{PODCAST #42} What is a Mastermind Group & How To Join One

TCFS #42 What is a mastermind group and why are they crucial to an entrepreneur’s success?

What is a mastermind group? How do you start a mastermind group? What kind of mastermind groups are best for entrepreneurs? Where can I find a good mastermind group? Questions I get asked all the time…!

It’s no secret that I’m passionate about masterminds. I’ve been running mastermind groups for 4 years as part of my programs (one on one coaching + mastermind = the ideal support for my clients) and have personally been part of masterminds for 5 years.

Mastermind groups are an integral part of an entrepreneur’s success for many reasons — and we’re going to cover them in this podcast episode — so I’m always slightly surprised when an entrepreneur tells me that they don’t know what a mastermind group is or that they’ve never part of one.

So in today’s episode, we’re going to cover:

1. What is a mastermind group
2. The origin of mastermind groups
3. The advantages of a mastermind group for entrepreneurs
4. The different kinds of masterminds
5. What to look for in a mastermind group
6. The costs and logistics
7. How to show up to make the most of a mastermind
8. Why I offer a seat in a mastermind for my clients
9. How I run my mastermind groups (it’s different than the usual masterminds)
10. What you can expect to get from a good mastermind

If you have any questions about how you can join one of my masterminds for start up entrepreneurs and seasoned entrepreneurs feel free to get in touch at hello@carolinefrenette.com 

Enjoy this episode and feel free to share with anyone who could use support in their business!

Caroline, XO

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TRANSCRIPTION

You’re listening to the Caroline Frenette Show Episode 42!

Hey guys! Welcome to another episode of the Caroline Frenette Show, a podcast dedicated to helping you wake up your inner CEO, develop your business intuition and unleash your full creative potential. And I’ve tried to not pop the P in wake up but it’s way more fun to say “Wake UP”, right?

This podcast is also dedicated to the Inside-Out Understanding of The Three Principles. This is my way to invite you into a brand new and a very different conversation about business building, one where we truly and deeply look at what will really impact your productivity, your success, your levels of performance as some people love to talk about because it’s “SO DAMN IMPORTANT TO PERFORM”! #lol

Well, I would like to propose that it’s way more important to know WHAT IS the actual energy that creates through us, that performance and productivity has a lot less to do with how we think and what we think, and in fact, it has way more to do with how much of a channel we become to the energy of life. You can call it universal energy, you can call it Divine Mind and if that’s too woo woo for you, just think about it as the energy of life because hey, you’re alive and so life energy is coursing through you.

So I’ve been obsessed with this exploration for over 25 years but it’s really only when I came across the Inside-Out Understanding of the Three Principles as taught by Syd Banks that things really started to come together for me and here’s why: in the spiritual growth industry, the self-help industry, the coaching industry, most people focus on “making your reality better” and the way that you do that is by trying to control your thinking, trying to think more positively, trying to control how you react to life.

Now what I’ve come to see with the understanding of the Three Principles is that what we’re pointing to is HOW your reality is ACTUALLY thought-created and when you join us in this conversation, you naturally stop struggling to control your thoughts – which is it’s hard work and it’s exhausting – and instead, you become more aware and mindful as to how your day to day experience is created through the power of thought, mind and consciousness, The Three Principles.

And my passion is to share with you what that looks like practically in business building because I’m an entrepreneur, I’m passionate about business building and creating and I love entrepreneurship, I’ve always been an entrepreneur and so of course, it’s the conversation that I really enjoy, it’s what I do for my work, I’m a business coach, and again, when I started to see the three Principles at play in business building, everything became easier. In fact, I just wrote a blog about this, check it out here.

By the way, if you’re not yet on my emailing list, I would love to invite you to join us, go to carolinefrenette.com and use any of the Sign Up boxes that you see to join the mailing list so that you can get my – I was going to say weekly blogs – but honestly I just blog and write when my intuition is calling me to, so I really don’t visit your Inbox that much.

You will, however, get the invitation to my free training or my upcoming Mastermind – we’re going to be talking about Mastermind groups today – and you’re going to be invited to any program that I’m launching, live events, and you’re going to be invited to join me in this conversation of business-building-from-the-inside-out.

