7 Reasons Why Successful Coaches Run Masterminds

Very few coaches run masterminds.

The reasons can vary from not knowing how to run a mastermind to being unsure of how to fill one.

The reality is that they are not hard to run, and filling them is often much more straightforward than acquiring one-on-one clients.

So let us take a look at seven very compelling reasons why successful coaches run masterminds and you should too.

1. They are profitable (sometimes very profitable)

I trust you became a coach because you have a burning desire to help others.

However, helping people in and of itself won’t put food on your table or pay your mortgage. 

To continue helping people way into the future, you must make your practice financially sustainable.

I sold out the first mastermind I ran in under 48 hours on the back of one email.

It made me about $10,000 from the actual mastermind, plus another $5,000 from sundries.

It’s common for masterminds to be $500 per month, and $5k per month or more for high-end ones is not unusual.

It’s not about the price but the value it delivers.

And if you have a great niche, then you can charge accordingly.

And speaking of niches…

2. You don’t need a huge list (you may not even need one at all)

As I said, I made $15k in total from my first mastermind, but I had the slight advantage of having 10,000 people on my email list then.

But I also had one huge disadvantage.

I didn’t have a niche.

My newsletter contained random self development material that would sometimes slide into politics and other controversial topics tenuously (at best) to life coaching.

It had no focus whatsoever.

Similarly, the mastermind I was promoting offered no focus; it was just a mastermind for anybody on my list.

Now imagine you have a list of only 100 people.

Your niche is ‘C’ level executives struggling with stress.

Do you think it would be easier to get 4 or 6 people to join your mastermind from a list like that rather than from a list of 1,000 random people who just wanted help with stress?

I do.

And here’s why.

1. They can, in all likelihood, afford to pay you
2. You can talk directly about their problems and the benefits a mastermind can offer
3. They will be motivated to change
4. They will be driven types willing to do the work
5. They will be used to working in a team environment and will have unique skills and experience that can help other attendees

A huge list is excellent, but a smaller, much more targeted list is far better.

If you don’t have a list, there’s a seldom used, but highly effective cool new workaround.

It’s called a telephone.

With one, you can call everybody you know and ask them if they’re interested in making huge beneficial changes.

If they are, great, sign them up.

And then ask them who they know who will be interested too.

If they’re not, great, then ask them who they know who would be interested.

Cutting edge, eh?

3. Attendees get results

Your job as a coach, first and foremost, is to help your clients get the results they want.

It doesn’t matter whether that’s a new promotion, a change of outlook, a reduction in stress, earning more money or, in my case, getting more coaching clients.

You (and I) get measured by our results.

Simply put, masterminds help people get results.

And then some.

The first mastermind I ever attended helped me double the value of my newsletter list and it only lasted for a day!

4. Clients become loyal to you

Because they get results some clients will stay with you on your masterminds for a long time.

For you, that means you spend less time looking for clients, and more time getting fabulous results for the ones you have – woo-hoo!

I’m not sure why on reflection, but I always prided myself on moving quickly with clients.

Between when I started in 2005 and 2011 my average life coaching client stayed with me for about five sessions.

My (erroneous) belief was that the faster I worked the better value I provided.

I also thought it negated any risk that clients may become dependent on me.

On reflection, both beliefs were utter bollocks.

Because as I’m sure you know, coaching can often work more effectively the longer it goes on.

Masterminds are just the same.

As you get to know a client you get to understand where her blind spots are, what will motivate her and how best to help her.

And she gets to trust you implicitly.

It becomes a valuable partnership, not a dependent relationship.

Plus, there will be things that don’t need addressing at the start of the process but come up as you move forward.

Growth creates different challenges, but it doesn’t eradicate them.

All these things are true of a mastermind too, only more so.

Attendees grow to trust and appreciate one another and become invested in the success of everybody else.

It’s brilliant having a coach on your side, but it’s even more brilliant to have a team on your side.

5. You will grow and improve as a coach

The biggest (unexpected) benefit of running masterminds is how much I personally have learned, and continue to learn from them.

Every person brings a different set of skills, experience and knowledge to the group.

As such, you as the facilitator can learn as much as the other attendees.

Much to my wife’s (understandable) annoyance on occasions, I hate not knowing shit.

I’ll stop a movie if I don’t know whether an actor is still alive or not. Or I want to know the city where it’s being filmed. Or whether it really is a true story.

That, almost OCD-type tendency, is magnified tenfold when it comes to marketing and coaching.

If somebody on one of my masterminds has a question that I don’t know the answer to I will go and research the shit out of it.

But even if you’re not quite as obsessed as I am, you still can’t help but learn from everybody else.

A mastermind also teaches you how to take an idea, that in its current guise may be unworkable, and turn it into a great one as people refine and modify it.

You will come away from every mastermind smarter, more knowledgable and more appreciative of the fact that EVERYBODY has something to offer.

6. Masterminds are easy to run

When you have a solid structure they’re super easy to run.

I do tend to do work in between masterminds and I make myself available via email and in a dedicated Facebook group, but I really don’t have.

As long as you are on the call as the host before everybody else and you can run a Zoom meeting, then you’re good to go.

For me, the most difficult element is telling people to start wrapping up when their time is coming to an end.

But it has to be done if you want to be fair to the rest of the group.

7. You’re not teaching, so don’t need to know everything

With the Fully Booked Coach course, I am the teacher and I need to know my shit about everything on the course

As most coaches join me to improve their marketing I still feel there’s an element of that when I run a mastermind, but it is a feeling and not based on reality.

You don’t need to have all the answers to run a successful mastermind anymore than you do with coaching a client

Every member should, and will, contribute to the success of everybody else.

I always make sure I give my thoughts and opinions last and there are many occasions when the other coaches have nailed it before it comes to me.

I’m not suggesting that you can start a mastermind on particle physics because you like the word quark. You do have to have some credibility.

But most things that your ideal client will want help with you could run a mastermind on.

So, Are You Missing Out?

It’s hard to see a downside to running a mastermind for any coach, but what do you think?

If you have any questions or thoughts, please leave me a comment and I shall respond. Similarly, if you are able to rate this post, that would be uber-cool.