THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman: Your hair’s looking very lovely today. Very magenta.
Liz Scully: Thank you very much.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, so I do have a plan, and I’m going to just start in on the plan, and then we’ll get started. You ready?
Liz Scully: Yes, absolutely.
Miriam Schulman: Cool.
Speaker 2: It’s the Inspiration Place podcast with artist Miriam Schulman. Welcome to the Inspiration Place Podcast, an art world insider podcast for artists by an artist where each week we go behind the scenes to uncover the perspiration and inspiration behind the art. And now your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman: Hey there, my friend. This is Miriam Schulman, your curator of inspiration, and you’re listening to episode number 323 of The Inspiration Place podcast. With me today, we have a Hollywood insider who has an Emmy and multiple Oscar nominations. Now, she’s a business strategist and a mastermind coach who knows business can be ridiculously fun as well as highly effective. Please welcome to The Inspiration Place, Liz Scully. Well, hey there, Liz, welcome to the show.
Liz Scully: Thank you for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, so Liz and I are related, right? You agree with that, right?
Liz Scully: Yah.
Miriam Schulman: Not really. We are related through Candace?
Liz Scully: Yes, we are, I think coachies-in-law. When you have the same coach, surely that makes a relationship between the people who are being coached.
Miriam Schulman: I think so. That makes us like cousins or sisters or something like that.
Liz Scully: At the very least, actually, if not twins, to be fair.
Miriam Schulman: Could be. Yes. I’m going to go with sisters, though. Yeah. Very good. Okay, so Liz is writing a book on…tell me the name of your of your forthcoming book.
Liz Scully: It’s called Think Like a Film Crew. And it’s about the stuff I learned in film that is useful for entrepreneurs.
Miriam Schulman: Okay. But today we’re focusing mostly on mastermind. But does your work in the film industry, did that lead you to the mastermind, or can you share a little bit about that journey?
Liz Scully: Yes, absolutely. So I’ve spent 20 years working in film in post-production, which is after they have done filming with live action. They then put all the visual effects and all the exciting stuff in, and I worked in that area doing lighting. And basically what they do is they, they take a lot of very skilled people, pay them far too much money and tell them they’re all right at all points. Everything you do. Everyone is convinced they are correct. So you are dealing with this massive number of egos all the time. They kind of opened a door to a studio, throw you in and go, we’re not letting you out until you’ve won an award. And that feeling of having to work with complicated groups in very complicated ways meant that I grew to love collaboration and that feeling of any group, if it has the right people in it, can work. And even people that have totally different views to yours can give you massive insight. And that was a very short step from there to the sort of masterminds I run now where people who need to have a bigger view of their business and their art and their work. Having other people give that 360 is really helpful.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah. So I run a group, uh, a small cohort, and then I have a large group coaching program that I have accountability pods inside, and I give them some structure, but I don’t run those pods. What I’m most interested in talking to you about is really getting coaching from myself on how to manage all these things. Yes. Of course. Just so we’re all transparent about what’s happening here. Like, okay, you can also use these things yourself, but I thought it would be really interesting, Liz, if we just cut straight down to what makes a bad mastermind. Like, what are the things to avoid? And then I’ll see if I’m doing any of them.
Liz Scully: Oh, well, there are many examples of bad masterminds, I would say most masterminds are not very good. So a mastermind group, in essence, is a very small group of people. In my opinion, small intimate masterminds is the way to go. So a little pod and they meet regularly and they make a plan this time that they will achieve next time. Very simple. So a bad mastermind. Mhm. Where do we start. They don’t have goals.
Miriam Schulman: Let me just ask a quick question though. Um, so what is in your opinion what, this is all in your opinion so we’re not going to say that again. Um, what is the ideal size for a mastermind group?
