Merchant Council

You weren't meant to build this alone.

A mastermind community for small business owners ready for a real table. Honest conversation, genuine accountability, and people who understand the conversations that don't always belong at the dinner table.

Monthly Gatherings

In-person in Edmonds or virtual — structured, honest, and genuinely useful.

Private 1:1 Sessions

Monthly with Yvette

for in-person members.

Quarterly for virtual members.

Real Accountability

The kind that's honest without being brutal — from people who are building something too.

Apply for In-Person

Apply for Virtual

This is not a new idea. This is the oldest idea.

Humans have been sitting in circles together since before anyone thought to write it down. Talking Circles have been a cornerstone of Indigenous cultures for centuries — sacred spaces for sharing stories, resolving conflicts, and making collective decisions. Not a technique. Not a framework. A way of life. Leadership arose from wisdom, experience, and the ability to serve — not from inherited status or coercive force. Elders guided through moral persuasion and community trust. Every voice in the circle counted. The circle itself was the structure.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy's Great Law of Peace — one of the most sophisticated collective governance systems ever created — predated and influenced early democratic thought. They were doing this before anyone called it democracy.

In Scandinavia, free men gathered at regular times in assemblies called the Thing to make law, settle disputes, arrange marriages, craft alliances, and renew the bonds of community. These gatherings lasted days, with a festive atmosphere — traders, brewmasters, storytellers.

Across Africa, Ubuntu — "I am because we are" — promotes a community's good through the unconditional recognition and appreciation of individual uniqueness and difference. Not sameness. The collective is made stronger by honoring what makes each person distinct.

Eventually, in 1727, Benjamin Franklin wrote it down and called it the Junto. Napoleon Hill put it in a book and called it the Mastermind Alliance. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis did it at a pub and called it the Inklings. The people who came before didn't need to name it. They just lived it.

Merchant Council is built on that original understanding — the one that predates every book, every framework, and every colonizer who thought he invented the circle. We gather because humans have always gathered. We hold each other because that is what humans do.