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...

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...