So I was just writing about this today in my latest blog post and was thinking back the first time the “ground shifted below me” – as a series of insights just started to sink in – and I completely shifted how I see business building. And what I was sharing today’s blog post is that I, pretty much, lost 99.9% of my fears of the future… “Is my business going to work?” and all that stress that was related to my thinking.

See, I didn’t see that my stress was created by my thinking. I was still caught up in the illusion and I was reacting to life, I was reacting to what I thought was real. But when I started to really dive deeper into the three Principles, I realized that I’m really living in a dream, that dream is created by my thinking mind and when I wake up to it, I spend more of my time in spaciousness, in a quiet state of mind and I’m more aligned with my wisdom and with my intuition.

Hence, awakening your inner CEO – so that you can have more fun in your business – and hence, developing your business intuition.

So I’m so happy that you’re joining me for this conversation. I’m happy that you’re here. I just want to say how grateful I am that you’re listening.

And today we’re talking about Masterminds.

So what is a Mastermind and why do you want to join a Mastermind if you’re an entrepreneur?

It’s so interesting. The reason I decided to record this podcast episode is because after 15 plus years as an entrepreneur and four or five years working in my coaching business working with entrepreneurs from around the world, I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, I talk to a lot of creators and writers and coaches and I’m always amazed at the number of people who actually don’t know what a Mastermind is. They don’t know what it is, they’ve never been in a Mastermind and they are missing out on one of the best support system that you can get as an entrepreneur.

So today we’re talking about Masterminds!

I’ve been running Mastermind groups for four years now and I’ve been part of Masterminds for at least five years. I started to get interested in Masterminds when I had my retail stores in Montreal and because I had two retail stores and a yoga studio and I was manufacturing my own yoga wear collection and I had a team of employees and I had, of course, yoga teachers that I had to take care of, I ended up managing a lot of staff and also becoming a leader in our community, in the yoga community. We were hosting events and participating in a lot of charities and what I realized at some point was that I felt that I was missing support, I was missing being around other business owners. Every day at the stores, people will come, knock on my door and ask me to give them something or participate or something. They would ask for advice, they wanted of my time, of my energy and take, take, take, take, take and I would give, give, give, give, give wholeheartedly until at one point, I was like, “Alright, I need to be discerning of my time and energy and I need to be surrounded with likeminded entrepreneurs so that I can get the support of other leaders and other entrepreneurs.”

Somehow, I learned about Mastermind groups, I forgot how exactly it probably was in Napoleon Hill’s book, Think and Grow Rich who, by the way, Napoleon Hill is the first one who talked about Masterminds and the power of a Mastermind, we’re going to talk about this shortly. But that’s when I decided that it was going to be important for me to get in touch with other inspiring entrepreneurs, go for lunch and talk business, talk about our challenges and help each other find solutions and inspire each other. Basically, this is what a Mastermind is.

A Mastermind is a small group of people. Usually, ideally in my Mastermind, it’s no more than four or five people, and everyone is coming together to support each other and to elevate to their highest potential. And if you deconstruct the word master-mind, it’s all of the minds coming together to help each individual within the group. So it’s pretty powerful and I’m going to dive deeper into what can happen as a result of a Mastermind. It’s kind of magical.

But I very quickly saw the power of a Mastermind group and when I shifted my business to bring it online and created this coaching business, I knew that I wanted to create that kind of support system especially because my business is an online business. I work a lot on the computer, I mean people call it the laptop lifestyle and the freedom based lifestyle but the reality is unless you actually reach out and make human connections, you can get lost into this World Wide Web and all these things that you need to do to run a business online.

So I created my first Mastermind reached out to at that time it was – so this is five years ago, I was part of an online community called B-School. It was an online course that I had done with Marie Forleo, really active, supportive community and I reached out to a few people and some people said “yes” to my invitation and I created my first Mastermind.

Okay, so first let’s talk about the advantages of a Mastermind.

