TL;DR: Multiple minds working harmoniously together towards a common goal form a “mastermind” which is more powerful than the sum of the individual minds it is composed of. Form a mastermind group to achieve success in life.
Introduction
Humanity loves the revolutionaries. The Henry Fords, the Steve Jobs’, the Bill Gates’, the Jeff Bezos’. It’s fascinating to imagine one brilliant man completely revolutionizing an industry, one sole person completely changing the game. Everybody fantasizes about being that man from time to time. The genius, Tony Stark, lone wolf, billionaire inventor character who just comes up with amazing invention after amazing invention all by himself.
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While it is fun to attribute all the success of a multibillion dollar company to one individual person, how often is that really accurate to do? While there is no doubt that the leaders of these companies are brilliant people, it is not honest to say they did it all by themselves. What about the scores of genius employees that all these leaders have working alongside them? Surely they also contributed greatly to the success of these giant corporations.
The truth is that achieving any notable amount of success will require the cooperative collaboration of multiple people. While Bezos may be much more intelligent than most, he still just has 24 hours in the day and 365 days in the year like the rest of us. There is only so much he can do with his time. Moreover, and more importantly, Bezos only has one mind like the rest of us. To achieve high levels of success it requires multiple minds working together in harmony towards a common goal. This is the main principle of the mastermind concept.
What is the Mastermind?
In his renowned book, “Think and Grow Rich”, Napoleon Hill defines the mastermind group as follows:
“Coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose”
In essence, the mastermind is working together with other people towards a common goal. This may seem like nothing special or groundbreaking initially but that is because most people miss the “psychic” aspect of this. When speaking of the mastermind, Hill states the following:
“No two minds ever come together without, thereby, creating a third, invisible, intangible force which may be likened to a third mind.”
This is where the true power of the mastermind begins to shine. When you put your minds together with other people, the result is a more powerful mind, more powerful than any of the individual minds it is composed of, a mastermind.
Forming your Mastermind Group
The most crucial part of forming a mastermind is selecting the correct people to be a part of it. A mastermind can only operate when the members of it are working in a true spirit of harmony towards a common goal. One ill-fitting member can throw off the harmony of the group, making the power of the mastermind inaccessible. Because of this you should be very careful in selecting members for your group. A certain level of exclusivity may be required. Just because someone may be a close personal friend of yours does not necessarily mean they would be a good fit for your mastermind group.
Below is a list of a few example questions you should ask yourself when evaluating potential members for your mastermind group:
- Does this person have similar goals and ambitions to my own?
- Will this person be able to work in true harmony with other members?
- Will this person be able to meet regularly and consistently with the group?
- Will this person take this seriously, or will they view it as a joke or simply a social occasion?
- Will this person contribute sufficiently to the group?
- Does it “feel” like they belong in the group? Does your gut instinct tell you otherwise?
Mastermind Meetings
Once you have selected your group it is time to start having meetings. You should aim to meet with your group at minimum once per week. To really utilize the power of the mastermind, regular and consistent meetings are essential. In person meetings are preferable, but when not possible another option is to have remote meetings via Skype or another similar service. All members should take attendance of the meetings seriously. Pick a time of the week that works for you all and then schedule it into your calendar as something you can’t miss, almost like showing up for work.
During the meeting you should all remain focused and engaged. Mastermind meetings are not social events or hangouts, you should view them like you view work. Get rid of all outside distractions, turn off your cellphones and put them away, close all unrelated apps on your computers. Be focused and present.
The first and most important part of your meetings should be to decide what your group purpose is. As said in the definition of a mastermind above, it is about working for “the attainment of a definite purpose.” The key word here is “definite”. Spend some time to really figure out what it is you are working towards. You should aim to eventually come up with a very clear and actionable purpose. Nothing vague, very specific.This is not a process that should be rushed. It can take up to several weeks to fully decide what it is that you are all doing in this mastermind group.
A good place to start is by going around the room and having every member state what their own personal goals and motivations are, both for their own lives and for the group. You can then look for common threads along these separate goals and begin to discuss them. After adequate discussion it should be more clear what your group’s purpose is. Now, get each member to write down what they think the purpose of the group should be. Compare and discuss them again. After a few iterations of this process you should have a clear group purpose.
To keep you on track you should come up with an agenda for your meetings. Your agenda should contain everything that you are going to be doing during your meeting and the time you will spend doing it. After a few weeks of following your agenda you should find that it almost becomes second nature to follow it. You will show up to the meetings and instantly start going through the tasks on your agenda. This will make the meetings very efficient as you won’t be wasting any time on figuring out what you should do next. An example of an agenda for a mastermind meeting is shown below:
- Review of weekly challenge (5 min)
- Issuance of next weekly challenge (5min)
- Discussion of weeks reading (20 min)
- Discussion of progress made on project over the last week (60 min)
- Discussion of direction/future of project (20 min)
- Group exercise (20 min)
Go to your meetings religiously, week to week, month to month, year to year. Keep faith in the process and stay motivated in going after your goals and put the work in. Eventually, you will start to see the power of the mastermind more and more. You will have discussions that flow seemingly perfectly from member to member, with one person almost finishing the others sentence. You will come up with ideas that seemingly will come out of nowhere, that nobody could have come up with by themselves. Your ideas will build and grow off of and synthesize flawlessly with others ideas. You will feel like you are on the same wavelength with everyone else in your group. You will feel the power of the mastermind and be able to harness it to achieve your goals.
Conclusion
You can’t go it alone. The genius, lone wolf, solo inventor is a thing of the movies. True success in the real world comes from working harmoniously with other like minded people towards a definite purpose. The mastermind is a powerful tool that must be used in order to be successful. For those wishing to achieve great things in life, you will need the help of a mastermind to do so. Those wishing to go UpRiver should begin forming their mastermind group today.
Authors Motivation
Mastermind is what started it all. Everything you see and read on this website is the product of my mastermind group. I started a Mastermind group with Spencer and Matt in the summer of 2019 after we had all independently read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
We initially had no idea what we wanted to do, only that we were all interested in being part of a mastermind group. Nonetheless, we all stuck to it religiously, driving down to Toronto every Tuesday evening, where we would discuss Think and Grow Rich, make challenges for one another to do throughout the week and discuss our direction.
It wasn’t until a meeting 14 weeks later that the idea of UpRiver came to us, seemingly out of nowhere, through the mastermind. I’ve seen and experienced first hand the power of the mastermind for myself. I’ve watched as it’s taken a little inkling of desire to do something meaningful inside the minds of three men and turned it into the website you are reading right now. It seems only appropriate, in the spirit of this website, that I now share this concept with you.
