The highest form of management education. The miracle that solves all business problems. Therapy by a group of similarly "afflicted".
Mastermind.
I have heard all this about this still somewhat mysterious phenomenon in the Czech Republic. A phenomenon that has been operating successfully abroad for decades. And maybe even millennia. The first mastermind was mentioned in ancient Greece. Although they didn't call it a mastermind yet.
Although I have been running masterminds for various platforms for many years, I am still positively surprised by this concept. That's why I invited two ladies to the microphone, the founders of Expertní board 21 s.r.o., which also offers mastermind training in the Czech Republic. To learn something new again. Lucie Libovická and Daniela Kolomazníková did not disappoint. They offered a very detailed look under the hood. We discussed ...
🔸 What is a mastermind?
🔸 What is the reason for the mastermind boom?
🔸 What can I solve in a mastermind?
🔸 How does the mastermind solve the problems for me?
🔸 How is the mastermind doing in the Czech Republic compared to abroad?
HOW A MASTERMIND CAN ACCELERATE YOUR BUSINESS (INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT)
Martin Hurych
Hello. I'm Martin Hurych and this is another Ignition. Today's Ignition will be about a topic that has been resonating a lot for the last few years, not only in my bubble. We're going to look at what a mastermind is, what a mastermind is for, and why you should at the very least consider a mastermind in your life. To do that, I've got two guests today, Lucie Libovicka and Daniela Kolomaznikova, founders of Expert Board 21. Hi.
Daniela Kolomazníková
Hi, Martin.
Lucie Libovicka
Hi, Martin.
What's the craziest thing they've done in the last year?
Martin Hurych
Before we get down to the serious stuff, here's a thought. What's the craziest thing you've experienced in the last year and what did you take away from it?
Daniela Kolomazníková
I feel like we do crazy things all the time. For the past year or so, it's been my 5 year old daughter on her scooter at 55mph cooing at me for going slow and not blowing in the wind at all. I thought that was pretty crazy.
Martin Hurych
Is there a lesson for life in there?
Daniela Kolomazníková
Don't be afraid, go for it.
Lucie Libovicka
I'm thinking of a profoundly powerful experience, and for me it was probably the conference at Prague Castle in October, when there was quite an unexpected media storm about the whole process. I have to say that for the first time I experienced being on the other side and reading something about yourself that you know you're living differently and there's nothing you can do about it.
How did they get to Expert Board 21?
Martin Hurych
When I arrived at the conference, I sat down and 5 minutes later I got a text message that I was in Express. I didn't know why, and I realized there that I had nothing to do with it until then, I hadn't read anything, I didn't know what had happened before. Suddenlybut a customer writes me that I'm at Express and I'm associated with something I don't know about. Let's move on to something more positive. I told you that you are the founders of Expert Board 21, so let me tell you about your journey to this company and what Expert Board 21 does.
Lucie Libovicka
I'll start with the serious version, because it was first hatched in the days when I used to do classic networking meetings. But I've felt there for a long time that I can't meet the expectations of people who run companies, who already have bigger teams and bigger companies, who come to that networking and are sometimes more or less happy there. They didn't find the space there to discuss just what they were interested in.
When Covid came along and there was this kind of calming down, I thought I could find something like that, some concept where we could be more useful. Daniela was my mentor and coach at the time. We sat on a video call one day and thought about how to do it and we discussed it for so long until the mastermind came in and we put the whole concept together and we said, that since we came up with such a nice idea, let's do it together. That was sometime in May 2020, which was the dark ages between the first and second lockdown, and we formed an LLC and started a company that was based on the principles of live meetings.
Martin Hurych
How did you see it?
Daniela Kolomazníková
You can understand from this that we like a challenge. I've dealt with a dilemma for myselfwhere I thought I was crossing some line as a coach that I shouldn't because a client who waswith meconsult, I say we do business together. I thought it was presumptuous, but now I think it's one of the right decisions.
What characteristic convinced the other that it was worth doing business together?
Martin Hurych
You knew each other, however, you each had and have your own businesses and yet you were in the position of coach versus coachee. I'm sure there were a lot of question marks. When I thought about it, I wondered what was the quality in the other that ultimately said it was worth a shot despite the things you had around those question marks. What was the last thing that the other one had that told you that you wanted to go for it with her?
