What’s up everyone! I am joined today by Ken Wallace, online course creator and the brain behind MastermindJam. He’s here to share how he created MastermindJam and discuss the value of peer-led mastermind groups. Mastermind groups help you to have another set of eyes on the problems about your business. The idea for MastermindJam came after Ken joined the the 2015 MicroConf. After some some customer feedback and a few tweaks in pricing, Ken created MastermindJam in 2019. MastermindJam is a platform that helps people find a peer-driven mastermind group or create a new group from scratch without having to waste time cobbling together a bunch of different software. With MastermindJam, entrepreneurs can now easily join a business mastermind that can help them supercharge their business growth and move their business forward. Tune in to hear Ken’s take on value-based pricing, the benefit of peer-led versus guru-led communities, and the story behind MastermindJam. Episode Quotes "Always price based on the value of what it is you are bringing." "Mastermind can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, so you have to get clear on what you need." "As a course creator, it is important to get a feel for your customer - who they are and what they're struggling with." Listen to Learn 01:24 - Getting to know Ken Wallace, Rapid 5 Questions 03:36 - Value-based pricing 08:57 - Building the mastermind group business 21:53 - What is a mastermind group and why it is beneficial? 25:05 - Guru-Driven Masterminds and Peer-Led Mastermind 31:01 - Importance of visibility and matching in mastermind groups 42:03 - Exciting things coming up from Ken Connect with Ken Check out MastermindJam Follow Ken on Twitter! Looking for the Transcript? Episode 117 Grab the bonus segment! Learn how to find the right community to supercharge your growth and get some practical tips for creating a mastermind of your own. Grab it here: https://get.zencourses.co/extra
What’s up everyone! I am joined today by Ken Wallace, online course creator and the brain behind MastermindJam. He’s here to share how he created MastermindJam and discuss the value of peer-led mastermind groups.
Mastermind groups help you to have another set of eyes on the problems about your business.
The idea for MastermindJam came after Ken joined the the 2015 MicroConf. After some some customer feedback and a few tweaks in pricing, Ken created MastermindJam in 2019. MastermindJam is a platform that helps people find a peer-driven mastermind group or create a new group from scratch without having to waste time cobbling together a bunch of different software. With MastermindJam, entrepreneurs can now easily join a business mastermind that can help them supercharge their business growth and move their business forward.
Tune in to hear Ken’s take on value-based pricing, the benefit of peer-led versus guru-led communities, and the story behind MastermindJam.
Episode Quotes
"Always price based on the value of what it is you are bringing."
"Mastermind can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, so you have to get clear on what you need."
"As a course creator, it is important to get a feel for your customer - who they are and what they're struggling with."
Listen to Learn
01:24 - Getting to know Ken Wallace, Rapid 5 Questions
03:36 - Value-based pricing
08:57 - Building the mastermind group business
21:53 - What is a mastermind group and why it is beneficial?
25:05 - Guru-Driven Masterminds and Peer-Led Mastermind
31:01 - Importance of visibility and matching in mastermind groups
42:03 - Exciting things coming up from Ken
Connect with Ken
Looking for the Transcript?
Grab the bonus segment!
Learn how to find the right community to supercharge your growth and get some practical tips for creating a mastermind of your own.
Grab it here: https://get.zencourses.co/extra
Ken Wallace: So in a typical mastermind group meeting, you're going to get the chance to talk about your business, the issues that you're facing, the hurdles that are confronting you on a week or monthly basis to talk about your goals and what you think internally are the next steps to get you to your goals. And it's a chance for the other humans in your group to reach back out to you and say, you know, that doesn't sound realistic.
Janelle Allen: Welcome back to Level Up Your Course, where we pull back the curtain on what it takes to create learning that transforms lives. You will hear stories from business owners like you who share their success and their struggles. This is not where you come to hear passive income myths, friend. This is where you learn the truth about building a profitable learning platform. I am your host, Janelle Allen, and this is today's episode.
JA: What's up everyone today day I am speaking with Ken Wallace, the brain behind MastermindJam. Ken and I connected on Twitter. We've been connected on Twitter for a while, but it wasn't until recently where we had a wonderful conversation about mastermind groups. And I realized that I needed to get him on the show to talk about the value of mastermind groups. So if you're not sure what a mastermind group is, how to find a good one, all of that good stuff, this episode is for you. Ken, welcome to the show.
KW: Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.
