How to Create a Mastermind Group

guest post by Brandana

So what is a Mastermind Group?

A Mastermind Group is a group of business professionals from various industries that meet up on a recurring basis to talk about their professional or personal life.

The concept of the Mastermind Group is simple – To be successful, you must surround yourself with successful people.

First off, you will need to promote or invite people to become a member of this Mastermind Group. Right off the bat, do you know of any like-minded professionals?  Go through your Facebook account and take a look at people’s profession and also create a Linkedin account if you don’t already have one. One Linkedin you could also create a Mastermind Group to stay connected with your members. You could post and share articles and of course, promote your actual meet up.

Once you’ve targeted the people you would like to invite, send them a simple email describing the event and purpose. I would try to keep it light and try not to make it sound too corporate or like a formal meeting. It’s simply a meet up for successful professionals. Also, be sure to extend the invitation to anyone your potential member thinks would be interested.

Next, you would need to have a couple of venues in mind. Affordable lounges, coffee shops and restaurants are always great. Make sure the venue is centralized to where everyone lives so it’s easy for everyone to get to it. I would recommend splurging a little and have some finger foods provided to your members. After all, they did join your group.

Like any other kind of group, organization is a key factor. In today’s world of technology, the internet has become the most effective form of communication. There are so many tools out there on the web that can help you get more organized in a time efficient manner.

The one tool I recommend for starting any kind of group is Whoozin.

Whoozin is an RSVP web application. Here you could place the group logistics and your members information and add them to a group which in this case, would be a Mastermind Group.  Whoozin provides the ability to email your members and track who is coming to your group and it also retains a history of events for the group. Whoozin can help you stay organized when it comes to registration or invitations to your Mastermind Group. I almost forgot to mention that Whoozin is free to use and provides an ad-free environment.

Finally, I don’t recommend handing out agendas like you would a meeting but you should have one in mind or a personal agenda handy. This agenda would contain topics of discussion or any announcements you would like to bring up.

After your first Mastermind Group is completed, make sure you call or email everyone a few days later to get your feedback from them. Always ask for ideas to improve the event.

Visit http://www.whoozin.com

Growing a Biz Results

Growing a Biz: Maximizing Advertising & Media Results

Guest post by marketing2020

If you are a business owner, manager, or entrepreneur trying to protect or grow a business with the assistance of advertising, you will 1) need a strategic media plan and budget supporting your marketing objectives and 2) you will also have to buy the planned media from media sellers, e.g., television, radio, print, online, direct mail — on a national or local basis.

Planning and buying media is a highly competitive, tricky and knowledge intensive business with over $270 billion in transactions  So, depending on what you buy, a budget of $50,000, your decisions could have  it the clout of $25,000 or 75,000+

Caveat-Emptor

The first rule to buying media is Caveat-Emptor.  Caveat Emptor means, “Let the buyer beware.”  You must understand that the sole purpose of media sales reps is to sell you some of their advertising media inventory (e.g., TV or radio spots, space in a print medium, impressions or clicks on the internet, etc.). They will pitch their availabilities in the most favorable light possible, carefully omitting information that doesn’t support their case. Caveat Emptor.

Media Selling Points

When media sales reps call on  potential advertisers, they  bring a  sales pitch– written, verbal or multi-media. However, media sales reps actually have only three basic arguments to pitch: audience, cost and impact.  A rep may try to convince you that their audience is perfect– in size, demographics, growth trends, etc. Or, they might pitch their cost efficiency, e.g., more audience per dollar.  Or, they might try to convince you that their medium is more impactful than competitive media (e.g., generates more sales, more credibility, etc.) Reps may point to a competitor’s alleged success in the medium (audience, cost or impact?)

Media Buying

As a buyer of advertising media you will examine not one but all of the reasonable alternatives in order to identify the ones which best meet your objectives, e.g., audience profile, impactful in communicating with target, and are  most cost effective, e.g., ROI = Cost/Audience x Impact.)  Ideally, you will make a side by side comparison of media alternatives on which to compare buying decisions for specific media vehicles.

