What Works - EP 279: Leveraging Masterminds For Support With Startup Pregnant Founder Sarah Peck

EP 279: Leveraging Masterminds For Support With Startup Pregnant Founder Sarah Peck

05/12/20 • 90 min

2 Listeners

In This Episode:
* Why Startup Pregnant founder Sarah K. Peck started organizing mastermind groups & experiences before she was even a business owner* How Sarah facilitates conversation among group members for maximum results* Why mastermind groups are less about getting answers and more about getting in touch with your own inner knowing* The role that mastermind experiences play in her business today and how her business model is structured (including pricing)* Why structure is such an important part of creating highly effective mastermind groups
What would we do without the internet?
I mean, really.
I have access to a global library of information and ideas in my pocket at all times.
If I have a question, I can typically find an answer in less than 60 seconds.
And how about online learning?
If I want to learn a new skill, there’s probably a YouTube video or a CreativeLive class or an ebook that will teach me what I need to know.
It’s probably impossible to quantify the amount of new skills I’ve picked up thanks to the internet.
And how about the people that the internet brings together?
You know I love online communities, social networks, and just finding random connections between humans you would have otherwise never met.
The internet gives me access to people all over the world.
Information, ideas, learning new skills, meeting new people and connecting with old friends... the internet, with all its faults and foibles, can be an incredible place for support.
But at some point, learning new information, acquiring new skills, and even meeting new people starts to come up short.
At some point, as my guest today says, you realize that their aren’t external answers to internal questions.
You realize that beyond access to the world’s information and citizens... you need access to yourself: your own inner knowing.
One way I’ve gotten access to myself—my own inner knowing and decision-making—is through mastermind groups.
Last year, at an in-person gathering of one of the masterminds that we run at What Works, one participant told me that they didn’t really need anyone to tell them what to do with their business. They knew exactly what they should be doing. Instead, they said they needed people to ask why they weren’t doing it.
That’s why they were in the mastermind group.
To me, that’s the perfect illustration of how a mastermind group can support business owners who are committed to—not just learning a new marketing skill or figuring out how to launch a new product—but to becoming a more whole entrepreneur and building a business that works exceptionally well.
I’ve been running mastermind groups of one sort or another for about 5 years and I have a lot to say on the subject. But I didn’t want you to just get my thoughts...
So I invited someone equally as passionate about masterminding as I am, Sarah K. Peck, the founder of Startup Pregnant.
Sarah was on the show before talking about how the Startup Pregnant podcast got started—but the whole business and community of Startup Pregnant has evolved and grown a ton since then.

Previous Episode

EP 278: Prioritizing Your Mental Health With Chris Brogan

In This Episode:
* Bestselling author & business consultant Chris Brogan shares how depression and anxiety impact his experience as an entrepreneur* Why he always knows what he can “drop” when things get rough and what he isn’t willing to let slide* Why he has been transparent about his mental health challenges on social media and how he’s helping to reduce the stigma for others* How he approaches his conversations with others to be as supportive as he can, while also creating his own support network
I have received an outpouring of gratitude in the last 6 weeks.
Telling you that makes me quite uncomfortable and feels self-serving, but I promise there’s a point.
The messages I’ve received have thanked me for being a leader and for sharing how I’m personally processing both our public health crisis and our economic pause.
Many of these messages have also ended with something along the lines of: I hope there’s someone supporting you right now.
And that’s why I’m sharing this with you. Because, sure, I know that sharing how I feel, what I’m doing to navigate planning or marketing, and how I’m coping is helpful.
But what I think is really helpful about what I’ve been sharing?
It’s showing people that they’re not alone.
I think that’s what they’re really saying to me when they say “I hope there’s something supporting you right now.” They’re saying “you’ve made me feel like I’m not alone and I hope you don’t feel alone either.”
Because the truth is...
Leaders get lonely.
When everyone is looking to you for answers, for support, for guidance, you can feel like there’s no one to go to for your own support.
And since all small business owners are leaders in one way or another, we all feel that loneliness sometimes—or maybe, we feel it quite often.
This month, we’re tackling that feeling of loneliness and the different kinds of support we can lean on to feel grounded and whole.
We’re going to tackle 2 sides of this conversation—mental health and business owner support—and we’ll acknowledge that this conversation really has many more sides than that. I’ll share what works for me and we’ll be asking our community members to share what works for them, too.
You’ll hear from Nancy Jane Smith about living with and finding support for high-functioning anxiety which is something I certainly deal with, along with many other business owners I know. You’ll also hear a conversation between me and Startup Pregnant founder Sarah Peck about using & facilitating masterminds for support. And you’ll hear from Shirin Eskandani about finding support through coaching.
Today, we’re kicking things off with Chris Brogan, an author, speaker, and consultant who has been incredibly forthcoming about his own experience with depression and anxiety. Chris helps business owners feel less lonely by vulnerably sharing what he’s going through on a regular basis and by regularly offering his support to those who are in the throws of mental health challenges.
Post by post, conversation by conversation, Chris is doing his part of reduce the stigma of depression, anxiety, and even failure.
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Next Episode

