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What the bleep is a mastermind? Is it some kind of scheme involving aliens in collusion with their human puppets in the guise of businesspeople to take control of us all?

I was talking with an old friend and colleague recently, and the question was implicit within the conversation. It soon became clear that the whole concept of “mastermind” was alien to my friend. There’s an insight here, so let’s explore a little.

For two days last week I sat in on a “mastermind”–discussing big ideas with a group of people, some of whom have an income a hundred times my own. These were not CEOs of mega-corporations; they were all entrepreneurs, people who started businesses from scratch to bring new ideas and concepts to the masses.

If you’d told me ten years ago I’d would be doing this, some (big) part of me would have been horrified. Hobnobbing with evil, greedy, scheming businessmen (and a few women)? No way. Get me out of there. I had a mindset: all businesspeople are suits trying to take my money away.

But the present me had an experience that was far from horrible. This was one of the most laidback, fun, eclectic group of people I’ve had the chance to hang out with recently. The energy in the room was palpable, especially when we had the opportunity to chat with a guy who has built 18 different, successful businesses, one of which went on to generate over $1B on its initial stock offering.

One member of the group was a former scientist; another a former statistician; and a third a math genius who was so good at what he does, that he got stolen to design software that trades billions of dollars in stocks. He quickly got tired of working for mega-corporations, and decided to use his skills to help the smaller “mom-and-pop” type investment managers improve returns for their clients.

There are many lessons that we could learn from a group like this about how to succeed in any endeavor–including science.

The primary lesson is success is a mindset. It is not due to luck, to who you know, to genetics, to having successful parents, or much of anything else.

The younger me would have said, “But wait! people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and many Nobel prize-winning scientists did in fact get lucky breaks. They were in the right place at the right time. They would not have achieved what they did without that element of luck.”

To which I would now say, “Yes–to become the richest person in the world or to win a Nobel prize–does require some luck. But to achieve success and recognition of the more regular sort does not need luck, only the right mindset.”

Let’s flip the equation around, and ask the what would have happened if Steve Jobs had the same luck, but not the mindset to back it up. I can only imagine Steve Jobs saying to Steve Wozniak, “Hey, that contraption we’re building in the garage will never amount to much, let’s scrap it and go get conventional jobs. This is too risky.”

Or how about Alexander Fleming? He had the luck and the insight to notice the effects of a certain mould on bacterial lawns–but it took the determination (and idiosyncrasies) of Howard Florey and the team he pulled together in Oxford to translate this curious phenomenon into penicillin.

At the core of this is a simple factor: successful people jump on opportunities as they arise. They waste no time being stuck, asking questions like “will it really work?”, or saying to themselves, “maybe I should be answering these 100 emails instead of pursuing this opportunity to push the science (or business) forward.”

I have had the pleasure and sadness of knowing quite a few brilliant and creative, yet shockingly unsuccessful, people. You may know the type: full of great ideas, and yet bitter about how many times opportunity has been stolen from them by others. Instead of complaining, why didn’t these people just make the ideas happen? You only need a fraction of these ideas to work out be successful beyond your wildest dreams. Take my friend Scott. I still remember a conversation with him around 1996, where he proposed a method for single-molecule DNA sequencing that would have dramatically improved its speed and accuracy. Now, 15 years later, several companies are producing instruments based on very similar ideas. My friend did not act on his ideas, but later someone else came up with something similar, and did.

Back to the original question of a mastermind, we can now home in on what it is: simply a mechanism for people to hang around with others who have a mindset of success, in order to learn and grow from it. Many successful entrepreneurs participate in a group like this, and it can significantly accelerate their results .

People do masterminds because building a business is difficult. There are many challenges, distractions, and problems. Without the right mindset, you can get eaten alive. I know, because it has happened to me. I left graduate school in debt, not because of student loans, but because of loans for a failed business that I tried to start.

We need to realize that building and running a successful research endeavor is not all that different from running a successful business endeavor. All the important tasks like fundraising, marketing, hiring, firing, systematizing, dealing with cash flow, dealing with regulations, inspiring people, having a vision, and more, are present in the business of doing science.

So, why don’t we have “mastermind” groups in science? While we frequently get together to talk about the science itself, rarely do scientists get together to talk about the mindset for the doing of the science, to make ourselves more successful at it (or at least if we do, I haven’t been invited to the party). Rather, among many of my colleagues, to admit that we might need help or an improvement in mindset is almost entirely taboo. It’s a kind of weakness, and if revealed might cause colleagues to pounce, like hyenas after a downed calf.

As the saying goes, the first step to a cure is admitting there’s a problem.

If nothing else, let’s start admitting to ourselves that the business of science is hard and getting harder, and that, indeed, we might actually benefit from getting some support. Let’s find ways to provide support, ongoing learning and better mindsets for each other. I suspect that as science budgets continue to tighten, those that find creative solutions like this will be the ones that not only survive, but thrive. I also suspect that the rest may really struggle.

And, if you’re looking for that kind of support for the challenges of getting grant funding in the current environment, you can do so here.