A mastermind group is a terrific opportunity for you to build long term relationships with leaders in your community. During this audio presentation listen to Rob Knapp and Rob Brown expand on the topic.
Creating your mastermind group
Here is a brief overview of the main points we cover in this recording:
A Mastermind group is a tool you can use to help you with client acquisition. As you know from following SN our acquisition formula is 90/6/4/2/2. That 4 represents the number of folks we want you to add to a group to create a mastermind group. In my experience in coaching advisors through SN, I have found this is probably the most difficult topic to handle, but when it’s done well, it produces terrific results with some of the biggest referrals received from other members of the group.
Mastermind groups can be confused with Centers of Influence. Centers of influence can be anyone, the mayor, a teacher, your father-in-law, someone retired, anyone in your community who refers business to you. In a mastermind group you want to have people who are professionals in your community – CPAs, attorneys, commercial realtors, property and casualty insurance agent; anyone you can refer to and they can refer back to you.
The idea is to meet once a month, preferably over dinner, for a couple hours. You talk about your practice and they talk about their business. Each person gets an evening to present what is going on in their practice and maybe present an idea. You start by picking someone very close to you. You may have gone to school with them, they trust you; you trust them, they like you; you like them, you are seriously committed to helping them; they are seriously committed to helping you in growing your practices. This is the kind of person you would get together with for a Sunday barbeque. The two of you get together and you pick the 3rd person for your group. Then the 3 of you pick the 4th person. You want to keep the group small enough to meet regularly so if someone is not there, they are missed. You want to make it intimate enough that people are willing to share everything with the group. This can be incredibly powerful.
There was a case in Indianapolis where a mastermind group was created and this FA would simply go to the meetings and say, I need to meet so and so. Who knows him? There is a new company coming to town and I need to meet the owner. Who knows a person who could introduce me? They would make those introductions.
We were recently coaching a very successful FA who has a team. They have been in a mastermind group for 20 years. They are closest friends who meet once a month and they do it exactly as we described. The success is amazing. She describes herself as simply a person good at building relationships. That is a strength. If you are a person good at building relationships a mastermind group is something you should definitely do.
The Mastermind group comes together easier if you come up with one person and then the two of you pick the third and the three of you pick the fourth. You have to keep an open mind when picking the other people. You might also want to consider having a different Mastermind group for different groups of people.
One approach to use in your Mastermind group is instead of asking for referrals tell the group who you want to get an introduction too and see if they can make that happen. “If you were me, how would you go about meeting that person?” Because you are really sharing a lot of ideas, the other folks in that group will go out of their way to help you make those connections. It is a way to expand your networks if you think strategically about who you want to know and would consider adding to your practice as a client.