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This is Internet Business Mastery, episode #58.

In a world where bosses control your life, and thoughts of escape fill your mind, where inspiration seems dead, and cynicism rules the masses, you have a desire to break free, you feel the need to take control. Now, there exists a place where the secrets of freedom and wealth are given to those who believe. Internet Business Mastery.com – free your mind!

Sterling: Hello, and welcome to Internet Business Mastery online at InternetBusinessMastery.com. I’m Sterling…

Jay: And I’m Jay.

Sterling: And we’re here to help you escape the ‘9 to 5,’ and live the lifestyle of your dreams by turning your life’s passion into a profitable internet business, even if you’re just getting started today. Now on this episode of Internet Business Mastery, we’re going to talk about mastermind magic, double your progress with a powerful peer group, part two. And we also have the perfect tool for finding out exactly what your market wants.

So have you rested up after our long trip to Salt Lake City?

Jay: Yeah, I think I’m recovered, that was quite the marathon. I didn’t realize it, but when I got back, I guess the more I thought about it, it was like two days straight of talking, and brainstorming, and more talking, and meeting, and brainstorming, and more talking.

I got home and Melanie was looking for a debrief on the trip, and she wanted to hear all about that video show because that was what the trip was about – was planning our new web TV show. And I was just like, “Uh, I can’t talk about it right now.”

Sterling: I know, even when we took a break to do lunch or dinner, we talked about the new web TV show, and then when we met with friends, we had them help us and talk about the web TV show constantly over and over again.

Jay: But she eventually got her run down on the week’s activities, so anyway yeah, I’m feeling recovered now and very excited about the cool stuff that we came up with. I mean it’s nice to have a format all outlined, and have an idea of what visually it’s going to look like, and the different segments we want to do, and how we’re going to make it a fun and entertaining show. So it was definitely a productive trip.

Sterling: Was she excited?

Jay: Yeah, she liked all the ideas that we came up with, and she’s like, “Oh man, I feel like I missed out,” because she’s been there so often in the past when we’ve done brainstorming sessions on different Internet Business Mastery stuff. She’s like, “Dangit! I didn’t get my two cents in,” or whatever. I was like, well if you have any ideas, let us know.

But yeah, she was really psyched for the stuff that we put together, so we’re definitely very excited for that.

Sterling: Yeah, it was very cool to see their web business startup going on with actually studios, and offices, and all that kind of stuff. That was really interesting to see it all be built as we’re walking around, and they had crew in there building all the stage stuff, as well as the edit bays, and all sorts of stuff.

It’s all really interesting seeing that, and the business we’re going to be working with is GotBiz.tv, I believe that’s right?

Jay: Yeah, cool. If you’re listening to this and haven’t seen the pictures that we took, go check out the blog at InternetBusinessMastery.com, and we’ve got some pics of the early stages of this studio being built. And one of the coolest part of the whole thing is it is a stone’s throw from where I used to slave away in a cubicle five or six years ago when I was still an engineer.

I found a lot of poetic cosmic whatever in that fact that I would be doing a web TV show all about escaping the cubicle, and it was happening just right next door to where I used to be in a cubicle myself. So it was very satisfying to think several years back and to realize that the journey between two points that were so close geographically, yet so far apart in all the mindset changes and business development, to everything I’ve been able to do in the last five or six years.

It’s just a very poignant juxtaposition of those two things. So you can bet I’ll be mentioning that on the show whenever I can.

Sterling: Well and the cool thing is, and we talked about this a little while we were there is, like I was asking you, so where do you think you’d be now if you were still in that cubicle? And if we go back in time just before you decided you were going to leave, could you ever imagine that within a block of where you’re working now, you would be doing a web TV show? Like would have ever even thought that would be possible?

Jay: No, not at all, that’s pretty crazy. Of course back then I had no idea what my business was going to become, I had no idea…podcasting did not even exist. iPods were maybe barely out then, so web media has certainly come a long way since then. So it’s just crazy to think about, yeah, where that journey has taken me.

Sterling: Well and it was interesting for me too, just last night I got together with an old friend when we were in the whole cubicle world. He came down from L.A., and he was the guy who gave me the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” books, his name’s Marcello. And it was so cool to see him and to show him the empire that we’ve created with this whole thing, whereas he’s actually the one that handed me a book that’s actually started it all.

