Small business

How a Mastermind Group Could Help You and Your Business

“Because eight minds are better than one”
Unknown

Usually when someone refers to a mastermind group, he or she means a group of like-minded individuals who come together on a regular basis to help and support one another to grow their respective businesses.

The history of a mastermind group dates back to the beginning of time. Andrew Carnegie, one of the most famous leaders of industry of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, became one of the richest men in the world. He believed in the power of mastermind groups and often said participating in a mastermind group was an essential ingredient for his success.

One of the names we hear most often that is associated with a mastermind group is Napoleon Hill. While Hill did not invent the idea, he can certainly be given credit for promoting the concept of a mastermind alliance. Napoleon Hill was an American author, one of the first to write on the topic known today as personal development. In 1928, Hill published a study course called The Law of Success, based on his interviews (at the suggestion of Andrew Carnegie) over the course of 20 years with some of the country’s most successful men. One of the lessons contained within The Law of Success is…you guess it…a mastermind group. Nine years later, Hill continued to expound on the topic of the mastermind alliance in his best-selling classic, Think and Grow Rich.

Mastermind groups are a very powerful way to brainstorm, support, give and get advice from your peers. It’s like your very own board of advisors and a way to access entrepreneurial knowledge, skills and experience from a group of like-minded individuals.

I’m a big believer in Mastermind groups and have grown my business significantly because of them. As entrepreneurs we can become isolated in our own businesses, often spending more time working in our business rather than working on the business.

Mastermind groups, with the correct structure, allow you the accountability mechanisms to stretch yourself, create a vision and goals that give you the shivers, and stick to a plan to achieve those goals.

If you’ve ever considered joining a mastermind group, I would love to talk with you. You can check out my new program, The Big Profit Club to see if this might be something that speaks to you, and if it does, I would love to see if you and your business are a good fit.

The program starts, Thursday, November 14th, so give me a call today 207-653-6977 and let’s chat!

Mandy works with talented, high energy self employed professionals and very small businesses who struggle to market their business effectively, stretch their capacity and play a bigger game. Mandy’s client’s receive proven, specific information on what they need to do to get more clients and grow their business. As a result, those who coach with Mandy increase their business, get more clients and make more money, faster and easier than they ever would have on their own. Sign up for her free Cd “7 Productivity Secrets of Successful Entrepreneurs” right down below.

Who Are You Trying to Impress?

by Mandy Schumaker Leave a Comment

Be you, be true, be strong.

Danielle LaPorte

The best conversations with my kids always happen after school, when they are having their afternoon snack and I’m preparing things for dinner. Yesterday was no different. I was asking my five year old son, Cade, about his day, and I said I had noticed he hadn’t mentioned his best friend (as of last week) Brendan much anymore and he said, “I can’t stand Brendan, he’s always trying to act like he knows everything and be somebody he isn’t.”

Hmmm, I thought. How interesting. So I said, “Can you give me an example of what he does?” So he preceded to tell me that Brendan (according to Cade) acts like he knows the answer to every problem, even when he doesn’t, that he tries to act older than he really is, and he tries to impress (yes, Cade’s word) the teacher and everyone else.

So I said, “Well, if Brendan isn’t your best friend anymore, who is?” And he said, “Andy”.

I asked, “Does Andy try to impress everyone?” and Cade said, “No, he acts like his real life”.

His “real life”. You gotta love it. Inauthentic behavior snagged at age five.

Of course, we’ve all tried to impress people in various situations in our life, but why do we do it? So we can feel bigger or better than others. It’s all ego stuff.

It’s probably not a big deal when we do it on a small scale and it is certainly not a big deal at age five. But, when we aren’t authentic and are trying to impress others in our relationships, work, businesses, etc its noticeable…even at age five. And people trust an authentic person more than someone who’s not.

Consider these questions:
-Where in your life are you trying to impress others?
-Where are you not being your authentic self?
-What do you have to force yourself to do, be or have?
-Where in your life can you help make others feel enough?

The biggest reason we try to impress others all comes down to not feeling like we’re enough. Like we’re not smart enough, rich enough, funny enough, happy enough, pretty enough, and good enough. One of my favorite lines from the movie, The Breakfast Club was, “spend a little more time trying to make something OF YOURSELF and spend a little less time trying to impress people.”

Or as my son, Cade puts it, “Act like your real life”.

What Problem Are You Solving?

by Mandy Schumaker Leave a Comment

I recently had the privilege of volunteering as a coach at Portland, Maine’s, first Startup Weekend. It was fun, interesting and eye-opening!

On the first evening of the event, over 40 people took to the stage to pitch their idea for a business. They had sixty seconds to do so and were supposed to answer these four questions:

Who am I (introduction)?
What problem am I solving?
How will I solve it?
Who else do I need on my team?

The most amazing thing happened! Only five out of the nearly 45 entrepreneurs who pitched their business, answered this question: What problem am I solving?

And here in lies the problem.

Most of the people said something like this, “My idea is to start an organic soda pop business.” Or, “I love to drive motorboats, so I thought it would be cool to start a rental boat business,” blah, blah, blah.

So many times when someone thinks they have a good idea for starting a business, they fail to answer the question, “what problem am I solving?”

And when pitching your business, whether it’s to get money, win a contest, attract an investor or resources, you MUST remember to answer this question and clearly define, what problem am I solving? Typically a pitch only allows you a set amount of time to lay out your business idea, so it’s crucial right up front to answer this question.

