I’m in a few masterminds, and I adore them all. Leveraging the expertise of other people = incomparable.

I made this “How To Run A Mastermind” checklist a year or so ago, and completely forgot about it. Nathan Gilder asked me for it today, and when I gave it to him, he said it was pretty valuable. Hopefully it helps someone else too:

How To Effectively Run A Mastermind

-Decide on type of MasterMind (supportive or paid)

-Determine purpose

-Figure out who you want in the MasterMind – what types of qualifications do you want people to have, how much diversity do you want, and how many people.

-Find members. There are a lot of ways to do this. Some ideas are to ask people, place ads, go on forums, look at social organizations, work, ryze.com, Yahoo! Groups, meetup.com, or save your time and use the “Search” function on MasterMind Zone.

-When interviewing people, make sure that people exhibit certain qualities. For example, you want to make sure that you have people that are “take action” types, and not people who are the negative “victim” type. You also should look for people who are eager to improve.

-Survey members, decide what everyone can bring to the table

-Decide how long each session should last, allotting for socializing and break time. Break it down by how long each members gets to talk (including the time that they receive feedback). It is very imperative to stick to this schedule, or people get frustrated that meetings consistently run too long, and there is not a clear focus.

-Decide when and where to meet

-Either make a leader, or opt to rotate leadership. Somebody needs to be accountable for watching time, relaying messages if people miss a meeting, and contacting people if there’s a change.

-Set rules and goals during the first meeting. One common rule is that everything said during the meeting needs to be confidential. Other rules are to not be able to shoot down ideas, have an open mind, be absent or late too frequently, or not achieve states goals consistently. Decide on consequences for rules. Everybody should also identify a long-term goal on the first meeting.

-Encourage people to share “brain food” – books, music, movies, quotations, websites, etc.

-Set timer as each person talks, carefully making sure that everybody talks only as long as they have set for them.

-When people give feedback, it needs to be brief and to the point so that everybody can give feedback according to time allotments. Sometimes feedback won’t be needed though, as a person might decide to simply ask to be held accountable for something by the next meeting.

-Be the one to go the extra mile. Someone has to lead before others will follow.

-At the end of the meeting, ask if anybody needs accountability until the next meeting (perhaps they need a call from another member to keep them in check).

-In future meetings, make sure that everybody gives a brief update of their progress from last meeting.

-Review rules periodically so that everyone follows. The biggest “crime” usually is people talking past their allotted time period.

-Once established, everyone has to vote unanimously on new members.

Okay, for the second half of Altitude takeaways from February 12.

(You REALLY need to get your hands on these DVDs!)

1. Although people are INSANELY important (in fact, Bill Gates had said something like, “Take my 20 best people away and Microsoft is nothing.”)… they’re maybe 5% of the results.

95% of your results come from your SYSTEMS. This brings me to an Eben quote that I love.

2. “If you can’t describe what you’re doing as a process… you don’t know what you’re doing.”

3. A lot of people get stuck in the minutia and can’t zoom out.

This was a great point for me, and why I decided to do so much outsourcing last week.

4. Short term results are often very different from what long term results are going to be, and that needs to be taken into consideration.

Don’t let variation freak you out… but make sure you chart it. Like a crazed bulldog. (That was one of John Carlton’s power phrases. I love it. ;))

5. Once a system is stable , it’s VERY difficult to change… so keep it moving constantly. If someone gets trained wrong, it’s ridiculously hard to change them.

This is HUUUUGE. Eben mentioned this at the Altitude follow-up too, and I’ve really taken it to heart. He talked about how he tells his team from the start, “I’m going to be changing my mind constantly, so expect it.”

I tell people that I outsource to that as well… so they know from the beginning, and I don’t feel like I’m being as annoying when they know it from the get-go.

(It was also really nice to have the validation that I’m not the only one who wants to try 3827432 different things. :))

That being said, he also mentions that you should identify what you never want to change and what you constantly want to improve. For example, with Wal-Mart, they’ll always be the lowest priced company… but they might want to tweak customer service, customer experience, etc.

6. Character is also a stable system that’s hard to change. Eben told a story about Jack Welch, and how he went golfing with some of his top employees. He saw one of the guys cheat at golf, and fired him that Monday.

7. A win is very dangerous for you and your team. People are cocky and feeling invincible. Be careful. Eben told a story about an older woman who was scheduled to be on the Titanic when it sunk. She saw an ad that said something like, “The Titanic - the ship that even G-d couldn’t sink.”… and so she cancelled her ticket.

Another important point is that most people only associate with success, and disassociate from failure. The classic, “I trained my team to make $700/hr.”, but “They messed up that account.”

8. Tips for creating effective systems…

a) Hook everything up, run it, THEN make guesses about future results.

b) Track results visually - don’t delude yourself any other way.

c) Proactively look for unintended consequences, and EXPECT them.

d) If you want to change a result, look at the SYSTEM, not the SYMPTOM

e) Focus on the strengths, not the weaknesses. I think I might have blogged about this before, but one huge takeaway I got from Joe Polish’s SuperConference was this quote (”If you focus on all your weaknesses instead of your strengths, at the end of the day, all you’ll have is a bunch of strong weaknesses.”)

f) Constantly look for bottlenecks in your system.