And I was like, wow thanks, it’s all your fault. But he’s actually finally just at Christmas time quit and now is going on the same journey. So it was an interesting…just within the same week you’re seeing the actual cubicle business you were at, and I’m meeting with the guy who actually helped me escape my cubicle.

So very cool, and there’s no way that I could of imaged a few years ago that podcasting would ever exist, that I would be doing a web TV show, or any of that stuff. It’s just a very exciting time of what we can do as solo-preneurs….just a couple of guys going hey, we’re done with these crummy jobs, and all of a sudden now we’ve got a show.

Jay: It’s interesting how it all comes full circle in very unexpected ways.

And now the featured segment…

Jay: Alright, on the main segment for this episode, we’re going to continue our discussion about mastermind groups. And just to kind of review what we talked about on the last episode – we talked about how a mastermind group is something that was kind of proposed, and defined, and talked about in the book “Think and Grow Rich,” and the definition that he offers up is: the coordination of knowledge and effort of two or more people, who work towards a definite purpose in the spirit of harmony. No two minds ever come together without thereby creating a third invisible intangible force which may be likened to a third mind.

So in part one, we went over some of the benefits of having a mastermind group. We talked about how a mastermind group works, and some of the foundational principles behind putting together and running a mastermind group of your own. So if you haven’t had a chance, definitely go back on the blog at InternetBusinessMastery.com, and find that episode, episode #57 to hear part number one.

Well, and in part number two today, we’re going to talk about how you can find group members for your mastermind group, how you actually…the step-by-step process of putting one together, and getting it going. And so after this, you’ll have a definite idea of how you can yourself create your own mastermind group if you haven’t already.

So, finding group members – and we have some great input, and questions, and things that came from our Twitter stream, people following us over on Twitter, at Twitter.com. And you can find if you want to follow us on Twitter, you can go to InternetBusinessMastery.com/Connect, and we’re going to have a page there that has all that information.
But one of the ideas that came from Joe Evans who listens to the show, he says he wanted to know about good ways to advertise and get your mastermind group known. That was a question that came from him. So you want to start a mastermind group, maybe you have one or two people in mind, or maybe you have nobody in mind to start it with, you just want to advertise and get the word out there so you can start one yourself.

Well, one of the first ways that comes to my mind is the Internet Business Mastery mastermind community, that scenario within the Academy itself. And we had last year when I counted, it was a dozen, and now I’m sure it’s many, many more than that. All over the world different mastermind groups of people, Academy members who now get together in a variety of different…I know there’s one in Houston, I think there’s one in California, there’s all these different places.

You went to one, Sterling I know in Salt Lake City, and these are Academy members who have met each other through the forums, and inside the Academy, and have now put together these kinds of groups. Obviously these are likeminded people because they are all part of a premium community learning the same things, trying to do the same types of activities for themselves. So that’s a logical place to go that comes to mind first.

Second of all, you can always try Facebook. Think about it, Facebook has a lot of information about different people on there, and you can actually search for different kinds of people. And so for instance, you can go in there and look for people in your geographic area, and you can do the same on Myspace for that matter. Look for people in your city, look for people who have mentioned words like ‘entrepreneur,’ ‘small business,’ or specifically ‘internet business,’ ‘internet marketing.’

So do some searches and see if you can find some people, shoot them a friend request with a little note saying, “Hey, I see you’re in this city, that you do internet marketing, just wanted to connect with you, and see what you’re up to,” and interact with them a little bit on Facebook. And then that way you can maybe form a group or find some people through Facebook or Myspace, and eventually then propose getting together, and maybe you don’t even say mastermind at first.

Just say, “Hey let’s get together over coffee, or maybe have dinner together and just chat about what we’re up to,” and that way you can kind of feel it out and get to know them. And if it seems like a good fit at that point, you can say, “Hey, you know might be cool is if we get together every month and have a mastermind meeting where we share ideas about our businesses and what we’re up to.”

A third idea that comes to mind is Meetup.com. I know a lot of the big cities have very active Meetup groups. Meetup.com is a place where people can form clubs or groups, and get together based on all kinds of very specific niches, everything from Chihuahua owners, to scuba divers, to Indie movie enthusiasts, and so on, and so forth. And we’ve used Meetup.com to find a variety of groups ourselves, to go and meet.

I know in New York City, I met lot of great people with very interesting groups that I found from Meetup.com. So you can go on there and tell what your city is, and what kind of interests you have, and maybe there’s a group already formed, maybe there’s not one at all, and you can go ahead and start one. There’s a small fee for that monthly, but it gives you all the tools you would need to put together a group, and to put together meetings and have them get together on a regular basis. So you can try it out – Meetup.com.

