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6 Steps To Build Your Own Mastermind Group

I love personal and professional development. Whether it’s reading a book, listening to a podcast or taking a class. I love the opportunity to learn new things and grow in my business and in my life. In November of 2022, I was invited to join a small group of women entrepreneurs who wanted to form a mastermind group. Since that time, I’ve mentioned this group we have in different speaking engagements and gotten so many questions on what it is we’re doing! People are really interested and I think hungry for something like it themselves. With the permission of my group, I thought I would lay it out in 6 steps to build your own mastermind group.

Our group began with one person wanting to start something with other like-minded individuals. It was nothing super formal – just an opportunity to gather and support each other however was needed. There were six of us in total and we coined our group the ‘Business Besties’. Some of us had never met while others were already friends or worked together in some capacity! We figured we would try it out and see how it went. We all wanted a place where we could talk about challenges in our businesses, and personal ones that come with that. A place where we could get feedback from people in that arena with us, and pool our collective experience to help each of us grow and connect.

I love listening to other people’s experiences. So much clarity can come from presenting challenges to a fresh set of eyes or people in similar situations. Some of us are service based businesses and some are product based with different levels of experience in business.

The value I get out of our gatherings is priceless, and I know the rest of the group agrees. I leave our retreats percolating new ideas and filled with energy that I can’t wait to take back to my business. Here’s a link to a reel of one of our get togethers!

Here are the 6 steps to build your own mastermind group:

First off, don’t be intimidated by the term ‘mastermind’. The definition of a mastermind is a peer-to-peer mentoring group used to help members solve their problems with input and advice from the other group members.

  1. Define your group. What kind of group do you want to have?
    You don’t have to be a business owner or entrepreneur to have a group like this. It could be a group of writers, artists, friends – or a mix of all those things, but the first thing to decide is what kind of group you want to have. This might evolve over time but you need a starting point. You could be in person or be virtual and have members that are in different communities, provinces or even countries!
  2. Determine the size of group you’re looking for. How many members do you want to have?
    For us, we wanted a small group. A few of us are or were involved in larger mastermind organizations and found that the larger the group, the harder it is to get to everyone, so not everyone is getting the same value. We decided to cap ours at six. 

    When looking at building your own group, you may decide four is enough, or perhaps you’d like to go up to 10 members or more. It will be as individual as you are- there is no right or wrong answer. You may start with a small number and choose to grow. You have to see what feels right for you and the group. Like the kind of group you have, this can also evolve over time.
  3. Decide what member qualifications you want. 
    Once you’ve determined the group and size, you need to think about what commonalties, if any, your members will have.
    Do you want a group of business owners or people in the same field?
    Do you want people who’ve been in their business or position for 5+ years?
    Do you care if its service vs product based businesses? 
    Does it matter if a member is the owner or manager of that business?
    Maybe you want a group where no two members do the same thing! The choices are endless so try to establish what you want the group to look like or see where it goes as you identify potential members.
  4. Frequency of meetings.
    The Business Besties meet quarterly. That’s what works for us and our schedules. We plan for the next one each time we get together. You could choose to meet weekly, monthly, quarterly or even semi-annually. You want it to be a frequency your members can commit to. If someone is going to miss every second gathering, it doesn’t really work. In that same vein, you should establish how many members can miss a gathering for it to still proceed – more on that later.
  5. Decide the length of meeting you’d like to have. How long is the meeting when you get together?
    You could decide to meet for an hour, a half day, a full day or a weekend. You could make it an overnight retreat. Figure out what each person’s expectations and capability is, and plan what works for the group.

6. Once you’ve gone through these steps and assembled your mastermind group, the next thing to consider is your agenda.

Do you want a formal agenda?
Do you want to tackle a specific issue each time?
Would you like to incorporate a learning component or movement break?
Is there a specific goal for this meeting? 

Our agenda has remained relatively the same since we began in November 2022. However, at our last meeting, we discussed introducing some new ideas. We elected to do an overnight, and timeline that spans about 24 hours. We get together and start with dinner to catch up, and get the socializing out of the way first. The next day we start with an early breakfast and get right into it. Sometimes we book hotels, sometimes an Airbnb! 