Lucie Libovicka
I was looking for a mentor or a coach, whom you will trust, whom you will trust that what he says is alive and whom you will have a little bit of respect for, so that you will do what he recommends. I have to say that I've changed a few people, a few places, and when a mutual friend just recommended Daniela to me, I said I want to try it. It wasn't that I was completely afraid of Daniela, but the natural respect for what she lives, what she does, was there. It became a mentoring relationship for two years and that was such a good foundation, that you trust the person, you hear what they're saying, you see what they're living. The moment you open up a project that requires really great expertise and this person says let's do it together, you think about it and you don't hesitate too long.
Daniela Kolomazníková
I'm more of a mathematician and analyst, so I've been in business for a long time on my own, and doing business on your own brings with it things that make you think, I wish someone was here. I know that what is a huge challenge on the one hand, but at the same time the only thing that makes sense is some complementarity. So I said to myself, what am I good at and what am I not so good at and where would it be nice to have someone to complement me. Of course, that brings with it differences of opinion, but I dare say that the fact that Lucy is extremely good at things I am not at all good at, and vice versa, was the last thing that was the deciding factor.
Martin Hurych
Before we get into the topic of today's podcast, one last question about you. You said you were going to start with the serious version. What's the funny one?
Lucie Libovicka
I don't know if we're totally going to do the version here that we said before the shoot, but I'm blonde, Daniela is brunette, and that's definitely one version. Daniela presents it as I'm the pretty one, she's the smart one, which is obviously the other version. Then there are many others, which we can't say out loud here at all.
Daniela Kolomazníková
But you know what she breathed with me? One of the last consultations in the coach/coachee relationship was when Lucy was sitting with me and I told her that if I came in that day a little nervous, it was because I might have been in labor since the morning. Then I left the consultation, drove to Brno and the next morning my son was born, so Lucka gave that as well.
Lucie Libovicka
That's not the last story. We were already in business together, and Daniela decided to have a third child. We were sitting in Brno, it was about 2 o'clock in the afternoon and Daniela was nine months pregnant. She told me she wasn't feeling so good and at 8pm a photo came back that her third was born.
son. So we are complementary in this respect as well.
What is a mastermind?
Martin Hurych
On a serious note, I've been running masterminds for friends for some 10, 12 years now, so I was surprised that for a long time no one here talked about mastermind. In recent years, not only in my bubble, mastermind as a topic has been ripped apart. What is this famous mastermind anyway?
Daniela Kolomazníková
One of the phrases we like to use and say is that it is the ultimate form of education for CEOs and business owners. Not many of us get to invite 8 other CEOs into our living room and if they are lucky enough to do this, then it's difficult to make it not be a men's night out, but really about business. That's what we're trying to keep hidden under the word mastermind as we understand it.
Lucie Libovicka
For me, it is an incredible concentration of knowledge, expertise, experience, which is also connected by an atmosphere of people who understand each other, who don't have to explain too much. They may be from different industries and different companies, but the way they lead companies and teams, they have a lot of the same topicsand they just go into the little nuances of those individual fields and that's what's interesting to them. I always say that the mastermind is such a very dense sieve for people. The ones that come in already are usually open, nice, cooperative, and they're surprised themselves when they experience it for the first time how incrediblygood and pleasant atmosphere there. They can open up topics there that they wouldn't often tell people they've known for years. That's often the thing that decides when they're wondering ifthey're going to give that 4 hours a month because they want that in their life. Because they don't have as many people around them to share what they're currently dealing with in that kind of environment and that kind of atmosphere.
What is the reason for the mastermind boom?
Martin Hurych
What do you think is the reason for the current boom of mastermind as a topic on the air?
Lucie Libovicka
For me it might be an effort to bring something that is modern, that sounds good, that people are not so familiar with and that can be a marketing ploy for them. The other thing, of course, might be the same effort to bring some other quality concept to people that can push them further. It can also be that it's being talked about, it's being known about, and people are already mentioning the results, and so of course there's a tendencyto keep using it. You talk about the boom and maybe it's because you're living it and you're doing it yourself and it's great that we don't have to explain to you what a mastermind is. But otherwise, it seems to us that given how many companies there are, how many people are out there leading them, there's still extremely little of it and we're all still pioneering the word and the method here.