Sterling: Yeah, Meetup is really great because once I moved to San Diego I realized in the last couple of months that if I wanted to go to some sort of a group meeting every single day – yes, including Saturday and Sunday, I could very easily do that. And in fact sometimes…and these are most stuff to do with internet business, small business, even SEO stuff, traffic stuff.

If that’s all I wanted to do, I could do it almost every day. So big cities have that, even in Salt Lake there was a few. But man, when you go to a bigger city, all of a sudden, it’s just groups every single day. It’s awesome.

Jay: And the last idea that comes to mind is a very popular internet marketing and internet business related forum online, it’s called the Warrior Forum. The easiest way to find that would just be to Google ‘Warrior Forum,’ and there’s all kinds of people.

Now it’s been a while, and there’s a lot of different people that are in and out, and are on and off of that forum, but you might want to try looking around and see if you can find people on there that are in your area, or maybe just kind of even making a post saying you’re trying to put together a mastermind group in your area, and see what kind of responses you get. So that’s another place that comes to mind you can go and look.

So the Internet Business Mastery mastermind community in the Academy, Facebook, and Myspace, Meetup.com, and the Warrior Forum are all great places to get started, either looking for people to get together with or advertising a group that you already have. Now one thing we might want to point out is that actually it may not be in your interest to openly advertise it everywhere once you’ve kind of got it going, because again, you want to keep a very tight knit group of preferably two to eight people that there’s a good gelling and people have the same kind of goals and things that they’re going for.

So maybe keep in mind that you might want to just kind of little by little organically try to identify and shoot invites specifically to people rather than maybe going and posting a big advertisement saying, “Hey everybody come and join the mastermind,” because next thing you know you’ve got lots of people in all varying levels of experience and dedication. So just keep that in mind as you’re looking for groups.

Sterling: Well and one actually thing I was going to mention about this is, I actually when I get started on wanting to start just a little individual group like this, I’ll go to a lot of Meetup groups and if I find other people that are interested, or seem likeminded, and about the same level, if I’m starting a new one, I’ll invite them to a separate group that I would just be running myself or whatever.

And in fact, we’re just about to do that now. So that’s a way to do it where you can start a group, but that’s not going to be the real group, it’s just a group where you’re going to try and find people that will work for you little individual group. And there’s lots of ways to do this, but that’s a way to filter people.

And then you actually just invite them as a guest, and if everybody else goes, yeah that works; then you can invite them to become a member, which there’s no fees or anything with ours. But it just means that you officially get invited to come every time.

Jay: Yep, that’s a great tip. Alright, so there are some ideas for finding group members to put your group together. Now, let’s talk about once you start finding people, and are ready to start, how you actually put one together. And on Twitter, Xavier D asked, “I’d like to know how to best outline requirements for becoming part of a group. Is this usually a formal thing or informal thing when it comes to screening people?”

So yeah, you want to definitely want to give that some thought right up front. That’d be the first step, is to decide how are you going to screen people? What kind of people are you looking for? What kind of experience level? And again, remember last time everything we’ve already mentioned about being like minded, and similar minded. Lots of beginners mixing with incredibly experienced people, and it’s just out of balance.

So all the different things we’ve mentioned about going to Meetups and kind of keeping an eye out, and seeing who are the people you gel well with, and who seem like they’d be a good fit, and then put out a personal invitation. So formal or informal, I don’t know, I think you just have a kind of a good sense, and as soon as it becomes four or five people, you just kind of all…like the great tip that Sterling just gave, maybe you invite somebody as a guest, or you don’t even tell them it’s a mastermind.

Maybe you just have everybody get together over coffee or dinner and chat, and maybe later everybody who’s in the group say, “Hey, what did you think of so and so?” And they can kind of give a ‘yeah,’ or ‘nay’ as to whether they want to extend a formal invitation to be a permanent part of a mastermind group.

But definitely, you do want some sort of screening people, so just kind of decide up front what you’re going to be looking for and how you’re going to do that. So that would be step number one of how to put together your mastermind group.

Sterling: Well, and I would say with the formal and the informal part of the question, I actually found that once the groups I was in became the most useful for me was when we sort of got more formal. When we started becoming more okay, we’ve got a certain amount of time for this, a certain amount of time for that, and we’re going to go over this a little bit more, but I just wanted to mention.

