The Content Strategy for Your Mastermind Business 

 

A lack of content is one hesitation we encounter from entrepreneurs who want to start a mastermind online. 

They’ll stop me in my tracks and say, “Big A, I love what you’re saying, don’t get me wrong. But I see how much content you pump out on podcasts, blogs, and Alexa briefs. Frankly, I don’t have room in my schedule for it.”

Or, they might say something like, “Time isn’t the issue for me. I have enough spare hours to create content … but I’m not much of a writer / podcaster / blogger.” This is more common for entrepreneurs' stronger with systems and processes.

The good news is, online mastermind groups tend to solve both of these problems by themselves. We’ve also got some great strategies available to you in The Mastermind Playbook. But first, I want to tell you a few stories that highlight how I’ve dealt with both sides of this coin.

The Limits of Business Coaching Services

I started this past decade coaching entrepreneurs one-on-one. It’s a great business. I love working closely with motivated men who want a mentor to help them overcome challenges.

I soon discovered there were many men I really wanted to help, who could not afford me as a coach. It wasn’t because they were broke. The investment just represented more than they could sensibly afford.

The other issue that cropped up was how my own time began to dwindle as my calendar filled up. What I’d begun was showing its limitations early on. The word-of-mouth and endorsements I’d received from friends like Dave Ramsey and Dan Miller had my schedule maxed out in no time.

I was turning people away far more than I wanted to. It was time to teach more people at once, and I began to evolve into a mastermind leader.

Where Do Comedians Get Their Content?

Jeff Foxworthy, one of my favorite comedians, joked once that he has one of the easiest jobs in the world when it comes to creating content. “People always ask me, ‘Where do you come up with your material?’ And I tell them, you don’t have to come up with it. You just have to write it down when it happens.”

We don’t need to guess where Foxworthy came up with his “You Might Be A Redneck” routine. He grew up saturated in redneck culture. Everyone around him - parents, friends, family and society - gave him plenty of absurdity to laugh about. All he had to do was deliver it in an amusing way.

Stop right now, follow his example and write that down if you need to. If you’re running mastermind groups online, you don’t need fresh material - not all the time, anyway. You just need to pay attention to what people talk about, the issues that keep coming up. 

This is the powerful secret of data discovered by goliath companies like Amazon and Facebook. People will tell you seven days a week about what’s important to them. If you’ll stop and pay attention, you’ll be able to provide for their needs much faster. That’s how you win in business - a fast, appropriate and thoughtful response to your customer’s expressed desires or outcomes.

E Pluribus Unum 

The parallel for a mastermind group leader is the same when you move beyond the business coach model. You coach several people instead of one. In the same way, you lean on the content provided to you by many people, instead of what you can come up with by yourself.

Not only will your members provide you with content, but they’ll also begin to provide the resources to create and publish it when you get too busy to do it yourself.

Some of my strongest allies for keeping things running smoothly at View From the Top are also members of our online masterminds. By extension, they also contribute heavily to our content.

Scott Beebe, founder of Business On Purpose, is like a sheriff running our team meetings. Through his skillful “steering,” we move quickly toward clarity of roles and responsibilities. Because of this, when we execute on our projects, we get content! It forces our team out of scatter-brained day-dreaming, and into the real world of building a coherent message to the marketplace.

I recently brought another member, Paul Edwards, into the team as our content writer. This re-established consistency and continuity for the written, expressive part of our brand. If I’ve learned anything from masterminds, it’s that problems get solved a lot quicker when you have more than one brain working on them. 

Surveying the Damage

Once you’ve built credibility with your online tribe, another useful strategy is constantly surveying them to find out common “pain points.” All business owners struggle and face challenges that take time, money and effort to solve.

My friend Neal Samudre, founder of Essential Hustle, is a master of getting constant audience input on what to talk about. “When people connect with me, I usually have them fill out a five-question survey,” he said. “The best question you can ask people usually goes something like this: ‘What is the number one problem you face in your business?’”

Neal went on to list some other important details to cover - contact information, income range, whether their business is full-time or part-time, and so forth. We developed a similar process for the applications we provide you in The Mastermind Playbook. 

There are other things you need to think about in a mastermind business … what books will you read? What topics will you cover? What speakers will you search for, and which issues will they address? 

The members don’t cover every single one of these all the time. But they definitely reduce the burden you would otherwise shoulder alone.