So first of all, if you’re a solopreneur and you’re working on your own, a Mastermind group is going to give you extra support and again, you’re going to be able to spend some time with people who understand what you’re going through. They’re going to understand the challenges of entrepreneurship and it’s just so nice to be able to “talk shop” I think is how you say in English especially if the people around you are not entrepreneurs. Let’s say that your husband or your wife is not an entrepreneur or your family don’t understand why you’re in business for yourself. Well, it’s really nice to be able to have deep conversations about what it’s really like to be an entrepreneur.

Another advantage is that you get accountability.

Now it’s up to you how you want to use the accountability system. Personally, the Masterminds that I’m hosting for my clients, I ask them first and foremost to be accountable to themselves and accountable to their inner wisdom and their inner CEO.

But some people really love to be accountable to other people and really it’s just a way of being accountable to yourself, really.

You can also ask for honest feedback from your mastermind group.

If you’re working on a project, it could be your copy, it could be you’re launching something, you can ask for honest feedback. Again, it’s up to you to be really clear on what you want to get out of your Mastermind. This is where you set clear intention again.

You can brainstorm ideas, you can get inspiration, you can make new friendships.

Often there’s also collaborations that happen as a result of a Mastermind coming together. This is pretty powerful. I’ve seen this over and over. Some of my clients would get together and create workshops together or programs.

Another huge advantage of a Mastermind group is that you can take advantage of other people’s resources, contacts and networks.

However, I want to say that a Mastermind is not a referral group. There’s business that can be done within a mastermind but the primary intention is really to support each other’s success.

Now this is why when you join a Mastermind, you want to make sure that you bring people from different industries.

That’s how I setup most of my Masterminds.

If people are in a similar industry, I’m looking, however, for people who have a different expertise.

Like for example, you could have a Mastermind that’s all coaches but they’re from different backgrounds. Maybe one of them is an executive coach, maybe one of them is a coach for lawyers, maybe one of them is a coach specializing in health and nutrition so that there’s no direct competition within the group.

You could also think about a Mastermind group in terms of a board of advisor.

So who would you love to have on your board of advisor? Maybe you’d like to have a marketing expert, maybe it’s a copywriter, a branding expert. Maybe it’s someone who’s really good at social media or implementing systems. And in that group of people, they operate online so they have this similar approach to business building and yet you have a varied group of people that can all bring their own unique expertise. That would be ideal.

Now there’s different kinds of Masterminds and if you look online and you do a search for Masterminds, you’re going to see all kinds of stuff popping up.

What I want you to really consider, and this is my personal preference, is that a real Mastermind is a maximum of four to five people.

We’ve already touched on this but I really want to say that a true Mastermind cannot have more than four or five people, otherwise you’re going to be really short on time or you’re going to need really long meetings which is not practical for most people. So whenever you see, because you might see that a huge Mastermind which is led by a coach or an instructor, that’s more a group coaching, it’s not Masterminding.

You might also see a Mastermind group offered within a one-on-one coaching experience.

That’s what I offer with my program Launch and Prosper. When you do Launch and Prosper whether it’s for six months or a year, you are going to be offered a seat in a Mastermind. This is my way of making sure that beside the one-on-one coaching and the business strategy that you get from me that you also get to have the experience of being in a really high level Mastermind with experienced business owners that will inspire you. Again, because Launch and Prosper is both for startup business owners and for season entrepreneurs, so I offer two different kinds of Masterminds: one is for startup business owners and one for people that have been in buinsess for a while.

Another advantage of a mastermind group is that you get to hear what are other people creating, what are they struggling with, what’s working, what’s not working…

It’s really inspiring to hear what other people are up to to see what are they getting stuck on and it’s going to give you also ideas when you hear about their projects and what they’re creating.

So I really want to clarify that group coaching is not Masterminding and if you end up in a group of 10 to 15, 20, 25 people, that’s also not a Mastermind.

Here’s why.

A Mastermind – the structure of it – is that each member of the group should have 15 to 20 minutes in the hot seat.