If everybody’s just kind of chit chatting, a lot of times there’s not nearly as much use if everybody’s complexly focused, and this person, they say what’s going on, and everybody specifically helps them right then and there, and then we move to the next person. I’ve found far more useful tips in that kind of stuff when we did that.

Jay: Is there a formal document or a formal process through which you screen people in groups that you’ve been in? I mean I know one thing in some groups is they actually say only people who are making six figures or more can be in this group. Or is it usually more of just an informal everybody gets a feel for somebody and decides if they’re in the group?

Sterling: Yeah, it was more a feel, like once we see what their business is up to; make sure that it is the same. Because if you’re with a brand new person, and then you’ve got five other people who are not making six, seven figures a year, obviously it’s going to be like not a balance like you were mentioning before where one person is kind of getting all the information, and it’s harder for them to give back.

So yeah, it was one of the things where when I was invited to one, it was after almost every single person in the group had bought from me, and then they realized I was in Salt Lake, and then they invited me. So they saw that I had a business going, and they invited me again as a guest, and then invited me to actually stay with the group after they saw that I actually knew what I was doing and that kind of stuff.

So in that case it was kind of both things, it was they got a feel for me, and they all bought products from me.

Alright, number two, you’re going to want to choose a meeting spot. Now there’s quite a few different ways you can do this. I’ve done many of these; one of the big things we used was just a local library. They usually have conference rooms, or what they call meeting rooms. And the mastermind group that I did in Salt Lake, they actually went to the library every time and just used one of their free meeting rooms.

You can also use somebody else’s office, if somebody has an office or office space that you can use. You can do that. Somebody’s home, you can also rent a conference room, and then everybody divides the cost. And one thing to do is, definitely avoid bars, or restaurants, or places that are noisy.

And it’s interesting because I’ve been going like I said a lot of these little Meetup groups and stuff, and there’s been a couple of restaurants that’s quiet enough to hear, but a lot of times especially if it’s kind of hip or a happening place, you can barely hear and everybody’s leaning in. And it’s best to completely stay away from that.

And one thing I just started doing is I actually have a mastermind group now where we play Frisbee golf. That’s where we do it, and this started with a friend Social Rob and Tri Swim Coach (that’s their Twitter names), we were actually just playing this Frisbee Golf (for the first time for me) just a couple of weeks ago, and the entire time we were playing we were talking about internet marketing.

So I said hey, why don’t we make a mastermind group, and then just add another couple of members from time to time? And it worked out great, everybody was excited about it. And as opposed to when we’re sitting in the library when I did that, we’ve all got notepads and that’s more of a formal setting. But nowadays, we all just whipped out our iPhones and stuff when somebody said a site we didn’t know about, and we just really quickly…I’ll just do a jot to myself, and take care of it that way, and we can still play and have a good time all at the same time.

So finding a meeting spot that works for you and it might even be fun. That’s just a high suggestion for you.

Jay: Yeah, we went to the mastermind group last week in Salt Lake, the one you’ve been a part of, and it was at that library. And actually I’ve been to that same library when I was president of the real estate investing group when you met me. That’s where we’d have our board meetings for our real estate investing group.

And as long as you weren’t charging money, or trying to sell anything there, those conference rooms were free. And they’re pretty nice conference rooms, with white boards, and you can easily fit eight people in there around a table. So definitely ask your local library if they have such a thing, because there’s a good chance that there is, and that’s a really handy way to do that kind of thing.

Alright, number three is – set some ground rules. And this may be something once you’ve found the initial group of people, the two, or three, or four, or however many people you want to start with. Once you’re ready to get going, and probably this will be what you do in the first meeting.

But you want at first just talk about what are the ground rules, how are we going to conduct this thing? What are some of the different things that are going to determine how we go about this mastermind meeting. So here’s a number of things you want to consider.

The first thing you want to consider is ask yourself, what is going to be expected as being part of this mastermind group?

Sterling: Yeah, and in one that I’ve been in, one of the things that was expected is that you need to be at all the meetings. Because what we’ve found in other groups is, sometimes people would just be there when they would present and ask for help, and then the next time somebody else would present, and they wouldn’t be there. And that’s just not fair to anybody.

So that’s just one of those examples of what is going to be expected of the group. And also, you want to be on time, and all this kind of stuff. But just let everybody know that this is actually how it’s going to be, so people aren’t just showing up whenever they want. That’s a little harder to do there, but at least you can put it out and say, this is what is expected if you’re going to be a member of this group.

