Mastermind groups have been the single biggest accelerator of my growth as an entrepreneur. Platform, publicity, connections, revenue – you name it. Moreover, nearly every high-level person I’ve worked with has either been in a group or is in one right now. Not a coincidence.
One of the things I love about masterminds: the game is rigged because you dictate the returns. A mastermind rewards the people who show up for it. The value you pull out is almost always commensurate to what you pour in.
A big part of the value of a mastermind is that you intentionally create the time, space, and place to do the kind of deep, critical thinking your normal week never allows.
I often talk, as friends, with people in masterminds. We often share business or growth insights when we catch up. It is nowhere near the same dynamic as when we meet in a mastermind. I am a strong believer that the intentional space created yields a special kind of return.
What follows is the handful of things I do, and ask the people in my own mastermind to do. You can apply nearly all of it to any room you ever join.
5 Tips As a Participant
1. Barring an emergency, focus on the outcomes you want instead of solving a problem.
We rarely notice how much our circumstances are thinking for us. Every ounce of energy you burn clean up is energy you’re not putting toward the outcomes you actually want. A good group flips that ratio, so more of you goes toward where you’re headed and less toward what you’re fixing.
Credit to Shane Parrish and his excellent book, Clear Thinking, for the above insight. I also love this quote by journalist Walter Lippmann: “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” The way I see it: Problems yield fixes, outcomes yield strategies.
2. Show up like it’s your own group.
Bring the same energy you would if you were the one running the call. If it were your group, you wouldn’t roll in late or half-present, so don’t do it in someone else’s, let alone one you invest in. I am amazed at people who pay to join a mastermind and show up pessimistic and depressed.
3. Listen actively, especially when it isn’t your turn.
In most masterminds, you will spend the majority of your time participating in other people’s hotseats. Listen for the one spark, the single idea that can be a catalyst for you. Sometimes it’s just a passing comment, or a book or app recommendation. If you only look for long, drawn out answers, you’ll miss the sparks.
Every hot seat that isn’t yours is also a mirror. Use them to look at your own business through a different lens. When someone digs into their pricing or their model, quietly ask yourself the same question. It’s a hotseat, not a lounge chair.
4. Contribute as much as you hope to receive.
Years ago I was speaking at a conference alongside entrepreneur Andy Traub. He said, “If you’re not growing from your mastermind, something is wrong with your mastermind or something is wrong with you. It’s probably you.”
Be active in the chat. Offer your insight freely. Be the person the facilitator is glad to have in the room.
Early in my career, contributing hard to a group I joined opened doors, connections, publicity, and paying clients. Several members told me they felt like having me in the group was like having another leader.
One more note on this: life will happen. I went through a divorce while I was participating in of my first masterminds, and some days it was hard to even log on. But my friend Dana Malstaff says something I’ve never forgotten: “You can’t cry out your intelligence.” However heavy the season, your brain still works. You still know what you know. Give your gift anyway.
5. Be kind, not nice.
Nice avoids the hard truth to keep things comfortable. Kind tells you the truth because it wants you to win. If I have food stuck in my teeth from lunch, I don’t want someone to be nice and avoid telling me. I want them to do the kind thing and tell me.
This does not mean you need to be harsh or cruel. But if it’s your turn to weigh in, have the courage to say the useful thing. When it’s your turn to receive it, drop the defense.
Confident people can admit a weakness, acknowledge that someone else might be better at something, and ask for help without flinching. Outcome over ego, both yours and the person you are helping.
How to Make the Most of Your Hot Seats, from Mark Timm
The hot seat is the center of most masterminds. My friend and entrepreneur Mark Timm has sat in more of these rooms than just about anyone I know, and the way he thinks about hotseats changed how I show up to mine. (Check out his book with Shark Tank’s Kevin Harrington, Mentor to Millions.)
1. Come with a clear ask.
The fastest way to waste your time on the seat is to spend most of it circling the runway. Get to the heart of it. Know what you are actually asking before you sit down, and the group can go right after it with you.
A simple way to get there: write the problem out. As the saying goes, “Thoughts disentangle themselves through the lips and fingertips.”
I’m quite amazed when it is someone’s turn on a hotseat and they have nothing prepared. Remember my first point way back at the top: focus on the outcome you want, not the problem at hand.
That allows people to give you more than just a binary solution. Whether my groups realize it or not, as a facilitator I’m always listening for whether the group has shared at least three possible steps forward. If not, I call on someone who I think can contribute to the discussion.
2. Think of it like cooking.
You show up with raw ingredients. There’s no meal yet, and some of the ingredients in of themselves are not even palatable. The hotseat is the heat that starts to cook them.
