[Ankesh]

I've had a couple of mastermind groups of my own.

Starting a mastermind group

You could either call up a few friends you know will be a good match and ask them if they would like to join a mastermind group. Or you could run an ad on craigslist or your local newspaper.

One simple ad that I've used before:

_________ MasterMind Group
If you would like to join a group of like
minded people, please call xxx-xxx-xxxx.

In my experience, a group of 5-6 people works the best. Its not too many so that everyone doesn't have a chance to pitch in. And its not too few - you'll get a wide range of opinions.

If you decide to call and ask people to join the group, instead of running an ad: try this thing: you ask just 1 friend to join. And that friend asks another friend of his that you don't know too well to join. And that person asks another person to join... until you have the number you want.

This way - you won't remain the center of the mastermind group. And you will have a bunch of people who won't be afraid of saying that your idea sucks.

Mastermind Meetups

In my opinion, once-a-week mastermind meetups worked the best.

How to make sure that everyone shows up to mastermind meetings? We used to have this rule: everyone pays for every meetup.

Say the group is of 6 people. Every week, they meet in a fixed cafe or bookshop. One week only 5 showed up. The bill still gets divided into 6 parts - and the 6th person pays - whether he shows up or not.

This worked very well for my group. People didn't show up only when they went on vacations or had marriages or something like that to attend.