But that's artificial. Now, when I'm coming to that meeting to person 151, I got to pull up the CRM. I'm like, who the hell is this person? Like, it's artificial, right? But if I'm in a mastermind of, say, 10 people for round numbers, 150 times 10, that's 1,500 people. If I ran the math correctly in my head here, 1,500 people, as you've expanded your network tremendously and they're all close confidants. It's now one degree of separation. Yeah. And is that 15,000? No, I think it's 150.
1,500. It's a math question. Don't ask me.
Let's see, 100 times 100 would be— well, 100, 100 times is actually 10,000. So it's 150— it's 15,000. Yeah, because 10 times 100 is 1,000. So, okay, so it's not 1,500, it's 15,000. That sounds absurd. Is that really true? Oh, no, no, it is. It's 15 times 10. So it is 1,500. Okay. Thanks for listening to that. Mike's math problems. And clearly I need someone that does math in my class. It was 15 times 100. But, but you're, you're one degree separated from 1,500 people. And that is really powerful. That's cool. Listen, in a mix of 1,500 people, you probably have any answer. I remember growing up, my mom said, you always in your family want a lawyer. A doctor, and an accountant. And most families don't have someone like that in there, but it's nice to know a lawyer, a doctor, and accountant. And therefore, when you have a mastermind, someone in that 1,500 people will be a lawyer and a doctor and an accountant. I love that. And psychologist, yeah. And a psychologist. Now you wanna say that.
Now we need a psychologist. Yeah, exactly. Post-COVID, we all need a psychologist. Amen. So that kind of moves into business growth and scaling. The diverse backgrounds in a mastermind group mean that members often learn strategies for scaling and expanding their business. By tapping into the collective knowledge, business owners can grow faster and more efficiently.
I call it, or we call it, our masterminds, experience sharing. Mm-hmm. So what's interesting is we're looking to grow our business as an example. Mm-hmm. And we want to sell more books. The traditional route is, well, what do other authors do? We consider the 5 things they do. Is it social media? Is it and so forth? Getting into a diverse group and posing that same problem people can come to me with different perspectives. But instead of saying, here's what you should do, they say, here's the experience I've had in growing my business. Yeah. One example I can think of is Larry. He had a tech company. He said, Mike, one thing I did was I called on the vendors serving my common clients. So I had a client, but they had other vendors. I called on them and said, we have a common client. Is there ways for us to work together? He said, who are the non-authors that work with your readers? They all have accountants, perhaps. They all have lawyers. Maybe it's relationships with accountants and lawyers that are your form of, of growing and scaling your business. Like, oh my gosh, my rote mind doesn't think that way. Right. This is amazing. So you put the challenge in front of them, whatever it may be, growing and scaling, and then you ask people to share their own experiences. Don't tell me, don't give me advice. I'm resistant to advice. If you tell me, Mike, you could, you know, what's up with these plaid shirts you're wearing nowadays? Not working for you. I'll hear it, but I'll resist it. I'll say, "Screw you. You're wearing plaid, Amy." That's basically plaid. It's not plaid, but it's getting there.
It's getting there. It's got lines.
Yeah. It's like coming out of '80s retro thing. "You suck." And you're like, "No, you suck." When we give advice, there's subconscious resistance. Right. We don't— we want advice. We just don't want to hear advice. But I love hearing experience. I love hearing, "Hey, when I dress wearing this, I notice that it makes me look lanky. And when I wear a different kind of outfit, it makes me look more balanced." Whatever the terms may be. Now you have the option to say, huh, I wonder how my clothing works for me. And I wonder if I can take something from Mike's story. So instead of me forcing something down your throat, you gotta choose to swallow it or not. Gotcha.
Gotcha. Let's move on to creative problem solving. So with these diverse perspectives in a mastermind group, they help members think outside the box. Brainstorming sessions can spark new ideas and solutions that would not have been possible individually. And I think we've kind of touched on that.