What can I solve in mastermind?
Martin Hurych
I did a little research. You guys have your own company, Expert Board 21, I've been on Scaleupboard for almost 5 years now, so I was kind of thinking I hear that everywhere. You know, when I bought my first black Volvo, everybody started driving black Volvos. But I've been to a few networking events and seen people actively asking for a mastermind, so objectively there's something going on in the ether. When someone comes to you, what do they typically go to you to sort out?
Daniela Kolomazníková
What Lucka said about why the mastermind boom is happening was still ringing in my head. That was from the point of view of the organizers and I think it's very important to say that the reason why there is a demand for the mastermind at the networking is Covid. Because we pulled out, we didn't have the social connections, we were at home, and those companies are now very much figuring out how to get those people back, how to rebuild that community. If you think about it, before Covid, we had a kind of community in the company. There were these people that we could open up those topics with in more depth or more superficially. Now, there's always this post-Covid thing that resonates, where these people don't go to these companies, they don't have a way to talk, they don't address it in these kitchens, over that coffee. I think it was one of those elements that accelerated the increase in demand. These people feel the need to talk to someone to move it forward.
Martin Hurych
So when I have this need to talk to those equally afflicted, I have this need to come out of my hole, what is the typical thing that business owners and CEOs come to you to address?
Lucie Libovicka
Mostly it's business. That's a theme that resonates across companies right now. I have to say that it's not so surprising to us now, but we see that these are companies that have been in the market for a long time, that are stable, that work and have a name. People are coming out of them saying they haven't had to do active sales for all these years and now all of a sudden they need to because smaller clients are leaving and they're suddenly building sales departments and figuring out how to do marketing and how to do sales. So that's one of those front and center issues and then of course it's people.
Daniela Kolomazníková
It is also a strategy. It's changed a lot because we used to plan for a year and now we still plan for 2, 3 months and how are we supposed to come up with something in this, to do these strategies and to lead and manage the company in a methodical and systematic way. That's another topic that comes up a lot in all its nuances.
How does the mastermind solve the problems for me?
Martin Hurych
Let's forget now the definition of mastermind, which we've covered very nicely here. How do I, as a a person who may have heard of mastermind once or twice, maybe for the first time today, imagine the mastermind solution to my problem? I'm coming to you I don't have a business, I need to sort something out about strategy, maybe I'm annoyed with my own people, maybe I want them more engaged because I want to hand over the business. How do I imagine that a mastermind is going to solve that for me?
Daniela Kolomazníková
For me there are several levels. One very common one, and very often mentioned by people who go to mastermind, is that they think they're solving these things themselves, but then they find out that it's a general topic that everybody is solving. Then those people also find out the dead ends that have been tried, so they
he doesn't have to come anymore. Another thing is the inspiration and what I find to be one of the best things about mastermind. You pour those ideas, those possibilities, those variations of that solution on the table, you make a big pile of it, and I can pick and choose what fits my company, my mentality, my whole context. Then there's the other thing that almost every employee benefits from, which is having some boss come in and say there was a deadline and what it looks like. The CEO or the owner of that company usually doesn't have anything like that, but the mastermind can also help address that in a way because you're setting some goals for the next month there. That's important too because we need to have a deadline somewhere.
Lucie Libovicka
I will add one more thing to this, an aspect that not only the owners or directors of thecompanies sit at the meeting, but also the mentor and the facilitator, who are the guarantors, sit there on behalf of the organizers. The role of the facilitator is that time will pass, so let's make sure that it's scheduled, that nobody gets chatty, that they don't pick one single ego and take as much time for themselves as possible. The mentor is the guarantor of that expertise and at theend not only gives a summary of all those views that were expressed there, but brings something extra fromin terms of his expertise. He has coaching, psychological and entrepreneurial skills and this trinity is something really special that you don't get even when you meet in a group of your business friends.
Daniela Kolomazníková
That's the thing that differentiates the different types of masterminds a lot. We take the role of facilitator and mentor very seriously and we really pride ourselves on the fact that these people are trained, educated, they work on themselves and it's really a profession. Because it's different to sit at the head of a mastermind because I run a business and I know how to facilitate a discussion and it's different to really sit there as a professional mentor or facilitator.
