Episode 279 with Jay Fairbrother: How to Transform Your Business with Masterminds

Join me on this episode of the Ready Yet podcast as I chat with Jay Fairbrother about his unique approach to business. Jay shares his inspiring journey from losing everything during the 2008 financial crisis to becoming a successful mastermind facilitator. Discover how masterminds can help entrepreneurs create intimate, exclusive groups that lead to business and personal growth. We dive deep into why building fewer but longer-lasting relationships with clients is key, and how to pivot towards doing what you love. 

GUEST RESOURCES

Jay Fairbrother is a serial entrepreneur, business coach and mastermind guru with 30 years of experience starting, buying and selling 7-figure businesses. His story includes losing EVERYTHING after the 2010 financial crisis and rising from the shame to shine as The Mastermind Guy. Jay helps Coaches and Experts with the programs Six Figure Events Mastery,  the Six Figure Masterminds Bootcamp and Mastermind Mastery™: Create and Launch Your High-End Mastermind in 60 days.

Mastermind Ready Scorecard Are you ready to add a high-impact, high-ticket Mastermind program to your business? Find out your strengths and gaps and get your readiness score! The valuable insights from this assessment will let you know the most important factors in getting started with your own unique Mastermind.  https://www.mastermindreadyscorecard.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayfairbrother

https://sixfiguremasterminds.com

Forge Your Path. Unlock Your Power. Unleash Your Potential.

Learn more about Erin Marcus
Join us on Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
YouTube

Are you ready to let go of living in reaction mode, filled with “have-to’s” and “should’s” and move into what you want to intentionally create more for yourself?

🌱 Join us in the Untamed Success community as we embrace the messy middle of embracing what is possible. Let’s do it together! 🌱

Transcript

Episode 279 with Jay Fairbrother: How to Transform Your Business with Masterminds

Transcribed by Descript

Erin Marcus: All right. Hello. Hello, and welcome to this episode of the ready yet podcast. I'm excited today for my guest Jay Fairbrother and talking about business, your approach to business. You said a few things before we got started about attracting and keeping clients for three years, not three months, which I freaking love and how to have fewer, better, longer clients, which I freaking love.

Erin Marcus: But before we dive in all that, I think Like really, those are such timely topics, but tell everybody a little bit first who you are and what it is that you do. 

Jay F: All right. So I'm the mastermind guy and I've been a serial entrepreneur for 30 years. I wasn't smart enough the first five years as an entrepreneur.

Jay F: To get into a mastermind. So 25 years ago, I joined my first mastermind and I I can barely remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday, but I vividly still remember 25 years ago, walking out of that very first meeting and saying to myself, Oh my God, I found my tribe. 

Erin Marcus: Nice. Like 

Jay F: it was a mastermind of entrepreneurs.

Jay F: And I knew after that first meeting, like these were my people. Like they got me. They were me. And so I was immediately hooked, but what surprised me, because we all joined that mastermind is to be better entrepreneurs and grow our businesses. What surprised me is that 6 months into it, In these meetings, I'm starting to watch like grown men cry as they start to open up and talk about their screwed up marriages and their kid problems and the anxiety and depression from running their businesses, right?

Jay F: And it was like, wait, this isn't what we signed up for. But for me, it was like my first real experience with human connection as an adult. And I was all in. So I joined six or seven masterminds over the next several years. It helped me take my business, which was doing about a million in revenue at the time to 10 million in revenue.

Jay F: I sold that business in 2004, life was good. And then the, in 2008, the world financial crisis began. And over the next several years, I lost everything. So quite literally went from being a multi millionaire living in a mansion to living in my friend's basement, broke, bankrupt, divorced, alone, humiliated, ashamed, and my story is that I did not bounce back quickly.

Jay F: I was in that basement. literally for five months, but figuratively more like five years dealing with that shame and that complete loss of identity. For 15 years, I had built this identity as this really successful serial entrepreneur. And there I was with nothing. 

Erin Marcus: I think that identity thing is so key to why it's so hard to do anything, but to seriously, but to bounce back from challenges that I think we all expect to have challenges.

Erin Marcus: We all can expect ups and downs, but when they get, but when they get extreme beyond our expectations of what's an okay challenge to have, and it starts to hit your identity. It's like you don't even know where to begin. 