We've kind of touched on it, but I'll give you an expansion on it. We talked about the growth and scaling experience. It's the collective experience where this creative problem solving happens. So I pose a challenge I have, whatever it may be. I'm struggling with an employee in their productivity, and now the group shares experiences and so forth. It may be a combination deal of employing multiple things, like one person may say, you know, if someone's not productive, you need to have a communication with them and confront them. And another person may say, well, confrontation in my experience causes resistance. And better approach that I've used is asking them what they think about their own performance. Another person may say when people set goals for themselves, they actually set higher goals than when goals are assigned to them. I'm like, oh, meet with the person, ask them about their own opinion of themselves. How they set their own goals. How they set their own goals. Yeah. And so this collective idea comes out. The cumulative idea is better than any individual idea. There was a study. This is— this blows my mind. It's almost like a magic trick. You ever see those things like, like how many marble marbles are in the jar, right? And you got to write down your number. Yeah. What was found in this research I read is that the more people that wrote down their guess, the more likely the group was accurate, almost to the marble. So if one person sees a marble and say, that's 1,000 marbles, puts it down. Next person goes, that's 50 marbles. The middle ground now is around "500 or something." Yeah. The next person goes and they're like, "It's 700." Next person goes, goes, "No, it's 1,200." Another person goes— but over time, the collective gets to the average and the average is almost perfect every time. I don't know if it was 50 or 100, but you need a lot of guesses. But people as an individual guess are pretty off. But as a collective guess are pretty on. Wow. And that's what this mastermind does. You get all these different insights and then collectively the best idea comes out of it. It's a form of negotiation. Right. And it's ironic, but negotiation typically results in the greatest win for everyone participating. In this case, this negotiation is collective problem solving. Mm-hmm. Gets you to the best solution possible in most cases.
That's so awesome. This is, sounds like an incredible resource. And if you're an entrepreneur, you're gonna wanna find a mastermind or create.
So let me give you some quick bullet points. Face-to-face beats Zoom. I've done both. Zoom is Okay, and acceptable. Get some face time. Humans need that. Secondly, you don't have to pay for these. You can facilitate it. You can run it or you can join an existing one. But joining an existing one can be a little more costly because these are formed groups and they may have some fees associated with it. I'm in organizations that facilitate masterminds and you pay a substantial fee. There's other elements besides just meeting, but it's facilitated and that's a choice and I love that. Yeah. But you can choose— and we actually have a mastermind called the Essent Collective. Is a fee-based program because I am sharing the best of what I know and I'm facilitating the group. So you can choose to do that. Right. But the poor man's lobster, as my dad would say, version— that was monkfish. My dad used to get this fish called monkfish. Yeah, I love monkfish. Oh my God. And it kind of has the texture of lobster and we dip it in butter. Poor man's lobster. Yeah. It was amazing. So good. So what he would— what you do is the poor man's lobster version is you just run your own event, reach out to people in your community, say, here, I'm thinking about doing this. There is a challenge of herding cats. You may be gung-ho for this. The other people may say, I'm along for the ride for now. Yeah. So you have to put regimen in place. Here's our expectation. Also have a rotation. The same people doing the same function, like you're leading the group and another person is acting as secretary, tracking notes. Another person is managing the budget. If you do retreats or something like that, that can tire out. So have a rotation. Next tip is have an elect and an elect. What an elect and an elect is, is right now for one of my masterminds, I am the facilitator. The problem is when my term ends in a few months, the next person, if they're not identified, has to volunteer, and it is a responsibility. Yeah. So people are like, I don't want to do it. So what we did is I said, well, who's gonna be the facilitator-elect? Being a facilitator-elect, it's kind of easy because you can say, I'll do it. It's a year out. Yeah. And I have a facilitator-elect-elect, which means 2 years out. So we have the queue filled up. So when my term ends, the next person's lined up. But there's no resistance because they're already lined up. Gotcha. But since I'm giving a 2-year warning, people aren't resistant to it. So it's very easy to fill the queue. Smart. Yeah. Very smart.
Okay. One last benefit. Long-term relationships. Many masterminds groups form lasting professional and personal relationships leading to future business collaborations, partnerships, and even lifelong friendships.
Amen. Is this for you? Right. It's absolutely amen. I am friends with people going back 30 years when I joined my first mastermind. Actually, yeah, 30. I'm 53 today. I joined my first mastermind when I was 23, and I wish I did it in college if it existed. Really? But some of my longest friends and just like any other long-term friendship that you've gone through a lot of experiences together, even if you disconnect for a year or two or 10 years or two, when you reconnect, you pick up where you left off. My son Jake, who's looking for a job, knock on wood, just landed one. Nice. Full-time. Great. And I reached out to a guy. His name is Scott Pellequin, who I haven't spoken to in 20 years just because we've lost touch. He's like, hey, dude, what's up? Good talking with you. We were in a mastermind together. How can I help you? He's like, let me make some introductions. The job opportunity didn't come that way, but it was a no-brainer for Scott. And I still had that same affinity. Yeah. You go through this remarkable experience of supporting each other that will never be forgotten. And these lifelong Friendships come out of it. Yeah, business opportunities. I have done business with some folks. If we purchase this building, the guy who's going to do the renovation, I trust him with my life because he was in my mastermind. I know everything about Kieran and his partner Mike. I know those guys. So yeah, I love that.
