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10 Reasons Why Mastermind Groups Fail-Karyn Greenstreet

Attached is a news update I received from Karyn Greenstreet via email that I wanted to share with you on mastermind groups. As Karyn identifies the 10 reasons why mastermind groups fail, this provide a check list of what to look out for when joining or starting a mastermind group to ensure future success. Thank you Karyn.

10 Reasons Why Mastermind Groups Fail

Mastermind groups are an extraordinary way to help you accomplish success is your personal and business life. But I’ve seen too many mastermind groups fail, falling off the face of the Earth at an alarming rate.

Here’s a short list of the most common reasons why mastermind groups fail:

1) Members are not committed. They don’t show up for every meeting. They make excuses why they didn’t achieve the actions and goals they set for themselves. They don’t pay attention during meetings and/or don’t participate fully.

2) The Group Facilitator does not have a good handle on how groups function, and doesn’t know how to build trust and communication in a group environment. They’re not trained to keep group conversations going, to deal with difficult members, or to keep energy levels high.

3) The mastermind group is too large. The purpose of a mastermind group is that everyone gets a chance to bring their problem, decision or idea to the table, and that everyone gets to brainstorm with the person in the “hot seat.” If the group is too large, people get left out of discussions.

4) There’s no mechanism for communication between meetings. Meetings typically range from 90 minutes to a full weekend. But what about all the time between meetings when life continues to happen?

5) The Group Facilitator treats the mastermind group like a class, lecturing to the members instead of encouraging the members to work with each other as a peer advisory board.

6) The group hasn’t decided on the purpose of the group and the structure of the meetings, so everyone flounders.

7) The members fail to hold each other accountable. They don’t hold people’s feet to the fire and they allow members to make excuses about why something didn’t get done.

The group doesn’t meet often enough. One of the benefits of a mastermind group is that each member selects a goal or action item to be completed by the next meeting. If the meetings are too far apart, all momentum is lost.

9) The members’ experience level/success level ranges too widely. While having very successful people in a mastermind group is great for a new person, the more seasoned person will feel they’re not getting as much value from the group.

10) The group members don’t feel safe in the group environment. People will not open up and talk about their problems and challenges if they fear ridicule or rejection. They also will not open up if they feel their competitors are in the same room, listening to their problems or stealing their best ideas.

Don’t let your mastermind group sink into obscurity. A little bit of planning and education will allow you group to prosper and thrive, benefitting everyone.

Karyn Greenstreet,
Small Business Coach and Mastermind Group Expert
The Success Alliance
“Create Success: Start a Mastermind Group!”
The Success Alliance – Articles about Mastermind Groups

Here are other articles pertaining to mastermind groups

5 Benefits of Joining a Mastermind Group click here

4 Tips to Find or Start a Mastermind Group click here

Mastermind Groups- Should I Join One? click here

Feb 07, 2011 | 6 comments | View Post

Terrific Tuesday Guest Blogger- Joe Cheray

Hello Everyone:

Today’s Terrific Tuesday Feature Guest blogger is Joe Cheray. We will have a feature guest blogger posting and sharing their expertise to help us take our blogs and grow our business to the next level. Thank You Joe for being our first guest blogger. Enjoy!

Terrific Tuesday Feature Guest Blogger Joe Cheray

Jane asked me to put together this post for her readers after I submitted my recent post to the Continuity Blogging Community Facebook page. In my post I talked about the tips I took away from #blogchat on Twitter. Jane visited my blog and asked me to write a little article to explain what a Twitter chat is and how to take part in one.

So without further adieu let me share with you this gem for your blog and your business.

As Twitter has evolved there has come about a chat interface called http://tweetchat.com/ where people can have a room to chat about a common interest such as #blogchat. The way it works is you go to the tweetchat site, sign in with your twitter ID and then enter the hashtag you want to chat with others about, hit enter and it takes you into a twitter style chat interface. For first time users you will have to authorize TweetChat to access your Twitter account once you accept you will never be asked again.

Here is a screen shot of what it looks on my end before entering the chat.

Once inside

Depending on the amount of folks in the stream it can be hard to keep up if you have it set at anything less than 10. This past week I had to set it to 20 just to keep up.

Blogchat is a good chat to get involved in as it allows you to be with others who are doing the same thing you and it also allows fellow bloggers to learn from each other. Let’s face it sometimes blogging can be a very introverted task and we all need to learn how to break free from that bubble ever so often. I know I do. I am a self professed introvert and have to force myself to interact with others around me just to get out of my own head space for a bit. Otherwise I would probably blog 24/7.