Jay: Yeah, all those are great considerations. What’s expected when it comes to showing up, to being on time. Things happen, so maybe you have ground rules like well yeah sure, if you have to miss one every few months fine, but have that all laid out so people know that that’s going to be the case up front. Because if those become problems later and it wasn’t laid out…it’s a lot harder to take care of those things after the fact.

And of course another thing you want to decide is how often you are going to meet. Is it going to be weekly, is it going to be monthly, and of course what we suggest is what’s most effective is at least do monthly if you can. And if it makes sense to even a little bit more than that.

Sterling: Yeah I think it depends, I think you’ll see right away and you can just put something out there at first like once a month just to get it rolling. But you’ll start seeing what kind of value you’ll get from it. So for instance in Salt Lake, we started meeting every three weeks because we were getting so much value, we didn’t want to just meet once a month.

And actually here in San Diego, we’re going to do it every two weeks, because the entire time we’re just constantly helping each other at a completely different level. So you just have to feel it out and see what kind of value you’re getting from the group.

Jay: So another thing you want to decide is how…I guess we already kind of talked about this, how is somebody going to be accepted into the group? I mean if you have an initial group of people, maybe…we’ve already kind of talked about this point quite a bit, but at that point, if you do maybe have an initial handful of people, you might just want to say okay, we’ve got three people now, or we’ve got four or five – what’s the max you want to have, and how are we going to accept new people?
But we’ve already kind of talked about that. And the next thing is you know, we’ve talked about you want to have expectations and ground rules, and things like that. Well, how are you going to enforce this thing? And I actually heard some pretty creative ways about…you know, sometimes there does need to be a little bit of motivation for people to stick to the ground rules so they take it seriously, because you want it to be valuable for everyone.

So some of the creative things that I’ve heard of for instance, if you’re late so many times or if you miss a meeting, you have to pay a certain amount to a charity for instance. Or there’s the obvious risk of possibly so many strikes and you’re out. Unfortunately we’ve got to remove you from the group because you never come, or whatever the case might be.

And so again, just decide beforehand, how are you going to enforce the ground rules and the things that you’ve set up?

Sterling: Yeah, we’ve actually thought about paying dues once a year, but then we were kind of talking about a lot of the guys in the one group I was in, they were making enough money that anything like a fine or any of that stuff, wouldn’t be enough of an incentive for them to be there if they weren’t going to anyway.

Or even if they paid $300 a year, they’re like oh well I can’t be there, so I’m just not going to be there. It doesn’t feel like they’re losing anything from that. But basically what we did, there were a couple of people we kind of let go from the group. And really, it was pretty light.

There’s times sometimes when we didn’t get together every three weeks, so this particular month we were all just busy and then the next month we were actually busy. And what ends up happening is you can just very lightly let the person go, like they’re off the email list. They just don’t get the emails for coming.

I mean we did that one time for somebody because we hadn’t got together for a while, and then we just kind of stopped sending emails. So, let them off easy.

Jay: Another thing to decide is obviously how long are the meetings going to be? Usually I think it’s good for everyone to know what to expect. It’s going to be a valuable experience for everybody, but people should know…okay this is going to be a two hour block, and then I know I can go back and I’ve got my other work to get back to and stuff. So if you want people to take it seriously, you definitely want to outline that beforehand so people know what to expect.

And don’t come, and then sometimes it’s an hour and a half, sometimes it goes three hours, and so you want to respect everybody’s time and set a guideline there as well.

Sterling: Well and the first time you get together you can just figure this stuff out really quickly, and say, “It’s going to be two hours, and we’re going to meet every three weeks,” bam, done. And then everybody knows.

Jay: And now one person on Twitter is asking, “Is there any kind of NDA or non-disclosure agreement that should be necessary?” And this is something I’ve never used one before, but it’s definitely going to depend on the comfort level of the group. Because you do want people to feel comfortable about sharing their deepest, most insider secrets, you don’t want to do anything that’s going to compromise your business.

But this is in the interest of trying to help everybody out with just some of the latest and coolest stuff that you’re doing. So if it makes people more comfortable, you can always consider passing out some kind of non-disclosure that everybody can sign.

Sterling: Yeah, and this is kind of an interesting question to me, because really the group’s there so everybody can kind of swipe from each other. And there’s been times when I actually gave out information about something I was just now doing, and other people took it and did it exactly at the same time, and I had to realize oh well, I’m giving this information out so that we can all do this.

