Innovating Masterminds | Innovative Ideas Ep. 11

When I started my business 12 years ago, one of the first things I did is I joined a mastermind group. And basically, mastermind is just a fancy word for a group of people who come together that work on each other's business. So we learn from each other. And I've learned a number of things over the years in terms of what makes a good mastermind group. So if you're in a business and you want to learn from other businesses, that's awesome. Now I will admit that in the early days, and in fact for most of my career, I decided to mastermind with other speakers, people who are professional speakers. And in the early days of my career, this was great because I learned some of the basics and I learned some of the things that would have taken me much longer to learn. So I was able to learn from some of the people who've already done what I wanted to do. But then I recognized something. There is a point in every business where hanging out with people who are in the same business is actually going to hold you back because you start breathing the same oxygen, you start thinking the same way. And as a perfect example of this, in terms of the benefits of breathing fresh life into your business, just last weekend got together with four other people in Las Vegas and we had this great two day mastermind. And we spent about an hour and a half on each person's business and we would dig really deep. But what was really cool about this mastermind is instead of being composed of a bunch of speakers, we had somebody who was in real estate, somebody who was in direct marketing and multi level marketing. We had someone who was in the printing business, somebody who had his own creativity space. And then there was me, the speaker. We also invited someone in who was an executive at Zappos for a while. So we got a very interesting mix of people. And I have to say that I learned more about business and what would be valuable from this group of people. And it surprises me every time, and it shouldn't after all this time, because my message around innovation is that we want to be hanging out with people who aren't like us, people who think differently than we do, people who are in different businesses than us. But I have to say it's still to me, very surprising to see the real power of getting a divergent group of people together who have a deep trust for one another and can share their open and honest opinions. It was fantastic. And the other thing which we learned, which is an extremely important part of not just masterminding, but in innovation, in General is you have to know what question to ask. And anybody who's seen my work knows that. I love to quote Einstein, who reputedly said, if I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem, one minute finding solutions. This is really important. And even in a mastermind, it is critical for us to make sure we're asking the right questions. Sometimes just even a small change in language can have a huge impact. So for example, one person might be thinking about starting a restaurant. Now that's a question which implies that there's everything associated with starting a new business. If we change the language slightly and say, well, what about buying a restaurant? Very different suggestions and ideas will pop up with that. Or if the question is, instead of actually wanting to buy a restaurant, what if it's just advising the restaurant industry? I want to be involved in restaurants, but I don't necessarily want all the day to day work. Well, that's again a fundamentally different question. And what we found over and over the course of the weekend is that if you're asking the wrong question, all the advice you might get from someone is irrelevant. So you want to make sure you're taking the time to really think about what matters, what's important, what do you value? And make sure your questions are framed accordingly. The other thing that we learned is that sometimes when you want to improve your business, you don't want to hang out with people who are even in the world of business. And we did spend a fair amount of time talking about personal development. Things which have nothing to do with the success of our company, but are all about our own internal success. How do we be better people, better leaders, live better lives, be happier, be more compassionate, whatever it might be. And it is amazing how these types of things, these non business types of activities, can have a huge impact on your business. And that's why it's really important for you. And whatever your business is, whatever your role is in a business is to recognize that you don't want to spend all your time hanging out with people who think like you. Don't just go to industry conferences, don't just go to conferences of people who might have the same role or function that you do. But find people who are in fundamentally different types of businesses. Find people who are in different parts of your business. If you're in hr, hang out with people who are in sales, learn from people who think differently. And then again, don't just spend all your time thinking about business, think about your life, what you want out of your life. This will make you more powerful in everything you do and will help you create a more successful business because you will then be able to define success, your terms. So this is Steve Shapiro, and I hope that you find a group of people who will be able to change your business and change your life by bringing some divergent points of view together.