We begin with a check in system where we rate from 1-10 how we’re doing in our business, personal, mental health and financial lives. We also touch on what’s keeping us up at night. Then we move on to any issues a member may have that they want to bring to the group. Once presented, we do a round of clarifying questions. Once there are no more questions, we begin to offer up our thoughts and possible solutions. There may be multiple members who have issues they wish to discuss or it may be just one. 

You can alternate who leads or moderates each get together, or it could be the same person who keeps this role. You could choose to follow the same agenda or change it up! As I said before, what works for you and your group could be different than what we’ve been doing. The mastermind group you create will be individual to you and the group you gather. While we know not everything works for every person, it’s just as important to establish some group rules and guidelines.

Suggested Rules & Guidelines

Obviously, life happens and things come up. Once you’ve formed your group, you will want to establish the group rules and guidelines each member is expected to follow. For example, confidentiality is a crucial component to any mastermind group. Members must feel they can be open to share, and that may include vulnerable moments. You will also want to discuss and decide the guidelines around attendance.

How many people can miss an event before you decide to cancel or reschedule?
How many times can a participant miss the gathering or does that matter to you?
What is our code of conduct for the group? It would be a great idea to discuss behaviours that will not be tolerated in the group so that every participant is on the same page. 
You should also establish a protocol for if an issue between members or confidentiality is breached. 

Once that’s figured out, you have the 6 steps you need to build your own mastermind group. You could already know the people you’d like to ask to join, or you may want to assemble a group of total strangers. Like I said earlier, there’s no right or wrong. Each group will be as individual as the people in it. I have no doubt, the value and impact of your own mastermind group will be priceless. 

Have ideas for a group you’d like to start? I’d love to hear them.
Already have a group? Feel free to share it! 


Anything that does not bring value to your life doesn’t deserve a place in it. – Florence Given
InternationalWomensDay-IWD2024

International Women’s Day Thoughts From A 40-Something

I’ve been struggling writing this blog over the last few weeks thinking ‘What do I want to say about International Women’s Day?’. What I want to do is celebrate this day. I want to inspire others and share something profound. I don’t know that this will do any of those things, but here are the thoughts that have tumbled out of my head and onto this page.

International Women’s Day is something I look forward to every year. It’s a time to shine a spotlight on women, their achievements, women’s issues and above all, to celebrate women. While the theme of International Women’s Day 2024 is Inspire Inclusion, I want to steer my own conversation to the use of language and perception of women.

I polled friends and followers on my socials about what IWD means to them and a lot of women said they feel disconnected from it. Like it doesn’t apply to them or it’s just become a sort of second Mother’s Day. What can we do to reconnect with the importance of this day?

What I keep coming back to are these scars I carry around with me. These wounds that I’ve healed but always remain a silvery line on the surface of my consciousness. I think about them before I contribute to a conversation, before I offer an opinion, before I draw any attention to myself. These are words that have haunted me in my personal and professional life as an adult woman: 

Aggressive. Bossy. Emasculating. Intimidating.

Am I aggressive? 
Am I bossy?
Am I emasculating? 
Am I intimidating?

Or are these labels the product of a society that’s been taught that a strong woman who leads or takes a stand is ultimately ‘a bitch’?

Words brought forward by other women are:

Unapproachable
Opinionated
Nosy
Stubborn
High strung 
Emotional
And a LOT of women brought intimidating forward.

There have been times in my life where I thought “If I am these things, maybe I’m unloveable. Maybe I’m doomed to never have a healthy, happy and supportive relationship or be a good leader…” It makes me wonder how many other women are out there thinking that very thing now.

Truthfully, I’m sure I have been all of those things at some point or another. As I was trying to figure myself out in my teens and young adulthood, I had to learn how to voice my opinion through effective communication which was, admittedly, a hard transition. I struggled to not be the loudest voice in the room or the strongest opinion because I thought I had to be to be heard or valued.

I’m sure I’ve also been referred to as a bitch in some scenarios which, I think most women can agree, is the go-to term when someone doesn’t agree with a woman. I’ve often been referred to as a ‘type A’ personality. I’m not afraid to speak up or take charge and as such, have been labeled with the words I listed above. I’ve also owned my own house, and made more money than my partners. I’ve been told to be smaller both figuratively and literally.

