The Traditional Mastermind is Dead - Here’s What You Need To Create Instead.

The traditional mastermind model is officially dead - and that’s actually great news for coaches, mentors, and consultants.

Outcome-driven masterminds are the ones that will succeed in 2026 and beyond, and they empower even those without big names or flashy networks to build profitable, impactful businesses that truly serve their clients and get results.
 
What You'll Learn:
00:00 The mastermind model explained
02:32 Is it a mastermind or group program?
04:54 Can a mastermind deliver better results than one-to-one coaching
06:35 How to scale your mastermind offer

The traditional mastermind model is dead, but the modern, curated, strategic mastermind is based on solving a problem for your clients. That's the model that I recommend for coaches and mentors - and the one that creates results in 2026.

LINKS:

FREE GUIDE: Sell Out & Retain Mastermind Clients in 2026: https://ellieswift.com/mastermind2026

Connect with Ellie on Instagram: https://instagram.com/elliehswift

Subscribe to Inside The Mastermind Newsletter: https://ellieswift.com/newsletter

Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@elliehswift

Keen to work together?

1. Sell Out Your Mastermind: The Mastermind Model - https://ellieswift.com/model
2. Be Coached By Ellie to $500k+ : The Scalable Freedom Mastermind - https://ellieswift.com/scalablefreedom

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the Scalable Freedom Show. Today we are talking about something that might ruffle a few feathers, but I can assure you that what I'm gonna share with you is going to help you sell in your mastermind way more powerfully than ever before. So the first thing to say is this the traditional mastermind is officially dead. And before I go on, I want to tell you that this is really good news because it means that people like you and I, people who aren't famous or surrounded by rich high-end friends that we can phone in, can create this model of business and both A, make a lot of money from it, and B, help clients get incredible results. As a coach, mentor, or consultant, running a mastermind is literally one of the smartest business decisions you can make. I run a mastermind first business with 35 to 40% profitability, with calls of five to eight hours per week and the type of lifestyle that I want so I can be a present toddler mama, wife, daughter, and you know, just really enjoy my life alongside my work. And if you're listening to this, I know that you feel the same. So let's talk about what the traditional mastermind used to be, and then I'm going to what we need to create instead. I'm also gonna share a few other mastermind myths I hear and debunk those for you so that you have the information you need to go ahead and create or scale your own sold-out mastermind. So let's start by talking about what the traditional mastermind actually looks like. It was very simple. You'd essentially pay to sit next to impressive people. Proximity and status were the sell. Masterminds used to be sold on who was in the room and like fancy group chats. They would literally pay $30,000 for a Voxer chat and vague promises that often wouldn't lead to any tangible results. But these days, people know that proximity isn't what generates the full ROI. If they're gonna spend their dollars on high ticket, they want solutions, not just status. So instead of asking the question, who's in this mastermind, they're asking, can you actually help me to achieve X, Y, and Z outcome? And this is really epic news for you and I because it means you can sell a mastermind based on outcomes that are within your control. You can sell a mastermind that creates clear outcomes and real transformation. Now that we're on the same page about what a sold-out mastermind looks like this year, I want to use the rest of this episode to go through a few more questions that I get asked a lot about masterminds and their true definitions so that you can go ahead and scale yours with laser sharp clarity. Okay, so question number one: is it a mastermind or is it a group program? Honestly, the label does not matter. The design of it does. So something that confuses people unnecessarily is wondering if their program is a mastermind or if it's a group program. I'll often have people ask me, is it a mastermind? Is it academy? Is it a group program? Like this debate is pretty semantic, to be honest. The real question is what experience are you promising? A group program traditionally is learning start to finish, and a mastermind is more peer-led, collaborative. But the reality is that most high-performing containers are hybrid. That's honestly the smartest play because from a marketing perspective, hybrid experiences are so much easier to sell. You can market the transformation, you can market the curriculum, you can market the community, you can market the proximity. Now, ultimately, you are marketing the transformation. Like that is the key piece, but being able to share and showcase what's inside the experience is gonna support it so much. In fact, inside my program, the Mastermind Model, I teach something called the five C's, which are coaching calls, coaching between calls, community, curriculum, and container criteria. And those five C's help you to create a mastermind structure that you can sell that has people falling over themselves to want to sign up. So as you can hear, it's honestly so much less relevant as to whether your mastermind is a true mastermind or not. The 2026 mastermind is far more hybrid and the way to sell it out is almost identical, whether it's a group program or whether it's a mastermind. Now, that said, I want to share with you when to actually use the word mastermind as part of your positioning because there are absolutely times to use it and times not to use it. So the word mastermind signals premium positioning, proximity, peers, strategic conversation. Now, for a high-ticket B2B audience, that's almost always going to be the right language. But if your audience is B2C and doesn't resonate with the term, call it a program, call it an academy, call it whatever makes sense to them. Customer-centric language is always going to be the thing that wins. The word does not determine the value. The design determines the value. All right, so question number two but how can my mastermind generate better results than my one-to-one coaching? Now, this one surprised me the most when I first transitioned from one-to-one coaching into masterminds. When I moved away from heavy one-to-one client delivery and into masterminds, I was so genuinely worried. I thought, how can I possibly give the same level of support? What if results drop? What if clients feel less seen? Now, what actually happened was that my client results improved. And here's why. In one-to-one, clients are like reasonably dependent on you. Everything runs through you somewhat if you've got a really close one-to-one relationship. In a well-designed mastermind, your client standards will elevate. The identities will shift faster. People see what's possible in real time by being surrounded by their peers. There's something really powerful about being in a room where someone just solved the exact problem that you are navigating. It accelerates your expansion. And from a psychological perspective, the data tells us that identity shifts happen faster in group environments. So now it's totally up to you when you're structuring your mastermind, if you want to include one-to-one or not. Now, my current mastermind, the Scalable Freedom Mastermind, includes one-to-one coaching every month. I love that because I find that it helps to accelerate results even more. And it also means that we can be really bespoke on client strategy. One-to-one is not essential in your mastermind. It's optional. So what I would consider is the outcome you're helping your clients to achieve and whether one-to-one should be part of that to help them achieve that outcome. Question number three is how do I scale my mastermind with more people without it equaling more work? Another really outdated belief is if I hold space for more people, it's gonna be exhausting. Let me tell you a story about when I was like at my worst with client delivery. I used to support 27 individual clients one-to-one. I know. 27 different boxer channels, 27 different containers, 27 customized strategies. The one time that I burnt out in my business was then because it was way too much. Now, comparatively, when I had three different masterminds, at one point I was supporting 80 different clients. And it felt so much more easeful to do that because of the way that I'd structured those masterminds with clear boundaries and defined coal structures. Your mastermind simply needs to be structured and set up for the number of people that you want inside it. And the reality is that most of the time it's not set up that way, which if your mastermind ever feels heavy to facilitate, it's rarely a business model problem and more that your offer just isn't structured correctly. I've got clients with 10-person masterminds. I've got clients with 100-person masterminds. You get to set up your mastermind to be the type of space that holds as many or as few people as you want. The structure just needs to meet the goal. Okay, so as you're listening into this, if you currently run a mastermind or you've been considering it, I really hope that this has supported you to just like work through a few of those myths and also give you so much permission to design a mastermind that is so right for you. The traditional mastermind model is dead, but the modern curated strategic mastermind based on solving a problem that you can help your clients to solve, that's the model that I recommend for coaches and mentors. If you want support designing yours using the framework that I teach inside the mastermind model, then check out the show notes behind this episode, either on Spotify or Apple if you're listening on audio or if you're watching this on video, you can go ahead and just check it out below. See you next time.