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In October of 1883, a boy was born in a one-room cabin in southwest Virginia. His mother died when he was just nine years old. By thirteen, he was writing for his father’s newspaper. At twenty-five, his business went bankrupt and his wife divorced him. He remarried in 1910, launched various ventures, and kept grinding through failure after failure.
Then, in 1925, he wrote a book that coined a phrase and introduced a concept that would quietly change everything. That book was called The Law of Success. Twelve years later, in 1937, he elaborated on that concept in what would become one of the best-selling business books of all time, a book that has sold tens of millions of copies and is still being read, discussed, and acted upon today.
The man is Napoleon Hill. The book is Think and Grow Rich. And the concept he introduced to the world is called the mastermind.
Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday, this is episode 694, “The Third Mind.” I’m Darrell Darnell, the board game Mastermind released in 1970 but is similar to a game that has existed for centuries called Bulls and Cows, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
I can tell you first-hand, masterminds are life-changing.
I first heard the word “mastermind” about twenty years ago. A podcasting friend of mine named Cliff Ravenscraft was sharing how his life had been positively impacted by reading Think and Grow Rich and joining a mastermind group. Cliff was so moved by the experience that he was starting a mastermind of his own and looking for people to join him.
I didn’t take him up on it. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe the timing wasn’t right. Maybe I wasn’t ready. But the concept stuck with me, and I’ve thought about that missed opportunity more than once over the years.
Since then, I’ve been part of three masterminds. And that experience is exactly what I want to talk about today.
But first, let me explain what a mastermind actually is. Or better yet, I’ll let Napoleon Hill explain it. In Think and Grow Rich, he describes a mastermind as the “coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose.” He called it an intangible “third mind,” an invisible force created when two or more minds come together in harmony, offering access to collective knowledge, experience, and energy that no single person could generate alone.
He called this the Third Mind Principle. He believed that no two minds ever come together without creating something new, something stronger than either individual part. But he was also clear about the conditions required for it to work. The alliance must be friendly and harmonious. If harmony is broken, the mastermind disintegrates. And the group must have a definite purpose. This isn’t a casual coffee chat. It’s focused, intentional, and directed toward a specific goal.
In practical terms, here’s how it works. A mastermind is a group of people who come together on a consistent basis with one purpose: to help one member of the group solve a problem. In the masterminds I’ve been part of, we meet weekly at the same time, with a predetermined rotation that determines who’s presenting that week. The person presenting is in the “hot seat.”
Once the problem is laid out, the group asks clarifying questions. Then each person goes around the room and shares their ideas, feedback, and perspective on how to best address it. In the end, the person in the hot seat walks away with tangible, actionable advice they can use immediately.
Most of the time these conversations are calm and encouraging. Sometimes they’re hard. Occasionally someone gets frustrated. But we all come in knowing that every person in that room has everyone else’s best interests at heart. That shared understanding is what makes honest feedback possible. And honest feedback is exactly what you need when you’re trying to grow.
My first mastermind was in 2014. I had just left my corporate job the year before and was in the process of relaunching my brand. The group had around six people, men and women, all connected in some way to the podcasting world.
I was in that mastermind for about four years. I eventually left because I joined a better fit, but honestly, I’d been quietly looking for a change before that. The group was inconsistent. We never knew from week to week who would show up. Meetings often drifted into socializing rather than focused problem-solving. And some members kept bringing the same problems to the hot seat week after week without ever acting on what we’d discussed the last time.
I felt like the group wasn’t as committed as I needed them to be, and I wasn’t as committed as they probably needed me to be either. Leaving was a tough decision. I talked with the leader of the group about my concerns quite a bit before I finally made the call. But it was the right decision. And I’m happy to say I’m still close with most of those people today.
The second mastermind I joined in 2018, and I’m still in it. There are four of us. We all have some connection to podcasting, though I’m the only one who actively serves podcasters or hosts a podcast right now. One of the members recently retired his podcast after building a full-time income from his show and the community he created around it. The other two members are expert-level marketers. One specializes in marketing for physicians and has grown that business to the point where he retired his previous podcast launch consulting work entirely. The fourth member is a serial entrepreneur who processes information at a speed that still impresses me. He sees where technology is headed long before most people even realize it’s moving.
