Mastermind Groups for Artists: Starting in July

“Thanks for sharing,” I said, taking a deep breath, on the edge of tears. “I’m really glad you felt open enough to talk about that. Nobody really talks about how hard it is to run a business when you struggle with depression, or to be married to someone who is struggling with depression.”

I was sitting in a room with 9 other business owners. We had spent most of the day talking about our primary struggles with running our businesses. More about the tears in a moment.

Many people think that the hard part of running a business is marketing, or learning how to sell. Those aren’t actually the hard parts for most business owners who have advanced beyond the beginner stage. Once you’ve managed to earn enough to live on, or get close to it, your struggles change a bit.

One of the big struggles that comes up for me is mindset. Do I believe that I can do more, earn more, or deserve more? Can I make “a dent in the universe,” as Steve Jobs said?

And we avoid those questions, because they’re hard.

I get distracted by the latest marketing trends (Facebook messenger bots), or I chase skills that I don’t actually need (building web pages or documenting systems instead of just having my team do those things).

How do I keep myself focused?

Having clear goals helps, like we talked about last week. Being able to refer back to those goals is a reminder to do the most important things first.

But, for me, the the most helpful thing is the people that I have in my life. My wife and my friends help a lot. But they often don’t understand what I’m experiencing when I talk about the finer points of running a business.

So I turn to mastermind groups. I have two.

The first group is my tactical group. They are all experienced business owners like me. We meet once per month to talk about our business challenges.

We do 15/30/15:
– 15 minutes on recapping challenges
– 30 minutes of hot seat time to dive into one person’s business
– 15 minutes of talking about goals before we meet again.

Between meeting sessions, we keep in contact using a group chat app called Slack. Every Monday, all four of us share what worked last week, what didn’t work, and what our goals are for the coming week. We read each others’ reports and offer accountability and insights for each other. This is using Brian Moran’s 12 Week Year format that I mentioned in last week’s post.

We also frequently discuss various marketing ideas, ask each other for feedback on projects, and share jokes.

This group helps me sort through the weekly grind and stay focused on what actually matters.

My second group is more informal. It grew out of my friend Adrienne’s desire to hang out with a cool group of entrepreneurs. She asked some of her closest friends to recommend one or two people who would be interested in doing a weekend retreat in Orlando. My buddy Jason Van Orden recommended me, and I’m so grateful for it.

When I went into it, I figured that it would be an interesting weekend to talk about business stuff and hang out with Jason. I didn’t know any of the other folks, so I had no idea where it would go.

What ended up happening was pretty extraordinary (and this is where the crying stuff started). Instead of spending the weekend talking about sales funnels, email marketing, or Facebook ads, we spent most of our time talking about the things that are truly difficult in running an online business – the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that shows up every day when running a business.

Don’t get me wrong. We talked about the hard number stuff too. But it was awesome to have a space where entrepreneurs like me could be open to talk about what its actually like to run a business.

All of that to come to this point:

Two weeks ago my friend Sam texted me because she is seeking a mastermind group like this. It was literally the day that I published the application page for our own upcoming mastermind group. She’s a smart, experienced woman who knows what she wants and how to get there. She’s just tired of doing it alone and wants to try something different.

I don’t know exactly what will happen with this artist mastermind group. We have a format that I know has worked for me and my other groups in the past, but this is new for me.

But I believe that if you join us, you will receive the following benefits:

• a small group of 10 artists who I’ve hand picked to work together in a group so you can generate new ideas and have people to discuss them with and not be alone any more
• be a part of an accountability group with a formal structure so you can use that to propel you to the next level
• more sales with greater ease as you learn to collaborate and receive feedback in a way that is often very difficult to find in the competitive fine art industry

So far, we have two artists that I have accepted into the group and three that I have turned down. We have two more that I am talking with next week to see if its a good fit. If they’re a yes, we’ll have four spots left.

If you’re interested, click here to apply. Don’t wait.

Are you interested in the MM group but would like to know if it can be tweaked or altered to meet your needs? Contact us and let us know what your needs are.

One more note: You can absolutely start your own mastermind group. There’s nothing stopping you from doing that. If you have the connections and the inclination, do it! This experience is for those who want to do this with me and want the structure of a formal group. For many people, paying for something makes them stick to it.