Also there is an immense amount of resources to be shared within this chat. At the end there is a transcript provided and also a way to share your favorite tips from the chat. The host usually posts the link to the transcript for us. The transcript and FavTips is an excellent way to capture those kernels of information for future reference. You can print both off and go through with a highlighter and add the information that stands out to you in your business notebook if you keep one and well if you don’t keep one you should. But I digress and that is a whole other topic to write about.

To read more of tips and asides at and find out more about Joe Cheray visit her at Wildheart’s Web 2.0

Joe Cheray’s Bio

Joe Cheray is a blogger from Topeka Kansas. She also specializes in other aspects of social media such as Twitter, StumbleUpon to name a few.

Dec 14, 2010 | 2 comments | View Post

Anyone Can Learn How To Hit a Baseball

Guest Post by Jeff Wise

Nothing goes better with summer than baseball, especially when one of the players is a relative or friend. Whether Little Leaguers or high schoolers, it’s fun to watch your son, grandson, etc. eagerly swing at the ball and run the bases. It makes you proud to see the excitement in his eyes as he anticipates fly balls in the outfield. The best feeling of all is knowing he’s having fun.

Sometimes, though, kids don’t have much fun playing baseball. They struggle in one area or another, causing them to dread games or want to quit the team altogether. There may come a time when they claim they don’t like baseball anymore. But there’s more to it than that. It’s not that they dislike baseball; they just dislike their failure to be the great player they long to be.

As a parent, grandparent, aunt, etc. you have a lot on influence on a child in this situation. Verbal encouragement goes a long way with kids. If they know you believe in them, they’re more likely to believe in themselves. Of course, you don’t want a child to be miserable playing baseball, but don’t give in to their first desires to quit. Remind them that skill develops with practice and committing to something builds integrity and character.

Your contribution to their success doesn’t end verbally though. Coaches aren’t the only adults who can help kids become better players. In fact, coaches are challenged in this area because they don’t get a lot of one-on-one time with players. Those who know the child personally have the advantage.

Be willing to set aside time to get your hands dirty and practice with the child. Teach him the basics to hitting a baseball. Practice playing catch with him. You may not know much about the basics of baseball, but that shouldn’t stop you.

You can learn and then teach kids the fundamentals of hitting a baseball. They need to know their potential and that you’re behind them 100 percent.

Learning to hit a baseball can be frustrating at times. If the child starts getting irritated, offer to take a break and reinforce the improvement you’ve seen. Always remind them that baseball should be fun for everyone.

Jeff Wise is happily married with two young daughters and has a passion for helping people achieve their dreams. Owner of Gregorio’s BaseballHittingTipsOnline.com, Jeff has 14 years of experience playing baseball. On his site, Jeff provides hitting tips for all ages and skill levels with articles, videos, a blog and an e-book.

Here is Jeff’s link and website for more information or to get in touch with him about his e-book. http://www.baseballhittingtipsonline.com

So excited to have Jeff Wise be our Feature Friday Guest Blogger. Thank You Jeff.

Happy blogging!

Aug 13, 2010 | 2 comments | View Post

Crafting a Compelling and Memorable Bio

Melanie Kissell

Guest post by Melanie Kissell

Next to public speaking, writing can be the most paralyzing act for most of us. Even if you are a writer, writing a bio can be daunting.

Follow these top five tips for writing your bio:

1) Keep it short – Normally it’s best to limit your bio to three or four sentences. If it’s too long people won’t read it. Bio = Short and Biography = Long

2) Briefly highlight your expertise – The purpose of writing a bio is to demonstrate your professional credibility.

3) Let your personality show – Since your bio is an advertisement for you, make it reflect the real you. If you’re a down-to-earth person, use unpretentious language. If you have a particular passion, let the reader know. If you love to joke around, include some humor.

4) Tailor your bio to your target audience – Your bio needs to address who you are, your expertise and how it addresses their problems or goals, and how they can contact you.

5) Write a bio in the third person – What this means is to write a bio as though someone else is talking about you. Instead of writing “I am”, you write “Jane Smith is”.

