There’s this swanky restaurant in my town called The St. Catharines Club, a member’s only club for business people who can afford to spend $750/year for the privilege of being billed once a month whether they actually visit the club or not.
My mom and I used to love having lunch there.
Maybe it wasn’t *actually* swanky, but next to the literal bonnets and floral-print dresses we were both raised in, it was Buckingham Palace.
The St. Catharines Club aka my “fancy people place”
I loved bumping into professionals and telling them I was at law school in Montreal. I loved watching my mom talk shop with old-guard white guys in expensive watches. I loved drinking wine and eating hor d’oeuvres on plush leather chairs.
The best thing about watching my mom build her business as a financial planner was seeing how much fun she had.
She bought cool clothes and jewelry.
She drove a gold Jaguar.
She went to conferences where she was one of four other women in the audience.
That might be why I love being in a mastermind so much, and why I decided to start my own. It’s the online business version of a country club. You get to spend most of your time having fun, occasionally talking about business but not a lot.
To get your money back, it doesn’t usually take much more than one or two incremental business changes. A single business contact can make the whole thing worth it.
The rest gets to be fun.
…and the in-person stuff is always the best part. It’s the “tennis and champagne” part of running a business.
As a business leader, you carry a lot. Your family, your employees, your customers, all the people who listen to your podcast, read your Instagram captions and look to you for inspiration, direction and support.
No matter how loud you shout, “Hey guys, this is actually really hard!,” those people really don’t get it.
Your spouse has no idea. Your friends don't know.
Having mastermind peers helped me feel so much less alone, even when I felt like I was so different from other members. In the last group I joined, one of us was starting a hedge fund, one was a double-diamond MLM boss, I’m pretty sure everyone was straight and probably a few were anti-vaxxers.
The best thing about the experience was how much Tarzan I got to be, and still feel like I belonged.
I cried my way through almost every hot seat. Often instead of talking about business I would tell a story or perform a song (something you will 100% experience as a member of Power).
What I needed the most at that time – more than any business advice or new, cool funnel strategy – was to be seen and to know that being me was okay.
>> I told them about my girlfriend and my boyfriend.
>> I talked about doing drugs (which was new for me).
>> My mastermind peers were among the first to hear that I wanted to get divorced.
>> I showed up to cocktail hour in a figure skating outfit and no one thought it was weird.
>> It was the first place I shared about my history in cults—a major secret given I was barely halfway out at the time.
After that experience (but not because of it) I rearranged my whole life. My business, my marriage, my parenting, and many of my friendships and loverships.
It isn’t ONE BIG IDEA or ONE PERFECT SYSTEM that makes a great business/life. It’s often incremental changes. Sometimes it’s a single conversation that results in an unexpected shift in your thinking.
That’s why we join masterminds.
Yes, you get additional accountability.
Yes, you get access to ideas that are different from what's generally available.
Yes, you get business strategy (and in this case, copywriting support by me.)
But what I believe really motivates a leader to join a mastermind is the need to feel less alone, to be supported, for belonging.
Those are not things I can guarantee, but healthy belonging is something I know a thing or two about because I spent such a long time in life without it.
Power: The Mastermind is a place where all parts of you are welcome—even (and especially) the doing-something-new parts, the scared parts, and the not-sure parts. As leaders, there aren’t a lot of places where those parts get to be seen, and they hold SO MUCH WISDOM.
If that’s something you’re interested in exploring, this is the place.
Applications to join Power are now open. Book your call by June 23 to get two extra hours of copywriting time from me included in the cost.
XOT
