Insights
Inside a vetted iGaming mastermind: what actually happens in the room
No performance, no pitching. Structured, rotating focus on whatever’s actually sitting on each person’s desk that week.
Leo Judkins, Founder, The iGaming Leader · September 2026
People ask what actually happens in these sessions more than almost anything else. Fair question. Here’s exactly how it works, no polish, just the mechanics.
How a session actually runs
Everyone comes into the main Zoom room first. A quick catch-up, people say hello, then we split into breakout rooms, one per Inner Circle, each named after its colour. Members move into their room with their facilitator.
From there, each Inner Circle spends 50 minutes together.
The first 10 minutes are wins or an icebreaker, something that’s genuinely worked well recently, or something new. It sets the tone before anything heavier gets discussed.
Then the hot seats start. The facilitator points to someone, and for 2 minutes, that person talks through a real challenge, problem, or decision they’re facing. The facilitator’s job is to sharpen it into one specific question: if you walked away from today with one thing solved, what would it be?
Then 8 minutes. The rest of the group responds, not with generic advice, but with stories and clarifying questions. The facilitator asks questions too, but the real value comes from the other members, telling their own stories, from their own version of the exact situation.
Ten minutes total, then rotate to the next person. Once everyone’s had their hot seat, the group summarises actions and accountability, which goes into a private Inner Circle WhatsApp group, so people can check in on progress over the following days. Then everyone comes back into the main room, shares a few insights, and the session closes.
That’s it. No performance, no pitching, just structured, rotating focus on whatever’s actually sitting on each person’s desk that week.
A real hot seat: the backpack full of cash
One of the clearest examples of this working came from a question about conference spend, specifically, how to get real return from the money that goes into a stand at a major industry event.
The member on the hot seat was paying a significant amount for a stand. Someone else in the group reframed the entire question: "What would you do if you had a backpack full of cash, that exact amount, and no stand booked at all? How would you actually spend it to maximise return?"
The answer that came out of that reframe was completely different from what they’d been planning. Instead of the stand, they’d identify their five or ten most ideal prospects, and put the entire budget into giving those specific people the best possible experience around the event, entertainment, hospitality, whatever it took, potentially even covering their cost to attend.
That’s not a tactic anyone would have arrived at alone, staring at a conference sponsorship invoice. It took someone else, with no stake in the decision, asking the one reframing question that changed the entire approach.
Where the real value actually lands
Here’s the part that surprises people. The biggest "aha" moments in these sessions rarely happen to the person on the hot seat. They happen to everyone else in the room.
You’re listening to someone else’s problem, thinking about what you’d say, running your own experience against their situation in real time, and suddenly you’re seeing your own decision differently, one you weren’t even presenting that day. That’s the part a case study on a page can’t fully capture. It’s not a single moment of advice given and received. It’s an entire room actively thinking alongside each other, for 50 minutes, every single week.
What this actually is
This is what a vetted iGaming mastermind looks like in practice. Not a networking event, not a panel, not a webinar. A structured, rotating room of four or five peers at your level, built specifically so that whatever’s genuinely stuck in your head this week gets a real answer, from people who’ve actually lived a version of it.
See how the Inner Circles workQuestions this usually raises
Is this done over video call or in person?
The weekly Mastermind sessions run over Zoom, in breakout rooms by Inner Circle. In-person meetups happen separately, around major industry events like ICE, SBC and SiGMA.
How much time does this actually take each week?
One 50-minute session per week for your Inner Circle, plus whatever accountability check-ins happen in your private group between sessions.
What if I don’t have anything to bring to my hot seat that week?
That’s rare at this level, but the wins and icebreaker portion means every session still has value even in a quieter week, and you’ll usually get just as much from someone else’s hot seat as your own.
Is the group generic business advice, or specific to iGaming?
Specific. Every member is a senior iGaming executive, so the stories and reframes, like the backpack-full-of-cash example, come from people who’ve actually spent real budget inside this exact industry.
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