Liz Scully: So I think you can have bigger masterminds, but they have to be broken down into groups of somewhere between four, 6 or 8, something like that. If you have more than that in person, you can probably meet maybe 20 at a push in person, but 12 is good, but online and I’m assuming your groups are online, then we need a bit more bit more leeway because as we all learned during the pandemic, we can have meaningful connection on Zoom. But it just takes a bit more organizing and a little more time to get right. So my groups are four people. When I’m training people, I suggest they go for 4 or 6. I have run them with eight, but as the person running them, it’s quite stressful because just at the point where someone gets to an amazing breakthrough, you have to “Right and moving on now let’s hear from Dave”, which is not what anyone really wants to do.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah. So just for my listeners who are not in my incubator program, the pods that we have now, we have it set for five people, and then occasionally we will make room for a sixth person. And usually it’s because somebody in that core group of five has like, they can they can only come twice a month or something like that. So really we know that in general there are about five people who are committed and we don’t want it to be more because we don’t want them procrastimeeting. Yes, exactly. You know, like if each person has ten minutes, well, that adds up very quickly if you want it to stay within an hour. Okay. So great. Now I’m on the I feel like yay, I got that one right. The number. What was the next thing you were about to say as being like, the big mistake? About goals, is that where I cut you off?
Liz Scully: Well, not having goals is pretty vital. If you haven’t got goals, you kind of haven’t got a mastermind, to be fair. It is one of those things that’s baked in. So do your people create a list that they achieve next time?
Miriam Schulman: Well, with the group that I run, the cohort that I run, I make everybody commit to what they’re going to do for next week. And when we start the cohort. So the inner, I call it the Inner Circle. And it’s like my mastermind level of the Artist Incubator. Currently, there are seven people in it. It is hard when it’s fuller than that, but I have allowed it to go for more than that, that many people. But then I’ll let it go for two hours. It’s not just an hour long meeting. And at the very beginning of the cohort we say what our income goals are, what are we striving to. But at the end of every meeting we say, what are you committed to doing before next time? Now, is that different than what you had in mind, like in terms of a goal?
Liz Scully: No, that’s perfect because there is something about having committed, having said it out loud to the group, that means you’ll achieve it. And partly it’s that whole “you’ve got your subconscious involved.” There’s that side of goal setting, but also there’s something of that feeling of a Sunday night doing your homework before school, because nobody wants to be the person who turns up saying, “Yeah, you know all those things I said? I haven’t done any of them.” So, we want to not let the group down. And that little bit of—let’s be honest—shame if you do, means that things get done.
Miriam Schulman: So, one thing I’ve been doing with my accountability pods, because now we have a lot of them in the big program—I forget how many, there’s definitely more than a dozen—but we have competitions between them. And that kind of helps with exactly what you were saying. So last month, our competition was that they all had to have a welcome sequence, and they were competing. And if one person in their pod didn’t have a welcome sequence running, they were eliminated. Some people felt really bad about that, but that was part of the whole point of the pod. Like you said, the shame—it’s kind of important.
Liz Scully: Exactly. I think the power of shame can be very positive, as long as it’s only that you don’t want to let people down—as opposed to lying awake at 3 a.m. feeling you’re a failure. That’s not helpful, right?
Miriam Schulman: Well, it’s not like people were going to get punished. It’s just they didn’t get to win. You know, there could only be one winner anyway. So it’s not like there would have been three winners. And now we can’t win because of Joe over here. It’s just that like, okay, you know, Joe didn’t do his job, so nobody wins. So next time, Joe, do your job, then you won’t let your teammates down.
Liz Scully: Exactly. That’s perfect, because that little bit of pressure is what we often need to make sure a task gets on our to do list in our busy weeks.
Miriam Schulman: Yes. And right now I’m like, wishing I had that whole clock situation set up that you told me about. I did order the clock. I did, and it turns out it needs like double or triple A batteries, which I don’t have. But of course I waited till today to set it up, so that’s why it’s not set up. So is there any other glaring mistakes of things you found inside of masterminds groups? Because I know one as a participant myself. But I want to see if you’re going to say it.