So here’s how it goes: you got your Mastermind of four people let’s say and you’re blocking an hour and a half. My Mastermind groups are always an hour and a half. I feel that an hour is just too short, two hours is too long, 90 minutes is just perfect and each entrepreneur will have 15 to 20 minutes. They’re going to ask a really specific question, they’re going to ask for specific feedback, and then the other Masterminders are going to jump in and help out, give ideas, brainstorm. Maybe they’re going to make some connections and introduce other people in their networks but this is how you get the benefit of being in the hot seat. Everyone jumps in to share how they can help.

The other really magical thing with Masterminds is that when you’re in the hot seat, first of all, everybody else will learn from the person in the hot seat.

So that’s really crucial and really powerful. The other thing that I’ve seen is that when someone in the hot seat has an insight or shift or an idea so powerful that the person becomes energized and luminous and activated filled with life energy, everybody witnesses it, everyone witnesses the change in the entrepreneur and there’s something about that witnessing that’s so powerful. I’ll give you an example.

A few years ago I had someone in one of my Mastermind groups that was really struggling getting her business off the group, and I remember during the session telling her, “I feel that you’re about to strike gold but if you stop digging, if you give up right now, you’re just like an inch away from your treasure, from that gold mine.” And somehow the other Masterminders just jumped in and helped her shift how she saw her business and the kind of services that she could offer. And the entrepreneur in the hot seat had this huge A-HA moment where everything shifted for her and everyone witnessed it. When she showed up again two weeks later to the next Mastermind session, she had created SO MUH MOMENTUM, she had already sold some of her new services, she had created new clients, she had make fresh new money and she had hit the gold that I was seeing in my mind’s eye. She had persevered and also she had had that shift, that insight that enabled her to see where the gold was hiding.

Now that was a magical Mastermind moment and this is something that you can expect when you’re part of a really good Mastermind group.

Now, you might have to join a few Mastermind groups in order to find your right peeps.

It’s not a guarantee that you’re going to have a good connection with the other people in the group, but here’s a few things that you want to keep top of mind to make the most out of your experience.

First, bring an open mind, this is so key.

You want to show up and have an open mind. If you are stock in your head and in your noisy thinking and you can’t listen, you can’t be fully present, you won’t make the most of your Mastermind. So you want to bring an open mind and you want to practice deep listening.

This is something that I talked about on the podcast. If you want to go back in the archives, you’re going to see that there’s a whole podcast dedicated on deep listening. And this is what I invite all my Masterminders to practice, show up in the Mastermind with deep listening and you’re going to hear something truly powerful for yourself.

Second, you want to be mindful of the energy you bring in a group.

If you show up to a Mastermind session and you’re complaining, you’re going to bring everybody down. Now yes, as you know, when we talk about the Inside-Out Understanding of the Three Principles, we know that our energy is brought down by our own thinking AND YET I still want to invite all of my Masterminders to be mindful of the energy that they’re bringing because I see the energy of a Mastermind like this beautiful ecology like it’s an environment of its own and it’s sensitive to other people’s energy. So you want to be mindful as to how you show up and bring the best of yourself.

Now I’m not expecting people to always be at their best. I know that life is going to happen and things are going to be hard. You can bring your challenges to a Mastermind and you can share things that are perhaps difficult, something that you’re living that’s demanding of you and it’s hard, that’s totally okay. But you should be mindful in how you’re showing up so that you don’t complain for the whole 20 minutes. This is the art of sharing in a way that you bring an open heart, you’re open to being vulnerable and sharing on a deep level and yet you’re open to receiving and shifting your energy.

Which brings me to my next point…

You want to be open to receiving feedback.

If you’re not, well, you’re really wasting your time and you’re not going to hear anything. Now granted, it’s possible that you’ll have an insight later on. We never know what people are truly hearing but if you show up to the Mastermind with a clear intention of being open in receiving feedback you’re going to make the most of it.

You also want to ask for what you want and need of your Masterminders.

So be clear on your ask. Ask a clear question, ask for clear feedback. When you’re in the hot seat, it’s your chance to be ask for what you want to receive.

You also want to be honest and authentic and truthful.

If you’re not going to be authentic and truthful about where you’re at and how you’re struggling and if there’s something that’s on your mind but you’re not sharing it, you’re not going to make the most out of the Mastermind and you might also be missing an opportunity to help someone else in the Mastermind group that has the same struggles. So be honest, be authentic, be real. Don’t worry about it. Your Masterminders are there to support you.