This group has been one of the most rewarding relationships in my professional life. We meet every single week, nearly without exception. When someone has to miss, we have a contingency plan. We also spend part of each meeting reviewing our goals and objectives for the week ahead, and then check in the following week to hold each other accountable. It’s not fancy. But it works.
Three years ago, I joined a second mastermind. This one also has four members, including me. The group was intentionally designed for men who are Christians, full-time entrepreneurs, and running online-based businesses. Having that level of focus has been extraordinary. We don’t just bring business problems to the hot seat. We’ve had sessions centered on family challenges, faith struggles, and the kind of personal growth conversations that most professional settings don’t make room for.
The other members all have deep experience with coding and app development. One builds apps primarily for the podcasting space. Another has a background in design and web development but has spent the last two-plus years building an AI tool that has grown into a legitimate player in that space. The fourth member runs a website design agency.
I’ll often bring the same problem to both groups. And I’ve noticed something interesting in how they each respond. The first group tends to help me think through long-term strategy and see the bigger picture of where I’m heading. The second group tends to help me navigate what’s right in front of me, the shorter-term plans and decisions that need to connect back to that bigger vision. One group helps me see where I need to go. The other helps me figure out how to get there from where I am right now. Having both perspectives has been invaluable.
Here’s what I’ve learned.
Napoleon Hill said it better than I ever could: “No individual has sufficient experience, education, native ability, and knowledge to insure the accumulation of great fortune, without the cooperation of other people.”
Read that again. No individual. Not even the most talented, educated, hardworking person in the room. Nobody gets there alone.
And yet so many of us try. We white-knuckle our way through problems that someone else in the right room could help us solve in twenty minutes. We stay stuck in strategies that aren’t working because we don’t have anyone in our corner who will look us in the eye and tell us the truth.
That’s what a mastermind gives you. Not just ideas. Not just accountability. It gives you people who will tell you what you need to hear, not just what you want to hear. And if you’re going to grow, you need both. You need the encouragement that keeps you moving and you need the honesty that keeps you from fooling yourself.
Here’s the important thing: the people you surround yourself with in that room matter enormously. I’ve come to believe you need a mix. You need people who are ahead of you, who are where you hope to be someday. Their presence keeps you reaching. You need people who are at roughly your level, who understand your specific daily challenges because they’re living them too. And you need people who are hoping to be where you are someday, because teaching what you know and helping others work through problems sharpens your own thinking in ways you can’t get any other way.
Not every mastermind needs to check all three boxes. But your life probably should.
And when you find those people, you have to bring something to the table. You have to show up with humility. Genuine, uncomfortable, ego-setting-aside humility. You have to be willing to hear hard things about your business, your habits, your plans, and your blind spots, and then actually do something about them. Because the room can give you the best advice in the world, but if you keep coming back to the hot seat with the same problem you had six months ago, you haven’t just wasted your own time. You’ve wasted theirs.
Hill was clear on this too. He said when your plans fail, that’s not permanent failure. It may just mean your plan wasn’t sound. So you build another plan. You start over. You replace what isn’t working with something that might. He called the failure to do this, the failure to persist in creating new plans, the point at which most people ultimately fall short.
That hits home for me. I’ve had plans that didn’t work. More than a few. But being in a mastermind has helped me fail faster, adjust quicker, and build better plans without spending years in the wilderness figuring it out alone.
If you don’t have a mastermind, I want to encourage you to find one. Or start one. The bar for entry isn’t as high as you might think. Find two or three people you respect, who are willing to be honest and be helped, and commit to showing up every single week with the intention of making each other better. That’s it. That’s how it starts.
Napoleon Hill believed that when minds come together in harmony around a shared purpose, something new is created. Something stronger than any one person could build alone. Twenty years into this journey, I believe that too.
Don’t go it alone. The third mind is waiting.
I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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