Jay F: Yeah. And at that time I was living very much in my ego. And as we get older, we start to realize that, you've got to get out of your ego and start to connect with what's important and most importantly, do what you love.

Jay F: And that's 

Erin Marcus: so true. It's so interesting as I also get older, how much. The difference of the approach to what I choose I want to do. How much less I feel I have to do. If only there were a way I could have learned this. 10 years ago, 20 years ago, imagine what life would, how different that would have been.

Jay F: Yeah, absolutely. And this is what I do now all day long with my clients. Because my clients are coaches, speakers, healers, thought leaders. And sometimes I'll ask them, how much do you, how much are you passionate about that course that you created? How much are you passionate about some of not, probably not all, but some of the clients you're working with one on one.

Jay F: And, what I hear is yeah, it's I'm into it now, but I don't wake up every day, like thrilled. And how 

Erin Marcus: in the world are you supposed to put your energy and get behind something that at your core feels mediocre? 

Jay F: Yeah. And it's, we can beat ourselves up about it, but it's a very natural process.

Jay F: We, we have 20. five, 30 years of experience or expertise doing something. And we're like, okay, how can I take that expertise and create a program that people will buy? Cause I got to pay my bills. And then we go down that road and it's okay, so I created this and I'm doing this, but it's not really, I'm not passionate about it.

Jay F: I 

Erin Marcus: think you can pull off having a job that way. I don't know that you can pull off really growing a business that way. 

Jay F: Yeah. And it's partly my story when I, finally got out of the damn basement and came back and decided to hang the shingle again and put myself back out there. I had done sales training for my own companies and other people's companies for 30 some years.

Jay F: So I started developing a sales training course and I had the course entirely done, packaged, recorded, ready to go. And it was at this event and that with one of my mentors and my mentor said was talking about, what do you want to be known for? And legacy kind of conversations and it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Jay F: I've owned nine different businesses in six different industries. I, that's. Can do a lot more than sales and sales training. And so I pivoted during that event and I never launched that sales training course. It's still on my computer somewhere. 

Erin Marcus: By the way, I want to just stop and really commend you for that.

Erin Marcus: I think that takes a level of courage, bravery. That people aren't willing to do and you've gotta, what is it? It's in the 10 times as easier than two times. It's in the quantum leap strategy. Are you willing to let go of something, even if it's your best stuff? And I don't think most people are like, can you be willing to let go of something, even if up until that point you felt that like 

Jay F: this was 

Erin Marcus: the thing.

Jay F: And it was, it's some good stuff. 

Erin Marcus: It's some good stuff, right? Clearly. That's what you did. That's what you knew. Yeah. 

Jay F: Yeah. And I could do it in my sleep. But yeah, I pivoted and I was like, masterminds is my passion. I have gotten more business and personal growth out of being in masterminds than anything else I've done.

Jay F: Any, courses, coaches, nothing has compared to it in my life. 

Erin Marcus: Yeah. 

Jay F: It not only helped me 10 X my first business, but it literally saved my life. during that time period. Guess whose basement I lived in? 

Jay F: It was somebody who was in my mastermind, another one let me borrow their car for seven months until I could get back on my feet.

Jay F: Like that kind of support from people, that sort of, inner circle, people who have your back. Like most of us don't even have that with our families. And 

Erin Marcus: there's something about, I have the same thing. I have a mastermind that I was in years ago. And those are the people who I could call them tomorrow.

Erin Marcus: And it's you've never missed a moment. And there's something about sharing that level of personal development with another human. And one of the words I use is there's a difference between, there's a difference when you are witnessed. And I think that's something that masterminds give us when we have being witnessed without judgment, being witnessed and supported, being witnessed without, yeah, but what about.

Erin Marcus: It's a different experience that we don't get to have as adults and it forges relationships you don't find in other places. 

Jay F: And that also touches on, it's a different type of learning. So I have a couple of mentors, right? That I pay a ton of money. 

Erin Marcus: Yes, totally get it. 

Jay F: And they will tell me something that I should be doing.

