Masterminds: Fueling Business Growth Through Human Connection with Jay Fairbrother

Hello. Welcome to leading with purpose. I am here today with my dear friend, mentor and member of our metamind. J fair brother, known as the mastermind guy. He is a serial entrepreneur, business coach and mastermind facilitator with over 30 years of experience in starting buying and selling seven figure businesses. His mission is to foster more human connection in our increasingly digital world by helping entrepreneurs create masterminds that enhance intimacy and collaboration among their clients. Hello, Jay, welcome, thanks.

Mark, it's always a pleasure to have an interview with you.

I always love connecting with you. We're going to use that word a lot today. We're going to talk a little bit about your your chapter in our newest number one bestseller, soulful leadership, elevating purpose and empowering change. Your chapter was I finally found my tribe. How masterminds can feed a world starving for more human connection. Can you share a little bit about what led you to become the mastermind guy and how masterminds have impacted you your personal and professional life with human connection?

It's a such a beautiful story. And every time I hear it again, it's touching. And I love hearing again how it helped do both in your business, but also in the personal life. For a lot of people that are listening, some of them may have be a part of masterminds. Different people have different interpretations of what a mastermind is. Some people have never even heard of a mastermind. In fact, we've had people join our mastermind. Have never heard of what knew what it was. And I think it does help just to get a little context for listeners, either again, who've never heard of one or might have a different definition than than your definition of a mastermind?

Yes, and there are a lot of definitions out there. There's, I joke sometimes that in the coach, healer, speaker, thought leader world. And you know, 75 80% of what's labeled a mastermind out there isn't really a true mastermind. And so the term itself is kind of bastardized to accommodate a lot of different things. So if you go back to the beginning, about 90 years ago, Napoleon Hill coined the term mastermind in his book, Think and Grow Rich, and his concept for coining that term was pretty simple, one brain in a room, a second brain in a room, and it creates this third invisible, intangible force that he labeled the mastermind. And if you imagine putting eight to 14 brains in a room the size of that invisible, intangible force when you start to tap into the collective experience, collective knowledge and collective wisdom of all the people in the room, right? So it's literally, you know, a one plus one equals three kind of equation. And Napoleon Hill's concept back then was for that small cohort type mastermind where people stay together. It's not a one day thing, not a weekend thing, but it's actually where people stay together and continue to meet regularly over time, and in that true masterminding sense, that regular meeting over time is what takes it to a different level of connection than is possible in almost anything else we do in life. And what I mean by that is that it's where you start to build relationship capital. So it's easy to go out there and find intellectual capital that were bombarded with intellectual capital every single day. You know, with information overload, digital you know, overload, it's relatively easy to go out and get social capital. Obviously, that's friends, but that's also networking events, you know, like you run JV directory, great place to build social capital, because you're seeing people meeting, people interacting, etc. But to get that next level of relationship capital, that's where it gets tougher, because that's where you need to create the container where people feel safe, protected and and we'll open up to get into those deeper, more vulnerable conversations. So one of the ways that I like to distinguish, or what I consider a mastermind from any other definition, is it's where people feel enough level of safety and security that they can open up and talk about stuff that they wouldn't talk about with anyone else, including family and friends, because one of the key principles to creating that sort of True mastermind magic is that people don't have agendas within the mastermind. They're not in it because they're trying to sell each other stuff. They're not in it because they're trying to, you know, look better than anyone else, or seem, you know, appear come across as smarter than anyone else. You sort of develop this, this culture of mutual respect and people. The only agenda that people in the group have is to help each other grow and thrive. So you hire a coach or a mentor, they have an agenda. Your family usually has an agenda. Your friends sometimes have agendas. Your employees have agendas. Your vendors have agendas. You trade this safe environment where you create this culture that we leave the egos at the door. We are here to help and support each other, and you buy get people to buy into that concept that, yeah, if I give to my team here. If I give to this group, what I'm going to get back will be exponential.

Yeah, yeah. So that's a great question, and first of all, you've kind of articulated but we start with the premise that there is no cookie cutter way to create masterminds, that the key is to create a unique, customized structure for each for you, right as one that takes advantage of your superpowers, more importantly, delivers the most impact for your clients and the people you bring into it. So I would say that 80% of my clients, the people that I help create what I call a hybrid program, and that is a cross between a group coaching program and that true Napoleon Hill sort of pure mastermind concept, right? Because the reason it's a hybrid is because you're not just sitting around facilitating these wonderful conversations around a common topic or a common problem that people are having, that's part of it, and that should be part of every mastermind to have, that those facilitated open conversations where everyone's contributing and feels an equal part of the conversation. But for a lot of you know coaches and healers and business leaders, you know there's a piece of the program or a piece of our superpowers that is around the training or the coaching, and so it's a matter of figuring out how to build in those Training pieces and that coaching piece of it, but also building their relationships, right? So if you think about the a group coaching program or like a course, you know, we talk to most people who have gone through any anyone else's course or group coaching program, usually you don't even really meet the P the other people in the program, as you go through the program's over, and you're like, I barely met those people. You may have seen them on a hot seat or something, or shared a quick breakout room with them, but you didn't develop a relationship with them. And that, to me, is the real key piece, if you can create those relationships to the point that people don't want to leave. That's when you've created a great mastermind. So I always say that people will join your mastermind primarily because of you. There's something about you. They want to follow you. They want your leadership. They want your training and coaching. That's what will get them into the program, but what will keep them in the program and have them renew for years two and three and four is because of the relationships they've now built with all the other people in the program. So even you know, so that you get to the point where it's like, okay, Mark, I think you've taught me everything you know in terms of whatever our mastermind is around, but that's okay, because I don't want to leave these other great people that you've assembled and that I've been hanging out with for this last year. So yeah, I'm staying in the program.