I love that. And you are really, really vulnerable with these people. I mean, these, these are so solidly based in friendship because you have been at— you've been through it all together.
The most vulnerable.
Your businesses are your babies, basically. Yeah.
Your business, your baby. They know your skeletons in your closet. That, you know, you have the right to share what you want to share, but you find that the more you share, the more you're connected to the group and the more they share. So, yeah, I know the difficult spots some of these women and men have been in. I've known the challenges they've overcome. I know who they are. And gosh, people get pissed at this building. You know, you don't hear it on the podcast, but the doors are slamming here.
Adam said just today, Adam came down and said, I got a guy coming to fix the door tomorrow.
Oh, that's probably what they're doing it. But oh, it's tomorrow.
But I think that's just every—
oh my God, you leave this building, the whole Play Shakes. In our next building, we won't have a door like this. So what's interesting is I know the life story that these friends had the confidence, these acquaintances, these colleagues had a confidence in sharing with me, and forever it will be with me. It's never to be spread. And that's— I had that same level of confidence with them. And what's interesting is one, one person said, here's the level of confidence that we have with each other that we commit to, is whatever's shared in this room, will stay with me forever and not be spread with anyone outside this room, including if I am on a Hawaiian island, which is all the way across the country— in the country for us, plus the ocean. And I'm sitting at dinner and there's one other couple there and I'm talking with my wife. I will not have a conversation about what we discussed because that other couple could be overhearing this. And maybe, just maybe, they know who you are. I will never reveal it. And that's the standard. I've had to go to my wife and I said, the rule is we will not share anything. And she— and the common response from someone that's not in the mastermind is like, cult, that's a cult. And I'm like, I know it sounds like a cult, but it's the best way to be of service to each other. Absolutely. And my wife has gotten to know the folks in my mastermind.
We've had parties together. Separately, individually, not through your big mouth.
Not through my big mouth. Right, right. Separately, individually. And we've all come together and she gets it and respects it. And so do their significant others. Yeah, cool. That's so cool.
Yeah. All right, I want to tell you about a couple groups in history. Yes. How are we doing on time?
Oh, I'm not doing time. My watch is going off.
Oh, because those people are trying to get to you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they can wait. Did you know that Benjamin Franklin had a mastermind called the Juntos? In 1727, Franklin formed a group called the Junto made up of diverse individuals from different trades and professions. They met to discuss self-improvement, politics, and business ideas. And the Junto inspired various public projects, including the first lending library and the first volunteer fire department. Did not know that. That makes so much sense because that's the kind of wonderful bubbling brainstorming type stuff that I've seen you do with masterminds.
We just had one really cool thing here, which was a mastermind-like experience, maybe like Junto, is we did a brainstorm approach, but it was one that most people don't do where the participant— you use a technique where they can't influence, and I won't share the hairy details. They're basically a fly on the wall and these extraordinary ideas come about because of it. That's one— another asset of a mastermind is you can generate extraordinary ideas. Our house you've been to was designed, or how we assembled it, I guess, is the right word, around a brainstorm I had for the mastermind. I said, I want to have a destination house. Yeah. What I said by that is I want my children and friends and family to come to the house, not because they want to be with me out of obligation. They want to be there because it's a place of reunion and fun and escape and all these different things. And I happen to be there, right? My kids, sometimes I can't get rid of them. They keep coming back and they're like, hey, we want to hang out. That all came out of the mastermind.
I have 100+ things on a list of things that you want your house to have. Yeah.
Secret room. Yeah. Secret. Checked off. Dungeon. Dungeon. Yeah, it's the dungeon room. We have a sauna, pinball machine, but we have these escape areas. You can go to this one section of the house on the outside of the property that you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere. Today we're finishing the addition of a backup generator, but we're using the battery-based, we're using the Teslas. But that came out of the Mastermind. That's awesome. They said there will be times of concern. Hurricane, power loss or something, and you got to build not just a safe haven, but safety. Right. And they said a power generator is an important thing for this part, actually any part of the world nowadays. Yeah. And so we're installing that because of the mastermind. I love that.