Now just because somebody can do it faster than me, you just have to consider all this ahead of time. And I don’t know that any of the people in the groups I’m in would do a non-disclosure agreement. You just have to know that if you don’t want people to know about it, just don’t say it at the group, because most times when you’re with people who take action, when they hear an idea you’re doing and they like it, they want to take action. They want to go do it right then. So, you just have to consider that.

Jay: Well, I guess an example of where this would maybe be appropriate is if somebody shares something that they’re up to, and then they share actual numbers in order to reinforce and give an example of what they’re doing, and they might say, yeah, I made ‘x’ amount of dollars off of this. And my company profited such and such from this last quarter, and they’re saying that for the benefit of the group, but they don’t want people to feel comfortable to want to know. It’s like okay, don’t go blogging my business’ financials just because I said it in the meeting.

And that can be something as simple as yeah, if an idea is given in this group, understand that people are going to take it and use it, but don’t go sharing sensitive information that people may share in confidence of the group. But you don’t want to go and say…somebody says, “Yeah we did such and such, and we lost so many people out of our email list,” that’s not something they want transmitted everywhere.

So you want to be sensitive to that, and whether it’s formal or informal, that’s just another expectation to lay out there and have understood by everybody, so that there’s no misunderstandings or people getting upset at what’s happening.

And a question that came in from Mark Mason on Twitter as well, he says, “Should there be a business profit model for a mastermind group, or should the group just be non for profit?” And really that’s up to you, there’s groups that charge many, many, many thousands of dollars a year to be a part of, and then there’s ones that are absolutely free, and everything in between.

And certainly if you’re to the level where you feel you’ve got the clout in order for people to be a member of your mastermind group, and for you to run it, and for you to put it together and organize it and make it a premium experience for everyone, and you can charge for it, then by all means. That’s obviously a personal question when it comes to your own business goals.

Sterling: Yeah, they’re very different models for sure, because obviously the one where we get together every three weeks is more of a tight knit group. We’re all just in the same area; we get to know each other’s business really, really well, because we’re meeting so often. But more of the premium model, I went to one where you had to have a certain amount of money per year to get in, and you pay like $20,000 a year to be a part of it, but you only go quarterly, and you fly to a specific place, it’s for several days, and it’s more high end like that.

But then there’s all sorts of stuff to put together to make that happen, because they have little events during it. We do the mastermind all day, and then have cocktail party at night, and all this kind of stuff. And there was more money put out for the person organizing the actual event.

But I think to get started, the suggestion would be just to start…find four or five people that you can all help each other out, and just get started right away instead of trying to do more of a high end business model where you can actually make profit from it.

Alright, number four – plan a format for each meeting. Examples include: let’s say okay…here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to give the example of what we did at the Salt Lake meeting. Basically the first fifteen to thirty minutes, we do kind of a general chat where we talk about past projects that others had advised us on, and how that worked out, as well as review each other’s goals and progress on just things we talked about that we did the last time, or the time before, or whatever.

Then, we get into more of a directed one person at a time mode. And that’s where everybody gets about 10 to 15 minutes, and sometimes we even only do a couple of people each meeting, and then they’ll get more 45 minutes. And that’s if somebody requests more time.

But generally everybody gets about 10 or 15 minutes to present, and basically during their time each person can talk about a problem that they have in their business, and ask for feedback, and/or they share some big tip that they have, or some new sales technique that they did that worked really, really well. Or some piece of copy that they did, or an opt in box that they created, and got the best numbers from; they’ll present that to everybody.

And everybody just sits there and jots it all down, and a lot of times we even bring in papers showing the copy that we had, or snag it on a screen that’s worked really well for us so that we can actually have handouts to give everybody. And then basically one person gets the feedback of everybody on their project.

So let’s say that I would go and I would say, “Oh, I’ve got this opt in box, it needs to be fixed; what do you guys think?” And then everybody just sits there and brainstorms, “Well I do it this way, I add an animated gif; you should try that.” And somebody else says, “Oh you want this headline, and you want this arrow,” and everybody just tells you stuff, you write it all down, and then obviously when you get back to working you try it out.

And then the next time you come, you tell them how it worked, or you find out oh, I tried this thing that nobody talked about and it actually worked better. So you come back the next time and you present that so everybody can then go off and test that as well. And that’s just how each particular meeting works out. How about for you? How do you guys do it?

