Building Masterminds and Facilitating Communities: An Inside Look At How I Design Them

#140 — How to design and facilitate group programs.

In today’s episode, we talk all about the ways I think about building mastermind programs, facilitating community, and bringing people together. Yes, I’ve overthought all of it—to the tiniest degree.

In this episode, we have a really fun question I am excited to geek out about. We are going to dig into the Wise Women's Council and the year-long membership that I created, how I designed it, why I designed it the way that I did, and how I thought about the membership model.

This specific question that I got is: “How did you decide on the model for your membership and have you been in other programs like this structured in the same way?” I’m excited to talk about this because I like to overthink things like this. I get really geeky about community design and creating really good containers for people and then testing them. I have been hosting mastermind programs for last five or six years, and one of the things that I like to do is to figure out and really test and tweak each year to make it better and better. Today, we’ll talk about the pieces that make it work, the components that make a mastermind or community program great, and how to setup the right infrastructure.

I have been in things that have worked amazingly well and I have been in things that have fallen flat on their face. Each time, I observe and I take notes and I think about it and I say, “Okay. What worked really well there and what didn't work really well and how can we combine these elements to create the next container?”

I hope you enjoy my iterative approach and hearing about all of the lessons I’ve learned so far in building mastermind programs. Take this, build your own, join one, or find a community space (or three!) to call home.

This is a full-length preview of our new podcast: Ask Sarah.

Many of you know that we just launched a second podcast last Fall — Ask Sarah: The Podcast — a show where I go deep into your life, my life, and everything in between. This podcast isn’t just about my life, although you are welcome to ask me anything you’d like. This show is a place where you can ask me for my feedback, my opinion, and my strategy on whatever challenge or puzzle you’re currently facing.

We’re sharing one of our latest Ask Sarah Episodes here as a preview on The Startup Pregnant Podcast so you can listen in. 

FULL SHOW NOTES

Get the complete show notes with episode quotes, photos, and time stamps at http://www.startuppregnant.com/140.