The last thing that I do in my Mastermind is that I give everyone a pass if they’re not open to taking the hot seat. I

‘m not going to make someone get in the hot seat. Yes, it’s a missed opportunity because you do want to really show up fully even if it’s hard, even if you weren’t accountable to what you said you were going to do, owning your shit is the ultimate invitation that I have for everyone. But if you happen to be in a particular day where you’re just not feeling open to receive but you want to be there to listen and support, that’s okay too.

You can be there as a Masterminder to support your other Masterminders which is why in fact, if you don’t have anything that you want to bring in the hot seat, it’s still really crucial to show up to your Mastermind because it’s not just about you, it’s about everyone in a group. This is something that I’m really, really clear and intentional about in my Masterminds: I want people to show up not only for themselves but for their fellow Masterminders.

So what do you want to look for in a Mastermind?

Well first of all, you want to look for compatibility. I would never put people in a Mastermind that are not in a similar place in their business. For example, I have a current Mastermind group starting this fall where the women have been in business for ten plus years and they’re making a certain level of revenue in their business, they have a high level of leadership and experience. Now I wouldn’t bring in a startup business owner into that Mastermind. I am really picky in who I choose to join which Masterminds because I’m looking for a charismatic interaction, I don’t know what better way to say it. I really want to have the Masterminders to really connect with each other and to be compatible so I want to invite you to also look for a certain level of compatibility.

You might also want to look for Masterminders that have similar goals in their business.

Not everybody is revenue-oriented. Some people are project-oriented, some people are impact-oriented so you might want to look for similar goals.

You could also look for entrepreneurs that are from really different backgrounds.

Now again, that’s not necessary, sometimes in my Masterminds, I have several coaches. They’re all coaches that are grabbing a seat but they’re in different industries. That way, there’s no feeling of competition or feeling that you don’t want to share particular idea because you have two health coaches in a group. So I’m really picky about that as well and I want to make sure that people are in different industries. That way, when people are sharing what they’re creating, it gives you the idea on how you can be more creative in your own field. So you might want to look for entrepreneurs that are from different backgrounds.

Next is cost.

Now that is going to vary drastically depending on who’s hosting the Mastermind and what kind of Mastermind it is.

You can find Masterminds for $500 a month, $200 a month. The length is going to impact the cost (we’re going to be talking about that shortly).

I offer Masterminds as part of my signature one on one program Launch and Prosper so it’s a bonus that I’m giving to my clients.

Again, I shared with you earlier but this is my way of making sure they’re really getting all the support that they need in their business and in their life. But I have launched Mastermind groups in the past that were $1000 for three months, $10,000 for ten months, it really all depends on the kind of experience you want to create and what kind of logistics that you’re bringing to your Mastermind.

For example, if you want to be hosting a year-long Mastermind and meet in person three times in exotic locations around the world, the price is going to be different than if your Mastermind is virtual, meeting twice a month for three months, right?

So there’s different logistics that you get to play with and that will impact the cost.

It’s really up to you to join a Mastermind that fits your needs and to choose a mastermind that appeals to you.

So what can you expect from Masterminds?

It really depends on who’s running the Mastermind group, what kind of intention was set, and again, what kind of intentions you set for yourself. But it’s really up to you to show up and make the most of your mastermind by showing up fully and taking action in between sessions.

I remember the first Mastermind group that I created for myself, I was so excited about the fusion of these brilliant minds coming together to support me that I remember sharing with them in the first session my entire list of To-Dos for the summer and it was a REALLY LONG LIST from a rebrand, to a new website, to launching new programs. It was a really robust list and I thought that it was actually going to take me three to four months to accomplish everything on that list.

But I left the first Mastermind session so excited and inspired that I dove deep into my list of To-Dos and I became super productive, so much so that I showed up to the next session and I had done almost everything on my list. It was amazing and the other participants in the group were also really inspired by that.

So this is something that you can expect from being part of a group that is inspired in taking action. You’re going to get really productive people, people that are launching much faster than they expected.