Man, I love these Altitude DVDs. I’m taking Frank Kern’s Mass Control course right now too, which is also insanely amazing. Between both of them, I’m getting so many actionable ideas that I’m implementing… and my income has been skyrocketing, and I have MORE time at the end of the day.

When I went on my cross-country road trip, I was a little freaked out about all the expenses. It’s one of the reasons I was sleeping in my car. Now I’m going to EUROPE - which is more expensive, includes $1000 worth of airfare at least, another $1200 for the Eurail, I have no idea of how to get things on the cheap, etc… and I’m not worried at all. That’s not to say I still won’t be conscious (Eben says stars are lean and conservative, anyway ;)) - but the point is - what a paradigm shift.

Geeeez, so much awesome stuff going on! I have SO much to say, but I’m going to write more and post date them after this.

(Have I mentioned how much I love that feature of Wordpress? :) :))

Anyway, got a TON out of this Altitude… even more than last week maybe.

The first part was all about hiring Stars for your team (super-achievers).

Some huge takeaways from that (and by the way, the DVDs have a trillion times more value in them, so if you can get your hands on them, I highly recommend it):

1. Hiring people on emotional bases is VERY damaging. In fact, Eben says that if you like someone a lot when interviewing them… that’s your first red flag.

A lot of people will hire people because they’re like them… which is disastrous, especially for entrepreneurs. If you’re hiring another entrepreneurial type… you’re just asking for a) someone to go and make a competing business, and b) someone to not be around for long.

He also says that you shouldn’t hire someone because you want to help them (family, friends, someone in a bad situation, etc.) He says it’s hard - even for him to this day - but crucial.

His last mistake to avoid is only seeing the good in people. This is one mistake I know I’ve made in the past, but am avidly working on now.

2. He says to surround yourself with stars - star CUSTOMERS, star TEAM MEMBERS, star PARTNERS, and star MENTORS. This is a fantastic point on all accounts.

Tim Ferriss mentioned the customer part in Four Hour Workweek too, and it’s so super-important. It’s SO less stressful to deal with people that are, in my terms, “good at life”.

I had a copy client a while ago who told me he was going to do something small for me… I don’t even remember what it was, maybe return my questionnaire… but he didn’t. Anyway, I called him on it and told him that if he couldn’t keep his word, I didn’t want to work with him. Dude did a COMPLETE 180, and ended up giving me one of my best testimonials ever. And my life was much easier.

Even with yayFOOD… if I get serial complainers, or people who aren’t taking action… I promptly refund their money and peace them out of my site.

And when all’s said and done… I’m one of the happiest people I know.

3 . Finding stars isn’t always easy, because most of them lay low. Eben says most entrepreneurs will never meet a star… because stars only speak “star language” to people that they believe are stars themselves.

4. There’s A, B, and C players. A players are the ones who are the stars… C players are average at best. C players turn A + B players into C players, and are pure toxic. Even having just one C player on your team is insanely dangerous.

Stars, on the other hand… they multiply each other. Two stars together is the equivalent of 3 stars, and 3 are the equivalent of 6.

5. Stars see life differently than other people. They take responsibility for their actions. They have specific aspirations (i.e. they have concrete long term goals if you ask). They’re usually well connected with friends and family. They don’t need to be managed… just led.

Lastly, they’re not “flashy” people (which confirms what I read in Good To Great, about how the CEOs of all the “great” companies were simple people, didn’t like “fancy graphs”, etc.).

6. A great way to test people out is to ask them to take 5 minutes at the end of every day and ask them to report:

a) What they did and the results they got

b) Any problems or challenges they faced

c) Any questions they have

By reading these every day, you “put your finger on the pulse”. It’s harder with knowledge workers to get concrete results (versus assembly line workers, for example, where you can easily account for specific output).

Geeeez, I have tons more pages worth of notes. I’ll post-date the next half for a few days from now.

The next part is on systems anyway, so this is a good time to break off.

I’ve got to say though - these points are HUUUUGE, even if you don’t have a team. I started implementing them and found THREE stars this week. THREE!

One of them is so passionate about yayFOOD that she wanted to work for FREE.

I found another one on a bidding site. I put a project up where someone had to find 100 ultra-specific YouTube videos to put in my video database for yayFOOD. The process is actually quite grueling and obnoxious, and I’d been putting it off for a while.  I asked for people to include 2 sample videos in their bid, and to consider how long it took when they made their delivery length claims. It took me like 20 minutes to find 2 that fit what I needed, which is why I had been putting it off. This person wrote to me with 10 or so different videos and said she’d deliver within 24 hours. And for $50! And she was LOOKING FORWARD TO IT.  I asked her some “Star questions” and come to find out she’s not just “good at life” - she’s AMAZING at life!

The other one is one of the best writers on the Internet, period. And she gave me a week deadline for what she was going to do (a few reports, articles, blog entries), but said she’d probably get it done even sooner because she liked to get things out of the way right away. I totally get that, I’m the same way with my copy clients. It’s AWESOME to find someone who feels the same.

:)

Okay, off to write more blog entries.

P.S. I CAN’T WAIT FOR EUROPE!