In This Article
A mastermind group is three to six professionals who meet to solve each other's problems. Learn how to start one, choose the right members, and structure it so it lasts.
A mastermind group is three to six professionals who meet on a set schedule to work on each other’s real problems. The format is simple. Running one so it’s worth everyone’s calendar time is harder, and it comes down to the agenda more than the guest list.
Ever sat through 90 minutes that felt great and changed nothing? Everyone nodded, someone said “so good to catch up,” and your actual problem came home with you.
I have been a part of seven different mastermind groups and had varying success with each.
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
—African Proverb
Check out why going together tends to beat going alone:
What Actually Happens in a Mastermind Meeting
It’s easy to picture something vaguer than the reality. A working session has a fixed shape: everyone arrives having done a small piece of homework, one person keeps the clock, and each member gets a turn nobody talks over.
A 2018 pilot published in Cureus ran this format with 14 health profession educators split into two groups of six to eight. Each group met twice for 90 minutes over videoconference, with a moderator keeping time so every member got through their own self-assessment. Between the meetings, members added suggestions for each other to a shared document. The second meeting turned those into next steps with a date attached.1
Participants rated it 9.4 out of 10.1 That’s a small self-reported pilot with no comparison group, so it tells you people liked the format. It can’t tell you the format beats the alternatives. What it gives you is a template: homework, a clock, a turn each, and a written commitment. (Four fairly unglamorous things, and not one of them is charisma.)
Where the Idea Came From
The term goes back to The Law of Success in 1928, where a “Master Mind” meant a mind developed through the harmonious cooperation of two or more people allied toward a common task. It reached a mass audience through Think and Grow Rich nine years later. Most of that writing has aged the way 1930s success books tend to, but people still get more out of a group that meets on purpose than out of the same people bumping into each other.
How to Start Your Own Mastermind Group
I have both joined and started my masterminds. I recommend trying both, since being in two at once is a good way to compare opinions. If you want to shape the experience, start your own. Here’s how.
Reverse Brainstorm Your Purpose
Success? Happiness? Lead generation? Each of those is a starting point. A purpose is narrower, and the fastest way to find one is to name what you want to avoid.
Ask the group: what are the common pitfalls or failures in our industry that we want to stay out of? The answers tend to be concrete in a way that goals aren’t:
- Falling behind on the technology the field is adopting
- Burning out and losing the creative part of the work
- Building a wide, shallow network with no real relationships in it
- Plateauing on skill, then on title
- Sitting in a circle of people who all think the same thing
Distill those into one sentence and you have a purpose a generic networking group can’t claim.
Your one sentence. Write it down: ________
Bonus: Make it goal-oriented. I have a specific structure for setting goals (watch my goal-setting training here), and your mastermind group should have one, too. Everyone can have their own goals. What the group needs is a goal of its own, so there’s something to hold each other to. A mastermind group without a goal is simply a hangout.
Pick Three to Six People Who Speak Your Language
Three to six is the right size. With fewer than three you keep hearing the same two opinions. With more than six the meeting runs long and somebody quietly gives up their turn (usually the person who needed it most).
Who you invite is the counterintuitive part. Research drawing on decades of small-group studies found people shared somewhat more of what they knew when the members were more alike2. That cuts against the instinct to pick for variety and hope better decisions follow.
Wait, what?
One likely reason is vocabulary. People volunteer more of what they know when they don’t have to translate it first.
- Related industries, or the same job in a different industry. Everyone has the same lingo and nobody is chasing the same customers. My favorite mastermind was with other authors and YouTubers who taught various topics. We had the same business models without competing audiences.
- People who follow your work without a glossary. They don’t need your job title. They need to understand what you said the first time you said it.
- People whose judgment you respect. There is one requirement for your mastermind members: You MUST respect their opinions. Who do you think is intelligent, open-minded, or collaborative?
No Rivals Allowed
This is the most important thing to remember if you are thinking about starting a mastermind group. Do NOT group with potential competitors or work colleagues who are up for the same opportunities as you.