Spoiler alert – making myself smaller didn’t help the relationship in the end. Ever.

Have I been intimidated by other powerful women in the room? Absolutely, but I learned that was about my own insecurities. Personally, I think a lot of those feelings are about finding the line between being self assured and confident instead of aggressive and bossy. 

Powerful women inspire me.
They motivate me.
They fuel my drive. 

What do I want from International Women’s Day? I want the generations of girls coming after us to see what they can be. I want them to have fewer barriers but understand the history of what came before them, and the struggles women have endured to get where we are today. I want them to appreciate it wasn’t always like this and that not every little girl is fortunate enough to grow up being told she can do or be anything she wants to be. 

I’m fortunate to be surrounded by a lot of inspiring women in my life. From my mother and sister, to close friends, coworkers and other business women where I live. I don’t have kids of my own but I have 6 nieces, and the world they’re going to grow up in is very top of mind for me on a regular basis. But so is them understanding where we are now, what came before us and where we still need to go. 

So here’s to strong women. May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them.

Happy International Women’s Day to all the women out there. This day is for you no matter what. 

To Build A Home in 2023: The Ending

Well folks, it’s been a journey building in 2023. From clearing the land in April to FINALLY moving in with an unfinished interior at the end of November. I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t know what it took to build a home. I don’t know what I thought this process of building our garage home would be exactly. I know it wasn’t what it turned out to be. Like any project, there were good points and not good points. Here’s a wrap up of our overall experience of our mistakes while building a home in 2023. If you missed the first two blogs, you can find the first one here and the second one here.

When you see text in italic, that’s been written by Tyson.

The Final Reveal

We are calling it both the Clutter Cave and Harage interchangeably haha. We were so amused by our friend’s garage – the Garage Mahal, but nothing that clever came to us!

As I previously mentioned, this was my first foray into building. I had done renos on my previous home. It ranged from new siding, roofing and kitchen remodel, but have never gone through a design and build process. Tyson and I talked about the aesthetic of the garage that would match our eventual house. Apparently we didn’t talk about the specifics like I thought we had. I’ll call this our first mistake. 

Once our design was drafted, we took our plans to Hubcraft Timbermart. Chris and Jim came back with a full supply list of everything we would need. I loved this part because it was so easy. We called in and ordered what we needed in stages based on the list they gave us. Working with Hubcraft is definitely one thing we did right in this process. Ok – here we go!

At the end of July, Tyson began the build -2 months later then we planned. You may have seen a post I did the summer about how he does NOT care about the look of things at all. I, of course, care deeply. Unbeknownst to me, he ordered windows and doors without thinking at all about what color, style or look they had… Even though I’d mentioned on several occasions I wanted to go with black windows not white, for example. He figured it was just the garage so why not order the less expensive ones. This pretty much became the theme of our build. 

I actually just went off of a rough material list that had been put together. I was too focused on making progress. In hindsight should have had Alicia be in charge of ordering materials while I focused on moving forward. Then she would have known what I needed and could have made decisions on her aesthetic at that time. Lessons were learned.

Here’s where I need to put a special shout out for Jim at Hubcraft Timbermart. He inadvertently became the neutral party between what I wanted to order and what Tyson had already ordered! Jim was a saint for being able to help us bridge between what I wanted design wise, and what Tyson wanted to spend. He repeatedly used his expertise (and mediation skills he may not have known he had) to help us make the right choices for my aesthetic dreams and our realistic budget!

I’m quite confident we provided Jim with plenty of entertainment at the very least. It should have been obvious from early on that Alicia should have been the only person with decision-making power.

It took me awhile to pick out the colours for our steel siding and roof. There are SO many choices of colour and profile! I went to order my choice only to find out the colour I wanted wasn’t available in the profile I picked. I selected a backup color which was available in the steel profile I wanted, but in my heart I knew I didn’t love it as much as the first one. We needed to get it ordered so I went with it. This was mistake number two. What I WISH I had done, was taken the time to ask what profiles the color I chose was in. I knew we had to get it ordered so that’s not what I did. Another lesson learned.