Negotiations

Rate cards are a myth in the 21^st century. Regardless of what is printed on the rate card, almost all media buys are negotiable, including price, inventory offered, timing/scheduling, positioning of ads within the medium, audience or results guarantees, value added elements such as merchandising to trade or dealers, promotions, use of on air talent, etc. It is therefore very important that the buyer have a win-win negotiating strategy firmly in mind prior to beginning a negotiation.

Key to Success: Education

Like most things where the stakes and risks are high, planning and buying advertising media requires that buyers really know what they are doing.  For those without experience there is a new college textbook, Media Planning & Buying in the 21^st Century (2^nd edition) which can help bring readers up to speed. For information, see: www.21stCenturyMediaPlanning.com.

Passion, Expertise and Authority by Christopher Tracy

As with many business stories we hear about in Success magazine, and Inc Magazine, the word “passion” is thrown around as if it’s the very foundation for business success.

“Passion” is the media darling for successful startup stories. We hear people like Seth Godin talk about it. Brian Tracy swears by it. Tim Feriss thinks it’s a bonus to have.

Imran Md Ali, who is our featured guest of the month, shares with us his understanding of the word “passion” in the context of entrepreneurship.

Imran is a co-author of Kaizen Business Principles with the legendary Brian Tracy (www.BrianTracy.com) and also author of 2 other books, The 10 Step Marketing Formula and Creating Marketing Breakthroughs, which are available at Amazon and also Barnes and Noble.

In an interview with Imran, he shares with us why passion is the core foundation for business success, and why passion alone will not be sufficient to ensure success.

There are two things which he says are needed, on top of passion alone in order to succeed. The first, is Genuine Domain Expertise.

Genuine Domain Expertise is simply being a real expert in whatever niche or industry you’re in. So if you’re in the restaurant marketing industry, the definition of an expert in Imran’s dictionary, is “someone who is in the top 5 percentile in terms of knowledge in restaurant marketing.”

It simply means that you have to keep learning, and gravitate towards the top of your class (or niche)

This, according to Imran, will give you a platform to operate from. People prefer to work with experts, and experts get paid more for less work too. The reason for this is because we are living in world where expertise is rewarded, and generality is punished with mediocre pays and prospects for jobs.

Here are 2 tips Imran gives to establish instant expertise.

1) Read up for one hour each day, about a topic in your market. At the end of the year, you’d have read about 400 hours worth of material and this should allow you to establish your expertise.

2) After reading, aim to apply your new-found knowledge for free as practise for clients. So if you’re a relationship guru, give away your advice for free in the beginning to practise what you have just read. This concretizes your new found knowledge.

Another aspect of passion would be authority.

Now, in a world where everyone claims to be an expert of some sort, you’d have to climb further, harder, and longer than the rest to establish yourself as a real authority in your marketplace.

Imran Md Ali shares some of the things you can do to establish authority

1) First, get some media coverage. Media coverage is a quick path to endorsed authority. Why? We have, as consumers, been trained to trust the media. How do you get media, you might ask?

Imran advises you to create a newsworthy angle. Get a PR expert to write up a press release, and send it out to all local news channels and magazines/papers. A reporter would inevitably find your story interesting enough to feature it.

Once you have gotten this initial exposure, snowball it by approaching other media sources and showing that you have been featured before. Keep on creating news angles that the media would love and try to be a media darling, and this would pay off in the long term.

2)Secondly, create a blog or website that showcases your past and current work. This is a site that allows you to store your bragging rights. State your achievements on this page and don’t be shy about it at all.

This way, when someone Googles for your name, your blog will appear and they can find out more about you- And the best part is, your website says only the good things about you!

That’s it then. Two things accompany passion, and those are 1) Expertise and 2) Authority

Apply what you have learnt and you will soon be on your way to dominating your industry or marketplace.

Guest Interview written by Christopher Tracy, CEO of CLT Holding and Imran’s marketing client in 2011.

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