There are so many (too many to count!) possibilities for things to include when creating a compelling and memorable Bio. If you don’t know what to write about, get started by looking over these 25 fun ideas:

Bucket List
Top 10 things About Me
My Favorite Slogans/Mottos
Life Stories/Experiences
Obstacle or Challenge I’ve Overcome
A List of my Favorite Things
My Pets
How I Did Something
Things I’m Grateful For
My Favorite Charity
My Collection/s
My Artwork
My Poetry
Gifts On My Wish List
Places I Want To Travel
My Ideal Client/Who I Serve
My Personal Victories
My Heroes
A Community I Love
Books I Want to Write
What I Spend Money On
Ten Guilty Pleasures
Friends I Can’t Wait to Meet
Social Media Sites I Like
What I Love To Give Away

If you are working to market your products and services online, your bio is your calling card! So be sure to include it on social media venues, communities and groups you join, article directory sites, and on your blog and website.

Melanie Kissell is a single mom to four daughters, big dog lover, avid affiliate marketer, and founder of Solo Mompreneur. She works with single womenpreneurs who show great tenacity and passion for their business, but who are short on time, exhausted, and tapped out financially. Melanie focuses on sharing low-cost and no-cost marketing strategies with her target audience.

Jul 02, 2010 | 4 comments | View Post

When you Blog in Another Language

Guest Post by Gonzalo J. Suarez

When you tried to do blogs in different languages simultaneously, you must consider important difficulties that arouse naturaly. Recently, I tried to do a bilingual blog that were like mirrors, in which the Spanish and English post was nearly exact versions of the other language post. But I discoverd this handicaps:

1.- FALSE COGNATES.- There are words that look similar in both languages, but their meaning is different. By example, “Libreria” and “Library”. The Spanish word is for a place to trade books, a kind of bookstore. The English one is for a place to consult the books for free. The equivalent word for “Library” is “Biblioteca”, and the equivalent to “Libreria” is “Book store”. So, there are different meanings, but writing quickly you can mix them, changing your post main idea.

2.- WORD GAMES.- Maybe some big problem arouse when you try to explain a word game that its obvious or well know in one language, but become obscure in the other. By example, “as fresh as a cucumber” had an Spanish equivalent, “fresco como lechuga”, “as fresh as a lettuce”. Obviously, a cucumber is not the same as a lettuce, but both phrases illustrates the idea of freshness using vegetables. There are not identical, but equivalent. If you didn’t know the adecuate expression, you can lost power in your post.

3.- INNOCENT WORDS TURNS BAD ONES. The main industrialized white bread company in Mexico and Latinoamerica is “Panificacion BIMBO”, and is represented by a well knowed, innocent little bear -like suggested by it because is a short version of Italian word “Bambino”, kid. But in English, specialy between italoamericans is a kind of slang for “hooker” or “prostitute”. When Bimbo tried to enter US market they discovered that his famous brand was… Well, infamous. They changed to Suandy… But lost its original fame!
How to solve this issues? In my experience, the best form is writing first in your foreign language, then translating to your native language. Maybe you can enrich your second post, but is easier to upgrade an idea to your culture, than downgrade it to a learned language, by nature most limited to you.

Another idea is to have an idioms and slang dictionary and use it in doubt.

The final suggestion is to break the mirror: maybe your idea get partialy lost or become different on translation, but it will be more difficult and less expresive if you try to do exact word-by-word version of your posts.

A final example: my Blogs’ Surname is “Dichos y Bichos”. Even if you didn’t know Spanish, you can see that only the first letter changes, and in small typo are very similar: d-b. But in English become “saids and bugs”, who are a very bad word game – far away from beauty of original one. I keep it because I tried to do a collection of things I directly observe (like when you see a bug for hours) or the ones I read or hear (interesting saids crossing your way). My two main categories are “Everyday things”, bugs, and “From my readings”, saids. So I prefer to lose the beauty word game “Dichos y Bichos” than lost meaning at the English version.

I am very greatful with Coach Jane Lee, my fellow companion on #blog30 Challenge, because I discovered how to do podcast directly in your blog with AudioBoo, because I enjoy reading -and hearing- her blog, and because she was so gentle to let me be her guest blogger today. I hope you enjoyed this post, and muchas gracias por leernos!

Gonzalo J. Suarez
Economist and Master in Public Policy. General Director of New Paradigms Consultants (www.nuevosparadigmas.com) in Mexico City. Professor at ITAM and other universities. He writes regularly for Excelsior Newspaper and for the Internet portals On Economy (www.enlaeconomia.com) and Sum and Substraction (www.sumayresta.net). His personal blog is http://gjsuap.wordpress.com