In Alicia’s defence, it’s very difficult to pick a profile based on a cutaway section, and a colour based on a swatch. It works but it’s hard to translate to the side of a barn in your imagination.

As the build started to come together, the color scheme did not.

At least not to what my original vision was, so we had to keep pivoting. The vision was to do a sage green siding with a charcoal roof, and brown doors and accents. The colour of siding we ended up getting is called Pacific Turquoise which is a much brighter colour than the sage. For the brown garage doors, the colour swatch was only available online so I picked what I thought was the closest to my references. When it arrived, it wasn’t quite the same colour I hoped but we were (I was – let’s be real, Tyson only cares about the steel in the door) happy with it. 

At that point I was just happy whenever Alicia was happy.

Now as we looked at the doors with the siding and the trim, it didn’t feel cohesive or at all like my reference photos. We pivoted again and discussed options to bring the color of the doors up to the gable of the garage. Here is where Jim shines again! He was able to give me SO many material options and swatches. When I couldn’t match a swatch to the doors we had (Teak Mitten!), he came up with MORE options for me. We found the perfect option! We decided to go with a vinyl siding at the top that matched the color of our doors perfectly. It tied the whole design together!

So what we have is a little mismatched misfit but, it’ll come together. In the spring I’ll paint the white windows black to match the roofing and steel trim, and paint the side door brown to match the other doors. We learned a lot. Mainly that I’m not sure I can survive an actual house build. We will start that process very differently than this one. 

Things we learned: 

Sit down with your partner if you have one for your project, and make sure you have a clear vision you’re both on the same page about. Look at the same photos together. This might sound silly but I REALLY thought we had done this (Ron Howard voiceover: They did not).

Decide who is going to do the ordering… 🙄

Don’t make rash decisions. When the colour I wanted for the siding wasn’t available, I made a snap decision to go with my runner up when I SHOULD have asked what  profiles the colour I wanted WAS available in.

Timelines mean nothing. If you had a build that went on time, I want to know about it because you may be a unicorn.

Have documentation with your contractor. While we all know timelines cannot always be accurate and costs can go up as you build, try to have written communication and receipts for any payments you make.

Right now we don’t have a plan to build until maybe 2025. Tyson would like to stretch it to 2026 I’m sure but we’ll see how it goes. Our focus now is on settling in to the Clutter Cave and getting the interior finished. Our goal is to enjoy this time of being mobile and mortgage free! We’re hoping to travel in our Clutterbug and really think about out dream house design. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed following along with our shenannigans. Maybe you learned from the our mistakes when it comes to build a home of your own. Maybe you were just entertained. Either way, thanks for being on this journey with us! May building in 2025 be a better experience than building in 2023.

This blog was sponsored by HubCraft Timbermart

How I’ve Failed At Small Business

It’s scary to be vulnerable when we talk about business. There’s a focus on being honest and authentic in your marketing efforts, but it’s scary to admit when you or your business is struggling. What will people think? Will clients stop buying from me if they think I’m having issues in the business? Or the dreaded fear of whether or not to throw in the towel and close your business. I often hear the comment, ‘I don’t know how you do it all’, and the truth is something always suffers. Some aspect of your life is neglected. So for Small Business Week, I wanted to share with you how I’ve failed at small business.

The Struggle Is Real

Businesses have been very transparent about struggling since 2020, especially small businesses. We saw so many large corporations claw back locations and staff to stay afloat during the shut downs. For me, 2023 has been my hardest year in my nine years as a business owner. I want to share why.

I acknowledge when it comes to talking about business is that I’m far more creative than analytical. Numbers have never been my strong suit (shout out to my high school math teacher Mrs. Wheeler who helped me get across the finish line of graduation with so, so many after school sessions). This was probably my biggest fear going into business ownership: could I handle the numbers side? I was tattooing for seven years when I decided to make the leap to a new province and open my own studio. While I had confidence in my tattooing, I didn’t have confidence in my ability to run a business.

