On Wednesday, 20th May, Mastermind9 is set to host yet another online networking event for business owners, following the immense success of the last one. This event has attracted the attention of thousands of business owners in the UK, making them sell out a week to the event.
A few years after the COVID-19 pandemic, face to face events started to overtake online ones. Fast forward to 2026, and the script has flipped again. With the rising costs in the UK, business owners are forced to rethink their movement.
The UK fuel prices have risen steeply since February 2026, and remain at their highest point in over two years, with petrol averaging around 157p per litre and diesel close to 189p.
The main culprit for the fuel increase has been the Middle East conflict, which has disrupted the supply of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that carries roughly 20% of the world’s supply.
With no silver lining in sight, business owners are quietly doing the maths. The cost of driving to an event, parking, and getting home is no longer a footnote. It’s a line item. And increasingly, it’s a line they’re drawing.
Analysts expect prices to remain elevated well into the second half of the year, and fuel duty rises are already baked in from September onwards.
During last month’s networking event, Peter Mols, founder of Mastermind9, highlighted that the change in business owners’ mindset was evident.
‘We’ve more than tripled our numbers for this event in a short, unexpected period of time! We’re glad that business owners are trying to get ahead of the problem by finding cost-effective solutions to find new opportunities.’
The events typically last one hour, and are held on Zoom. Additionally, they’re completely free to make them fully accessible to business owners. The participants get to go into different breakout rooms with business owners, pitching their offer. At the end of it, members walk away with at least 30 people to follow up with.
One business owner at the last event noted that it is better than networking. “A lively, thought-provoking meeting, full of dynamic and interesting people all there for the same reason – to help each other. How networking should be.”
Mastermind9’s networking events are the front door to something bigger. The organisation’s main offer is its mastermind groups, where 9 sets of diverse business owners come together monthly for support, strategy and accountability.
The results speak for themselves. Members have gone on to hire their first employees, exit their businesses, break through revenue ceilings, and, perhaps most importantly, stop feeling like they’re doing it alone.
Because the uncomfortable truth of running a business is this: the bigger the decisions, the fewer people around you who truly understand them. Mastermind9 was built to fix that.
