There is a whole genre of business books devoted to team dynamics and relationships.
Do you have the right people on the bus? Jim Collins wants to know; he says it’s crucial for leaders to put the right people in the right seats—employees in their ideal roles.
Are you leveraging your network? Dan Sullivan adopts a mindset shift, emphasizing who not how. Sullivan’s whole premise is about relying on others. Teamwork, done thoughtfully and with the right people, helps business leaders achieve bigger goals. All signs point to relationships being important to business, which is great advice, though we may be missing a step: How do entrepreneurs find the right people in the first place?
And, beyond a list of contacts, how do entrepreneurs find meaningful connections?
Entrepreneurs, who have more at stake when it comes to making connections, are also busy running companies. We don’t have the time or the inclination for smalltalk about the weather to determine who we should invest more time in. So our networking is often outsourced to business groups that screen for demographics like industry, revenue or business size. This is fine if you’re looking for transactional encounters or acquaintances in very specific industries. At MMT, we want more than that.
Humans try to surround ourselves with those who can be assets. This is especially true in business, where trust and competence are more than nice qualities; they are essential for starting and leading companies. We want to give you access to like-minded people, the ones who will help you get better at business and be the best version of yourself. We curate meaningful community using a foundation of shared values. Our members hold each other accountable, and to higher standards. We celebrate and struggle together.
MMT condenses a lifetime of networking into one community. Members build close relationships, and they keep coming back—the renewal rate for our last cohort was 98%.
More than that, those deep connections strengthen with time. In our latest Member Survey, returning members rated their close connections to the group an average of 200% higher than their previous year.
That’s 200% more opportunities; 200% more peace of mind. It might even be 200% better health (we can’t guarantee this last part, but hear us out). According to Harvard University and the longest-ever study on adult life, close relationships delay mental and physical decline, a stronger indicator of health than genetics or cholesterol levels.
So eat a cheeseburger, then apply to MMT.
MMT increased community closeness by 200%. Here’s how.
Our team is hyper-focused on community curation to make meaningful connections faster. Your membership includes countless hours that co-founder Jayson Gaignard has spent reviewing applications to build a unique vetting process. It includes thousands of one-on-one calls conducted by Jayson and our team to screen members so you don’t have to.
Entrepreneurs are rare, less than three per cent of the general population. If you walked down the street in a major American city, you’d have to stop about 300 people to meet just one entrepreneur. Even among the 202 million working-age adults in America, only 19.2 million are running established businesses–less than 10 per cent. At a typical networking event, this already small group comes together. Entrepreneurs who share values are even rarer. We’ve built that rarest of communities at MMT.
Our curation helps entrepreneurs build meaningful connections.
Jayson’s research into relationship building took him to the fields of psychology, sociology, cognitive behavior, couples therapy and even The New York Times Modern Love column. Nothing captured the process for entrepreneurs. So he created his own.
The model is a patchwork of other theories. It’s rooted in the work of Dr. Joseph Devito, communications professor at Hunter College; Beverley Fehr, social psychologist at The University of Winnipeg; Amy Cuddy, social psychologist and former Harvard lecturer; and Gestalt theory, or the idea that personalities have layers, like onions.
Every relationship goes through these stages:
Awareness: One-sided or mutual (i.e. LinkedIN connections)
Contact: Small talk reveals the roles we most identify with—parent, business leader—but not enough to be vulnerable
Assessment: Rating trustworthiness and competence to assess the risk of developing a relationship (borrowed from Dr. Cuddy’s social exchange theory)
Intimacy: Self-disclosure, supportiveness, vulnerability
Social Identity Support: Our closest relationships boost self-esteem by affirming our identities as entrepreneurs and as humans
Meaningful relationships must move beyond casual awareness. In the assessment phase, we suss out trustworthiness and competency in a kind of cost-benefit analysis. Will this person be helpful? Will they be a liability? At this stage, some people are relegated to acquaintances. With others, we reach Social Identity Support, forming relationships that reinforce our very sense of self.
It’s these deeper relationships that we foster at MMT.
You’ll be surrounded by people who’ve made similar sacrifices for their companies, who know what it’s like to worry about payroll and the livelihoods of a whole team, to go from euphoria to despair and back again on the entrepreneurial roller coaster. Your fellow members also need to appease investors, raise capital and manage family obligations along with work expectations. MMT Community is doing all of these things with shared values at heart.
Business Moves at the Speed of Relationships
We can help you move past Awareness, provide a means for ongoing Contact and, frankly, at least part of your Assessment phase (if a member isn’t trustworthy or competent, they’re out). Everyone has at least a few things in common. Apart from entrepreneurship, we screen for values including generosity, curiosity, humility, and a passion for lifelong learning.
Does this sound like you?