JA: I am really excited to dig deeper into mastermind groups, but before we get too serious, we have a tradition on the show called the Rapid Five, five quick questions to help listeners get to know you. Are you ready?
KW: I think I'm ready.
JA: Number one is easy. What did you have for breakfast?
KW: I had two eggs and a cup of coffee.
JA: Nice and simple. Number two, what is the last rule that you broke?
KW: Boy, the last rule. Does it have to be business-related?
JA: Not at all.
KW: Okay. The last rule I broke was here in the house and telling my wife where she had gone wrong.
JA: Doesn't sound like that, uh -- did that go okay for you? Did you make it out?
KW: It didn't work out very well for me. I knew better.
JA: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's move on. Number three. This one is a serious one. So brace yourself. The zombie apocalypse has hit. You have six minutes to get three essential items to help you survive. Not people. All of your people are okay. These are survival items. What do you pick?
KW: My Leatherman, my blow torch, and my machete.
JA: Okay, so for the record, for everyone listening, I am a part of Ken’s zombie apocalypse survival group because he sounds prepared. All right. And I'm glad you're close. Okay. Number four, fill in the blank. When I was a kid I wanted to be blank.
KW: I wanted to be an architect.
JA: Huh, okay. I guess in a way you are actually in a way.
KW: In a way, yeah. I’m not designing houses, but I design online houses for people.
JA: Yes. I love that. Okay. Last one. What is the hardest lesson you have learned so far as a business owner?
KW: That's a great question. I would have to say that what people are buying from you is not always what you're selling.
JA: Hmm. Okay, so that's a good one. That's a great way to end the rapid five because I want to know more before we continue. Can you expound?
KW: Yeah. So I learned early on that we as product creators will create a product or a course or you know, whatever it is that we're putting out into the world for other people to consume. And then people come to you, they come to your landing page, they find you with their own preconceived notions of what their life is like, what their world is like and what they need. And they'll arrive at your product page and they might purchase what it is you're selling. And um, they have a totally, completely different reason for purchasing, for engaging with you, for consuming that object. Something completely different than you might not have ever conceived off. And it's always more important than whatever it is that you had on your sales page.
So the key there is to realize when you're pricing your product, you know, if you're thinking to yourself, well I should sell this for cheap just cause it's, you know, it's basically these three Zapier things mashed together and an email they get with a PDF attached. So that shouldn't be that expensive. But on the other end, that person might be receiving tremendous value from you. You might have just made their life so much simpler, so much easier or solve the problem in their marriage or in their work or in their business that is so much more valuable.
So they came to you wanting to purchase something that solves a marriage problem or a business problem or you know, something in their life, you're selling a PDF. So that's the bottom line of that tip. You have to realize that sometimes people come to you for reasons that are not on your sales page and to always price based on the value of what it is you bring.
JA: Value based pricing can be hard for people to grasp, to really understand. And I think that part of that is it requires you to really know your market and your customer. Essentially, I think part of what you said is about the problem. Whatever it is you do in business, you need to be solving a problem. But there is a pain underneath that problem. To me, that's what you're speaking to is the value comes from the pain that's happening in their life as a result of the problem. And this is why, you know, again, it's super, super important to dig, deep and learn who you're serving because if you can communicate that and put it on your sales page even better, but to your point, being able to understand that pain and the value of it allows you to price more effectively.
KW: That's right. I first learned this lesson back in 1999 I was introduced to this concept called planogramming. Now, planogramming is a concept used in retail stores for how they plan the layout of their store shelves. And me just fresh out of college, I had no idea about retail stores. And so as we were designing this software, they were giving me an example. The client was giving me an example of what they might put in a particular aisle, like in aisle seven in this hardware store, we're going to sell drills, and then they listed off a whole host of other things that might be near the drills in this aisle. And I scratched my head. I was like, why would you think to put these things with the drills? And the client looked at me and said, Ken, what do you think it is that we're selling in aisle seven? And I said, well, obviously we're selling drills, Dewalt drills, Milwaukee drills, hammer drills, cordless drills, drills, and he's like, ‘Nope. People that come to aisle seven in this hardware store, they're looking to make a hole in the wall. So all of these things are items that help them to that goal.’ And so the same thing with your product. If you're an online business, if you're helping somebody solve that pain, they're coming to you to get that pain solved and your product is just a facilitator of that.
