We are stronger together.
This idea binds families, sports teams, armies, and corporations. So often, however, when taking on the deepest of challenges, we find ourselves alone. Solopreneur-ing is a thing. It can be the right way to approach business (more on that another time), but that does not mean one cannot benefit from support and help.
The various schools of how to put together this support are all alliances: unions for mutual benefit. In my experience, the utility comes in four categories. Accountability is where someone else is helping you keep to your commitments. Emotional support keeps everyone together when we are under all sorts of stress. One can think of it as lending out one's patience. We are less frustrate. Advice lets us take advantage of each other's wisdom to work on the businesses, rather than getting lost in the minutiae. And finally, we share resources to put that which is cheap to one member to use for our ally's dear benefit.
I have read of four organizing principles for this kind of mutual support society. The mastermind is the most common in startup circles in which I have traveled over the last year. Annie Duke offers an approach from the world of poker, which she calls "decision groups." Tiffany Da Silva champions the concept of Shine Crews as a bulwark against impostor syndrome.
In his book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill introduced what he called the "master mind alliance." One of his steps to success was forming a group of career and business-driven individuals who would support each other's efforts. He cites as the first of these the self-described "Vagabonds": Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs. These are business principals who can share data in confidence and work on each other's problems.
In the modern iteration, these can usually meet weekly or monthly to gather each others' wisdom. Two formats help. The hot seat is when one person discusses their business blockers in each meeting. They get the insight of their colleagues. The hot seat format is often most helpful when getting started, and the group requires more background on a problem to dig into it. Some change this structure with time, but I have found it has legs. The person in the hot seat pulls insight from the group rather than being "grilled" as much.
The second is the panel, where they go around the group to solicit questions and sort out a series of topics to cover in the meeting. Each mini-discussion identifies immediate insights and ways one member or another can help after the meeting. The panel also allows seeing common threads in each others' blocking factors.
In Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke discusses a model based on how professional pokers debrief: the decision group. The focus is on reviewing decision-making processes both retrospectively and prospectively. Groups gathering to consider decisions provide domain-specific support and accountability. I see how they represent a block against the emotional impact of "resulting." "Resulting" is a poker term Duke discusses in her book. It is when we look exclusively at the outcome of the decision rather than what went into it. I hope to incorporate these ideas into support groups I form and join in the coming months.
I imagine the retrospective as parallel to a Morbidity and Mortality meeting. In medicine, doctors review each adverse outcome behind closed doors. They go deep into what was known, what was almost known, and how to make it more thoughtful next time. I have two sisters who are physicians. They are sworn to secrecy about those meetings but confirm they save lives. Imagine if they could save businesses.
Tiffany Da Silva advocates women come together in Shine Crews. Her focus is heavily on the importance of emotional support to fight imposter syndrome. I do not have inside knowledge here, except to say that the emotional connection as a sales pitch makes a lot of sense to me. I would check out her materials to learn more if you are of the appropriate demographic, and I will try to apply these lessons in my efforts.
While the preceding are the most common, these are not the only possibilities. I have experimented with a few models at variance from them.
For example, for twelve weeks this winter and spring, I co-hosted a weekly hour on Clubhouse. We called this the "Sunday Growth Mastermind." We invited people to join us on stage to talk about business blockers. The job was public and transactional. As a result, the ongoing mutual support and confidentiality could not be part of it. Still, it seemed to help people.
As of this writing, I host an open-invitation small group startup meetup in the Virtual Coffee community. On any given week, people can join or not, and there's no agreement to confidentiality. But the support they get in the room seems to make a big difference. I'm spending more time moderating, so we rarely talk about my businesses. Perhaps that is the price? I find that I can do good for these solopreneurs.
Harry Moreno runs Solofounders, another open-invitation Zoom session for, well, solo founders. There are some regulars, and others who show once, get value, and do not return. We often settle on one person who has something they are working on who wants to talk about it and go deep. It seems like we invented the flash hot seat. I come away from each of these meetings even more interested in the business opportunities around me.
From all this, a few recommendations for getting the most out of getting into your first mastermind alliances.
First, you can get great value from the first meeting by going deep with your immediate issues. To maximize returns, take what is most in front of you rather than picking an issue that makes you look intelligent or profound.
Second, pay attention to the advice given when discussing the issues of others. Most problems are alike, and the words you use to help your ally may be just what you need to do for yourself.
Third, record video if possible. The value of a recorded video meeting is enormous. Tools like grain.co allow digging into the record quickly without having to rewatch the whole game film. Instead of scrambling to memorialize insights as you go, you can participate in the meeting with your full attention. As it happens, I take contemporaneous notes to keep track of the many good conversational threads. But there is no substitute for a review of the "game film" after the fact. Spending an additional hour reviewing the meeting via skimming the transcript and diving into significant exchanges is high-return.
Any recording or video must remain confidential to the discussion group. The exception is when the meeting itself was public, as it is in my variants discussed above. Pulling from the stream or youtube recording is uncontroversial.
I have a great deal more to learn about extracting the maximum value from masterminds and similar structures. I hope these lessons in media res can help you get a jump-start on your journey. For all the complexities, ideas, and recommendations, the essential idea is this:
You are not alone.
We are stronger together.
Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash