Professional speakers are a particular breed of micro-business and although some have full or part-time staff, most could be described as "solo-preneurs", buying in a number of third party services to help them run an effective business. The danger is that the management of these third parties can get out of control, becoming messy, inefficient and expensive.

All micro-businesses face the same challenge and it is this: you simply can't do it alone and the sooner you recognise this and get help, the better off you'll be.

In this Business Booster I relate my personal experience in establishing and running a highly effective master-mind group. Based on that experience, I suggest master-mind groups are a good place to start in terms of getting that all too valuable help.   

Let's start by outlining the characteristics of the master-mind group to which I belong:

• We live within an hour's drive of each other, so it is easy for us to meet physically on a regular basis
• The group has a small number of members (in our case, three)
• Our regular physical meetings follow a set agenda
• We have very different professional and personal strengths
• Our businesses are broadly speaking equivalent in terms of basic business metrics, even though we do very different things
• We have each worked with each other on joint client projects
• We trust and respect each other professionally
• We trust and respect each other personally
• We respect each other's confidences
• The group's meetings are closed to all external parties, (spouses too are excluded)
• We have regular internet-based conferences between physical meetings - these too follow a set agenda

The above may sound very heavy and serious when written as baldly as the above list, but it's developed over time into something that really works for us. The meeting formats and the group's overall modus operandi were arrived at democratically and have been modified to reflect our own development and that of the group.

I'd like to go through each of the characteristics and tell you why we do what we do and why I believe it works so well for us.

The group meets (physically) every month. We started out meeting every six weeks and changed this to monthly when we began to see the benefits it was bringing to our businesses. The meetings are hosted at each other's houses according to a pre-set rota - hence the need for group members to live reasonably close to each other.

Our monthly meetings last the entire day. We work to a set agenda which divides the time equally between the members. Each member can use their slot for whatever purpose they wish - they simply instruct the other members on what it is they want to achieve and then we all get on and do it. The more members you have - the smaller the time slot. For us, three is a good number. I could see the same format working with four, but would consider that the maximum.

One of the other benefits of having a small group is the ease with which friendship and trust develops over time. This is reinforced by working together on client projects.

The fact that our businesses are roughly equivalent (in terms of basic business metrics, not what we do) means that (a) there's no "grand standing", (b) no competition to be "top dog", (c) recognition of the challenges that each of us faces, (d) genuine pleasure in sharing each other's successes.

All of the above conspires to produce the intangible spirit of a closely knit team - and once you're in that position, you simply can't bring in outsiders, it disturbs the whole balance. We've had a few approaches from people we know - and also respect - who'd quite like to join and this has triggered a few debates. However, thus far we've elected to stay as we are and the longer the status quo exists, the greater the chances that the team will remain with its three initial members.

At the end of the day we reward ourselves by having dinner together at a local restaurant, to which spouses, friends, etc can be invited.

Sounds good - so what?

Well, the "so what" is that we need to do something new to maintain each other's sense of urgency (see Prof. John P Kotter's book in the right margin - a great read).

We've recently added weekly Skype-enabled conferences to the mix, where we simply tell each other what we're going to do for that week. The fact that we have established such strong personal relationships now means that we're making a commitment to each other as regards weekly work targets. (One of mine for this week was writing this Business Booster - so it does work).

In summary

Master mind groups are a terrific way to boost you business, boost your relationships and boost the amount of fun you're having in life.

Give it a whirl, I'm sure you won't regret it.

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