Founding Females®

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5 Ways a Business Mastermind Will Help You Grow into the Person Your Business Needs

Francie Hinrichsen

In my line of work empowering female entrepreneurs with practical resources, it’s hard to deny that women tend to use a very different playbook than men.

Here at Founding Females®, we honor new and evolving expectations about what it means to be a working woman. For example, women tend to build businesses around life milestones, like having children, overcoming a challenging life circumstance like cancer or divorce, or seeing an opportunity to build a  business to make a difference in the world. 


And then there are silent challenges women entrepreneurs face, like gender bias, lack of access to capital, lack of mentorship, and work/life balance struggles, to name a few. 


Coming together as a united front to problem-solve with other women who view those challenges through the same lens and who are intimately familiar with these challenges is important. From these connections come a practical dialogue about how to overcome obstacles keeping women from reaching their full potential.


In a 2022 report from the National Women Business Council shared by SCORE.org (the nation's largest network of volunteer, expert business mentors), “Women-owned businesses earned $1.8 trillion in revenues, but that’s only 4.3% of the total private sector annual revenues.” The same report shares that about 80% of women are solopreneurs (meaning they have no employees).

To me, earning only 4.3% of total private sector annual revenues is a red flag. It means we have tremendous opportunity to do better. To me, this number says that many female entrepreneurs feel stuck.

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“Stuck” can look like playing the same ideas over and over, never getting different results.

 

“Stuck” can look like limiting your business’s growth to your own weaknesses and limitations rather than leveraging others’ strengths to level up.

 

“Stuck” can mean becoming the bottleneck keeping your business from reaching its full potential.

 

When we try to “go it alone,” we give up reaching our full potential!


So here are five important ways joining a Mastermind can help you grow into the person your business needs you to become:

 

#1 A Mastermind Normalizes BHAGS

BHAG stands for “Big Hairy Audacious Goals.” The term was coined by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in the book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.

 

BHAGs are the “if only” visions in your heart about what your company can become. BHAGs feel so big and so out of reach from where you stand currently that it seems impossible to get there…

 

…Until you position yourself around other people also aiming to achieve BHAGs.

 

Setting “unrealistic”’ goals alone feels impossible.

 

But positioning yourself around other dreamers taking action to accomplish something significant actually normalizes BHAGs. That’s why community is so important. It makes it more likely that you’ll grow into the person capable of reaching those goals.

 

#2 A Mastermind Supplies Real Life Examples as a Fresh Source of Ideas

The business landscape changes constantly, especially with AI promising to supply lots of “oh sh*t” moments by changing business as we know it.

Agility is an entrepreneur’s superpower. That means by the time the information emerges as a lead magnet or free course, best practices might already be changing.


The entrepreneurs who make it are the ones who embody agility as a way of life. To become agile, we need a quicker source of knowledge to make decisions without waiting months for new information to come down the pipeline. A business Mastermind makes that possible.



Hearing women’s business strategies in real time, straight from the mouths of the women forging new territory in entrepreneurship provides the source of fresh ideas your business needs to act fast and pivot quickly.

 

#3 Find the Best Binge-Worthy Resources

Book and podcast recs are passed around all day long in the entrepreneur sphere, but how many people actually act on the information they take in? With time and attention being your most limiting resources, it’s important you’re investing only in content that will actually make a difference.


In a Mastermind, you know you’re surrounded by people who take serious action. Through Mastermind dialogue, you’ll hear about resources that entrepreneurs are using to create actual change.

 

Inside a Mastermind you can hear the recommendations and actually see how the book or podcast is impacting a fellow founder because of the decisions that flow from it.

 

#4 A Mastermind Provides Soul-Filling Accountability

Many times as entrepreneurs, we know the right steps to take and just need a nudge to get it done.

We know that around 80% of female entrepreneurs are solopreneurs. Some women are satisfied simply replacing their 9-5 income and that’s it. Whatever your reason for running a business, it’s 100% valid.

But most female entrepreneurs I talk to are actively looking to build more than a paycheck…they want to build freedom.

For those of us who aim to build something significant into an asset, not a paycheck, we need accountability. Accountability comes through conversation that revolves around stepping outside our comfort zones. We need reality checks from women who care and authentic conversation when another sister in business checks in on our BHAGs.

 

A Mastermind is a tremendous source for accountability because the conversation is on-going with people who know your business and your heart well. It’s only through relationship that others can tailor the conversation to holding you accountable for the dreams in your heart and the difference you aim to make in this world.

 

These people can look at you on a monthly call and encourage you to “Do the hard thing. Face the scary decision. The thing you fear will change your life.”

  

Scrolling Facebook groups just doesn’t cut it when it comes to accountability. You may source information from online communities like Facebook groups, but the accountability in a Mastermind is very different from scrolling mindlessly. That’s because the accountability you’ll find in a female business Mastermind will hold your feet to the fire.

 

You can talk and dream all day long, but it’s taking action that will grow and evolve your business. Checking in with a Mastermind is a natural way to be held accountable to your dreams and goals, even when you hit rough patches and might otherwise quit.

 

#5 A Mastermind Allows You to Be the First to Know About Upleveling Opportunities

Women who view their business from a high level lens know about high level opportunities. I’ve passed countless client and speaking opportunities on to the women closest to me in the Mastermind. Why? Because we’ve built a relationship of trust.

When women know, like, and trust other people, they do business with one another. It’s also how women vet other women to pass opportunities to, like paid speaking engagements and equally high level clients worth pursuing.

 

While the Founding Females® Mastermind isn’t a networking group per se, there’s a ton of value in sharing opportunities as a natural byproduct of having a community you trust.

 

Conclusion

Friends and family who aren’t entrepreneurs sometimes find the entrepreneur lifestyle a bit unrelatable. When you join a Mastermind, you find your people.

As entrepreneurs, we have an insatiable thirst to live out our passion. We’re willing to work ridiculous hours. We give up the luxuries of a 9-5…all so we can pursue this dream in our hearts.

Being around women who get it inside a business Mastermind is magical because we don’t have to worry about being “too much.”

When you join a women’s business Mastermind, you’ll enjoy:

  • The beauty of normalizing big dreams and goals

  • Fresh ideas from real life examples while you see women business owners aiming high

  • The best binge-worthy resources that lead to results

  • Soul-filling accountability

  • First access to upleveling paid opportunities like high quality clients and speaking engagements

Looking for a women’s business Mastermind?

Come power up with a girl squad whose energy and business mind matches yours. We’re currently in open enrollment. Give the Founding Females® Mastermind free trial a shot and see what it’s like inside. We can’t wait to welcome you in!

P.S. Here are some of my top favorite female small business resources:

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