JA: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I want to keep digging in, but we can come back to that because there's so much more to say and that connects to segmentation, also, knowing the needs, problems, pains of each segment in your audience, which is something I've been talking about a lot lately. Especially when you talk about pricing, you can have a segment that is, let's say they're beginners and -- let's talk about technology.
So for example, one of my clients, he works with Airtable and there are people in his audience who are just getting started who don't have a huge budget, but sometimes they want to learn how to use Airtable so that they can find their own clients. And sometimes they just have this one thing that they want to automate in their business. And so for that segment, they're at a different price point. But you have to know about them, right? You have to know those things about them.
And then you have another segment, you know, he has his enterprise clients who are running multimillion dollar businesses and have teams and they're not interested in DIY. They want it done for them. They're looking for consulting. They have huge budgets. They are trying to set up complex systems and it's a completely different need and pain point and value. And so the pricing reflects that. So I just wanted to give people a real world example of value based pricing. You can see it very well in technology or just any segmented service or product.
KW: Right.
JA: Okay. We've kind of went deep, so let's take a step back and I just realized I don't quite know what it is that you do outside of MastermindJam. I know that you're -- are you a programmer? What do you do, Ken?
KW: I'm a programmer by trade. My title is VP of business solutions. I help manage a Microsoft.net consulting firm in Chicago. So I have a team of employees. My practice area in that business is healthcare, so we do a lot of health IT or health e-commerce or healthcare based applications for insurance companies. So I delve a lot into technology but also into compliance and privacy issues that revolve around healthcare. I probably know more about Medicare than most people that you've ever met, unfortunately. And we also take care of the needs of the business all the way from user experience design from the front end of adding things to your cart and checking out. But we also build all the backend tools that the business uses to receive the orders and to process the orders and the ship and put a label on the orders.
JA: And so how does a programmer who's working in the medical industry decide to create a product that helps people form masterminds? Tell me about that journey. How did you get here?
KW: So I have long been trying to start my own business and back in 2001 I was working for myself and, uh, I was a freelancer programmer and I had a bunch of clients that all kind of needed the same thing. And I just thought to myself, boy, this should be an online kind of thing where they just sign up and put their logo on it and just start using it. We didn't really call them SaaS apps back then, but it was kind of like Salesforce, kind of like what was going to become Basecamp. Basecamp wasn't around really at the time. So I just thought, well I, I think I can make this work. But at the time, if you remember, there was no Stripe. It was really hard to get a merchant account to receive payments in your online business...
JA: What was it, Authorize.net?
KW: Yeah, Authorize.net and you had to program your web apps to be Authorize.net compatible. And it was a pain in the butt. And I remember just working day and night trying to satisfy the freelance clients and work on this new application. And it just went nowhere. And part of the problem was I was all by myself, like me and my cat sitting in Wrigleyville. I had an apartment up just two blocks North of Wrigley and it was so isolating, so lonely, just working on this business. I really had nobody to talk to. And the unfortunate thing happened is I just ran out of runway to freelance. And so one of my biggest clients kind of did this weird swing where they requested a ton of work from me and so much work that I kind of turned, started turning down work from all my other clients and then that client filed for bankruptcy and so I was kind of in a bind immediately so I had to go back and get a job and I told my boss, I was like, look, I just need like six months of work and then I'm going to go back and work on my thing. Right. It's like I was Frank, I was up front and was like, dude, I'd love to have this job but I will only be here six months. I'm out of here. I just need a refill the coffers and you know, get back to level ‘cause I'm going to work on this software startup that I've got in mind.
JA: And how did that go? Did he --
KW: So that was 2003 when I went and tail between my legs looking for a job. And that was 16 years ago. So, yeah, that's, I've been at that job for 16 years because it turns out, like, it's pretty cool that when you cash paychecks they don't bounce and you can pay your mortgage and --
JA: All those little things.
KW: I don't know, life comes at you, but I started getting the itch again back in 2006, 2007, I'm like, boy, I've really gotten complacent here and I've built a lot of cool things for other people and helped a lot of people start businesses. I want to do that for me. I know how to do this. So I kind of got the itch, I started listening to podcasts, I stumbled upon Startups for the Rest of Us with Mike Taber and Rob Walling. And I'm like, well, these guys are just like me.
You know, it's so refreshing to hear that there's other people that start businesses on the side and make them like a reality. So I would listen to podcasts, but the problem is I can't talk to the podcast. I can't have a conversation with the podcast about what I'm going through. \
JA: I'm chuckling cause I just saw your tweet not too long ago about that.