Jay: Oh, well very similar thing. We’ve had meeting where we’ve started out by saying…a lot of times what we’ll do is we’ll set…sometimes people like accountability to come into the meeting. And so at the end of the meeting, we set goals, so the beginning of the next meeting we kind of review and say, “So hey, last meeting you said that the big bold move that you wanted to do this month was such and such. How did that go?”

And so you can work that kind of a thing. But yeah, something that’s always helped is everybody just brings their one or two biggest questions or pains in their business, and just says, “Hey one of the big things I’m dealing with right now is my books are just out of control, how do you handle that?” And then everyone gives great ideas and that person goes away ready to overcome that hurdle.

So that’s kind of how it’s been done for us, for me and the groups that I’ve been in.

Alright so, that gives you several different ideas of format that you can have for your mastermind meetings. And the fifth thing you want to make sure you do is, is to just appoint any responsibilities. So you know for example, you might have somebody who’s…you should have somebody who’s the meeting organizer, because if somebody’s not responsible for scheduling the meeting, scheduling the room, just emailing everyone saying, “Hey can everyone be there at such and such a time.”

That’s something you want to have a point person to take care of. So make sure somebody is appointed as your organizer.

Sterling: Yeah, we actually assigned a president, and basically that position actually rotates every couple of months. And what they do is they actually send an email a week before the actual meeting takes place, and then they send another email the day before to remind everybody and tell everybody where it is, and what time, and how long, and that kind of thing.

And then everybody’s supposed to RSVP, and the reason why is because if more than two people can’t come, we actually cancel the meeting and try again in a week or two from that time. So we want to have as many people there as possible. So again, if you only have five people, and two people aren’t there, then you’re losing out on a big portion of the group.

Jay: And something else that sometimes we’ve done in masterminds I’ve been a part of is to appoint somebody to do like meeting minutes – somebody who writes down all the different stuff that’s talked about. And this may or may not be something you want to do, but I mentioned earlier that we like to set some goals and hold each other kind of accountable and follow up with each other.

So obviously having somebody who writes down all of that so we can review it the next meeting is important, so you may want to if you’re going to do something like that, it may be helpful to…and it can rotate. You might just say hey at the beginning of the meeting, who want to take notes for this particular one? But that’s something else to consider.

Sterling: Yeah, we’ve never done that, but it’s really a great idea because the person who actually does the minutes, they can send out an email afterwards with all the links, or certain things that people talked about, just for people who didn’t write it down, or just didn’t remember certain things that were talked about, because they were writing other things down. Because sometimes we’re in a flurry of writing things down, because people bring such great ideas.

They’ll say ten things, and I’ll get five or six. Now if somebody was doing minutes, it would all be able to get down; that would be awesome.

Jay: Yeah, that’s a great idea, because just in all the talking, you don’t catch everything that’s going around. And that sounds like a good thing, it would be nice to rotate and share, because if one person’s taking the notes every meeting, it would get pretty arduous, but definitely something to consider.

And then the sixth thing as far as how to run your group is you can set up online tools for interaction. So if you do…sometimes if you meet once a month, and you think well, it would be cool to be able to interact more often. Obviously, there’s the email thing which sometimes works for people, but of course you could start a Facebook group, you could interact that way.

You could start a private forum; you can post stuff and follow up with each other that way. Maybe you start a Skype chat that you all get on from time to time; of course we refer to in the Academy. A number of our members in the Academy have a Skype chat where they get together, and day in and day out, they’re in there asking each other questions and motivating each other, just chit chatting sometimes.

And that allows kind of the mastermind thing to permeate throughout the month, rather than just every three weeks or every four weeks or whatever the case might be for your meetings. So if you deem that, it would be worthwhile to have that kind of thing, you can always consider setting up those kinds of online tools for your group.

And then Mark Mason had another question that he asked on Twitter. He said, “Should there be free alcohol at mastermind meetings, and if so, how much? Who should be responsible for bringing the blender?” Well all I can say is, if it’s a Meetup or a meeting in Portland, then come to find out, beer is like a required thing.

I don’t think I’ve been to a single get together….I even went to a little thing on the weekend that was about starting up a blog for your business, and they got somebody to donate and bring the beer for that. Portland’s known for beer, so I guess that’s a big thing here. I don’t know, what’s your take on that Sterling?