How can I measure the effectiveness of a mastermind?
Martin Hurych
You mentioned that the mastermind pushes those members into the results as well. How do I see that happening, how do I see that happening, how do I see that mastermind being effective for me from a member position?
Lucie Libovicka
For us, it's all about long-term discussion. That discussion starts the moment you come and try out in any way how a mastermind works, whether as a guest or as a participant in the opening board. There, he already knows that it's something he likes, but he may not yet know how to incorporate it into his personal and professional life. Then it's usually the two of us who come in and have a fairly
long, extensive and detailed discussion with each person individually, asking them what they need, what and what he's looking for. Based on that, we find the right board for him, and by having 14 at the moment, and of course more every year, it's possible to find him one thatfully compliant. Often the requirements are extremely specific. So we find the right board for him and he also sets what he wants to achieve in that year, what he needs to improve on, what he needs to gain and we work with all of that. So we get that picture at the beginning and then over time we work on it together and see if it works.
Daniela Kolomazníková
We have colleagues who deal with customer care, and part of customer care is not just how we take care of those members. They help them to fulfill those plans, objectives and goals that they said at the beginning.
Martin Hurych
Does that mean that maybe annually you have some 1:1 with your members to really track that person's progress within the group?
Daniela Kolomazníková
1:1 we have, but it's not yearly, it's more often. I dare say statistically it's about quarterly.
What else should you know?
Martin Hurych
What else should I know about masterminds?
Lucie Libovicka
It's something that can change your life completely. It may sound like some form of marketing, but that's the kind of thing we hear from these people. That's when you realize you're doing something that has incredible reach, that connects people on a personal and business level. You see projects over the years that have come about because you've not only brought those people together, but sometimes you think for them because you know the diversity of their businesses and them as people and you can come up with things that they don't immediately think of. It works wonderfully. I was just reading a post from one of our members who was on
He gave LinkedIn a summary of the best of the past year. He came to the board, invested in a company that was part of the Expert Board, while still being on some
training. Suddenly you think we're really changing people's lives. That's something that is so much more than an invoice paid or some feeling of checking off that a meeting took place.
Daniela Kolomazníková
I'll add to that what you really should know about mastermind, because we explain it to every person before they even go into our mastermind and before they even experience what it's like. Because the most common confusion is networking versus mastermind. Those people automatically jump in and say they've tried some networking. I mentioned in my very first answer that I'm very analytical,
so I'm gonna say flat out that mastermind is a healthy business platform. Because when you get on a networking site, one beautiful thing happens to you overwhelmingly, you're going to be seeded and you're going to become the hunted. That's something none of us want to experience because no one is comfortable in it. On the other hand, imagine you're sitting next to the owner of an agency that specializes in web design, and you're sitting next to each other for the third, fifth, eighth month, and you start tackling a new website. Who's going to be the first person you ask? So the business obviously belongs in the mastermind, but it's not the first order of business, it happens because you build relationships with people who have thrown their problems on the table. You see the way they think about those things, the way they solve those things, and not just in relation to clients, but in relation to themselves, in relation to their own business, and that's why you want to do that business with somebody afterwards.
How can a mastermind boost a business?
Martin Hurych
In the groups I lead, sometimes I think you want to be osalesed. Often they will come to me or even amongst themselves and ask if we could do that for them. Often it's in a position of such intimacy that you don't dare advertise your services as a member of the mastermind and the others don't think of it. When it's
i.e. a hard business platform, do you have an example of a business that has taken off in your country?
Daniela Kolomazníková
Since we're sitting on a podcast, I remembered when we did a podcast with one of our members and partners. We don't usually edit the podcast when we record it and it made for such a hilarious story. We ended up recording it and he said we're going to have to cut it because he's gotten 20 times his investment back, which is the one thing he wanted to say on the podcast, and he forgot about it.