Do not expect a finished dish in fifteen minutes. The flavor keeps developing across the whole time we’re together, and some dishes taste best the next day. Take the pressure off yourself.
The pressure cooker is there to accelerate your thinking, not to force a perfect answer on the spot, so let your mind keep working the problem long after your slot ends. Whatever starts to taste right, you carry home, cook up for the people in your inner circle, and keep adding ingredients until it’s a meal you can serve.
Even if your turn comes late in the schedule, especially during an in-person mastermind, you’re already handling the ingredients the whole time.
3. Capture it before life blows you away.
Do not let two days of deep thinking evaporate the moment you end the call or fly home. Capture it while it’s hot. If you can, fly out the day after and spend that last night tasting what you cooked, playing with the recipe while it’s fresh. If you can’t, do it on the plane. Speak it out loud in your hotel room, run a voice-to-text tool like Whisper Flow, and get it written down before real life pulls you back under. Then study the transcript.
I have literally spent over $300,000 on masterminds and coaching in my ten years. I have recordings and transcripts of all my hotseats, even from years back. I still review them constantly, and it’s even better now with AI. I’m amazed to see what some people saw in me years ago that have only materialized now.
I’m also amazed that so many don’t even review their hotseats from their last call. This is baffles me.
A podcast is built for the masses. Your hot seat was built for you. Why would you not review them?
Unwritten Rules of Success in Masterminds
The way you show up on every call will contribute directly to how others in your own group perceive you. How they perceive you either moves you toward them or away from them, as well as the opportunities to collaborate with them.
I’ve been in groups, sometimes for years, with the same people. I’ve been invited to speak at all of their events or be on their podcasts while others don’t. It had nothing to do with expertise or even likability. It had everything to do with their energy, their pedigree, and whether they would be seen as an addition or subtraction. These are some honest observations from over the years:
1. Being Seen as an Excuse-Maker or Not Taking Action
Sure, a mastermind can be a place where you can “let your hair down.” But nobody wants to be in a room where someone shows up with excuses. Don’t be the dead weight. Don’t be the person who brings the pessimistic, negative energy, or doesn’t show up prepared for their hotseat.
This stuff matters. I absolutely 100% silently evaluate people in groups I’m in to see if they’d be a potential collaborator, partner, or even guest on my podcast or vice-versa. If they’re checked out, lazy, or not serious, it goes nowhere. Others have said the same about people we’ve been in groups with.
2. Connectors Always Win
Group calls or sessions are only part of a mastermind. I encourage you to make time for a 15-minute one-on-one with a different member in your group every few weeks. If you don’t know what to ask, keep it simple: what are you working on this year, and how can I help?
Then follow their content. Like their posts, comment on them, and pay attention to what matters to them. Be impossible to ignore, in the best possible way. Be the noticer. The people in your group often hold the keys to the doors you’re trying to walk through.
3. Learn to Borrow Other People’s Energy
At some point a mastermind stops being about what you learn and starts being about who you’re around. The Greek philosopher Epictetus put it plainly a long time ago: “Place an extinguished piece of coal next to a live one, and either the dead one reignites or it snuffs out the live one. Consort with someone covered in dirt and you can hardly avoid getting a little grimy yourself.”
The reverse is just as true. Beyond just their knowledge, there have been countless times I’ve borrowed “calm” from steady mastermind members when I was frantic, “resilience” from those who’d been knocked down and gotten back up, and “boldness” from those who just don’t take no for an answer.
They give me a template to model myself after. I didn’t need their information. I needed their energy to rub off on me.
4. Familiarity breeds contempt.
Like any relationship, things can be taken for granted over time. This is natural, but doesn’t have to be. Anytime I catch myself getting a little bit too chummy or think the people in my mastermind aren’t all that, I remind myself that they are best-selling authors, or multi-millionaires, or have completely turned their lives around in ways that I could never see for myself or think possible.
This doesn’t mean you have to worship the ground they walk on. But honoring the people around you and appreciating what they’ve done, especially over time, will only benefit you. I’ve got to credit my childhood faith for this as a root principle of mine, where it’s said that even a prophet is without honor in his hometown (Mark 6:4).
As a facilitator, I assume people will always become over-familiar with me. That’s the price of leading a group, and yea, it can suck or even hurt, but that’s just human nature.
But for me as a participant, I have worked very hard to never take my coaches, facilitators, and fellow members for granted. I’m very grateful for this principle being taught to me so early in life and I completely 100% believe this is why I have such a great network across many different circles, to this day.
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The people in your mastermind are shortcuts to excellence. Take note of the skill, attitude, or disposition each of the members has that you want to grow in yourself. Play all out, have fun, and I’m confident that you’ll see some pretty amazing outcomes.