Yeah. So cool. All right, here's another one. The Vagabonds. This group included famous individuals like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone. They would go on camping trips and discuss innovations and ideas. The friendships and discussions between these influential figures led to advancements in the automotive and manufacturing industries. Then there's Napoleon Hill's Invincible Counselors. Napoleon Hill, the author of Think and Grow Rich, popularized the concept of mastermind groups, and he suggested that many successful people, including Andrew Carnegie, used mastermind groups to achieve greater success by surrounding themselves with individuals who challenged and motivated them. That's definitely your experience.
That's okay. I know the vagabonds because it's in Edison's biography and there's pictures from it. Really? These dudes are out in the woods. Edison's sleeping and snoozing away. Another guy's on the campfire. I think they don't have to be all about the execution of tasks. Right. Just like our retreat, those moments of relaxation or enjoyment or even solitude and reconnection, sometimes those are the most inspiring moments or powerful moments. Right. And so that's what they did. They just congregated. Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, he talks a lot about masterminds. And I agree, they can be such an extraordinary platform.
Although more symbolic than real, the round table represents the ideal mastermind. King Arthur's knights met as equals, each contributing their expertise and experiences to solve problems and strategize about the kingdom's future. Do you know why I had a round table?
I mean, this may be mythology. Yeah, I do. You do? Yeah. So that no one was in the superior position. Nice. Yeah. So I don't know if that's mythology or not, but that is a technique. Yes. If you have a rectangular table, you've got to head a table at a table. And that is actually a problem. It— there's a discord in the balance. So I encourage people to make circles or rotate the positions. The same person should not be at the head of the table. When we have meetings, you can— I learned this, you can observe, I will never sit at the head if I can avoid it. I'll never sit in the center side. I'll sit in the corner side. It's considered the weakest position in that shaped table because as an owner of an organization, you bring an authority to the table and you've got to be there's got to be ways to diminish it. And that's one technique.
That's smart. That's smart. Can you talk a little bit about modern mastermind examples? I know we have— Yeah. So EO and YPO.
Yep. So EO is Entrepreneurs Organization. YPO is Young Presidents Organization. They all have their own kind of flavor. EO is for entrepreneurs. Young Presidents is for leaders of an organization, not necessarily owners. We have Edison Collective, which is the best mastermind ever. Yes, it is.
It is.
That And ours is what's called a facilitated mastermind. I facilitate it. It's managed by someone, and then there's participants. We do share and collaborate equally, but the facilitator manages the agenda, contributes specific ideas and exercises. EO and YPO are voluntary organizations. You do have to pay a fee to participate, and it could be substantial. But when your group forms, your group's on its own. BNI is more of a— I don't even know if that's the mastermind. That's a very fringe. It's a lot more of a sales orientation. But TAB, which is the alternative board, is one. Vistage is one. These are all in the entrepreneurial space. As in Collective being the best.
Very cool. Yeah, I agree. I absolutely, as the admin—
And the Limited. But right now we can't get any more people in.
I know.
So we're taking applicants. I think we have 2 people that—
We have 2 or 3 people on hold just like— And giving us deposits. Yeah. So that's one final question just to wrap it up. If you've got somebody who's in the same mastermind, is 7 years too many? Is too much? Is there a time where you— where you're not— it's not serving? It expires. Yeah, it expires. Or I assume it depends on the challenges that the company is facing.
That's right. And the person's personal journey and the value. I would say the value, not that you're extracting from it, the value you're contributing, because that will correlate to what you extract. I notice when people stop contributing value, not showing up, that then they say, well, I'm not getting value because you're not giving. So it actually starts with the give. What can I put into the group? But if you're not giving value to the group anymore, then it's time perhaps to depart. Secondly, you may have a transition in life and it's not coherent with the group anymore. So I was in a mastermind that was all about innovation and entrepreneurship, and one person sold their company and they said, I'm all about retirement and legacy. Family time, legacy. Yeah. Yeah. And that's extraordinary. There is a mastermind for that they needed to form. Smart. But now there was an incongruence so that they stepped out. Sometimes it's just like, this ain't working for me anymore. I was in EO for 18 years. I loved it, but it wasn't working for me because the speaking career was taking off and I couldn't live by those rules anymore. So I elected out of EO. Not that I have anything against it. I love that organization. I wish I could still be in it. Right. I just had to have a new lifestyle and found a new group. So it wasn't working for me anymore and I wasn't working for them. So yeah, there's a timeframe, but you have to pick what it is.
Thank you. Yeah. That was so helpful, Mike. This was fun. It was. Hey, I got a little news article for you.