KW: Oh yeah, that's been going on a while. Like I would literally to be the guy on the train on the commute, on the blue line out to my job talking back to podcasts. And then when I moved to a place where I was in like commuting distance, I would be sitting in the car in traffic, you know, talking to the radio, people thought I was nuts. So I heard that um, my favorite podcast had on a conference, so, I went to the conference and it was like, oh man, like this is amazing. Yeah, the speakers were great. But these like in between the sessions and after the session in the evening, over a lunch hour, sitting at a table with eight or 10 people talking about my business and their business and getting feedback from actual people who are doing it or have done it, or a step or two ahead of me, people that are a step behind me, I can, you know, there's just this comradery of spread of core that happens when you're in these conferences were just amazing to me and it was so refreshing. And so I went home just like refilled and ready to like tackle it. But as you know, like a month after the conference ends, you're back at home and, yeah, you got your questions answered while you're there, but now you've got new questions, you've got new problems in front of you and then life kinda starts attacking you.
And so man, by the time that next conference rolled around, I was just so eager to sign up again. But I realized that I needed to come away with a networking group that I could just stay in touch with the rest of the year. And I heard, I had heard people call them mastermind groups. Now, the name didn't mean much, but whatever we're going to call it, we need to have Skype calls or just telephone calls or whatever. But I can't wait a whole year to talk to other people about my business, like, I can't talk to my wife about this. She's just, she'll go nuts, you know, I get a blank look from my family, but I'm trying to talk about this and I can't talk about my side hustle at the day job. And it's just like, ah. So I went to the conference and we decided a bunch of us that were standing around talking at one of the networking events and one evening we decided, okay, let's, let's make a mastermind group with this. Like we're all pretty compatible. So the five of us, um, got in touch afterwards and while we were eager to do it, we all had the same need. We all needed to stay in touch. We hadn't really asked each other like the uncomfortable questions that would've made a difference. Things like what kind of business are you running? What's your revenue? How many years have you been doing this? What time zone are you in? And it turned out that two of the people were in Australia. Here I am in Chicago, there's a person in London and we're like, oh man. So like we soldier through for like nine months. Like I had to stay up and we met, like, it was two in the morning for me when this mastermind call, what happened once a week and I did not miss it. Like I could not miss it. But a lot of other people had to cause it's just like, it's tough to be that flexible with your time.
So the next conference rolled around. Like, this is now three years. I'm going to this conference --
JA: Is this MicroConf?
KW: It’s MicroConf. So it's like three years in a row I've gotten in this conference and my wife's like, what have you got to show for it? I'm just telling her like, this is like, this feeds me, this keeps me going for the rest of the year. But um, for that one I, I was like, you know, can we be smarter about this? Like instead of just like swapping business cards and email addresses, let's, you know, we're all programmers in this room, why is this not a solved problem? So I put together just a simple like application with some quantity based questions, like some actual, you know, facets and metrics that we could actually match people on. And I just wanted, I didn't want to put people in the groups for them. What I wanted to do was just let people narrow it down to the right people to talk to while they're there. So if you want to get into a mastermind group with four or five people for the rest of the year, how about you talk to these 10 people? Why here at the conference? Just get to know them and surely your mastermind group will be, you know, you'll get four or five people out of that 10.
And so that was my goal. So for each day of the conference, people got an email with 10 people, they should meet that day and you know, a picture of their face and stuff like that. And then after the conference it was like, “Ken, why did you take down that forum?” And my response was, “Conferences over, like, my work is done here.” Cause at the time my side business had changed because the world had changed and I had different clients now and different needs. And and I was building a personal finance app for families. So I wasn't really thinking of making a mastermind group business. It didn't make sense to me ‘cause I needed to get back to my thing, right? So I um, I said, okay, I can put the signup back. That's no problem. And I'll just, I don't know what I'll do. Maybe once or twice a month I'll email people out introductions, does that sound cool? And they're like, yeah. And then I had people say, Ken, I would never sign up for this because now it's just internet randos can sign up for it and there's no skin in the game. All of us who went to MicroConf. We had all paid 800 bucks to be at MicroConf It's more expensive now, but we'd all paid this amount of money to be marketing help. We all had skin in the game, but all of these new random people, we've never met. There's no vetting here. So I'm not going to sign up because it's free. I'm not going to sign up cause you're not charging anything. And that was like kind of a smoke signal for me. I'm just like, wow, that's interesting. I hadn't really thought of it like that. So I said fine, I don't really believe you. That's what I told the guy, like I don't really believe you. So hold on a second. I put up a link on the page. So instead of the button taking your right to the signup form, it made you pay first, 49 bucks. I was like, all right, there you go. And the next morning people signed up.
