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Who Is Your Mastermind?

Who is your group of peers that can offer support, strategies, mentorship and advice?

Over the years, I’ve had a few.
Some organized… some unstructured.
This past weekend, I spent a few days in Miami with Jenny Blake, Dorie Clark (thanks for hosting us!), Alisa Cohn, Ron Friedman, Stephen Shapiro and Michael Bungay Stanier (unfortunately, Dave Crenshaw could not make the trip).
We discussed everything from business strategy to investment strategies to the value of writing a business book to marketing insights on how to be more effective with our individual thought leadership practices.

Before leaving, Michael asked us one question: What will you do differently going forward, based on what you learned this weekend?

Michael always asks the best questions.

I came up with a few answers:

I’ve had the pleasure of always working with amazing business partners. Getting support and advice outside of that echo chamber was invaluable. I will do more of that.
I will be more committed to this mastermind group, and the handful of other individuals in my trusted circle (people like Laura Gassner Otting, Ron Tite, Rahaf Harfoush, and many others). I need to show up more for them.
I will downplay the self-marketing (which I never liked doing) and focus on creating valuable content that might help anybody reading my content to get better at the work that they do.
I will do a better job of explaining the value of my new venture, ThinkersOne, to customers and Thinkers on the platform.

If you don’t have a mastermind or group of peers that can provide you with this kind of relationship, make it a priority.

You will grow.
You will question yourself.
You will find a more successful path forward (and these people will support you).
You will make your work and your team and your clients better.
Don’t believe me?

You can try out ThinkersOne by getting some of these incredible brains into your daily meetings and gatherings. It’s easy to book and cost-effective to do. Take their brains for a spin, and let me know how it goes…

ThinkersOne is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.