At the beginning of Covid, my friend Stephanie reached out to see if I wanted to be a part of a Mastermind Group. And I said yes. That single decision has made a huge difference in my income over the past three years and it’s the reason I broke the $200K barrier. Our mastermind group has six women who met in ASJA and have met in person many times over the past nine years. Most importantly, we are all at a very similar income range – around $200K. We also earn our money similarly – most members do a mix of content marketing and journalism. 

As an aside, I’m using the term ‘mastermind group’ loosely. When I use the term, I am thinking of a group of like-minded professionals who come together to help each other succeed. Accountability group is another term that I think works well to describe what we are. Since I’ve mentioned this group several times as a reason for my success, a number of writers in the Freelance Content Marketing Writer group on Facebook asked me to write a post sharing my experience. And I think now is the perfect time of the year to start thinking about starting your own group in January.  

Decide on your goal. 

You can’t pick the right members until you have a clear understanding of what you want to get out of the group. Are you looking for a group to refer work to each other? Are you looking for members to teach each other skills? Do you want to move up from one income level to another? Is there a specific area of your business you want to grow, such as write more essays or improve your social media presence? Spend some time really thinking about the goal because the success of the group really hinges on picking a goal that meets your needs. 

Set the length of the group. 

I recommend picking a set length, such as three months, for the group at the beginning. We didn’t do that for our group and it worked out fine, but we also had known each other for years. If you don’t set an end date and a member isn’t a good fit for the group, then it becomes very awkward. With set time period, then you can decide to continue the group, reform the group with members who click or disband the group all together with no hurt feelings or issues.  

Ask members to join the group. 

Go back to the goal of the group and then think about who you know that would be a good fit. The goal really drives who you should ask to join. If your goal is to refer work to each other then all members should be in the same niche. Groups that help each other move to a new income level should all be at the same level – it would have been awkward in our group if we were talking about making $200K and someone was struggling to break $50k. And if there is a specialized goal such as writing more essays then everyone should be passionate about that specific goal. 

As far as finding members, I recommend starting in your own network. In addition to asking writers you know, ask your writer friends for recommendations on other writers who may be interested. You can also post in the Freelance Content Marketing Writer group looking for people to join a free mastermind group (I don’t allow posts for paid groups). 

Decide on how often and where to meet. 

Once you have the members, then I would set up an initial meeting to work out the specifics so that everyone is on board. The first topic is how often to meet and where to meet. Our group meets weekly over Zoom. You could do weekly or every other week or monthly, whatever works for your group and goals. I also recommend talking about attendance. Some groups have a requirement that you must attend a certain number of meetings or you are removed. Other groups like ours have a very casual attendance policy. One of our members comes to about 20% of the meetings and that’s totally fine – we are just happy to see her beautiful face. 

Create a communication method between meetings. 

Your group will want to stay in touch between meetings to ask questions and share celebrations. Our group has a private group on Facebook for just us while other groups I know use email and another uses Facebook Messenger. The most important thing is that it works for your group. 

Decide the process for new members joining the group. 

You don’t need to decide this at the start if you have a set time period for the group to last. But if you continue it indefinitely, then you should talk about the process for accepting new members. A common requirement is that all current members need to agree on a new member. Otherwise, the new member can cause contention. 

I honestly think that one of the biggest keys to my success is my writer network. And that includes my accountability buddy Stephanie, my mastermind group, and my many other writer friends both from my writer group on Facebook and through ASJA.

Even with all of that, I have found the mastermind group has given me a push that I haven’t found in other writer relationships. The different perspectives on my challenges have been a huge help. As have the referrals from within the groups. Not to mention the help with pricing new projects. But for me, the biggest benefit is having a group where I can share the good and bad knowing that they are there to celebrate my successes and give me encouragement when needed. 

Share your tips for mastermind and accountability groups.