JA: Wow.
KW: And I'm like, really? It's like, oh, man. Now I've got to make this a thing right now. I've got to like take the attention off of my personal finance app and my day job is pretty busy, like at the time I was working 12 hour days and I was like, okay fine. And so, um, I kinda made that like a codified process where it was like an email sequence and so people would sign up. I had a backend algorithm that I'd run on Mondays from my laptop. Then it would put people into drip sequences based on tags and introduce people if they could be introduced to a good group. Otherwise they got another email sequence that says, “Hey, we're still waiting for a good match for you.” I started getting emails from people saying, Hey, you know, my business makes 50 or $100,000 a month and you're only charging 49 bucks one time for this match. Am I in the right place? Cause this doesn't seem like a good -- the value doesn't line up, right? 49 bucks of match, you know, multimillionaires into a mastermind group doesn't really make a lot of sense to me.
So that's when I started thinking, well, you know, for a SaaS app we would have like tiered pricing. And as you move up the tiers you get these extra value or extra features. And I was thinking like I can charge these people more, but they're getting the same thing. They're just being matched to a higher tier of entrepreneur. And so I was honest, I put that on the pricing page. And so beginners were 49 bucks. And then I had tears going all the way up to a thousand dollars to be matched into a group. And within six weeks I had people that signed up for every single tier, all four tiers. And so I went to my mentors and like reached out to Heaton Shaw and Rob Walling and Mike Taber and like, is this a business? Is this a sign I should like focus on this? So that's how this whole journey started for me.
JA: I love those stories, stories like yours, because one of the key things that I think is so hard, or can be very difficult, is just to listen. You know? And you had all of these, I think you called them smoke signals and because you, you started to listen, this business begins to unfold. But I can't tell you, you know how many times I -- I loved when you said you were thinking the whole time you're like, well I got to get back to my real business, you know, the whole time, like almost missing it. And I've so been there where I have tunnel vision, I'm focused on this thing. The thing, the thing, the thing, the thing. And meanwhile there's all this, you know, I think it's chatter on the side, but if you shift your perspective and really focus in and listen to what your audience or your first customers are telling you, it can open things up in such a huge way, which is why, you know, for anyone listening, this is why I am always drilling in the importance of connecting with your target audience, connecting with past clients, customers, and listening to what they're saying, listening to what they're repeatedly asking you for. Because it just, it changes everything.
KW: Right? That's exactly right.
JA: I love that story. So thank you for sharing. We talked a little bit before we started that people listening to the show they’re -- many of them either have a course or they're thinking about a course. So I want to talk about how mastermind groups can be beneficial for course graders, but before that, let's be really explicit. What is a mastermind group? How would you define it?
KW: In a business setting, by the way -- a mastermind group works in many different facets, but let's concentrate on business mastermind groups. Business mastermind groups is a small group of entrepreneurs who help each other achieve their goals. That's the simplest definition I can give you. So what I found is small peer groups of anywhere from four to six people work fantastic for business mastermind groups.
JA: Yeah, I would agree. I think I first heard, I've been in, let's see, I think three mastermind groups at this point and you and I had a great chat a couple months back about just the challenges of mastermind groups, of finding a good one, of running them. I personally have been in three, like I said, three but those were business and then one personal group with some friends. It can be tricky because, especially the personal ones because a lot of people who aren't entrepreneurs don't know about mastermind groups. They don't get it. Like, you know, we're, we're meeting to do what? Especially in this day and age where everyone just wants to talk, you know, via Twitter or Facebook. But for business mastermind groups, why are they beneficial? And particularly for anyone who is building a product based business?
KW: Well the bottom line with mastermind groups, the reason they're beneficial to business owners is it helps you to have another set of eyes on the problems and issues that you're facing your business. So in a typical mastermind group meeting, you're going to get the chance to talk about your business, the issues that you're facing, the hurdles that are confronting you on a weekly or monthly basis to about your goals and what you think internally are the next steps to get you to your goals. And it's a chance for the other humans in your group to reach back out to you. And say, you know, that doesn't sound realistic, or hey, the choice is right in front of you, it's obvious, it sounds like you've already made the choice, you're just not confident in it, and here's why you should be. Just to give you a new perspective.