Liz Scully: Assuming you’ve actually built a mastermind—so you’ve got a small group, and you’ve got goals, and people have a place where they can ask questions—that is a mastermind. So obviously, you’ve got those. Where I see the biggest flaw, the place where almost every mastermind lets itself down, is on curation. Now, by the very nature of people joining your program, they are already curated to a certain degree. By being in there, they are like-minded enough to be following you, sensible enough to have joined your program, and ready to take action. So that already eliminates a lot of people.
Where things go wrong is if people are setting up their own mastermind—which you can do very successfully—but if they just look at their friends and think, “Who’s available on a Tuesday?” as opposed to “Who would be a good member of this group? Who is going to be helpful?” So, bad curation is probably the biggest flaw. I think we’ve all been in those groups where there’s one person you’re thinking, “Could you please let other people have a go at the talking stick? Stop speaking.”
Miriam Schulman: Yeah, that that was the thing I was thinking about. And it was like whoever’s running it, like, not raining in that one person. So when I run it myself in the beginning, I used to just say, okay, so it’s 142 and I’d write down 142 on my piece of paper, and then at 152 I would wrap it up. So now I use a tool on Zoom, you know, the timer tool. Have you found it? Yeah. So I run the timer for everybody so that it plays an obnoxious sound when the time is up. And it doesn’t mean they get cut off then, but it really then just helps so that somebody’s time doesn’t spill into 15 minutes. And Susie over there is feeling resentful because she only got whatever eight minutes according to her or whatever it was. Now everyone feels like they got the same amount of time. But in terms of curation, how are you doing that currently with your groups list?
Liz Scully: So there are quite a few things to consider because you want to have a different mix of personalities. I have before now run groups where everyone’s an introvert or everyone’s an extrovert. And with the introvert, it’s very hard to get them to speak at all because nobody wants to go either first or second or indeed third. Everyone’s trying to be fourth or fifth, which is there’s a sort of shuffling to the back, which is hard to do on zoom. I could see you all. And so there’s that difficulty. And with extroverts, you have to be super on top of, as you say, people not hogging the mic. Yeah. And that makes it harder for other people to add their little extra information, because that’s where the gold is. I think in a mastermind, when people have a chance to add extra as people are sharing.
Miriam Schulman: That’s beautiful. So in terms of my high level mastermind, I do have criteria. So the high level one, that’s the one that they have to apply. That’s the inner circle for my listeners. They have to apply. And in that application process, I vet to make sure that yes, they’ve made art sales in the past, so it’s not somebody trying to get their first art sale in the group. Yes, they already have their marketing assets like a website. So, you know, it’s like that’s kind of like the minimum criteria. In the pods that I have, we don’t have that vetting. So we have a mixture of group I call it the Montessori method in there. So do you know what the Montessori method is?
Liz Scully: I was a montessori child. Absolutely.
Miriam Schulman: Would you like to explain it for the listeners?
Liz Scully: So it’s very much about actively participating and making. I seem to remember a lot of colored blocks and crayons, but that might not be required for masterminding.
Miriam Schulman: No, it’s not. It’s more like the nursery schools where instead of having this is the twos room, this is the by two year olds, three year olds, four year olds. They put the two year olds, three year olds and four year olds in the same room together. And the idea is the four year olds benefit from having a leadership role for the two year olds, and the two year olds benefit from having the four year olds as models for them. So that’s what I call the Montessori method of my accountability pods is there are going to be people in different levels, but the assumption is that they benefit. And also just because somebody is ahead in some areas, they could be behind in others. So we have people who maybe they’re just starting out in their art career, but somebody else who is further along may not be technical, may not understand the ins and outs of social media because they’re used to more traditional things like galleries. So those two people can help each other even though they are in different stages.