Some of my clients have created new businesses as they were part of a Mastermind and in two ways. First of all, some of the people in the Mastermind needed the specific service that this member was offering and without pitching or selling, because you really get to know the other members in the group, well, who do you turn to when you want to hire someone? Well, someone that you know and trust. So there’s also really good business that can happen.

Again, one of the members I remember just created a thriving business because she launched brand new services in her business through the Mastermind and the members shared her services with their peeps on Facebook and email list and the brand new business was created.

I’ve also created challenges for my Masterminders where everybody jumps in for specific challenge, something that they would otherwise never dare to do.

Last time I did a Facebook Live challenge and it was really exciting.

A lot of my clients were scared to put themselves on video and on Facebook Live but one of the members did it and then another and then another. They all supported each other and jumped on each other’s Facebook Lives and commented and they all got inspired and guess what? They got better at showing up on Facebook Live, showing up on video. They got better at sharing their messages and just being clear in communicating what they’re up to, and then some of them just took the ball and run with it. Now they’re doing Facebook Lives all the time, they’re doing video all the time and that started with a really simple challenge where pretty much everybody yes and jumped in even though they were scared, scare-cited (scared and excited), and they all challenged each other and had a lot of fun doing it.

Now sometimes some of the results that you get from joining a mastermind is not just having an impact on your business, sometimes it can have a deep impact on your personal life.

A few years back, there was a participant in one of my groups that was going through a really big life change, in fact, she was getting divorced and even though it was a challenge for her and it was, you know, not the easiest thing to go through, she still showed up to the sessions. She showed up to everyone else to give support and receive support and we were able, in a period of six months to a year, to see her change her life completely from going through the divorce to becoming financially independent from creating a second business. And so the conversations with this particular participant was not about business and not about goals or not about action, it was providing a space for her to be heard and to be held in an energy of love, to be understood and to have this posse of amazing women coming together to be there for her.

When there’s a beautiful synergy happening within a group and when there’s trust and respect and love, of course we’re going to be creating a space for the participant, the entrepreneur to bring whatever it is that’s maybe weighing heavily on their heart or in their shoulders because again, the magic of these people coming together is that we can shine the light of consciousness, of awareness on a particular issue and then it can shift just like that. So that’s something really beautiful and magical that you can also expect when you join a group of likeminded souls.

You can expect your business to grow and you can expect to get support for your personal life as well.

It really is, again, up to you to ask for what you need and to be willing to show up authentically and fully you.

So that pretty much covers what a Mastermind is.

I hope that this was helpful for you and I hope that it’s giving you this idea that wherever you are in your business whether you’re starting out or you’re up leveling or you’re about to give up, you might want to consider joining a Mastermind group.

I want to invite you to do some research online and see what you find and if you’re attracted to joining my Mastermind group, well, come on over to carolinefrenette.com/launchandprosper and you’re going to see the information about Launch and Prosper the program and you can click the Apply Now button and schedule a call with me so we can talk about your business, your dreams, your goals and I will let you know what kind of Mastermind is available to you at that time.

Bottom line, what I really want you to think about is that you don’t need to do it alone. You can get the support that you need.

You don’t have to invest in a $10,000 Mastermind group if it’s not for you right now. If it is, good, go for it, do it. There’s even Masterminds at 25,000$ to 100 ,000$ by the way which sounds crazy but when you’re at the point in your business that you’re making multiple six figures or even seven figures, when you spend that much to invest in a Mastermind, well you’re in a network of people that will bring you that same level of business.

So I want you to look at the return on investment.

And if you’re not there, again, that’s okay, you might just be starting out and if that’s the case you could start your own free Mastermind, or you could pay a monthly fee to join someone else’s Mastermind.

So many options available.

Again, just look for the help that you need to have the success that you want and to get the support that you need.

Don’t do it alone, don’t struggle on your own. There’s a lot of people out there that are willing to support you and to love you and to uplift you.

I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions about Mastermind, feel free to reach out on social media or by sending us an email at allo@carolinefrenette.com.

Thank you for listening and I will see you on the next episode!