In their day, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Andy Warhol (and others) were friends who hung out together. To improve their own game, they lived near one another. They influenced each other; and they were rivals. This also bettered their game.

What are you doing to better your game?

We live in the age of information. There is so much education available right at our fingertips. Podcasts, videos, webinars, ebooks, blogs and so much more are available to you. Yet beyond that are peers, mentors, coaches and subject matter experts.

Today, Dali wouldn’t need to move to Spain to hang with Picasso. Through LinkedIn (News - Alert), groups, forums, Hangouts and other platforms of communication, partners can mastermind with other partners to learn, share best practices, advice and more.

There are a number of channel partner shows per year from Informa (News - Alert), CVX, master agencies, et al. These provide a number of opportunities to network and meet your peers.

I encourage you to take that one step further. Wrap some organization around one to three peers. Meet regularly (virtually and in person). Put your goals and needs out there. Those needs might include utilizing their expertise or referrals to educate yourself or support your customers. Your peer support might look like accountability or just a boot in the butt via email to get you to focus.

There’s great value in mastermind. Napoleon Hill first wrote about it in Think and Grow Rich. “When you use other people’s knowledge and then organize that knowledge towards a specific goal, you can accomplish anything. No one has ever gained substantial success without using this mastermind principle. All great minds grow and prosper through contact with others.”

Mastermind groups offer a combination of brainstorming, education, peer accountability and support in a group setting to sharpen business and personal skills, writes the Success Alliance. One more major factor is commitment. This mastermind only works when the members are committed to the success of others. Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and Carnegie vacationed together and supported each other as a mastermind. It can work for you too.