Lucie Libovicka
We have members and we have certified partners, which are companies that don't come to the board regularly. They come in as interesting guests because they're verified, they're reliable, we have references from us or from members, and those are kind of two worlds that overlap. These people are often the ones who are addressing the issues that are raised on the board. Many members are in both of those roles and they want the mastermind, they want the business. I remember one person who was very much a part of our lives last year and that is Maruska Bubnova, who has the Bubna agency. It's a hostessing agency, but they also make merch and import a lot of stuff and they can make it happen here. She was a partner just at Prague Castle for the negotiation conference and she supplied us with the complete background of the hostesses and everything that you had there as participants. Maruska is extremely action-oriented and she is such a beautiful example that you can use a mastermind for yourself, for your development, because her company is a rocket, just like Maruska. They're flying through that advertising and marketing universe to big targets, and she also manages to harness the potential of those contacts and then produces and produces events for a lot of our members and partners. We were discussing this with her at the end of the year and we did some case studies of it. When I saw how many of those contacts, how many of those companies, how much was there, I said that's incredible and I saw the feedback there, how it can be used.
What's the most curious topic they've addressed in mastermind?
Martin Hurych
What's the most curious topic you've addressed at a hot seating?
Lucie Libovicka
Most of the time it's business topics, sometimes there are personal topics and those are very special and I have to say that the room gets quiet and calm and they go very deep. For example, I remember one very deep topic where they were dealing with the death of a classmate who had been in your life for 40 years and suddenly disappeared. The person in question came to the board the day after the event and went to ask how others dealt with such a thing and how they dealt with it. That was such an absolute change in that climate and I have to say it threw the whole day into a whole different mode and in the end it was extremely helpful.
Daniela Kolomazníková
I may not say a curious topic, but I will say a topic that always throws me personally when I sit in that mentor's chair, because I wonder how many times I have to repeat it for such a trivial thing to become commonplace. It's a question of how to get a B2B contact. My first question always says if they have that list of ten contacts they want to get. I almost always get the answer, no. I wonder how many more times it's going to have to come up so that, if you want a good B2B contact, you've sat down and written those first ten down on that piece of paper.
Lucie Libovicka
But you probably experience that with your clients too, don't you?
Martin Hurych
Yes, just recently in my mastermind group at Scaleupboard I had how to get a business off the ground quickly. So I didn't come up with that, I didn't come up with that, my wife brought that up a long time ago when my wife and I were youngsters starting out together, because she had a short episode with a multi-level. That's where they start, write down 100 contacts that you know and where you startto untangle. So I agree that this is absolutely the easiest, quickest method, to know where tostart, who I want. Very likely it's so trivial that it's overlooked at first. We're all looking formore and more complex solutions, we're always asking the AI for something, but what's rightin front of your nose, many times you don't get it.
Lucie Libovicka
But often it's not about contacts I know but who I want to meet and they don't dare. The taller and more well known the contact seems, the more they tell themselves that there's going to be a lot of doors, it's unavailable, and that person wouldn't talk to me. So they're looking for an opportunity to just consult or talk to someone and yet it's so easy. These people are so nice.
Martin Hurych
I even have the experience that the higher up, the easier.
Daniela Kolomazníková
I like how you said we're looking for a complicated solution. Because that's one of the things that seems to me to be an added effect of mastermind. It's not that you need to invent a revolution, but sometimes you hear that advice, that tip, and you're like you've known this for a long time and why haven't you been doing it for years. Suddenly you hear it in the right way from the right mouth and you think, that's it.
Lucie Libovicka
Or are you just talking about it out loud, the mastermind is often just a time to sayyour thoughts and your questions. There you sometimes formulate them yourself or with the help of others and at the endyou'll say you actually knew, or you'll thank me for the new comments.
Martin Hurych
I see a change of venue there. You get out of the company, you automatically start thinking about other things.
Daniela Kolomazníková
There's one more thing. One of the biggest compliments I find in relation to mastermind is when some members tell us that from 9 to 1 is our meeting, we're done at 1 and they don't plan anything else that day. They just want to sit and think these things through. So it's not just the change of venue, but the venue then evokes that change of approach to how we think about things.
How is the mastermind doing in the Czech Republic compared to abroad?
Martin Hurych
How does the mastermind in the Czech Republic compare to the world? Are we behind, are we catching up, are we ahead, are there enough masterminds here?
Daniela Kolomazníková
They're few and far between. In terms of frequency, there are few, but in terms of quality and the concept as such, it is as varied as anywhere else. But if you really think about the amount of companies that are in the Czech Republic and the ratio, it's percentiles of people who are in the mainstream. We're way behind there.
