15 Ways a Mastermind Can Help You Level Up as an Entrepreneur
What is a business mastermind?
A business mastermind is a peer-to-peer mentoring concept where members regularly meet to share their best ideas about how to run a business well.
Members commit to focused conversation by sharing experiences and advice so all members can get better in their respective businesses or careers.
A business mastermind is a group made up of entrepreneurs and experts in some particular field - marketing, sales, online courses, branding, blogging.
At Founding Females®, our female business mastermind community provides the ideal space for women to continually evolve into better versions of themselves so they can grow the business on their heart.
We meet once monthly to talk through business-related topic relevant to today’s female entrepreneur focusing on actionable takeaways where everyone learns from others' expertises and experiences.
A mastermind can be a game-changer for your business. Here are plenty of reasons why:
#1 Female business mastermind communities present expert insight about unfamiliar topics
As entrepreneurs, there’s no way we could possibly learn all there is to know about sales AND marketing AND product development AND online business AND “all the things,” so bringing together people with an expertise in those areas can help benefit everyone because idea-sharing is crucial if you’re going to tap into others’ expertises.
When committed, motivated, and goal-chasing powerhouses are gathered together in one space, a beautiful synergy happens. Conversation begins to flow, experiences are shared, and a whole new world of possibilities begin to emerge.
People who are professionally mature to realize the benefits of a mastermind and commit to it regularly typically have set themselves apart from average in their profession and are the type of people you and I want to be sharpened by. They have knowledge, experience, and expertise to share. Masterminds provide a breeding ground for new ideas to flourish.
For example, I regularly share my effective strategies for getting local news and tv attention at your event. In addition, it’s not uncommon for us to talk through profit strategies for increasing revenue and decreasing costs. Together, we present ideas for leveling up that other members may have never thought of.
#2 Female business mastermind communities provide support
Entrepreneurship can get lonely. At least in the corporate world when you have a crappy day, there’s someone in the next cubicle to vent to and hopefully laugh with. That’s not how it typically goes in entrepreneurship.
When you’re building your own business, your spouse or bestie can get burned out of hearing about your challenges pretty quickly. The community of support formed through a good quality mastermind can serve as the listening ear to business challenges and lend actionable, experienced-based suggestions and recommendations for pushing through challenges at all stages.
#3 A female business mastermind adds variety of decision making input
Entrepreneurs are pretty darn good at creativity. You won’t find a successful entrepreneur who’s built a profitable business and not had to MacGyver his/her way through challenge after challenge.
Those challenges build the skill of good decision-making and gaining that sort of insight from other mastermind members is what can help shorten the learning curve and fast-track you toward your goals.
#4 A female business mastermind community allows you to tap into members' network of connections
I speak often on the serendipitous nature of stepping out of your comfort zone in entrepreneurship...How when you step out of your comfort zone and intentionally be in community with others, you tend to make connections with the exact right people.
Don’t ask me how this works, but I’ve seen it over, and over, and over again. When you join a mastermind, you open yourself up to the networks of other savvy, goal-driven entrepreneurs just as they open themselves up to yours.
After all, the business of business is relationships. I have to laugh when I talk to entrepreneurs looking for the “key to success.” I suggest something so simple, anyone can do it: go out and build relationships. Often, the response is “Yea, I don’t have time for that.” Really, it’s that simple. Genuinely build relationships and your business will flourish.
#5 A female business mastermind community adds accountability
Chances are with entrepreneurship, you have no one checking in on the progress of your goals. That’s one of the hardest parts of running your own business.
When you work for someone else's business, you likely have deadlines set by someone else and a boss to report to, but when you work for yourself, it’s easy to let life get in the way and allow dreams and goals to fall by the wayside.
In addition, when you build your own business, you’re building something that has never existed before. YOU are forging the territory. YOU are drawing the roadmap. YOU are setting the pace. They're thoughts that often stay within your own mind unless you seek out opportunities to share them so they can evolve into their greatest potential.
Personally, when I come upon a task I don’t know how to manage or if I’m confused about how to accomplish a goal, that’s when my mind naturally tends to wander. That’s when I allow myself to get distracted. But when we speak our goals and dreams out loud in a mastermind, other people hear them, they remember them, and they get in your corner to check in with you.
#6 A female business mastermind community is amazing for “seed planting”
The beautiful thing about business is the way it evolves. Rallying around your success with a mastermind opens you up to entrepreneurs who are forging territory in stages of business you have yet to discover.
When you hear about their challenges, and their goals, and their successes, it plants seeds on your own trail that allows you to dream up the coming stages and goals ahead and begin putting steps in place to achieve bigger and better goals. Who better to help you conceptualize where your business is going than people who are already CRUSHING their goals?!
