Emily Thompson has had a long journey with her business. Her brand, Being Boss, is dedicated to helping creative entrepreneurs thrive in their businesses. From a hit podcast – the Being Boss Podcast – to Facebook Groups to a Slack Channel, Emily finally landed the brand on Mighty. And she built something amazing.
Today, Being Boss offers a few fantastic membership options. And Emily has made masterminds a part of it. The C-Suite membership rings in at $599 a month, bringing together established business owners into a coaching mastermind to help them learn from each other and from Emily.
The Being Boss example shows how well masterminds can fit in with a group of other offerings, including group coaching. Building a mastermind will give you a dedicated group of people who share experience and a niche and who come together to learn from each other.
In this article, we’re going to talk about mastermind group coaching, what it is and what it isn’t. We’ll also work to separate the terms – talking about how a mastermind is often very different from group coaching.
And if you’re interested in starting your own mastermind group, make sure to read our guide!
If you want more support in building your online community, come join OUR Mighty Community for free and meet other new and established community owners! We’d love to meet you. Join for free!
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What is a mastermind group?
A mastermind group is a group of people with similar experiences or life goals who meet up to learn from one another, sharing stories, lessons, and accountability.
When Napoleon Hill, famous for his studies of wealthy people, realized that they kept intentional company with other wealthy people, the idea of a mastermind group was born. Mastermind groups often cost money, sometimes a lot of money, to keep participants accountable for showing up and doing the work.
Mastermind vs. group coaching
There aren’t always clear differences between masterminds and group coaching – the words are used interchangeably sometimes. The main distinction is usually the power dynamics of the group.
Group coaching usually refers to an expert who brings together a community to learn from them: 1 expert and a group of novices. A mastermind group is usually considered a community of peers who all bring expertise to the table, with a facilitator rather than a coach.
BUT there’s no perfect distinction between the two things. Group coaches occasionally call their offering a mastermind – and that’s totally cool. BECAUSE even in a group coaching situation, everybody brings something to the table. One of the benefits of the group is the chance to learn from each other, instead of just from a coach.
If you’re running a practice of mastermind group coaching, you’re probably doing a little bit of both. You want to share your expertise and experience as a coach, but also allow members to teach each other as a mastermind group.
So feel free to call your group a mastermind, no matter what it looks like :)
What you need for mastermind group coaching
- Members who are on a similar journey and interested in similar (not necessarily identical) outcomes (e.g. business owners).
- Members who have some knowledge and experience to share with each other. Masterminds don’t work well for total beginners.
- You need to have some experience yourself in the subject.
- You should also have good facilitation skills.
How to start coaching a mastermind group
1. Have a Big Purpose
As with any online community that we see come together on Mighty, a coaching mastermind group should have a Big Purpose. We use a Big Purpose as one of our fundamental steps for Community Design™.
Basically, a Big Purpose is the reason why any community comes together, and we like to think of it in terms of a bridge. A coaching mastermind group will bring together a group of people, for a set of activities, to accomplish something.
You can use this formula to create your own Big Purpose.
2. Ideal Members
The second thing you’ll need for a coaching mastermind group is an Ideal Member. An Ideal Member is the person who will benefit the most from being in your community. Since this is a mastermind group too, your Ideal Member will be someone who has some experience or perspective to share with the group but who can also learn from you.
Ask yourself some of the following questions to clarify who your Ideal Member is:
- Where do they come from? What’s their background?
- What do they care about? What do they dream of accomplishing?
- What value or perspective can they bring to your other members?
- How can you and the group help them achieve some transformation they’ve been dreaming about?
- How much can they afford to pay?
As always, one of the best ways to find your Ideal Member will be to interview them. Go find 15 or 20 people who you think might be your Ideal Members and sit down with them – in person or virtually. Ask them some of the questions above and figure out what they’ll need from the group.
3. Set group rules
Before you start, it’s a good idea to set some ground rules and guidelines for what you expect from your mastermind group. You can come up with these yourself at the beginning, but it’s also a good idea to run them by your members and make sure they agree.
For example, most mastermind groups have some ground rules around showing up. Many might let you miss a session in case of emergency, but miss more than one and you’re out.
Does that sound extreme?
The thing is, mastermind groups require a really high level of trust. It takes time to develop trust. And if you’re working with seasoned leaders, executives, or people with high-power, high-stress careers or businesses, they might need a bit of extra convincing that your group is a safe space.
Knowing that the participants will keep showing up is a way of creating safety.
4. Set a price
A mastermind coaching group usually qualifies as a high-ticket item. Masterminds can run from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of dollars (yeah, really). And the people who run them will tell you that the price tag is important.
The price tag is a way of keeping the quality of the group high. The more skin people have in the game, the more they’re going to show up and do the work. So choose a number that will make your Ideal Members take the group very seriously.
Here’s an example. $1,000 a month for a mastermind might seem like a lot of money for a new business owner who’s barely earning anything. Maybe they would be more comfortable with $50/mo. But, if your mastermind coaching group was targeting successful business owners making $1 million/year or more, $50/mo is such a small number that you’d worry about them not taking the group seriously.
Find the balance between charging what your members can afford, but enough to sting a little so they’ll do the work.
5. Choose a platform
Obviously you can mix together programs like Calendly, Gmail, Zoom, some sort of payment processor, and God knows what else to make your mastermind work. But it’s easier just to use a mastermind group platform.
There are different platforms out there, but think about the things that you’ll need to run your coaching mastermind group. You’ll need scheduling, video chat hosting (if it's virtual), a point of sale and way to keep collecting on a regular basis, and options to keep track of and message your members.
So why not come build your mastermind coaching group with Mighty? Mighty is a cultural software platform that lets you mix your mastermind events with content, community, courses, and commerce. And our flexible Spaces mean that you can add live streaming, chat and messaging, group discussions, polls and Q&As, member profiles, and more.
Monetization is built-in, you can charge in 135 different currencies or monetize with token-gating. And Mighty Networks comes with a great app that works on every device.
6. Invite your members
Once all this is set up, the next step is to invite your members and schedule your first mastermind group coaching session! You can go back to the Ideal Members you interviewed – those are often the early adopters of any community.
But otherwise, take to your email and social media, and search for your group members. You might invite everyone. You might hand-pick members. It’s up to you, but choose the people who will make your group thrive!
One piece of advice. Keep your groups relatively small. 10-12 people are optimal for a mastermind coaching group. If your group is too big you lose the intimacy, people will be less likely to connect AND you just won’t have the time in your sessions for everyone to go deep. If you’ve got more interested members, just start more than one group! This could be as easy as creating two different Spaces in your Mighty Network!
Ready to start?
If you’ve done this groundwork, you’re ready to get started with your mastermind group coaching business. Don’t worry about a thing. You got this!
And if you want a great place to host, come give Mighty a try! It’s free to try for 14 days, no credit card required.