Liz Scully: Yes, I think that’s that’s key. When I’m putting groups together, I make sure that everybody has three things they need from the group and can give three things so that there’s that, even give and take. If you have four people, five people in a group that suddenly an enormous amount of connections, probably not something you could do with your pods, but with your high level group, you can really weave it together. And it doesn’t all have to be, you know, this person needs to build a warehouse and this person is a distribution expert. It doesn’t have to be that kind of stuff, but it might be. This person is going through a troubling problem with in their personal life. This person has already been through it. Or maybe this person wants to move to Mexico and this person is a Spanish speaker. It can be all sorts of stuff, but the more of that you get. The groups that I have that stay together longest are as carefully curated as possible. That feeling of you’re getting as much, you’re putting as much in as you’re getting out is really important.
Miriam Schulman: Okay. And then what about like having this the cohort rather than an evergreen model. Can you talk about that? And this is I have my own opinions, but this is now more for listeners who may not have an opinion yet.
Liz Scully: So I’m a big believer in cohorts. I like things to have a nice clean start and end. So when people join my groups, we set like a strategy. This is what we’re going to do. So my groups tend to be a year long. And in that time the first in January, the first thing we do is set up like a big strategy for the year. This is what we’re going to achieve this year that will build on, and next year you’ll get this. In theory, if all goes well, things never go quite to plan as we know, and then we implement that through the mastermind. So it’s nice and clear. So at the end of the year, then what we do is we reassess. How did it go? What went well? What went badly. Are you continuing? And we’ll start it again. So that way it’s got a nice clear arc and people stay with me year after year after year because they see the results. Now, I know lots of people who have like a rolling enrollment, and for some masterminds, I think that could work. But certainly the high level ones, which are super fancy and get fabulous results. I think for me that having rolling enrollment is tricky because you have someone who’s brand new who nobody knows in the same group with people that have known each other for years. And I think that has a very different feeling. If at the beginning of the year you introduce a new person and you set up that community and you build it all beautifully, I think it can work. But if suddenly in August someone wobbles in like, “Who is this?”. We’ve been pouring our hearts out over here. Who’s Johnny come lately here? It could be very disruptive.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah. I’ve been in masterminds where it was rolling, and when I first started my incubator, the first time I set it up, everybody started together. And then there was people. The next cohort. Everyone started together. But then I changed it to rolling and it was not good for anybody. It was not good for me because sometimes I would have a few people and sometimes I’d have a lot of people. And then it was always very sad. And then someone, you know, somebody was at their end. They’d be announcing, today is my last day. And that was always very awkward and weird. So now I only do it in cohorts, so everyone has that feeling they’re coming in at the same time. There may be people who’ve been in it together before, but this is the cohort start date, this is the cohort end date. And then they can have that circle of trust and relationships build that are just so much stronger. And then there’s no womp womp womp feeling. If somebody leaves it’s like no, no. Because this is this is the end. It’s like, this is the semester in school. Like this person graduated and now we can have the freshmen come in. So yeah, I agree with you on that. Okay. So what have I not asked you that you think are very important to know about masterminds?
Liz Scully: Well, just actually, before we move on, I’d love to go back to the closing of masterminds. So for years, I used to sort of just close them—I didn’t really make a big thing out of it. But these days, I’ve created a kind of process so that at the end of the session, the end of the mastermind, the end of the year, the six months, however long it is, we make a big kind of to-do about it. And one of the things we do is go back over the things that everyone has achieved. Because us humans, we are really bad at remembering what we’ve achieved. What we actually mostly remember is what we haven’t achieved. So if we’ve got ten things on a list and we achieved nine of them, we’ll only think about the one we didn’t get, which, while understandable, is not good when you leave something. You’ll think, “Oh, I didn’t do that thing,” as opposed to, “Look, I achieved nine other things.” So I make sure, first, that I squeeze people so that they don’t have any regret about what they haven’t achieved. I remind everyone of how much they have achieved. We go through, “You did this, you did this, you did this.” Everyone’s very excited about that.
