Another topic of online mastermind groups people ask about is hiring and firing staff. It’s very likely, if you’re leading a group across multiple time zones and different countries, your team will also be virtual.

Well, it’s a good time to discuss that question, because in Iron Sharpens Iron, we’re reading up on the topic. The book this month is “The Ride of a Lifetime,” by former Disney CEO Robert Iger. And he has some handy principles he lives by when it comes to hiring and firing.

First off, though - I want to acknowledge that a meeting over Zoom is still not the same as a face-to-face interview. I realize there’s an inherent risk in hiring someone overseas. To offset that a little bit, we’ve included some useful tools in The Mastermind Playbook that are worth checking out if you really want to keep tabs on people’s productivity.

How to Hire For Your Mastermind Group Online

Iger tells an...

If you know much about me, you know I put a high price on character and integrity. It’s part of the brand - View From the Top, Iron Sharpens Iron and The Mastermind Playbook. We go the extra mile to treat people how they should and want to be treated.

This isn’t to lecture you, while you’re busy forming your online mastermind group. Everybody has their own niche they serve, and there are different levels of maturity and growth in every person you meet. I’ll say this, however - mastermind groups get much more complicated if you don’t value things like humility, authenticity and moral character.

In Iron Sharpens Iron, we’ve been reading this book called “The Ride of a Lifetime” by Robert Iger. He was CEO of the Walt Disney Company for the last 15 years. His story is amazing. One thing I couldn’t help but notice was how careful and attentive he was to the people he worked with the most, inside and outside Disney.

...

Where to Find the Answers for Your Mastermind Group

People are searching for answers to a lot of questions these days, aren’t they? Even more so if you have a mastermind business. I can’t recall a time so many people have looked to me so often for direction, guidance or wisdom.

I don’t like to sugarcoat things - leading an online mastermind group will put you in a position that requires tremendous self-awareness and self-control. You’ll face “D” personalities like me on the DISC profile, who want to tell you how they think things should be run.

You’ll take things into confidence, you’ll have people ask you to rubber-stamp approval on things. Living in community can get messy, because people are involved. If patience, discretion, listening and asking questions aren’t “your style,” you may have a tough time getting your mastermind going.

When Answers Don’t Come

We read an...

When I started Iron Sharpens Iron, one thing I knew about mastermind groups is they’re binding. The level of transparency, authenticity and vulnerability you require will weed out a lot of applicants who aren’t ready to go the distance. You don’t have to “have it all together” to be in ISI, but you do need to prepare for a marathon, not a sprint.

Since we’re studying Brian Moran’s book, The 12-Week Year, I think it’s time we discussed our reluctance to make commitments with time. I read somewhere that a “commitment” is “a state of being bound emotionally or intellectually to some course of action.” The problem with this isn’t the idea itself. It’s how commitments collide with all the other things we have in our lives, like family or faith, that scares us.

I can relate to that, as a lifelong Christ follower in pursuit of a healthy marriage and family. I learned the hard way that putting...

“I already know what I need to do, so I don’t need a plan to get it done.”

“WRONG!” I want to shout, when I read this in Brian Moran’s book, The 12-Week Year. But maybe you’ve caught yourself thinking exactly that. I know I have. How is it we know we need to plan, but can’t bring ourselves to do it?

Over the last several months, including the coronavirus, I’ve had the most productive fitness routine of my life. Believe me, until the last year, working out could hardly have been less interesting to me. I hated going to the gym, and didn’t want to “pay the cost to be the boss” with my physical health. But I’m 60 years old now; some things last a lot longer if you take good care of them. Who would look at the season of life I’m having now, and not want it to go on as long as possible?

One thing that changed for me was realistic planning. I always felt, if I was going to work...

Here’s another concern I hear from entrepreneurs all the time: “Big A! How do I start up an online mastermind group when I don’t know for sure if people will even show up?” 

Well, there’s the obvious truth: if you give away your membership, don’t expect it to last. The old saying goes, “People who pay, pay attention.” Commitment isn’t as hard to come by as you might think. One time, Dave Ramsey and I had a conversation just like this. I was going to teach his Financial Peace class to some people in church for free, and he told me, “Big A, don’t do it for free. You won’t even get half of them to show up.”

Dave was right about my first class, and I’m telling you what he told me, because it’s the same principle. Not only do you get people to show up when you charge a fair price for what you do. You also tend to get the right kind of people. You don’t want to do business...

Do you feel a little awkward starting your own online mastermind group, because you think, “What do I talk about once we’ve started?” That’s a very legitimate concern, and I want to validate it because I’ve been in that situation.

I started out as a business coach. In that setting, it’s usually about all the experience the coach or mentor has accumulated. You’re passing one person’s knowledge to another. Sure, you need to ask questions and make sure you’re giving the right advice for situations clients bring you. But mostly, it’s a game of waiting for them to bring something up, and then answering from your reservoir of wisdom.

The way I designed my masterminds online, however, was to gather everyone on a weekly basis. And that immediately begs the question, “What are you going to talk about once a week, especially with eight to twelve other men on the line at the same time?”

Well,...

Do you think you could start a new mastermind group in twelve weeks?

Welcome to June, and I’m fired up to share this next truckload of value with you. We’re diving back into one of my favorite books for our online mastermind groups this month. My friend Brian Moran wrote a book called The 12-Week Year, and we like it so much we’ve made it our signature tool for time management.

The old saying goes, “Time is money,” and in this example I want to compare these resources because of how easily they slip out of our hands. “Easy come, easy go,” as George Strait would say. Although money’s a lot more replaceable than time, both substances are supercharged by the spiritual world. As a Christian life coach, I see it often - you can tell what people’s priorities are by how they use their time, and how they use their money.

More on that later, but I want to ask you the question again: do you think you could start a new...

Back in the early Eighties, the Walt Disney Company was in decline. They’d had some magical years when I was growing up, but there’s no question that by 1983, they were stalled.

The next year, their board of directors made a wise decision and hired Michael Eisner as the new CEO. One reason this worked out well was Eisner understood an important growth principle, which business coach Alan Miltz calls “The Power of One.” I’m going to show you how it helps you build and grow your online mastermind group.

 When Eisner took the reins of Disney, the first thing he did was raise admission prices at their theme parks in California and Florida. It turns out, Disney had not raised their prices for many years, and they weren’t growing fast enough to outpace expenses.

LEVERAGING THE LAWS

Now if you read last week’s blog, you might recall another law of economics they don’t teach you: Parkinson’s Law....

Since our masterminds online are doing a deep study on the book Profit First this month, I want to touch on a touchy subject for today.

From the heart of a lifelong entrepreneur and business coach, I can’t believe how little attention I paid to the financial structure of any business I ever owned. It wasn’t until I started online mastermind groups that I came across Mike Michalowicz’s book. It was my friend, Scott Beebe, who introduced it to me. That book changed my life.

What many entrepreneurs don’t understand is that business finance has its own set of principles, just like personal finance. Either you work for your money, or your money works for you. 

That might not sound too bad if things are going well for you right now, but it’s music to the ears of someone whose business is threatened by our current economic state. If your business’ expenses are fully, or even partially covered by passive income and...