Inviting Guest Speakers to Your Mastermind Group

One of the best ways to add variety and richness to your mastermind group meetings is by inviting guest speakers to give a talk on a particular topic.

First, survey your group and ask members to suggest speakers who can be approached by the Facilitator. Second, ask your members for specific topic areas they'd like to learn more about from an expert. Third, have your members vote on how much meeting time the speaker should use. For example if your meetings are two hours each, should the speaker use the full two hours, or perhaps only one hour?

As the Facilitator, it's your job to contact the speaker, explain the nature of your group, and discuss the possibility of that speaker joining you for a meeting. Some speakers charge a fee, so ask upfront about any fees involved. Some speakers will speak for free and these speakers typically want to sell their product or service to the group. Set limits on how much time the speaker can spend talking about their products and services; make it clear that it's the content of their speech that the members are primarily interested in. If they enjoy the content, they will be much more open to purchasing from that speaker. If they feel the speech is nothing more than a sales presentation, the speaker is wasting the group's time.

If the speaker charges a fee, find out what it is. If you don't already have a fund in place to pay for speakers, go to the members and ask if they're willing to contribute to pay the speaker's fee.

Finally, set a date and time for the speaker to present. Remind the speaker how many minutes they have and stick to that schedule, especially if you are planning to run a regular mastermind meeting after the speaker departs.