So the mastermind group doesn't always give you advice. It's not like sitting in a course. It's not like somebody handing you a blueprint or going to a workshop or a conference. A mastermind group really helps you coalesce all the things in your head into an actual action plan that you can be confident about for moving forward.
JA: But they're tricky to get right.
KW: It can be tricky. I think it's because mastermind is such a wide open term. You know, it was coined in the aughts, you know, in like ‘08 to 1923 and the ideas that go into mastermind groups have shifted over the decades. And first of all, you have to realize that when some people talk about mastermind groups, they're talking about a workshop. They're saying, “Hey, be a part of my mastermind, which is me standing on a stage and telling you what you should do in your business and I'll be on the stage and there'll be a hundred people in that room with me,” and they'll call that a mastermind and while they're [inaudible] and be valid aspects of a mastermind to that, you just have to realize that mastermind can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, so you have to get clear on what it is you need.
So I like to ask people to start with what it is you need from a mastermind. Do you need advice? Do you need somebody to tell you what to do next? Or do you need a sounding board? Do you need confidence? Do you need accountability? Because those lead to two different very different kinds of mastermind groups. One I call the guru-driven mastermind, which can be led by like a coach or a facilitator or some kind of guru person. They feel much more like a workshop even though you'll have a chance to talk about your business in most of them, usually every conversation is wrapped up and a little bow is put on it by the guru person and so if you're in a workshop setting with 20 or 30 other entrepreneurs and even if those entrepreneurs are also sharing and stuff, if there's a person in front of the group leading the discussion, setting the agenda and that at the end of every single topic they say, okay, at the end of the day, let's all remember this, or the lesson that we learned today is this, those are signals that you're really kind of in a workshop labeled as a mastermind group and so I just call those guru-led masterminds.
The other is a peer led mastermind group where it's exactly what it sounds like. It's purely a group of people. Almost like when we were kids are sitting in a circle playing Duck, Duck, Goose, right? There's four or five people that are on a call or sitting around a table or you know, having coffee together, however it happens. And you are really just going deep on the topics at hand and those workout best when the group is very well curated. And that's another hard thing because people don't understand that if you ask those awkward questions up front, it makes the group much more beneficial for everybody involved. There might be times that you say to a friend, I'm sorry this probably is not going to be the best fit for you. Um, so they have to be well curated. There has to be accountability involved. Like the people in the group have to feel comfortable telling you that you didn't make your goal and they have to feel comfortable asking you why you keep missing this one goal you set for yourself. Is that a realistic goal? Is that a goal that you really, really truly can attain and should attain? And what are the hurdles that keep getting in your way? Let's focus on those between now and the next meeting. So there has to be a lot of candor in the group. There has to be a lot of transparency in a group to lead to accountability.
JA: And I would argue there has to be action, you know?
KW: Yeah.
JA: That's one of the things, you know, I'm sitting here thinking, I love how you framed it, so you have guru-led or more coaching style, and then you have peer-led groups. One of the things that I have struggled with, with regards to peer led groups is a resistance, even though it's formed to have accountability, oftentimes it doesn't work out that way. Particularly, you might have people who just aren't taking action, and if other members of the group -- I'll just be explicit, I have a very strong personality and I don't need a ton of accountability. I’m usually -- I know what I gotta do, I get it done, I’m sharing, but I’ve been a part of groups where we said were going to hold each other accountable. And then when people don’t do what they said they set their accountability as, no one else feels comfortable holding their feet to the fire and saying, “Why?”
KW: That’s the breakdown.
JA: And that is the breakdown, yes.
KW: At the end of the meeting you have to set a goal and the other members have to be listening, they have to be present when you set the goal. Don’t just go around the room, set a goal, and end the call. You have to talk about the goals because somebody has to be the check that says, “Wait a minute, is that attainable what you just said?” Okay, but the next meeting, we’re gonna meet 2 weeks from now and my goal I’m going to solve world hunger, okay everybody, have a great day. Somebody has to say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, Ken, that sounds cool and all but that’s not an attainable goal. Like, is that even realistic? What is it you can actually get done knowing your life? You have kids, you have a family, you have a job. What is it you’re going to actually get done that moves the ball forward on this overall goal you have?” So if you’re in a group that doesn’t do that for you week after week, it’s time to excuse yourself from that group. You can still be friends, you can stay in touch. But find a mastermind group that works for you.
