‘Masterminding’ is like having an unpaid board of directors willing to provide business advice in return for you supporting them.
As you may know, I spent some considerable time as a member and organiser of various networking groups while I was growing my business. When I first started, there were only a couple of networking options to choose, while now, you could be out ‘networking’ morning, noon and night, both online and offline, and never actually getting any work done.
With so much competition, I observe that networking groups are constantly trying to provide added value to recruit and retain members. There was a phase when they all started offering training opportunities, and now I observe that many are adding masterminding into the mix.
When I was a senior manager at Freemans, we had a peer-to-peer development group that met regularly to discuss and resolve common issues, with someone appointed as each individual’s ‘conscience’ to follow up agreed actions.
Later, I ran a local ‘Idea Café’ where members brainstormed solutions to problems and generated ideas for each other.
I’m now founding another London-based masterminding group, initially to focus on public speaking. Please let me know if you’d be interested in taking part. If you’d like to launch your own masterminding group, Andy Lopata has compiled some useful tips here.