The strongest link in that research was between how cooperative the discussion felt and how much people shared2.
The entire point of a mastermind is to give open and honest feedback and advice. If you are competitive with someone in ANY way, it makes it impossible to have transparency. (Let’s say their best prospect happens to be your best prospect. Every piece of advice either of you gives now arrives with a small asterisk on it.)
Ask the Same Four Questions Every Time
Every time you meet, ask the same four questions in the same order:
- What was your biggest success since the last time we met?
- What is your biggest challenge right now?
- What one goal do you want to achieve before our next meeting?
- How can we help you?
That’s the whole agenda. It looks too plain to matter. It’s also the difference between the masterminds I’ve been in that worked and the one that didn’t.
I have only been in one unproductive mastermind. It was a great group of people—the problem was there was no structure. At least not one that worked for everyone.
The research here is consistent. When groups work on a problem where one member holds something the others don’t, they spend substantially more of the discussion on what everybody already knows than on what only one person knows. That showed up again and again2.
That’s the failure mode of an unstructured mastermind. Five people talk for 90 minutes, everyone leaves feeling good, and the one thing that would have solved somebody’s problem never gets said, because the conversation kept returning to common ground.
A set agenda breaks the loop. The same research found people shared more when the discussion had a structure, and that what only one person knew counted for more when it did2.
What each question is for:
- What was your biggest success since the last time we met? Opening here gets everyone talking before anyone has to be vulnerable. We rarely get as much encouragement as we like—this is a great way to start a meeting (and it pushes you to go get a success worth bragging about).
- What is your biggest challenge right now? Dig into at least one specific challenge per person. Just meeting and chatting is not a real mastermind.
- What one goal do you want to achieve before our next meeting? Keep goals as specific and achievable as possible. If you have big annual or seasonal goals, run those in addition to these mini-goals. This also gives people homework in between meetings.
- How can we help you? This is the question that turns advice into action, because it makes each member say a request out loud. Think of these mastermind group members as your board of directors. They are there to help you.
Send an Invitation They Can Say Yes To
The hardest part is connecting with a good group. Keep the ask to one meeting. Name the people, the purpose, the length, and the cadence, and give them an easy out.
Hi Nadia,
I’m putting together a small group of people running one-person content businesses. Four of us, 90 minutes, once a month, on video. The format is simple: everyone brings one real problem and gets the group’s full attention on it for 20 minutes.
I’m asking you because your pricing rewrite last spring is the clearest thinking I’ve seen on this. No pressure either way, and no hard feelings if the timing is wrong. Want to try the first one on the 14th and see whether it’s useful?
Swap the specific reason for a real one. “I admire your work” is why people don’t reply.
Pick Your Meeting Drumbeat
A mastermind runs on rhythm, so pick a drumbeat the whole group can keep.
Action Step: Start by proposing a monthly meeting. This frequency works well for most. After a couple of sessions, take the group’s pulse. Are monthly meetings sparking enough progress, or does the group need to meet more often or less? Stay flexible and responsive to what the group actually needs.
Pro Tip: Give it consistency. It doesn’t matter when, how, or where you meet—as long as there is consistency. Once you decide to meet monthly, make sure you meet every month. The moment you lose consistency, you lose accountability.
Put the Ground Rules in Ink
A rule that lives in somebody’s head isn’t a rule yet, so get yours in ink. Confidentiality is the one that matters most: whatever is shared in the group stays in the group.
Action Step: Build a shared document listing your ground rules, and start every meeting by revisiting the group’s goals. It takes two minutes and keeps everyone working from the same list.
Then let the group change them. Yours will grow on its own, and you might be surprised how fast it stops needing you to run it. The rules shift, the members shift, and you don’t have to own every decision forever. Owning the agenda early is also low-stakes practice at leading a group, which is worth something by itself.
What a Mastermind Group is NOT
A mastermind gets misunderstood often enough that you might want to say this out loud in your first meeting. It saves a lot of tidying up later.