#7 A female business mastermind helps with vision execution
Sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know. As entrepreneurs, we take one step forward and trust the process. A mastermind community opens you up to the operations of others’ businesses so you can build out the fuzzy, not-yet-formulated parts of your business that you aren’t quite sure how you’ll execute.
#8 A female business mastermind helps with articulation of what you’re doing, why, and where you want to go
Having to explain out loud the direction you’re taking your business is beneficial for so many reasons. Your ideas start to become reality when you take them from thoughts alone and manifest them into actual conversation.
#9 A female mastermind is the self care of business ownership
Entrepreneurship is TOUGH, especially in this current season. It’s worth it, but some seasons can be so challenging, they make you want to quit. Being in community with other people who “get it” is crucial for sharpening your entrepreneurial mind and heart and refilling your cup to keep pushing through those business challenges.
#10 A female mastermind can help pinpoint upcoming holes, roadblocks, and mountains in your journey
Since you don’t know what you don’t know on the business journey you’re forging, other entrepreneurs can come alongside you and point out upcoming holes, roadblocks, and mountains so you can plan ahead for the course.
Taking an alternative route or sidestepping an unnecessary challenge can save you precious money and time you can't afford to waste.
In entrepreneurship, mistakes can be costly in time or money. When you team up with others who have experience crushing challenges, you gain insight on how they handled the challenge and can apply that valuable problem solving and decision-making knowledge to your own execution.
#11 Learn about new tools and resources in a female business mastermind community
We’re living in an age of accelerations where change that used to take an entire century now only takes a decade. With AI weaving itself into the everyday tasks of our lives, technology is only accelerating that rate of change.
The availability of technology at our fingertips is one of the reasons why entrepreneurship has become a possibility for so many people, but it’s also a challenge in that it’s difficult to know which platform, tool, or solution is the best.
Learn from others who are also leveraging technology in their businesses to see which platforms, tools, and solutions have served them well.
#12 Be inspired by motivated people in a female business mastermind community
As entrepreneurs, we know the journey is worth it, but sometimes the journey really stinks. Being around other people who “get it” and can offer a word of encouragement when the going gets tough AND offer encouragement after you just CRUSHED a huge goal are valuable assets to an entrepreneur’s mental health.
#13 A female business mastermind community provides continuous knowledge and learning
Look at successful entrepreneurs and you’ll likely see one common theme - they never stop learning. Putting yourself in a position to be sharpened is critical to your success.
#14 A female business mastermind community provides a sounding board to ask questions
It’s hard to ask and trust the input of people who have never before run a business. How could they possibly have a sharpened decision-making ability without seeing the cause and effect that entrepreneur micro-moments present?
Entrepreneurship simply offers unique challenges that someone who has only always worked for someone else cannot understand. Having a female mastermind community to ask questions and seek guidance from is crucial for running, growing, and scaling your business.
#15 A female business mastermind can help shape your repetitive thoughts
Your success and attitude about the world are made up of repetitive thoughts. Unless you position yourself to intentionally learn from others, you're stuck in the same repetitive thoughts that have always run through your mind. As the saying goes, "What got you here won't get you there."
If you want to continually shape and mold yourself to be ready for the next opportunity to level up, you must prepare by introducing alternative approaches running the many different components of your business.
Join our Female Business Mastermind
The Founding Females Mastermind Community provides these 15 benefits. It’s one of those costs with an infinite return because you gain so much from showing up that it’s hard to put a dollar value on it.
Committing to a mastermind was by far one of the pivotal changes I made in my business that moved the needle most significantly. I found that when you surround yourself with other sharp, goal-oriented dream chasers interested in business, you get regular check-in for accountability, fresh new ideas, and a strong community of support.
P.S. Here are some of my top favorite female small business resources for females:
Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business - a guided handbook including everything you need to know from business idea to launch to profiting and scaling your business.
Dream, Build, Grow Free Resource Suite - free business templates for your business plan, marketing plan, ideal client persona, financial statements, and more!
Free PDF Download: 25 Ways to Market Your Business (Aside from Social Media)
Founding Females Community - an online female mastermind space for new entrepreneurs to connect
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Meet the author, Francie Hinrichsen
Francie Hinrichsen the founder of Founding Females®. She is a business sage empowering female entrepreneurs to breathe life into the business dreams God called them to.
After feeling like a misfit in the corporate world, Francie discovered a life she loved waking up to through business ownership.
Francie is the author of Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business, a guided journal helping hundreds of women start and grow their businesses.
She’s a passionate entrepreneurship hype girl, female leader, public speaker, and community enthusiast.
Her MBA and 10 years in a corporate career and in business ownership positioned her to teach women forward-thinking strategies for starting and growing successful businesses.
As a community leader, Francie realized other women could thrive with the right guidance and support. She created the Founding Females® Mastermind Community that provides a safe space for women to build better businesses.
She believes that anyone with a dream on their heart can pull up a seat to change the world through entrepreneurship.