EP 280: Thriving With High Functioning Anxiety With The Happier Approach Host Nancy Smith

In This Episode:
* How licensed professional counselor & therapeutic coach Nancy Jane Smith learned to navigate high-functioning anxiety while building her business* How high-functioning anxiety differs from our usual concept of what anxiety “looks like”* The strategies Nancy uses to help herself (and her clients) deal with HFA* Which of the 3 voices in her head Nancy uses to guide her action and keep moving forward
Can we talk about anxiety?
Even if you don’t think of yourself as having anxiety or dealing with anxiety, there’s a good chance you’ve felt pretty anxious over the last 2 months.
I’ve been calling it ambient anxiety.
It’s just in the air.
Everything is in flux. Nothing is in our control. Everyone is on edge.
It’s just really hard to get a solid handle on what’s going on a day to day or even hour by hour basis.
Your response to all of this ambient anxiety might be to slow down—even shut down. You might feel numb or a bit panicked. You might have trouble concentrating or find yourself caught up in worry.
That’s a very normal, very understandable response.
But it’s not the only way that anxiety can manifest.
The other way anxiety makes itself known doesn’t even look much like what we think of when we think anxiety.
And that’s how I initially responded to the anxiety of our present moment.
This month on the show, we’ve been talking about finding support as an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship can be a lonely endeavor and the mental health challenges that many of us face don’t make it any easier to feel like you’re not alone.
Which leads me back to how I found myself quote-unquote coping with my anxiety a few weeks ago...
Instead of shutting down, I turned on. I worked long, hyper-productive days. I created new things. I hosted live events. I checked in with friends and supported our members and clients.
My anxiety led me to over-functioning. My subconscious was trying to work my way through the stress and uncertainty. I was trying to control the uncontrollable.
That burst of anxious over-functioning led to a complete collapse. I’m now trying to get back into a more manageable and gentle groove but I’m feeling pretty rotten.
I’ve talked to a lot of people who have been living a similar story.
Which really isn’t that surprising to me because in the before times, I was having a lot of conversations that started with: “Can I tell you about high-functioning anxiety?!”
You see, I started learning about high-functioning anxiety from our guest today, Nancy Jane Smith. The way Nancy described anxiety was nothing like what I thought of anxiety to be... but was everything about my experience of the world.
I’ve shared on the podcast before that only recently did I realize I was living with chronic anxiety. I had always identified as dealing with chronic depression and didn’t recognize my normal-for-me mental state was one of high anxiety. But the more I’ve learned from Nancy, the more I’ve learned about my own brand of anxiety.
Nancy is an expert in High Functioning Anxiety. Nancy is trained as a licensed professional counselor and therapeutic coach. ★ Support this podcast ★