Oh, lay it on me, sister.
You were talking about this earlier and I hadn't heard about them prior to this, but this company Waymo. Are taxis safer with no driver? These women think so. Women?
Pardon? Wait, women? What do you mean?
Women riders, women, women who need taxis would rather be in a Waymo to avoid safety concerns with male drivers.
I heard something that was shocking and it's sad. There was a survey, a questionnaire that went out to women and said, do you feel safer if running into a man in the woods or a bear?
Yeah, man or bear.
And bear, I feel safer. Yeah. Yeah, that's—
yeah, I have to say, I, I, yeah, you wonder.
That's such a sad statement.
It is a sad statement.
But it's the reality and therefore it's an opportunity. Right. So Waymo can say no male drivers.
Yeah. Autonomous taxis eliminate risks of inappropriate behavior from human drivers. And even with low incident rates, women feel safer without a driver. They offer a sense of privacy and security. And Waymo provides 24/7 support and emphasizes safety, especially for women. Yeah, bingo.
Bingo. That's so smart. Leverage that. Yeah. And I think they got the future going on there. Yeah. When I saw that thing drive by in Phoenix, I was like, when are we going to see them in our area?
Because you were out west for this.
Yeah. Yeah. I think they're in like 5 or 6 major cities and they're coming to New York, but they are logging hundreds of thousands of miles now every day. Wow. Right. So you and I may log 100,000 miles over 10 years to get that experience. They're doing it on a daily basis because of this hive mind. So the driver, the driving, if you will, is getting better and better. And they've proven that their accident ratio is better than any driver, effectively. Yeah. They're better than humans by a long shot and getting better. So it's not only—
Do you see this being the future where none of us drive cars?
Oh, absolutely.
None of us ever drive cars?
None of us. We do it for fun. We do it for sport.
So we can go to a track. Go to a track and race cars. So we'll still take our kids for driving lessons and we'll still go get our driver's test?
Oh, I don't think so. No, I think that's going away. I think we're going to say, hey, Back in the day, we used to ride horses. You got to learn how to ride a horse. A car is going to become a horse. Wow.
A car is going to become a horse. That's cool.
A car is going to become a horse. And so some people will do it out of sport and fun.
Yeah. Get to a track and—
Get to a track and race around. And there'll be roads set aside for this, but it's going to go the way of the horse. It's still going to be a part of our historical society, but it's not going to be what we're dependent on. Wow. Yeah. I'm so bold on this prediction that within I want to say 10 years shortest, 20 years maximum. We're not driving. You cannot even buy a car without it being an effort or burden because that's not what we do. Wow. Yeah, they just— it just pulls up.
Do you think we'll need licenses to operate self-driving cars?
I don't think so. You don't have to qualify anymore.
No, you just be a passenger.
Stick your 2-year-old in there. Hey, Grandma, I'm sending the baby over. Right? Yeah. And the robots breastfeeding. Could that happen? Yeah, of course it can. You know, it seems absurd today. Yeah. I remember watching a video about the future of mobile technology. It was by Bill Gates. And he said one day— this was back in the late '80s. No, late '90s. Late '90s. He holds a device that was a box and he goes, one day, he goes, we're going to be staring at these things and using these. These are our personal assistants. PDAs was the term, personal, or PADs, personal assistant device, or personal device assistant, something like that. PDA is what ran into my head. And he said, this will be our future. And I'm like, that is such a fucking joke.
And here we are.
And here we are. And it took us, you know, 25 years.
But we have a computer in our pocket that will tell us all the answers to all the questions.
Could you imagine not having that device? Like, how do you live? No. We're going to say that about cars 10, 20 years from now. Mark my words. We're going to say, why did anyone drive? What idiots were we? How risky, how scary that was.
How crazy was that? Are these people crazy going behind machinery?
And you risk your life every day.
You're an idiot. Driving 2,000 tons of metal around. And you're exhausted. Yeah. Merging onto highways in New Jersey. That's crazy.
You could be playing games. You could be doing work. You do anything but drive. So, so cool.
This was fun, Mike. Thank you.
We want to know from you, our listening friends, what do you think the future beholds? With Waymo or any other technology that may be coming our way. Thank you for listening to Entrepreneurship Simplified. I was gonna say Entrepreneurship Elevated. It's on my mind. Thank you for listening to Entrepreneurship Simplified. Thanks for Amy for correcting me on that one. I would love if you rate and review the show. That does serve us. And I am wishing you tremendous success in your entrepreneurial journey. Bye.