Flash forward 3 years as a solopreneur and I start a second business in marketing and promotion. My businesses are growing and I need to take on more help to grow and manage. That means more accounting work. In 2019 I attended a business networking event in New York where one of the speakers said ‘Learn to love the numbers’. I knew this is something I had to do. I was clinging to the mindset that if the overall number in the bank account is growing, I MUST be doing ok, right? 🫣

The Hard Truth

I’m sad to say I adopted this policy for far too long. The time came where I really needed to dig in to the numbers – how were both businesses performing? What was doing well and what wasn’t? Where are all our billable hours going exactly? I felt deep shame that I was so hands off the details of accounting in my business. I relied on other people to do what I struggled with. I assumed they would tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t they..? That shame kept me from facing what I kind of knew but didn’t want to face…something is not right in one of my businesses, and I don’t know what it is exactly.

It took me a year of trying to really get up to date on the details of how my businesses were doing. While I always kept invoices in order, receipts filed and paid my taxes on time, my accounting software had never been set up with the categories I needed to separate my two businesses and the services of each.  While it seemed like things were chugging along and I was focused on growth, the numbers were not supporting the growth I was going after. I believed in what we were doing and that I could figure it out. As I recently heard in another networking session this last year’ “Hope is not a strategy”, and I was definitely hoping it would work out. 🤞

The Decision Not To Open

It was time to face the truth in more ways than one. I had opened a third business, which was a sister company to Truro Buzz- Secret Nova Scotia Tours. Where Truro Buzz was all about showing people online what it was like to live and work here, Secret Nova Scotia would actually take people to these places. Other than the horror of opening a tourism business in 2020, I quickly realized I could not fracture my attention over another business. As much as I loved it and believed in it, after three seasons, I couldn’t continue it. In 2023, I didn’t open for business and it won’t open again. I thought this would feel like failure, but it didn’t. It felt like making the right choice as much as it’s not what I wanted. 

Now I had to do the hard work to break apart all the pieces of my other businesses to get a real clear picture of every aspect. This is honestly hard for me to write. I know there are people out there who will read this and think, “How could you go so long without knowing your numbers?!”, “You should never be a business owner” and other negative, deprecating things our inner voices tell us when we feel shame. 

Learning From My Mistakes

The reason why I’m pushing through my discomfort to write this is because I know I’m not the only one. If my confessions help another business owner to take a better look at their business or reach out to someone for help, then it’s worth it. Shame keeps us from helping other people because we’re embarrassed to admit our shortcomings. I am very embarrassed but I also know that I am making the changes to right the ship, and that’s what matters. Nothing changes if nothing changes. 

So many small business owners are not people with business and marketing degrees. We’re people with a passion and a product or service we want to share with other people. We’re figuring out the business side of it as we go. In a perfect world, we’d be able to have marketing managers and CFOs so we can focus on the thing we do that we love. That’s not an option for many small business owners. Some people are truly a jack of all trades, and can handle the back and front ends of their business. Others, like me, rely on bookkeepers and other professionals to handle areas that we’re not strong in.

Why We Do It

If you’re reading this and feeling your own shame about an aspect of your business, I hope this will encourage you to reach out to someone for help. There are so many free resources available to help you that I’ll tag below. I think it’s obvious to most that entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. Another quote that stuck with me is that ‘Business owners rarely have two good days in a row’ and I have found that to be true in my nine years of experience. 

So why do we do it? Everyone has their own reasons, but what I’ve found to be the most common thread is freedom. To own the thing you’re spending so much time working on. To be able to make your own schedule, even though that schedule is often more hours than you put in working for someone else. In many cases for less money! If you’re lucky, to be able to work wherever you want. Yet new businesses spring up every day. Almost 98% of Canadian businesses are small companies and employ over 10 million Canadians (madeinca.ca). Whether owning a business is right for you or not is a question only you can answer for yourself, but know this: there is a solution to every problem if you look for it. I’m learning from how I failed at small business and applying it to what I do in the future.

Resources that have helped me:
Truro Colchester Partnership for Economic Prosperity
CBDC-NOBL
LSI Workplace Education
Abundant Living, Debbie Lawrence

5 Days In Vegas

I had hoped to go to Vegas for my 40th birthday but it didn’t pan out. In December, we decided to book a last minute trip to Las Vegas with two friends of ours, leaving on Jan. 1st. Three of us had never been there, but my husband Tyson had gone once with friends six years ago. I hear lots of mixed reviews on experiences in Las Vegas so I wanted to share our experience with you. Here’s our experience having 5 Days in Vegas and our tips for your own trip.

The Welcome to Las Vegas sign is further than you think.

We were actually super happy with the flights we got. We would leave Halifax at 6 am and arrive in Las Vegas at 12:30pm their time with one stop over in Toronto. If you’ve done any air travel since 2020, you know this is not what happened. As our boarding announcement started in Halifax, we got an email that our Toronto to Vegas flight was cancelled. Thankfully we quickly got a hold of an agent on the phone to tell us not to board that plane. We were rebooked to go to Edmonton, then Vegas. What was supposed to be a 9 hour travel day became a 22 hour travel day, but hey, we got there the same day right? We were also very glad we all packed a carry-on bag so we didn’t have to worry about our luggage on top of everything else.

Our first day we woke up early as we were on Atlantic time, but this was great. We got up and out before most people in that time zone. Let me preface this by saying none of us are ‘night’ people, so we saw the strip a lot more in the daylight than night time!

Vegas Is Not Hot In The Winter Months

Alicia is sitting at a booth putting a sweet potato fry to her mouth with a fork and is surrounded by plates of food

I’m glad we chose the time we did for our 5 days in Vegas. I had never been to Vegas or Nevada but obviously my thought process was “it’s a desert, it’s going to be warm if not hot”. It was not haha. Watching the weather the weeks before we went showed that the daytime was from high single digits to mid teens. In the mornings when we left our hotel, it would be maybe 5-6 degrees Celsius. In the afternoons 10-15 degrees Celsius.

The temperature was great for walking all day for me because I didn’t feel sweaty or overheated. It was definitely chilly first thing in the morning and in the evenings but definitely manageable. I packed a lot of layers so if it started out cold in the morning, I could take off a jacket or cardigan in the afternoon as it warmed up. Tyson had previously gone in June and said it was way too hot for his liking, around 45 degrees.

You Don’t Have To Gamble

We didn’t put a single dollar into gambling the entire time we were there. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying anything bad about choosing to gamble. I was under the misconception for a long time that that’s what you did if you went to Vegas. There are literally slot machines as soon as you walk through the gate to the airport. There’s so much else to do – sights to see, food, shows, museums, comedy shows. There are endless possibilities for entertainment at your fingertips if gambling is not your thing.

The Food Is Expensive & The Portions Are Huge

You probably know I like to eat. Food is a huge part of travelling for me so I was very excited to try the restaurants in Vegas. While I knew things would be pricier there, we were NOT prepared for how expensive food was everywhere. We chose to primarily stay on the strip. I know we could have found less expensive and excellent eating experiences off the strip, which I do wish I’d looked in to more. I had made reservations for supper every night but we ended up cancelling most because the cost was just too much. We were quickly burning through our food budget. While this was disappointing, we had to make adjustments and that was ok. I know better for next time.

Drain Your Blisters

5 drag queens on the stage of Rupaul's drag race live in vegas
Rupaul’s Drag Race Live in Vegas

We walked almost 90 kilometres in the 5 days we were in Vegas. I had great walking shoes, as did Tyson, but we still got blisters and had sore feet (except Dave. He’s a unicorn). I’m confident in saying no matter what footwear you have, you’re going to end up with sore feet when walking THAT much on concrete and asphalt. Next time, we’ll walk through the hotels more than the sidewalks as the carpeted floors really do make a difference.

Ok, not to be gross but I wish someone had told me this! I developed blisters in the first few days. I didn’t want to pop them because I knew then the skin would be raw, and I still had more walking to do. On the second last day, I couldn’t take it anymore. I used a pin to poke a small hole and just drain the fluid at night before I went to bed. I wish I had done this sooner. The next morning it felt so much better and it was far more comfortable walking the last day.

While this wasn’t the trip I envisioned (I was also sick the first two days from a bad cold I got before we left), I can’t wait to go back again. We’re more prepared this time and I feel like there’s still so much I want to see and do! For us 5 days in Vegas was enough to be honest. I can’t see us staying for a week or longer but who knows what the future holds!