The adage that two heads are better than one is a powerful statement that most people have heard before, yet often treat lightly. We all face challenges in life, relationships, communication and especially in business.
I meet with so many businesses and salespeople who still take a renegade approach to seeking wise counsel from others who might be of benefit to them. I shake my head and think, Wow! There is such an easier and smarter way to approach the game of business. In today’s highly networked and collaborative world it’s not only a smart idea to seek like minds who support you, but it’s extremely dangerous to go it alone.
Without challenge, imagine how boring life would be? One of the biggest issues most people face when confronted with a major challenge or crisis is to step back from the situation, humble themselves and seek out others for solid advice and help. I can tell you from personal experience that this is where having a ‘navy seal’ team of positive, solution driven people to assist and call upon is invaluable!
Two Reasons to Use a Mastermind Group
Here are two great reasons to assemble and use a mastermind for your business but in particular within your own marketing efforts.
#1. To help you get into action. I’ve lost track of how many people over the years that carry on and on about how ‘they don’t have time’ to work on their marketing or that they ‘got busy and haven’t had a chance to work on it’ because of other issues, plans, etc. Yes, the list of excuses is often predictable and honestly pathetic. Yes, I said it and here’s why: marketing is the oxygen of every organization. I feel like a broken record here as I hammer this home in all of my books, talks and client consultations as it often appears that I’m speaking a foreign language or being taken too lightly on this premise.
If you investigated through the daily list of business casualties around the globe, you’d find them littered with well-intentioned people who are excellent at what they provide, make, or offer, but were horrible at promoting (aka: marketing) it. Unfortunately, the market place often doesn’t reward the best people, product or service, but bottom line the best marketers. Please burn that last sentence into your mind and never, ever forget it. A lot of people reading may dislike this, but it is true in almost every industry.
When you assemble a good group of likeminded people to assist you with ideas, questions, and problems or opportunities related to your marketing efforts it helps to not only save you time, money, frustration, but in the context of marketing it helps to build in a key ingredient: accountability.
Case in point: writing a book. Not easy to do, yet so many people romanticize about the great book they ‘plan to write someday’ knowing full well how challenging it is to actually pull off. Here are three, simple yet very powerful pieces of advice I give aspiring writers: write one-page per day, set a deadline for getting the rough draft completed, and then tell five positive people in your circle of influence of your intentions.
Why this advice, especially the part about telling five key people of your intentions? The answer is often overlooked, but here it is: these people will often hold you accountable and offer up encouragement to get you moving into action now versus later due to the excuses known as distraction and procrastination.
When it comes to your marketing efforts, having a core group of mastermind friends and allies at your beck and call will not only motivate you, but inspire you to get busy on your ideas and initiatives versus wasting time or coming up with more and more excuses to push it off.
#2. Seek wise counsel. This again is timeless, battle-tested advice, yet so many people skip over and/or ignore it. For example, I’m shocked at how many people in organizations of all shapes and sizes that let unqualified, and often extremely negative people, weigh in on key business decisions such as marketing. This is not only foolish but too important of a business function to let amateurs give input.
In the age of Google search, the temptation is to go online for 5-minutes and find a few people or ‘experts’ who validate what we want to hear, and then assume that the idea is sound and move ahead. This behavior echoes a similar issue I find with people who ask me to solve a ten-year marketing problem with a sixty-second solution. It’s not happening and it’s never that easy to fix. Sadly, reality and hard-work are two difficult pieces of advice that most people refuse or don’t want to hear.
This a mastermind or inner circle group of advisors who are well qualified to weigh in on marketing based on a history of success and failures. Yes, I said failures. These expensive mistakes made by others are often valuable when approached from a learning perspective. As we say in marketing circles, we call dismal results “testing” as there is no long-term failure only lessons learned to grow and improve from.
Share this:
