Internet marketing » One Sherpa

The Power of a Mastermind Group

November 14, 2008

I have recently joined a mastermind group and am finding it a great way to personally learn and grow. You may not have ever been part of a mastermind group and I am getting so much value out of this one that I thought it would be a good idea to tell you a bit about mastermind groups.

So what is a Mastermind Group?

In simple terms it’s a group of people who meet to share ideas, encourage one another and hold each other accountable.

The mastermind concept first became popular when Napoleon Hill talked about it in his book “Think and Grow Rich” which was published in the early part of the twentieth century.

He referred to the mastermind principle as:

“The coordination of knowledge and effort of two or more people, who work toward a definite purpose in the spirit of harmony”, he also said “No two minds ever come together without thereby creating a third, invisible intangible force, which may be likened to a third mind.”

The mastermind group I have joined is a group of people from all around the world who are learning about the whole new world of social media marketing.

We are exploring the rapid development of social interaction online and what this means for our businesses reaching the market place of the 21st century.

The world we live in is changing rapidly. Traditional means of marketing and communication are becoming less and less effective, and business people who fail to adapt quickly to the new mediums will get left behind.

This particular mastermind group meets entirely online using an interactive webinar room, a Wiki, a Google group and email.

In recent weeks I have discovered Feedly, Twitter, Flickr and a number of other rapidly growing and thriving online communities.

If you don’t have any idea what these things are then can I encourage you to find out more about them… because these things, and others like them, are having massive impact on the way we communicate, interact with each other, and do business together and this impact will increase and not diminish in the future.

You can find out more here.

In my next post I will outline for you the characteristics that make up a good mastermind group.

Tags: australis media, Business, Communication, Flickr, Google, Internet marketing, Marketing, masterminds, Napoleon Hill, social media, social media marketing, think and grow rich, Twitter

Categories: Mindset

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Reflections on the Summit, and a great video

October 30, 2008

It’s a week since were up on Mount Dandenong and I’ve had some time to reflect and gauge the feedback from those who came up there with us.

Overwhelmingly the feedback was positive which has encouraged us to do an event next year. Many people commented that it was different to what they’d thought.

One close colleague who knows me as a finance person thought that his eyes would glaze over in the first hour and it would be boring for him. Twice he has come back and said it was nothing like he thought it would be and of course much much better. Already he has invited a few colleagues to next year’s Summit before we’ve even set the date!

We are in the process of getting all the footage and material ready to post to the internet so that people can get an appreciation of what the day was all about and also give those of you who came the chance to reminisce a little. We were hoping to do that within a week of the Summit but our filming people have been caught up in another conference and there will be a slight delay. Please bear with us…

As promised at the Summit, here is the video of Paddy Hirsch, the Senior Editor of Marketplace explaining the financial crisis and how it occurred. This is a great explanation of a very difficult subject:

The reason I’m showing you this video is twofold:

To help all of you understand the financial meltdown a little better; and
To get you thinking about the use of simple yet powerful videos like this one for promoting your business online.

On that second point… all of us need to market our business in new and different ways. If I had a dollar for every time I’d seen a manager write on the whiteboard to explain a concept to people then I’d have lots of dollars in my kitty. I encourage you to watch the video twice:

On the first time, listen to Paddy and get an appreciation of the financial crisis.
On the second time think about how you might be able to create and publish videos like this for your business. Ask yourself questions like:
- What concepts would you like your clients or customers to know about your products or services?
- How would you go about recording yourself drawing that on the whiteboard, then uploading that video to YouTube so you and other people can refer to it at any time?

Remember Alister’s first rule in the new world:

Start by giving me something for free.
(If I like it, I won’t mind paying for the “meat”.)

There are a number of interesting articles which I’ve been reading around the Summit and just after it. These will be the next few posts as a service to bring you up to speed on the new economic conditions which are unfolding.

By the way, Lindsay and I are so committed to these innovative forms of online marketing that we’ve both signed up for Alister’s Internet Marketing Mastermind’s course. The best-priced memberships are selling quickly, so I encourage you to act quickly if you’re interested in this exciting course.