What Napoleon Hill, Benjamin Franklin, and C.S. Lewis had in common.
Talking Big Ideas.
Today’s piece brings to life a concept I’ve found essential throughout my life: the Mastermind Group.
I’ve started several Mastermind Groups and have found each one invaluable. Our 2024 Speaking Mastermind was particularly rewarding, and we’re gearing up for the 2025 Mastermind.
As you read today’s piece, consider your own goals for 2025 and whether a Mastermind would be useful for you. Learn more and apply for our 2025 Mastermind here.
“What I owe them all is incalculable.”
~ C.S. Lewis on the Inklings
Napoleon Hill wasn’t an admirable person.
Long before he authored the self-help classic Think and Grow Rich, he opened the Automobile College of Washington. His school promised to train students how to drive and repair the latest hot new technology.
However, what students really got was an office filled with promotional flyers and almost no actual curriculum or training.
Under the gun, Hill pivoted the school to training students how to sell cars. But again, Hill’s tendency toward grift materialized. Students were primarily incentivized to sell Automobile College courses, turning the whole endeavor into a multi-level marketing scheme.
Eventually, Hill was run out of town. He disappeared to avoid legal trouble.
Hill’s rap sheet of scams, abuse, and infidelity runs a mile long. Hill freeloaded off his son while working on Think and Grow Rich, running his son’s wife out of her own home. The story of meeting Andrew Carnegie, the basis for his classic book, is almost certainly a lie. Hill swindled business partners and family alike.
Despite his many character flaws, Hill did get at least one thing correct. The power of the Mastermind.
What is the next big thing you hope to achieve in your career? What are you going to do in 2025 to make progress?
A Mastermind is a group explicitly designed to help you achieve these things.
In Chapter 10 of his famous book, Hill declares Masterminds “the driving force” of power. He directs readers to apply this power to making money, but the usefulness of Masterminds goes much further.
A Mastermind is a group of people who meet regularly to help each other grow and achieve. Each member has their own goal or project, which their fellow members help them accomplish by being a sounding board to provide feedback, ideas, and insights. With the power of many minds, members achieve more than they could alone.
Mastermind Groups date back to antiquity. From philosophic gatherings around figures like Epictetus and Socrates to coffee shop gatherings of the 17th and 18th centuries to the Vienna Circle, a gathering of prominent scientists in the 1920s and 30s. Napoleon Hill simply helped popularize the concept.
If you like public libraries, your local fire station, or the University of Pennsylvania, you’ve already benefited from a Mastermind group: Benjamin Franklin’s Leather Apron Club. Franklin’s group generated the sparks of insight that led to these core community pillars.
The Leather Apron Club was a regular gathering focused on discussions of personal and community improvement. Club members committed to philosophical probing, thoughtful writing, and working together to improve. They discussed morals, science, and politics. Franklin brought the style of this meeting to the Constitutional Convention decades later.
If you like Lord of The Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia, you can also thank a Mastermind. J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were both members of the Inklings, a literary group at Oxford during the 1930s and 40s.
Like Franklin’s Leather Apron Club, Inklings members would meet regularly. They read their work and got feedback. Sometimes feedback would help nurture a new idea. Sometimes it would help writers strike disastrous ideas.
In particular, this group is thought to have been essential to Tolkein’s development of Middle-earth and Lord of the Rings. Members encouraged Tolkein’s originality and helped him work through challenges.
Lewis read versions of The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters, and The Great Divorce to the Inklings. Despite his good friend Tolkein’s skeptisicm, Lewis forged ahead with his own fairy story about a lion, a witch, and a wardrobe. The camaraderie and insights of the group were invaluable for creative endeavors.
Bob, creator of this newsletter, has started several mastermind groups.
These groups have helped their participants succeed in many ways, from the profound – losing weight, starting businesses, raising kids, publishing books – to the mundane – unclogging a sink, giving a ride when someone lost their keys, offering restaurant suggestions for date night.
These groups go beyond achieving financial success (looking at you, Napoleon Hill) or an important goal. They develop bonds based on deeply held beliefs and values. It’s these relationships that deliver the priceless value of a mastermind.
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Modern Masterminds can take many forms.
David Perell’s Write of Passage is a good example. Aspiring writers get together to share their work and get feedback. This is a cohort-based model where members collaborate to improve and achieve their writing goals.
Organizations like The Genius Network or Young Presidents’ Organization offer a much larger membership base, emphasizing networking and creating business connections.
Regardless of its focus, one of the essential elements of a good Mastermind is that it gives you high-quality feedback.
It’s tough to get good feedback. Adam Grant’s latest book, Hidden Potential, has an excellent analysis on why this is the case.
Grant says there are three main components to getting feedback. Care, familiarity, and credibility. The person giving you feedback needs to have all three.
- Care: the person wants what is best for you;
- Familiarity: they know you well;
- Credibility: they have relevant expertise.
It’s the people who have all three who can be extremely helpful. When someone cares about you, knows you well, and understands your challenge, their feedback becomes invaluable.
Imagine you’re trying to get a promotion and need to convince your manager. Who do you go to for advice?
- Oprah may have a lot of great insight on this, but she doesn’t care enough to share it with you specifically (sorry to rain on your parade).
- Your mom cares about you and knows you well, but she probably doesn’t know your situation well enough to offer useful advice.
- Your workplace buddy, on the other hand, cares about you, knows you, and understands the organizational dynamics.
Of course, you get the best feedback from your colleague.
A Mastermind is intentionally designed to incorporate all three of these elements: care, familiarity, and credibility.
Members genuinely care about each other and their success. They get to know each other well and form deep relationships. And they have overlapping experiences and shared contexts.
These three essential elements make your fellow Mastermind members uniquely positioned to offer excellent feedback and ideas.
In our 2024 Leaders Speaking Mastermind, members worked on tangible and intangible goals like establishing their role within a startup, publishing a book, and implementing a new organizational strategy. They got honest feedback from each other. Both when they needed to hear hard truths and when they needed a boost in confidence.
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Consider your most important project or goal for 2025. Would you benefit from the accountability, support, and clarity a Mastermind group provides?
The next Ewing School Mastermind starts in January 2025 and offers an opportunity for leaders, experts, and wonks to focus on a goal, hone their skills, and grow in the area most important to them.
This Mastermind is a 10-month accountability program designed to help you achieve your most important project or goal for 2025.
Members will build valuable relationships, expand their thinking, and accomplish the goal most important to them in 2025.
Click here to learn more and apply.
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J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Napoleon Hill, and Benjamin Franklin each recognized the power of bringing together like-minded people for the mutual improvement of all.
As you start to think about 2025 and what’s next for you, I encourage you to seek out the support of others with shared values who can help you grow.
Whether you hope to get rich, improve your community, or write the next great American (British?) novel, a mastermind group can help you stay focused and sharp.