One of the best ways to address it is to tell a story about the problem. Now, of course you probably couldn’t tell a story in a sixty second pitch, but you certainly could tell one in a 3-10 minute pitch. And storytelling, by far, is the best way to capture people’s attention.

Also, you need to remember the problem you are solving stems from your perspective and experience. However, it’s absolutely critical that you do some market research to figure out is there really a problem? And of course, do enough people, besides you, believe it’s a problem?

Lastly, I’d like to point out, that even if you’re not pitching your business, or perhaps you already have an established business, the question, what problem am I solving, needs to continuously be in the forefront of your entrepreneurial mind every day! This is the kind of mindset that makes for a successful business!

3 Signs It’s Time to Raise Your Rates

by Mandy Schumaker Leave a Comment

One of the most challenging things to do as an entrepreneur is to develop your pricing, particularly if you are in the service business. Because most of us struggle with valuing our products and services, and when starting out, we just want to get new clients, so our tendency is to establish pricing that is too low.

I spoke this week with a very talented events planner who shared with me a great story about how she learned her prices were way too low. She had been hired by a bride to help her plan her wedding. In the process, the bride shared a Google Doc with her not realizing that on the document were the bride’s notes pertaining to other wedding planners she had spoken with before she hired her current events planner.

The events planner told me, she could clearly see that her prices were “way lower than everyone else on the document”. The bride had also made other comments next to several of the other events planners she spoke with such as, “never called me back”, “didn’t like her attitude”, and next to the event planner she hired, she wrote, “loved her energy, really nice”.

The very talented (and very smart!) events planner immediately raised her prices!

So here’s three signs you need to raise your prices.

1-Raise them right now-because I guarantee they are either too low or on the low side. Every time I work with a new client-the first thing I do is raise their prices. It’s hard and they rarely want to do it-but one, it gives them renewed confidence and two, they ALWAYS get more clients-so without reading number two and three below-raise your prices!

2-You’re starting to resent doing the work for your current prices. Whether you know where you stack up with your competitor’s pricing or not, there comes a time in our businesses where we start feeling resentful that we’re not making enough money for our time. I have seen this over and over with my clients-it’s some kind of intuitive sense that it’s time to tweak their rates again.

3-Your practice or business is full. Whether it’s a program you offer, or you’re in a service-based business, when you’re full-it’s time to raise your rates.

Just to clarify, it probably isn’t a good idea to raise your prices on current customers and clients. I’m not saying don’t ever do this, but if you’ve been in business 3-5 years, you have probably tweaked and changed your rates frequently over the time you’ve been in business, and you don’t want to always pass along those price increases to the clients who’ve been with you from the beginning. At some point, you may have to give a price increase to your long-term customers, just not every time you raise your rates.

So, take a look at your pricing-does it make sense? What’s it based on? An hourly rate? Is there logic behind it? Do you feel good about it? Do you feel valued from it?

Remember, you can always test it along the way, before you make a wholesale change, but reviewing your pricing every 6-12 months is a very worthwhile, and lucrative exercise.

Off Your Game?

by Administrator Leave a Comment

The game has its ups and downs, but you can never lose focus of your individual goals and you can’t let yourself be beat because of lack of effort.

Michael Jordan

This week was school vacation week in our house and instead of taking a big trip away, we chose to take day trips and stay closer to home. It was a great week, lots of family time and fun activities, but I had recently just returned from a week away with a friend in Europe and was already feeling a bit “off my game” in my business.

It happens to all of us at one time or another. There are disruptions in our lives that can often pull us in another direction for awhile and we can lose focus of our goals.

I experience this with my clients and I often see it happening eight to ten weeks into the New Year. Remember back to January, where we were all so gung-ho to get our goals in place for the year and really commit to what we want? Then something or some event or situation demands our attention and we wonder how we got so off track to our best laid plans?

The trick is recognizing where you are and where you need to be, and getting yourself refocused and back on your game. Don’t beat yourself up, or make negative comments about any of it, because this happens to everyone. The muscle you need to learn to develop is how to refocus your attention and continue on your path and “get back in the game”.

Here are three suggestions to help you get refocused on your business-and they work because I just used them for myself this week!

1-Schedule a ½ hour with yourself (yes, put it in your calendar) to review your business plans, goals and visions. Figure out where you are in the process and write down the next three steps you need to take, from where you are today, to get back on track.

2-Surround yourself with positive affirmations, tapes, people, quotes, build a vision board; make a mind movie-whatever works for you. When we get off track, we usually start giving ourselves negative messages, which in turn spiral us further down and make it increasingly difficult to get back on track. Find a way to circumvent the negative tapes by creating lots of positive input for yourself.

3-Make a list of everything you are grateful for-nothing puts us in a better frame of mind than to be grateful for all the wonderful things in our life. It helps us focus on what’s important and puts us in a state of abundance, rather than lack.

I can guarantee that taking these three steps will help get you refocused on your goals, give you renewed energy and help you continue the success you’ve already created for yourself!

Be sure and let me know how this works for you!

What’s Your Why?

by Administrator Leave a Comment

Do you know “why” you do what you do? Would you be willing to do what you do for free-all day long? This week, I spent a lot of time with several different groups of entrepreneurs. In each group we spent some time trying to understand why we do what we do. What’s our compelling story? What was our defining moment?

Why is it important to determine all of this? Because people buy your why-they don’t buy how you do it, or even what you do-they buy WHY you do it.

One of the best examples I’ve ever seen in explaining this, is Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk, “Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action”. Take a look and be sure and leave a comment below…

Small business

Footer

Sign up for updates