- Not a coaching session. Coaching goes from one expert to one client. Here nobody is the designated authority, which is also why nobody gets to opt out of giving advice.
- Not a therapy group. Mastermind groups are supportive, and they are no substitute for professional mental health support. The focus stays on professional and personal development. If you need emotional or mental help, please check out Mental Health America’s resources.
- Not a networking event. Networking happens anyway. The purpose is depth on a few problems, and business cards are a different tool for a different room.
- Not a lecture series. Nobody is at the front of the room. The advice comes from peers working on the same scale of problem you are.
- Not a low-commitment calendar item. Showing up, preparing, keeping what’s said in the room, and giving as much airtime as you take are the price of entry. A member who only ever receives will quietly end the group, and it will take you months to work out why attendance dropped.
When Is the Right Time to Start One?
Ask yourself: what’s the problem you’ve now re-explained to three different people without doing anything about it?
The clearest signal is a problem you keep circling without moving on it, and what you’re missing is somebody else’s experience. If a search or a book would fix it, a search or a book is cheaper.
The second signal is that your current circle has stopped surprising you. When everyone you talk to about work gives you the same read, you need somebody in the room who solves your kind of problem somewhere else.
Special Note: These groups fail, and they fail in two predictable ways. The first is the one described above: nobody owns the agenda, so the meeting becomes a catch-up. The second is attrition. Two people miss a month, the rhythm goes, and the invite quietly stops getting accepted. A group of four that meets 11 times a year is worth more than a group of eight that meets three times.
Frequently Asked Questions About Mastermind Groups
How many people should be in a mastermind group?
Three to six works for most groups. Below three you don’t get enough different opinions, and above six the meeting either runs long or somebody doesn’t speak. The 2018 Cureus pilot ran groups of six to eight with a moderator keeping time, which is the upper end.
What's the difference between a mastermind group and a mentor?
A mentor relationship goes one direction, from someone further along to someone earlier. A mastermind goes every direction at once, which is why the 2018 pilot describes it as non-hierarchical peer mentorship. Nobody is the designated expert, and everyone is expected to give advice as well as take it. If a one-to-one relationship is what you’re after, start with how to find a mentor.
Do mastermind groups work over video?
Yes. Virtual masterminds work great, especially if you are part of a remote team. The 2018 pilot ran entirely over videoconference and members rated it highly.
Should you pay to join a mastermind group?
Paid masterminds exist and some are worth the money. What you’re buying is curation and a facilitator, which happen to be the two hardest parts to do yourself. Before paying, ask two questions: what is the agenda for each meeting, and how many people are in the room? If neither answer is specific, you’re buying a mailing list.
What if one member dominates every meeting?
That’s what a fixed agenda is for. Give every person the same number of minutes, and put somebody other than the most talkative member in charge of the clock. If it keeps happening after that, you have a membership problem, and the group’s ground rules are the place to handle it.
How long should a mastermind meeting be?
Budget roughly 20 minutes per person, which puts a group of four at about 80 minutes. The 2018 pilot used 90-minute sessions for groups of six to eight and its authors judged that about right for the number of questions each member worked through. Shorter meetings tend to mean somebody gets skipped.
Mastermind Group Takeaways
- Write down the one problem you keep circling. If what you’re missing is somebody else’s experience, you have a reason to start a group. If more information would do it, save the calendar slot.
- List six people who’d follow your work without a glossary, then cross off anyone chasing the same customers or the same promotion.
- Send the invitation for a single meeting and let the group decide whether there’s a second.
- Put the four questions in the calendar invite so the agenda arrives before the meeting does.
- Give somebody the clock. Equal minutes per person is the difference between a mastermind and a catch-up.
- Set the next date before anyone leaves the first meeting. Attrition ends these groups faster than bad advice does.
A mastermind is a formal way to ask for help from people who are glad to give it, which matters because asking is the hard part. For more on where to point all this, read our guide to becoming the best version of yourself.
