As early as the 1960s, futurists around the world took a look at the rapid advancement of labor-saving technologies and predicted that Americans in the future would work roughly half the amount of time per week. In fact, a famous senate subcommittee in 1967 was told that the average American would work just 22 hours per week for 27 weeks per year.

Despite futurists’ predictions about labor-saving technology, they could have never predicted just how transformational the technology of the coming decades would be to the productivity of the average American worker. It would have been impossible to predict technologies as disruptive as the internet, machine learning, cryptocurrency, or autopiloting vehicles. 

These exponentially advancing technologies drastically increased the productivity of the American workforce, but this didn’t have the effect that futurists predicted. Americans never saw the reduction in their workweeks these labor-saving...

How to Employ the “Story Formula” to Grow Your Mastermind Business

As the springtime sun brings warmer temperatures and longer days, I’m itching to go on long walks! I LOVE to walk. I walk with my family. I walk with friends. And, if you’ve seen my YouTube videos, you know I even walk by myself! 

I especially like walking on nature trails. As you walk, you see little guideposts with messages printed on them. These guideposts tell you where you’re at and where you can go. 

Most of the trails here in Tennessee share routes with other trails. Without the guideposts, it would be easy to walk down the wrong path. It’s better to know where you are, so you can make an informed decision about where to go next.

Could you imagine starting down a trail without direction? It would be impossible to reach your destination.

That seems straightforward, doesn’t it? But many business owners make this mistake when...

Do you long to see “next-level influence” among the people in your online mastermind group? It’s one thing to set up shop and invite people in. It’s quite another to create an environment in which everyone participates in each other’s growth.

As the leader of your mastermind group, every member is secretly hoping you know how to do this. They observe how you introduce concepts, hold conversations, and solve problems. 

Make sure your habits match your intentions to create space for others to improve their lives.

In our masterminds, we’re reading Stephen Covey’s classic, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. When I think about what great mastermind leaders do, I think of Habit #6: Synergy.

Synergy is the ability to combine knowledge, talents, and enthusiasm of others, to achieve together what they cannot do alone. It brings forth solutions that would remain hidden otherwise.

Synergy is the...

What Your Weaknesses Provide for a Mastermind Group

Would you like to know one benefit I never saw coming when I started mastermind groups online?

It’s how much more I’ve received from being weak, than I have from being strong.

As you begin to build your mastermind business, you should ask yourself this question: “Where am I weak?” It’s the opposite of what you’d think to ask, but it’ll go a lot further than your strengths.

Think about it this way - have you ever gone out of your way to help someone? If you’re starting an online mastermind group, chances are you’ve been a coach or mentor to someone already. You’ve probably experienced the pleasant feelings of being generous and helpful. 

Well, if we tend to attract similar-minded people into our circles, then you’re going to have other people who also like to be generous and helpful. They’ll feel even better when they get...

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...

Something that might catch you off-guard when you start your own online mastermind group is how many people have never heard of the concept.

I have to admit, when I attempted my third retirement in 2010, and Dave Ramsey and Dan Miller talked me out of it, I only knew about our business mastermind, the Eagles. It never occurred to me that there were hundreds or thousands of groups online. I started my next career with one-on-one business coaching services, for just two clients.

Coaching proved difficult to scale, however, and I’m not the type of person to have a small, local operation that only serves a handful of people. Whatever business I’ve ever done, it’s always scaled. I do multiple locations, I hire lots of employees and I always have my eye on providing more value to more people.

Still, a lot of people don’t really understand the idea. They’re even less certain of how to own and operate a mastermind business. I want to point...

Have you ever led a seminar or sold from the stage? You might know the calculations you need to turn a profit. Let’s say you need twenty people to buy … that means you probably need 150 to show up, which means you need to invite 500, and so on. The pathway to profit is usually reverse-engineered.

We had our very first webinar for The Mastermind Playbook last month, and we had a great turnout. The numbers were right around what I just described - 25 percent of the registrants showed up, and 20 percent of those who attended, invested. I don’t like to reduce people to numbers, but numbers are useful when you’re trying to make projections or reasonable predictions about people.

In fact, that’s what I want to share with you today. Numbers are extremely useful when it comes to anticipating the power of online mastermind groups. In this blog, I want to talk about a general principle they bring that changes the game - not only for you, but also...

When I started coaching entrepreneurs, I wanted to keep things small. I found two pilot clients, and that was as far as I wanted to go back then.

I didn’t anticipate the value my experience brought to those two clients. Their businesses began to take off, and word began to spread. Soon enough, I was taking on more clients. But as you may know, business coaching services have a “ceiling” on the amount of time you can devote without becoming unhealthy. 

I didn’t want to spend every waking hour on work. That’s what led me to mastermind groups. It was the same kind of work; I’d still coach and mentor people. But I’d no longer do it totally by myself. The substance of each session wouldn’t depend on my ability to figure out solutions.

Reasons to Quit Coaching and Start Masterminds Online

I have nothing but respect for business coaches, and to this day, I still privately coach a few clients myself. But each...

On one of our recent team calls, we were trying to figure out the best strategy for responding to the Coronavirus scare. Reports trickled in of the men in our mastermind groups, in various emotional states. Usually, the ones I heard from were anxious or apprehensive.

We were concerned about the size and scope of our response. Was it enough? Would we get lost in the shuffle? Would we face a loss of members, because we failed to come up with the right tactics? 

That’s when my friend, Scott Beebe, pointed out something I’d forgotten. It’s funny how he said it, but it made total sense: “You have to realize how unlikely, how difficult it is to get a group of eight to ten men together once every week, nearly every week of the year.” 

That tells you something about the world in 2020, doesn’t it? We now pay dues to belong to groups that used to exist for free, because people got out and socialized. But Scott’s point...

Aaron Walker, the creator of The Mastermind Playbook had a great time as a guest with Ray Edwards Show as he discussed how you can have a multi six-figure (plus) business if you follow the steps he and his team layout for you and transform lives while you are doing it. I really believe this interview could be beneficial for you. I hope you enjoy this. 

Some snippets below of their conversation. 

Ray Edwards: You've made a huge contribution to me, my legacy, to the family, to the families of the people who are in the groups that we're creating. I want people to hear the passion in my voice for what is available here. If you're interested in doing this, and I think everybody could do this, who's listening to me and we wouldn't be anywhere, we
wouldn't even touch one 10th of 1/100 of 1% of the potential that's out there in the
marketplace. If you're worried about that, you can set that aside because this is the
future. This is human connection and wisdom at...