Jay F: And usually the third or fourth time they tell me It might sink in. It starts to be like, oh, I wonder if 

Erin Marcus: this is a thing. But 

Jay F: if I'm in a mastermind and someone has a similar problem and they're getting feedback and support and advice on, and I get it the first time. It's oh my God. Because I'm not the subject of it, I'm witnessing it happening with somebody else, and I can make those leaps mentally to go oh shit, that's exactly You're not, wait, 

Erin Marcus: you're not under the spotlight, you're not, you're no longer too close to the story, you're no longer too close to emotions.

Erin Marcus: I say that all the time. The biggest leaps I've made in my business were based on questions other people were smart enough to ask that didn't occur to me. Absolutely. 

Jay F: Absolutely. 100 percent 

Erin Marcus: Yeah and I love the idea that like you took this life changing thing for you and said I want to be able to Pay it forward do it for others 

Jay F: And that's exactly right.

Jay F: Like I want my clients to be able to create these kinds of intimate exclusive tribes these inner circles for themselves Right and their own personal growth and development, but also as a way to scale their business so that they can get beyond 1 on 1 coaching. They can get beyond hawking courses for a living and get beyond that need for having thousands of people coming into their funnels and hundreds of people showing up on calls.

Jay F: And work with a hand selected, curated group of clients that they choose, that it, they don't work with just anyone who can write a check. 

Erin Marcus: From a buyer's perspective, because truthfully the way to sell well is to understand the buyer's perspective, so I'm sure you understand both sides of this.

Erin Marcus: For people who are looking for masterminds, what do you tell them I think one of the challenges out there is people positioning something as a mastermind, and yet the room is not full of people who are at a level who can help each other. 

Jay F: Yeah, 

Erin Marcus: right. You know what I'm not articulating that.

Erin Marcus: I put it this way. I'm trying to be too polite.

Jay F: Yeah, so 80 percent maybe higher of what is out there labeled as a mastermind is really just glorified group coaching. 

Erin Marcus: Right. 

Jay F: People show up, pray to the altar of the guru. There's a little Q& A maybe a hot seat for good measure. 

Erin Marcus: That has its place too, right? But it's a different animal. Yeah, 

Jay F: But the difference is and maybe some listening, I've gone through group programs.

Jay F: At the end of the group program, you've barely even met all the other people that went through the program with you. It was still all just, guru, give me your knowledge, give me your training, give me your ideas. When, You can curate who's in the room and put people with some level of parody, like the opposite of disparity, in the room, then you all learn from each other and you benefit from the collective wisdom, the collective experience, collective knowledge of everybody in the room.

Jay F: That's Napoleon Hill's philosophy. Concept when he coined the term mastermind back in the day, and that's what's missing from a lot of what's even labeled as a mastermind in the thought leader industry, 

Erin Marcus: and I think some of that is one of it's just marketing and misunderstanding. And I know without being malicious about it.

Erin Marcus: And truthfully, I think some of it is. You've gotta be, as the facilitator, thrilled to death, I'm not even gonna say comfortable with, I'm gonna say thrilled to death, to be surrounded by people who are very possibly smarter than you. 

Jay F: Absolutely. That's what you want to strive for, right? Put smarter people than you in the room.

Jay F: And that doesn't mean As a coach, healer, speaker, that people aren't going to pay you well to be in that group of other people who might be smarter than you. You're still the leader, you're still the person they're going to be attracted to in the first place to get in the room, and they still want your leadership and your expertise and knowledge as part of the program.

Jay F: So there's many different types of masterminds out there, right? You I have three masterminds. They're all for different purposes. One is a peer mastermind. These are what I consider my true peers in the industry. They're all other coaches and we, are there for each other. That I don't create, I don't run that mastermind as an income stream, although there is a cost for people to participate.

Jay F: So they have skin in the game. So that's one. I run another local mastermind here in Pittsburgh of entrepreneurs. And then I run a mastermind for my clients. Most of whom are trying to build a mastermind program to help scale their business. So all different purposes, all different price points. And the key is to be able to really articulate what is the outcomes for people to expect by joining the program.

Jay F: That has to be clear up front. 

Erin Marcus: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I want to go back because I'm intrigued by the personal story. So you put together I always ask people, what gave them the courage? This idea that you were willing to let go of Because of what had been working, what you would put time, money, energy, and effort into in the sales training.

Erin Marcus: And I would imagine, especially coming off the back of the difficult experience that you went through, it almost makes it scarier to let go of something that's finally working. Like one of the, the tagline for this whole podcast is you'll never do what it takes until you become the person it takes to do it.

