How to Create Your Own Mastermind | Jack Canfield

Hi there. I'm Jack Canfield. Today I want to talk to you about the power of the mastermind group. You know, one of the most powerful tools ever used by successful people is called the mastermind group. Napoleon Hill first talked about mastermind groups in his classic book, Think and Grow Rich. And it's the one concept people most reference when they credit any one thing with helping them become a millionaire. Andrew Carnegie had a mastermind group. So did Henry Ford. In fact, Ford would mastermind with brilliant thinkers like Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone and others in a group they held at their winter mansions in Coral Gables, Florida. They knew, as millions of others have discovered since, that a mastermind group can focus special energy on your effort in the form of knowledge, resources, and even spiritual energy, too. So while you must always do the work of becoming a great success, a mastermind group can harness and maximize the spiritual focus behind your success. And it's this spiritual aspect that Napoleon Hill wrote about extensively. In fact, he said that if we are to tune in with the mastermind that is God, or if you want to call it universal power, infinite intelligence, source energy, or whatever term you use for this all powerful life force, we have significantly more positive energy available to us when we do that. Power that can be focused on our success. Now, what's an example of how this works? We have probably seen bumper cars at a local theme park or carnival. And this life force is similar to the web of overhead cables that link all those bumper cars to their energy sources. And while you may be a single bumper car, you have a cable going up that connects you to the greater source of energy, which provides the power you need to move forward. And in the same way, mastermind is both that power coming to us from above, but also the power that comes to us from each other when we mastermind together. And together, we know more and can focus more energy than any one person can do alone. Now, assembling a mastermind group is easy. You want to choose people who are already where you'd like to be in your life or who are at least one level above you. If your goal is to become a millionaire, you're not going to get a lot of help if everyone in your mastermind group is only making $60,000 a year. Now, of course, approaching successful people can feel a little scary at first. In fact, you might be thinking, why would anyone want to be in a mastermind group with me if I'm only making 60,000 a year? But the answer is that many people at a higher level of productivity or success will want to become involved. So simply because they then get to play at a game they might never organize for themselves, called a mastermind group. Now, the other people you're going to invite are people that they would like to be around too. But you won't know if people will play or not until you ask. So you have to ask them. Are you going to get some no's? Probably. But if you ask enough people, you'll get the five or six people you need to have your mastermind group. So start with a list and simply work down the list. Now, maybe you'd like to have the published for your local newspaper, and you're only going to end up with a local columnist instead. But that someone might be the person who actually might be a lot more helpful to you in the long run. You never know. And if your goals are centered around a specific subject, like starting a new business or investing money, you might start a mastermind group specifically centered around entrepreneurship or investments. In most cases, the ideal mastermind group brings together people from different, different professional arenas, as well as people that are above you and who can introduce you to a network of people that you normally wouldn't have access to. Now, while the benefits of masterminding with people outside your field may not seem obvious at first, the truth is we all tend to get stuck in our own area of expertise, doing things the same way everyone else in our field does. But when you assemble people from different industries and professions, you get lots of different perspectives on the same subject. Now, the ideal size of a mastermind group is five to six people. If it's any smaller, it tends to lose its dynamic. If two or three people are sick or can't come, you really don't have a group anymore. And if it's much bigger, it gets unwieldy. Meetings take too long and some needs go unmet, and personal sharing is minimized. And when that happens, people tend to drop out. Now, my first mastermind group led to the sale of the first Chicken Soup for the Soul book and the Chicken Soup for the Soul television show with vin de bona. I was literally in a group with about six people. And when we came up with the chicken soup idea, we didn't know how to sell it. And so we had gone to a number of publishers and shared our book with them, and everyone was turning it down. And someone in my mastermind group said, are you familiar with the bea, the Book Expo America? And I said, no. What is that? They said, well, it's the American booksellers. Association annual meeting and happens to be in Anaheim this year. If you could go there, all the publishers come at the exhibit area to sell their books to the bookstore owners who are having their conference to see what the new books are in the coming year. And they also have editors there that could acquire your book. Now, had I not been in that mastermind group, I never would have heard about that. So Mark, Victor Hanson and I went to the ABA meeting. We took 30 copies of our book. We went around from booth to booth to booth to booth to booth and getting more and more and more and more rejections over the course of several days. But on that last day, we talked to Health Communications, gave them a copy of the first 30 stories of our book. They read it. A couple weeks later, they called and said, we want to publish it. That book went on to sell 10 million copies in the US and 17 million more around the world in 50 languages. And being in that mastermind group and having access to someone else's information, someone else's resources, et cetera, allowed me and Mark to get our book sold. Perhaps it never would have happened otherwise. So the reality is mastermind groups are very, very powerful. Now, going through the process of participating in a mastermind group, you too might find yourself in a whole new role as a teacher or an advocate or a coach of sorts, leading people in the group to resources, ideas, and new thoughts that can help them. That's what professional trainers and coaches do every day. And we really want to encourage you to start acting more like a trainer and a coach in your life. Because the more you serve others and empower them, the more they will serve you back and empower you. We always say the more people you help, the faster you'll get to where you want to go. Now, I want to leave you with a bit of homework once you're finished watching this video. So use the steps I've outlined for you to think about how you can benefit from a mastermind. And leave a comment below and I'll be sure to follow up with you. And if you find that bringing these success principles like masterminding to other people is a calling for you, I've got a couple of gifts for you. First, there's a complete plan for forming a mastermind group and conducting regular mastermind meetings. And secondly, I've got an introduction to an entire world of these success principles, starting with chapter one of my best selling book, the Success Principles. And I'll also send you information on how I work with coaches, trainers and others who do the work of transforming others lives every day. Just in case that's a calling that is speaking to you. So thank you for watching and remember, nothing will change for the better until you do. Now, if you found this video helpful, make sure you like it, share it with a friend who may need it, and subscribe to my channel for more videos like this one, and for some additional resources on how to create your own mastermind, visit my website@jackcampfield.com.