And then, this is the evil part of my life. I force people to be nice to each other. I make them sit in the hot seat, and for once, they don’t ask a question. They just sit there and absorb other people sharing what they have been fabulous about all year. And it’s weird and squirmy because none of us are particularly good at hearing praise. But it is so beautiful because often the things that can change in others’ lives can be a little throwaway comment—”Why don’t you try this?” or some little moment where you feel that you’ve maybe been bouncing along at the bottom in life, but other people see you as, you know, filled with resilience or think, “Isn’t that amazing?”. So I go through the whole group and force everyone to remember how much they’ve achieved and have the group like them. And it is—it’s just the sweetest part of my life. By the end of the session, we’re all in tears by this point. Oh, it’s amazing. Everything is lovely. And since I’ve done this—let’s get a little business-y here—as well as the fact that people leave on a high, my retention rates have vastly increased because people remember all the amazing things they’ve achieved over the last year. It’s a beautiful thing.
Miriam Schulman: How do you help them remember what they achieve for the whole year? Because I begin my mastermind sessions by asking people to share their wins for the week, and people have a tough time with that. They usually like to start their wins by saying, “Well, I didn’t do this and that.” I’m like, “Wait, stop. This is your win-win section, not your what-you-didn’t-get-done section.”
Liz Scully: Well, I start with notes. I think about the things they’ve achieved. So, obviously, I’m their coach—I’m in those sessions—and that really helps because the things I remember aren’t necessarily the things they remember. Often you see people going, “Oh yeah, I did launch that thing. Oh yes, I did go to that event. Oh yeah, there was that biggest sale I’ve ever made in my life thing.” So, it doesn’t take a huge amount of work—it normally (don’t tell my clients) takes ten minutes before the mastermind starts. But with that little, effectively, post-it full of information per person, it’s enough. Because we are so good at forgetting what we achieved, it really doesn’t take much to remind them. And, of course, the delight about being in a mastermind where you’re in control and helping people shine is… I feel like my job is to shine the spotlight on people, and that certainly means squeezing them so they remember their stuff. To be honest, the things people forget are always the same—um, bigger sales, best number of clients, that amazing thing somebody said to you. People never remember that. All they remember is, “I said I’d launch my website and I didn’t.”. “Yes, but you made all the graphics, you did the photographs, and you got it all together—it’s like 30 seconds away from being finished.” “Oh yeah, I suppose so.”
Miriam Schulman: Oh, you shared so much with us, Liz. I think you have some sort of course for people if they want to learn more about masterminds. Is that—
Liz Scully: Oddly enough, yes, I do.
Miriam Schulman: Okay. Could you tell us a little bit about that and where to find it?
Liz Scully: Sure. It’s called Mastering Mastermind, and it is, oddly enough, a course on how to master masterminds. I’ve run it probably for about a decade, and you can get it as a recorded course where you can binge on it or get it weekly. But I’m just about to run a live version for the first time in a long time, so there’ll be a waitlist for that, which you can get on at RethinkCentral.com/Mastering.
Miriam Schulman: All right. Repeat that because I didn’t even get it. So I’m sure my listeners didn’t repeat that whole URL again.
Liz Scully: Sure. So rethinkcentral.com/—
Miriam Schulman: Rethink. We think or rethink?
Liz Scully: Rethink. Sorry, it’s my English accent. I apologize.
Miriam Schulman: How is that possible by the way. Like you’re Irish and you’re… okay.
Liz Scully: RethinkCentral.com/Mastering.
Miriam Schulman: Okay. And we will have this linked up for you in the show notes which is episode 323. So either click down below where you’re listening or head on over to SchulmanArt.com/323. Liz, do you have any last words for our listeners before we call this podcast complete?
Liz Scully: Well, I genuinely think everyone can benefit from being in a mastermind. Some kind of peer review of what you’re doing is so healthy. And I think particularly artists or running a business, we are sitting there on our own, second guessing ourselves all day, every day. And to have a group of people just say, yeah, you’re doing it all right, or what on earth are you thinking is so helpful?
Miriam Schulman: I love that. All right, my friend. Again, thank you so much for being with me here today. Thank you Liz. All right. So we will see you same time same place next week. Until then, stay inspired. Bye for now.
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