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“No two minds ever come together without, thereby, creating a third, invisible, intangible force which may be likened to a third mind.”
Napoleon Hill
Before Li Shufu spent $1.8 billion on Volvo, he asked 20 other Chinese founders in his club to argue about it.
Liu Chuanzhi told him how Lenovo bought IBM’s PC business.
The club’s secretary-general said Li was wavering before the deal was signed. Once the members saw how much he wanted it, they talked about how to make it work.
Four months later he announced the $1.8 billion purchase.
Some mastermind groups are three people.
Once a week for six years, Paul Jarvis told his friends Justin Jackson and Jarrod Drysdale where his business was stuck.
During those years Paul co-founded Fathom Analytics and wrote Company of One.
Justin co-founded a podcast hosting company called Transistor. He wrote that Paul and Jarrod were a big encouragement while he built it.
I found my group at an Indie Hackers meetup. I walked in as a stranger and left with an accountability partner I’d check in with for the next six years and a group of founders that became my mastermind for two years.
The first offer I made for Trends.vc failed.
I asked 7,000 readers to pre-pay for the next report.
None did.
One mastermind member, Ash, said to admit the flop to those readers. “Pivot now. Be vulnerable. Send the message today.”
I sent the message with a new offer: the next report half free, the rest behind an upgrade. I made my first $100 in two hours.
Trends.vc came out of that mastermind.
Other founders had groups like mine.
Nathan Barry taught design online, then started building email software called ConvertKit. For two years he met each week with a group of friends that included Barrett Brooks and Caleb Wojcik.
James Clear joined some of their calls and came on their 2015 retreat. He later wrote Atomic Habits.
At that retreat, Nathan’s friends told him he was most interesting when he taught design.
He wrote in his notes, “ConvertKit can be a way to keep designing.”
ConvertKit became the company he’s known for. Barrett later became its COO.
Warren Buffett said what he expected the day he met Charlie Munger at a dinner in 1959: “We were gonna both behave better than if we didn’t know each other.”
So that other founders can have a group like these, I launched masterminds for Trends Pro Members.
The companies we credit to one founder often had a few friends who met with them regularly.
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Who’s one person you could invite to a weekly call?