Erin Marcus: Whether you're moving from a job into your own, you feel like you're jumping off a cliff or falling off a cliff. You can get pushed off the cliff, you can choose to jump off the cliff. Is that, my new word lately is spark, was that like a aha moment, an oh shit moment?

Erin Marcus: So it 

Jay F: was, it was definitely an aha moment for me, that realization that, I don't want to be, I don't want to be the sales guy. I want to be the mastermind guy. So that was a total aha moment and a total shift. And partly though, it was driven by I was having some success, but not the success that I knew I could have.

Jay F: It was a struggle, right? 

Erin Marcus: I want to stop you for one second, because the way you just said that was, I think very important. What you said was, I was having some success, but not the success I knew I could have, which is a very different statement than not the success I wanted. We, I think, people know when they're not living up to their potential.

Jay F: Yeah. Okay, this is now like a therapy session.

Erin Marcus: You've been through some things and I think the rest of us can benefit from it. 

Jay F: So you're right, it's an important distinction because wanting something and then beating yourself up because you're not getting it is a different thing than Knowing that you can do better and driven by 

Erin Marcus: a desire driven by a knowing absolutely.

Jay F: Yeah. I have the benefit. Of, I've sold three businesses, I bought several so I have had that success that I knew that I was capable of. Some people haven't hit that level of success or what they, how they, everybody defines success differently, right? So I had that to go on and maybe, that makes a little, makes it a little easier for me to get to that knowing space of, I know I can do better.

Jay F: I know I can be more successful. But the real aha was in the passion. Like for me, my superpower is facilitating. I've done it for 25 years. I love doing it. I love the unpredictability. I love the challenge of pulling what is in the room out so that it's not, and I love not having that dependence on me to be brilliant every second.

Erin Marcus: Yes. 

Jay F: That's the smarter people in the room thing, right? I could, if I could wake up every day and run a couple of mastermind meetings, and that was my day I would be just, that would be perfect, right? Because I love it. I would never get tired of doing that. So it's really about recognizing the passion piece of it and going okay, I really don't like working with clients who show up and don't do the work or don't show up at all, or, they're like, Like I, I've run courses and those types of programs in the past where people, they loved it, they raved about the course, but they didn't do the work and implement at the end.

Jay F: They write a great testimonial. And it's hard, you 

Erin Marcus: know, and I get it, and I've had the same thing, and I do truly, I don't just say this, I truly, Have a lot of empathy for those people because they most of them, at least in my experience, most people who have worked with me and then have not achieved success 99.

Erin Marcus: 9 percent of the time I could tie it back to them not doing the work and 99. 9 percent of the time I could tie them back to having not been able to break through their fear. 

Jay F: Absolutely. And you're 

Erin Marcus: That being said, I'm not always a soft place to land. It is what it is. 

Jay F: That gets into a whole other thing, which is that, there's a huge mindset piece to it.

Jay F: And, that's something that I resisted for a long time. Ah, mindset bullshit. 

Erin Marcus: It wasn't the world you were brought up in. It just 

Jay F: I see that now in, in working with the clients that I work with. And that's why I've built a mindset piece into my programs that I don't actually run.

Jay F: I bring a mindset expert in for that piece. But it is important and, so yeah, for me the moral of the story is pick your clients. Don't let them pick you. 

Erin Marcus: Oh, okay. Why do so many people have such a hard time with that?

Jay F: Because Again, in my industry of coaches, healers, speakers, thought leaders, most of us are doing it, not because we're trying to amass a fortune. We're doing it because we want to help people. And we want the more people we help, the better we feel. And when we start to pigeonhole our niche, our services to only help a certain type of people, we feel like we're limiting.

Jay F: Right. 

Erin Marcus: It's a version of a lack mentality that 

Jay F: shows up. Absolutely. Absolutely. But the trick is that again, when I help people create a mastermind, the positioning is that you can stop chasing clients or have that be in that feeling that you're constantly chasing clients. You need more clients.

Jay F: Find the few clients that are willing to invest in themselves who you want to work with and help, not the ones that can just write the check. And then put them in a container and creating that container is one of the, that's the critical piece and how to create a good mastermind. Because a lot of people think they can just throw a bunch of similar people together or I'll sit around and have some wine and talk about our problems.

