As a leader/influencer, have you ever considered what your future would hold? Are you merely aiming towards in your future a life of leisure, void of trials and tribulations, or have you considered how you might leave behind the best you can offer to others through your life? Consider the impact your life could have beyond yourself; consider dedicating your life and the legacy you leave to others who could benefit from your life and experiences. 

Not sure how to move forward? The best way to ensure a lasting legacy is to enlist others to guide and direct you, to unveil the possibilities. The Mastermind model is created with this in mind.

Many professionals seeking a lasting impact in the lives of others have found the coaching space to be an effectual avenue for passing on one’s personal and business influence. And while coaching is an effective means of impacting others, your personal limitations are its limitations as well. In this model, you can only give...

In Iron Sharpens Iron this month, we’re deepening the impact on members’ financial health. If our hand wasn’t already forced, this coronavirus phenomenon sealed the deal. We have a lot of work to do!

Although we coach and lead men in all areas of life, this one kept turning up in the feedback. Members of our online mastermind groups would write to ask, “What materials are available for me to accelerate business income?” Or, “How do I increase sales and revenue?”

Those are critical questions. No matter how much we pretend otherwise … making money affects everybody, everywhere.

We assembled an internal team to address this. I wanted members anticipating greater clarity, and definitive answers. When our April live event was canceled, we set about thinking how we could start spreading this content online. 

It made me think of master mind group facilitators everywhere. Let’s face it - talking about...

Mastermind groups online are different from traditional businesses. But they also share realities common to all forms of enterprise.

Several early adopters of The Mastermind Playbook asked me these questions: “How do you know when you’ve scaled a mastermind business? How do you know when all eight cylinders are firing?”

I’ll share a few observations I’ve gathered. As usual, this isn’t math class. You probably won’t get definitive answers. But I have ideas, along with some definitive questions you can take and apply to your circumstances.

Clarity and Ambition

My friend Bill Caskey has a great way of tying together clarity and ambition. “You can be ambitious and still be foolish,” he said on a recent podcast. “But I have much more ambition when I have clarity.”

The less “guesswork” we have to do with our mastermind groups, the more room there is to execute. I love this way of thinking. Friends of mine who...

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...

Deep in the heart of everything we do and teach at View From the Top is the priority of human interaction and relationships.

This is as important as the day is long if you’re running a mastermind business. You need a good mentor or coach reminding you of this. And if you’re like me? You probably could use The Mastermind Playbook to help you establish written goals and procedures for it.

For this Christmas season, we’re placing a strong emphasis on the theme of how we relate to others. God, our families, friends, acquaintances, employees, and customers. They all deserve a version of us in a mode of continuous improvement.

Angels in the Details

Details of people’s lives - their families, hobbies, travel activities and so forth gain new levels of importance when you welcome them into online mastermind groups.

Over the years we’ve run the Iron Sharpens Iron mastermind, we faced some learning curves in gathering and leveraging this data.

I always wanted to...

During our most recent retreat for the Iron Sharpens Iron Mastermind, some of the newest members took the time to ask me the secret of our success.

This is a question with a zero-hesitation answer. I believe in the law of 10,000 hours. Consistency - doing the same good things over and again whether I feel like it or not - is the secret.

The men understood what I meant, but there’s something else I’ve noticed about the mastermind business. The more I teach, the more I get the opportunity to examine what I do and ask, “Why does that work so well?”

Starting on a Flat Line

Maybe you can relate to how I felt when we started View From the Top. Although I’d been successful in several businesses over the previous 30 years, it was a brand-new territory.

There were many hard lessons to learn. I don’t regret what I learned, but I’d like to have the time back that it took for me to realize what I didn’t know.

What was constant from then through...