Martin Hurych
Do you have any idea what it looks like outside? I still follow the Anglo-American bubble a lot, because I started in the Anglo-American corporate world and it's 50/50 there. Some call it the Roosevelt concept, some call it the Ford concept, I even traced the mastermind to Seneca. I mean, it's perfectly normal there. What about elsewhere in the world, do you have any idea?
Lucie Libovicka
There it is just a normal part of business life and not only business life. You can apply Mastermind to pretty much any area of life. It's about those people coming together purposefully just to find a solution, to find a common theme that they're passionate about and that they need to get an output from. It's a very common thing in business life there, and it helps people at all levels, and especially at the highest levels, tremendously. Because you've been there, you've been through all the training, you've been through all the training, you've been to everything a million times and you think nothing can surprise you anymore. But then comes one of the highest levels of training, which is the mastermind, where those people who are the bearers of that know-how, that experience, can enrich each other in that way.
Daniela Kolomazníková
I always enjoy the psychological bubble. When I tell colleagues in psychology practice about mastermind or we collaborate in some way, the realization always comes after the performance that every psychology textbook contains something called a Balint group. It's the concept of leading a group and some kind of sharing of experiences. So it even really has a methodology in some technique used in applied psychology that all psychologists know. It's not really anything revolutionary, it's just done in a specific way for business.
Where are they inspired?
Martin Hurych
Where do you find inspiration?
Lucie Libovicka
We are inspired a lot in business by our members. They basically figure out what they need for us and by the way we are in contact a lot, they tell us and a lot of new projects come out of that. They basically fine tune the mastermind, they basically set up certified partners because they wanted to know how to do things and who to do them with. They basically inspired us to do a number of workshops and a number of trainings, they motivated us to connect with different partners just by demanding some type of education. For example, we have a connection with Radim Pařík, with whom we do a lot of training in negotiation and communication. We have a lot of new things coming up this year and our members are involved in all of it.
Daniela Kolomazníková
I'll be the canned food. Lucka just posted a "leaders are readers" post today, which is exactly right. When someone asks me where I find inspiration, I'm a huge reader and love any literary source. It always makes me think of second grade at my parents' house, sitting locked in the pantry, where I happened to reach for a book while looking for some groceries, sat down on the floor, and started reading. After about an hour of reading, my brother, a year younger than me, came in and looked at me, picked up the book where he had read Chuk and Gek, and told me I was a literary pig. So there's the inspiration, still books.
What are their ambitions within Expert Board 21?
Martin Hurych
Last question, what are your visions and ambitions for Expert Board 21?
Lucie Libovicka
There's some numerical ambition, it's not just about the number of boards, the proliferation of boards, it's about the people that are in it. It's about what we can give them, it's about other kinds of meetups and those boards and masterminds for those who have been with us for a long time and are still looking for more and more and want to go deeper and deeper. It's special masterminds for big companies, for their owners who have very specific topics, and it's about other types of even one-off events and gatherings.
Daniela Kolomazníková
For me, it's a lot about being able to meet the demands and expectations of our members, participants, guests in a way that is very often different, very often revolutionary. I like the fact that it pushes us to come up with unconventional ways, unconventional solutions based on proven concepts and to innovate the business scene in some way.
Martin Hurych
I wish you all this to come true, that you continue to enjoy what you do and that you are successful. Thank you so much for being here.
Daniela Kolomazníková
Thank you very much.
Lucie Libovicka
Thank you, Martin, have a good day.
Martin Hurych
Another episode of Ignition is over, this time about the mastermind. If we've introduced something new to those of you who didn't know the concept, we've done our job well. We've done it just as well the moment we got you excited about a shift in your business and said some clever thing that just kicked your butt and you have it on a sticky note or spoken into your phone if you're driving right now. If that's the case, I'm going to ask you to do a few things, like, share, comment on whatever the platform you're listening to us on allows you to do. It's the only way we're going to get through the algorithms to the top spots and it allows me to invite guests as great and even more great as the two ladies today. Be sure to check out my website, www.martinhurych.com/zazeh, where in addition to this episode you'll find all the others. I have nothing to do but keep my fingers crossed and wish you success, thanks.