Jay F: And that's a mastermind, right? That's a match 

Erin Marcus: fest is what we call that here. 

Jay F: And some masterminds are run that way. 

Erin Marcus: Yes, 

Jay F: for sure. So creating the container to develop the relationships among the people in the group intentionally to create the confidentiality, the safety, the culture, so that people start to open up.

Erin Marcus: And the levels that are supportive of each other. 

Jay F: Yeah. And that's where you get to those vulnerable conversations that, where people have real transformation instead of the surface level. How do I do this or, tell me what I should do here. Yeah. 

Erin Marcus: I think this is more important than ever because one of the things that I've been saying for a while now, and it's even more true than when I started, is facts are like with AI being what it is, and as good as it's become.

Erin Marcus: There's no information in the universe that is no longer available to anybody with a iPhone or an Android, whatever the other brands are, for free. So if you are competing on this is the checklist, You're gonna have a problem in today's environment. 

Jay F: I tell people that all the time imagine three to five years from now, how quickly AI has developed just in the last year or so.

Jay F: Imagine three to five years from now. Why is anybody gonna be paying you for content and training? Because it's free. Because it's already free. And it's 

Erin Marcus: not even bad. The free version I understand chatGBT, the free version is two years old, but it's not even bad. But can you, to your standpoint, create a container?

Erin Marcus: Can you, one of the things that I talk about is, applying it to your unique goals and your unique strengths and your unique weaknesses. What you're talking about, like the idea that you could have fewer clients, better clients, keep them longer, is actually more applicable in this noisy, noisy, no barrier to entry marketplace.

Erin Marcus: Than ever before. 

Jay F: Absolutely. If you have a 1, 500 coaching package or a 1, 500 course. You need 67 clients just to reach six figures and getting 67 of anything is hard, let alone clients, 

Erin Marcus: right? Yeah, 

Jay F: whereas with a mastermind, you can reach six figures with 8, 10, 12 people that are willing to, invest in themselves, invest in you and yeah, and it's just a much better environment.

Jay F: And you become a gatekeeper more than that dog chaser trying to find clients all the time. It's you can get it to a point where it's like actually, why don't you tell me why I should let you into my mastermind? What value are you going to bring? How committed are you going to be?

Jay F: I need to make sure you're a right fit. To invite you into my exclusive inner circle, because if I put the wrong person in there, it will upset. Oh, it 

Erin Marcus: upsets the apple cart real fast. 

Jay F: Yeah. Yeah, 

Erin Marcus: absolutely. I love it. I love your approach. I love your openness and vulnerability and sharing your whole story.

Erin Marcus: I think I think we all especially as entrepreneurs and especially if you're in the coaching industry in any way, shape or form, whether it's health, business, all of it. We all understand ups and downs, but I just love the example you've set by just doing it, just living it. That maybe we can stop worrying about what we think is a setback, and realize that people have overcome bigger things.

Erin Marcus: and done amazing things with it. How can you reframe this, right? How could you change your identity? How could you go back to what you know? How do you tap into the resources that you have and do something amazing with it? So I love it. And I love you sharing it with me and the audience. Thanks. If people want to learn more about how to your mastermind, how they can have you help them add masterminds to their businesses.

Erin Marcus: Cause I know you specialize in working with coaches and thought leaders. What is the best way to get ahold of you? Tell them a little bit about your business and how to find you. 

Jay F: So first of all, you can just shoot me an email. It's pretty easy. It's j at fair brother dot com. I think we're going to in the show notes, we're going to put, I have an assessment that is called the mastermind ready scorecard.

Jay F: So if you're intrigued by this idea of possibly creating something like this for your own business as a way to scale, going through this assessment will give you. It'll let, where you're already good where your strengths are and where your holes might be in terms of things you need to think about or consider in order to launch successfully a program like this.

Jay F: And then I have several ways that I help people to actually do that. Take and implement this and put it into action. 

Erin Marcus: Awesome. And yes, we will make sure we have links in the show notes that you're just one click away from everybody. So thank you for hanging out with me for a while today. I always love chatting with you and I can't wait to see what you're doing next as well.

Erin Marcus: So thank you. Thank you. 

Jay F: Thanks, Erin. I appreciate it.