JA: So when we do the bonus segment I want to talk about ways to possibly vet or mitigate that from happening b/c it’s happened to me twice at this point and it really turned me off from mastermind groups because I felt like, in one of the groups, I felt like I was the one who kept saying, you know, did you get it done? Did you get it done? Whereas the other members kind of weren’t really pressed. And like you said, like you just said, I realized that I needed to leave. It goes back to what you said -- what is it that you want? I realize that the other members wanted more of a social group. They wanted to keep in touch and share what they were working on. They weren’t looking for anyone to hold them accountable, they just wanted to do their own thing and share from time to time. And it wasn’t what I was looking for. So I would love to come back and talk about ways to mitigate that. Are there any other categories? You said guru-led, peer-led, anything else?
KW: No, I think in a business context, those are two really broad buckets and obviously outside of business you can have religious mastermind groups, sometimes they call them sermon based small groups or bible study groups or mens’ groups, all kinds of these things. I keep getting people who sign up and then they cancel b/c they’re looking for a mastermind group for yoga instructors you know what i mean? There’s so many diff categories for how mastermind groups can help people, it’s becoming very wide spread.
JA: Yeah, there’s so many ways to niche it down and for anyone who’s a yoga instructor who wants to maybe have some additional revenue, business idea right there. So let’s talk about the importance and value -- from a business standpoint, joining a mastermind group will help you to grow faster, you know, we all know this intuitively., whether we fight it or not. But you can only go so far. What is that african proverb? If you want to go far go --
KW: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others.
JA: Yes, thank you, Ken. So mastermind group, that’s really what it comes down to. And it also is something else and this is what we talked about a couple months ago of just visibility is also important -- it’s not only lonely as especially an online or digital entrepreneur but it can also be hard to find people who are interested, have similar values and interests, but also might look like you which is very important you know and that’s why i remember when we spoke you said that there were some women who have reached out to you and were looking to be part of a womens’ group for various reasons. Can you share one of those stories and then we can come back and talk about other aspects of visibility.
KW: Sure. Without sharing names, in the early onboard questionnaire, I never ask things like age, race, gender, ano of that kind of stuff because what i do for my day job is kind of training to realize that you don’t collect information you don’t need to get the job done because it’s just adding liability for yourself and frankly it’s just extra creepiness for no reason. So i never ask those questions. And while i did ask for profile pictures, i only used those really for when i was making introductions to people. And so I had placed this lady in particular into a mastermind group and it just so happened she was the only woman in this mastermind group. And they met two or three times and then she reached out to me and said, “Ken this group is pretty great, you know, I'm the oldest person in the group which is fine but what really sticks out to me is that I'm the only female in the group and I didn't think it mattered as much until i started meeting with these guys and we just have different challenges right now in the world that we live in right now in the tech environment. I see things happening in tech that I'm faced with that i’m working through that these guys aren’t confronted with. And while they’re open to it, open to discussing it, they really can’t relate and give me feedback and how they’ve solved certain problems. So it would be great if you matched me, in addition to this group, I'd like to be in another group that is just all women.” and so that was really eye opening for me. And again, always listen to your customers. Because for me, in the two mastermind I was in at that time, both of them had a female in them, you know, one of them was two women and two men and one of them was three men and one woman. And it had never occurred to me that maybe their gender was influencing how we interact with one another or, like, the ranges of experience is coloring how we solve the problems with one another. So anyway, this kind of struck me as like a new thing i really needed to reflect on and research.
The first problem I had was I didn't know who in my program was female. I mean you get a sense of it just by looking at names and seeing profile pictures but i can tell you you’ll get in trouble really fast if you start just like tagging people male or female just based on their profile picture. And that leads nowhere but embarrassment. It’s like going up and congratulating somebody on being pregnant. So that became a turning point for me where i was like, you know, and at the time I was working on building a new platform to make the mastermind group experience better so i really had to think on this. Like, well, should i be adding the question of gender and if i add gender, what else should I add? I’m coming from a place of maybe i have some biases that I'm working with, that i’m working from but I hadn't considered this before. So maybe some of these other questions are relevant.
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