People ask me how I learned to set up mastermind groups as if there was a master plan from day one. There wasn’t. I built my first one because a problem kept showing up, and nobody was solving it.
I’ve covered the theory in how to build a mastermind group that lasts and the background in my review of Think and Grow Rich. This one’s different. This is the actual story of how I set up mastermind groups in real life, in order, mistakes included.
The Problem That Started It
I was a Senior Laboratory Technician for the London Borough of Waltham Forest. Science technicians in schools are an odd professional group. Every school has one or two, tucked away in a prep room, solving problems that nobody else in the building understands. Broken equipment, awkward risk assessments, exam board quirks. Each of us figured it out alone, in isolation, and as a result we were often re-solving a problem that a technician two miles away had already cracked the year before.
That waste bothered me. So I decided to set up a network of my own. Nothing grand. I simply asked around to find out who else was doing this job in the borough, and started getting us in a room together once a term.
How I Set Up Mastermind Groups, Step by Step
I should point out at this stage that none of this was clever. It was simply persistent.
- I found the other technicians. There was no list. Waltham Forest had around 200 schools, so contacting all of them myself would have been a massive job. Instead, I asked a handful of volunteers to each take on a handful of schools themselves. That one decision was a huge time saver, and as a result the network started life as something built by several people, not just me.
- I picked a low-pressure first meeting. No agenda beyond seeing if this would be useful. I didn’t want anyone feeling obligated to attend a second one.
- I made the value obvious early. I came with a genuine problem I was wrestling with, and consequently others did too once they saw it wasn’t a trap. That’s the bit people skip when they try to set up mastermind groups of their own: it only works if the first session proves its worth, rather than just promising it.
- I kept the rhythm light. Once a term. Often enough that people remembered why they came, but infrequently enough that it never felt like a burden on top of an already full job.
- I let it grow on its own terms. Word spread, and the network reached around 250 members eventually, which is a huge number for what started as a handful of people in a prep room comparing notes.
Where It Got Interesting
Here’s where it gets interesting. Once the network had numbers, equipment suppliers noticed. They wanted access to 250 technicians as a sales opportunity, but I saw it differently: as free training.
I turned their product demonstrations into proper training sessions. The supplier provided the trainer and covered the cost of lunch, so we got hands-on time with the latest scientific equipment, in our own laboratories, at no cost to anyone. Not every school could release staff for it, but twenty or so technicians would turn up each time, and the knowledge spread from there through the rest of the network.
It wasn’t all supplier-led, either. Some technicians had specialised knowledge of their own and were happy to share it, leading training sessions for the rest of the network on whatever they knew best. I led several of these myself. That’s the bit that made it a proper mastermind rather than just a training calendar, because the expertise was coming from inside the group, not only from outside suppliers.
We also ran an annual group purchase of science equipment. By aggregating everyone’s individual orders into one collective buy, I negotiated a discount that none of us could have got alone. It’s a simple idea, but it’s only possible because the group existed and was organised enough to act together.
My manager backed the whole thing from the start, and the department benefited directly, with better-trained technicians, fewer repeated mistakes, and faster fixes. Eventually the borough’s Design and Technology departments asked me to come in and advise on setting up something similar for them. That worked too.
The Bit Nobody Talks About
There was something else going on underneath the training and the discounts. One of the technicians once described her own role to me as ancillary, as if she were an afterthought to the school’s real work. That word stuck with me, and for the record, it’s wrong. These were skilled professionals, and the network gave them a forum that proved it. Some of them went on to train teachers on the equipment they’d once felt apologetic about handling.
I didn’t set out to fix anyone’s sense of professional worth. That happened as a side effect of giving people a room where their knowledge mattered, and it’s a huge part of why I think masterminds work, beyond the practical wins.
What I’d Do Differently If I Were to Set Up Mastermind Groups Again
This beggars belief, looking back, but I built the entire thing around myself without ever planning for what happened when I moved on. I didn’t rotate the organiser role, and I didn’t keep a shared record of contacts and notes that lived anywhere other than in my own head. When I eventually left that role, the network didn’t have a clean handover plan, so a lot of momentum that took years to build relied on nobody else stepping up.
If I were starting again, I’d build succession in from month one. I’d rotate who organises each term, and keep a shared document rather than a personal inbox. A group that depends entirely on one person is fragile, no matter how well that person runs it. I cover this properly in the build one that lasts article, and it’s the single thing I’d change about how I ran the Technicians’ Network.
The Looser Version: Martin Avis’s Lunches
Not every mastermind needs that much structure. The most informal version I’ve taken part in was a series of business lunches in London, organised by my good friend Martin Avis, who has a knack for getting the right people into the same room.
We met roughly every two months, and Martin charged a modest fee that covered only the food. The lunch itself was structured enough, but the real value happened afterwards, in the hotel bar, when people hopped between tables and the conversations got specific. Martin steered the first few gatherings gently, and then it took on a life of its own, which, in hindsight, is exactly the succession point I missed with the Technicians’ Network. He built it to survive without him steering every session.
Several joint ventures came out of those lunches. A handful of the people I met there are now very well known, and a few are self-made millionaires. I was even approached by a well-known online author to write software converting old websites into what was then a brand-new platform called WordPress. I didn’t have the bandwidth to take it on, but the fact that the ask happened at all tells you something about the calibre of people in that room, and the trust that builds when a group like that runs for long enough.
If you want to go back to where this idea originally came from, Napoleon Hill’s foundation still maintains a good archive of his original writing on the mastermind principle at naphill.org. It’s worth a read once you’ve got the practical side sorted.
What It Actually Takes to Set Up Mastermind Groups
Looking back across both groups, the pattern is the same. Find people who genuinely understand your world, and give them a reason to show up that has nothing to do with politeness. Keep the rhythm light enough that it survives busy working lives, and build it so it doesn’t depend entirely on you.
You don’t need permission, a budget, or a grand plan to set up mastermind groups of your own. I certainly didn’t have one. You simply need a handful of people willing to contribute, and somewhere to put the next meeting in the diary. Once you’ve got that sorted, the rest tends to build itself, so just make sure someone other than you knows how to keep it going.
