I once joined a mastermind that cost more than my first car.
Thirty founders, one Slack channel, quarterly calls with a facilitator who read from a script.
Within two months, the group was dead. Not officially. Nobody quit. But the energy left the room the way air leaves a punctured tire. Slow, then all at once.
What happened wasn’t a mystery.
The group had been assembled, not designed.
Assembly is easy. You get people to pay, you get people to show up, you cross your fingers that chemistry happens on its own. Assembly treats a room like a container. Fill it with enough interesting people and something interesting will happen inside.
Sometimes it does.
Most of the time it doesn’t.
Design is a different animal entirely.
A designed room starts months before the first person ever logs in or walks through the door. Someone decided who gets in and who doesn’t. Someone decided what members owe each other, not just what they’re owed. Someone built the incentive structure so that the natural move, the…