Sterling: Well, most of the mastermind groups I’ve been in have been in Utah, where about the best you get is Jello. So there’s been no alcohol.

Jay: Who’s bringing the casserole?

Sterling: You definitely want to wait until the end of the group, so you’re not ruining it by everybody’s drunk or something. But nice, Mark.

Jay: Yeah, that actually brought up an interesting thing. You kind of touched on this, is that maybe you have your meeting, but every once in a while you guys should just get your group together to go to a movie, or meet at a pub, or go play Frisbee golf or whatever the case may be.

I mean that may be a very worthwhile thing too, sometimes we’d have our mastermind meeting, and then we’d go out to eat. We’ve done that before in groups I’ve been a part of, so something to think about.
Alright, now I just want to point out that as you noticed we took a number of questions for this episode through Twitter, so when I was outlining the episode and we were getting ready for it, we just threw the question out there on Twitter, ‘hey we’re going to be doing an episode on mastermind meetings, what questions do you have?’ and a whole bunch of questions came back.

So that is a great place to interact with us and to find out what our shows are going to be about, and to get your questions in if you’ve got them. So if you want to know more about how to follow us on Twitter and have that kind of interaction, go to InternetBusinessMastery.com/Connect.

Sterling: Alright, it’s time to take action. Number one, find at least one person, preferably a few other people, to form a mastermind group with.

Number two, set up your first meeting. And now, we want you to tell us what you think. We’d like to hear your thoughts on this. You can interact with us and others in the community by visiting the blog post on InternetBusinessMastery.com for this episode, which is number 58.

Here’s the question (actually there’s two questions): what other ideas do you have for finding mastermind group members, and what other tips do you have for running a successful mastermind group?

It’s time for the Internet Business Quick Tip….

Jay: Alright, in this episode’s Quick Tip, we’ve got the perfect tool for finding out exactly what your market wants. This is a tool that we use every time we’re going to launch a new product, every time we’re going to launch a new site. We even did it recently when we got ready to put together a new web TV show, and that is we put a new survey out to our list.

And it’s just amazing the kind of insight that you get back, and even if all you get is thirty or forty responses, you can definitely get information that’s going to be very insightful, and may keep you from doing stuff that wouldn’t work, and may give you just that key idea or something you completely missed when it comes to what your market wants.

And as we’ve talked many times before, it’s always a lot easier to get your market to buy what they want versus just what you think they need. So, the surveying tool that we recommend and use is Survey Monkey which can be found over at SurveyMonkey.com. They’ve got both a free and a paid version, just kind of depending on what your needs are, and how many responses you want to get.

But SurveyMonkey.com is either free or very inexpensive if you need the Pro version. It just makes it very easy to put together surveys, and you can send that link out and people go over there and they fill out the survey, and then you’ve got all the data tabulated and ready for you to look through when you’re done. So definitely check out SurveyMonkey.com for finding out what your market really wants.

Sterling: I’m actually always pretty surprised when I talk to other internet business owners that they don’t survey very much, if at all. Because I know that even with the Internet Business Mastery Academy, we did a lot of surveying ahead of time so we could when we created our sales letter, we could of course have exactly what everybody wanted in there.

And sometimes it was much different than what we actually guessed they wanted. So rather than just guessing and going hmm, I wonder what people want with this product, you can just ask them. Then it’s like tailor made. They almost can’t say no, because it’s exactly what they said they wanted. I love that. I love Survey Monkey.

Jay: Yeah, it’s a pretty handy tool, and definitely under utilized when it comes to many businesses. So don’t make that mistake, put it to use for yourself starting now!

Sterling: Now if you’ve like dozen of other resources such as this one, you can find them in the Internet Business Mastery Academy along with video tutorials of us showing you exactly how we use them. And to get a 30 day no risk trial membership to the Internet Business Mastery Academy, visit freeaudiogift.com.

That’s it for this episode of Internet Business Mastery, until next time we wish you ultimate success in your internet business.

You’ve been listening to the Iconiclass of the 9 to 5, and the purveyors of freedom and fulfillment – Sterling and Jay! Sterling and Jay invite you to discover one of their most popular audio programs ever, the free builders of designing your ultimate internet lifestyle! Visit freeaudiogift.com now and sign up for the free weekly Internet Business Mastery email newsletter! And you’ll get instant access to the life changing audio presentations, pulled directly from the content of the acclaimed Internet Business Mastery Academy membership community. Go now to freeaudiogift.com! Internet Business Mastery – free your mind!