So this might bring up something for some of the listeners, because it was coming. Coming up for me is, and I've heard clients in meta mine, and especially spouses and friends saying, Why are you paying that much every year for friends? Why? Why do you have to pay to have friends? Can you you've been with them for three years? Can't you just be friends now?

Yeah, so, so that's again, comes back to understanding group dynamics and being a good facilitator, because you you could, in theory, work yourself out of a job, right? You could create a situation where at the end of like, say, the first year, and it's renewal time to keep people in your program, and they're like, Yeah, well, I think we could just go off and meet on our own, right. They you still, as the leader, have to be providing a value to the the program. You know, even after a year and into years two and three, that. That is becomes a factor of good facilitation skills and understanding the group dynamics, so that you're constantly taking the group to deeper levels. And once people see that transformation, that group dynamic developing, it's almost becomes intuitive or instinctive, that's that they know that part of the magic is your leadership and the facilitation and the hand curation of the people to keep it going, and that gets lost. Look, I've seen a lot of masterminds created and fail, and it's because of this exact thing is that people don't understand how to facilitate and how to create the group dynamic. And then I'll build those relationships and how to have an experience where people feel it just gets deeper and deeper, instead of it's being like, linear, like, okay, yeah, I think I completed that program. Like, time to go find another one.

I said before, there's all kinds of structures. You know, we have a friend in common that runs four live masterminds a year. And you can pay one price and go to any two of them. So it's just literally running four live in person masterminds for two days. Some people do it a monthly there's all kinds of different structures, but you teach people how to customize it, rather than. And try to fit into the thing. And even that, you have a very simplified method, you have a three day event, and you have these trainings where people can come and learn more about you. I'll put the links down in the chat below, but we'll make it really easy for somebody that wants to come to one of your master classes. What do you what do you teach in just the short period in an hour? What can somebody learn from that?

So in the master classes, we're basically sort of giving you some guidelines on the different types of masterminds. And you know why the model is one that you can look at, kind of regardless of where you are in your coaching journey. To me, if more people at the beginning of their coaching journey created the model, at least, or the vision for the high end program, mastermind type program that they would create, they would get there a lot faster, because then they could validate everything else they do in building their coaching Business from the beginning against this, you know, okay, here's where I'm going that I know that I need to get to this program which can generate six figures, one program that will generate six figures plus for my business. So the decisions I'm going to make between now and then are so much easier because now I have that vision. So in the masterclass, we're just sort of, you know, painting that picture of how to build this sort of more intimate, curated, hand selected community. Who are the people you really want to work with that are most passionate to help. And then in the three day events, which are called the six figure masterminds boot camp, those events are, it's really kind of amazing, because I have brand new coaches that come to those, and they walk out, you know, incredibly grateful and having had huge ahas and transformation. And these are very workshop style events. So you actually get a lot people walk out with pages and pages of notes. But I also have seven figure coaches that come to my three day events, and often they come, you know, it's kind of like, yeah, Jay, I want to support you. I'll show up and kind of check it out. And many times they have ended up staying for the entire three day event once they get there, because in this event, we're having people look at things they might already be doing from a different lens, and they're getting huge ahas around, oh, you know, this is not the way I've been looking at it, and this is a different viewpoint. So the three day events are a lot of fun. It's really rewarding to see the kinds of transformations that people get, and the comments people make about the value of the events,

And I have, we've heard rave reviews just about the way that you lead an event. People can learn from that, just to be able to show up and like, oh, wow, this is a great way to create a transformation for everybody there and the people that are ready, that want to learn more, that they've made a great, easy path for them. I also wanted to talk a little bit about people, because we talked about some people may not know what a mastermind is. Some people might have a different idea of what a mastermind is. Some people might have a very bad taste in their mouth that they had a bad mastermind experience, just like some people may have had a bad JV experience that, oh, I don't ever want to do that again. You're also in multiple you lead multiple different masterminds, and you're in multiple different masterminds. How do you how do you juggle that? How do you discern when to be in a mastermind and when it's time to go?

Yeah, yeah. So I have three masterminds of my own. I have my a mastermind locally here in Pittsburgh for entrepreneurs, we meet in person once a month for like a three to four hour meeting. That is the small, intimate group of no more than like 12 that we have in that then I have a peer mastermind, which are all other coaches, healers and thought leaders at about my level in terms of, you know, income and size of business and that kind of thing. And then I have my client mastermind, which is where I am hand selecting the people that I am excited to work with and help support and we help them, not only in creating their own customized mastermind or hybrid program, but in building their entire online business. So three different masterminds that I run for three different sets of people and three different reasons, three different outcomes, then I'm also in like three masterminds. Yours being one of them, in addition, because I believe so much in the power of masterminding, and you get different things, so in terms of how to find a mastermind that's appropriate for you to. To join. To me it. You know, do Do you respect? Want to be around I want to follow the leader. Number one, have they ever run a mastermind before? Like I would ask that question, because, you know, as I said, even the majority of things that are labeled masterminds out there are really just group coaching, and a mastermind label is thrown on it because it's a little sexier and maybe they charge more. So you know, what kinds of masterminding things do you actually do in the program? How am I going to get to meet the other people, etc, the other thing. So one of the key components, and one of the mistakes that most people make in putting together masterminds is they think, Okay, I'm going to create a mastermind, and all my clients could be in and that's right there mistake number one, because one of the key things that make a mastermind work really well is the idea that there is a lot of commonality or parity, like the opposite of disparity among the participants. So where masterminds don't really get to that sort of deeper magical levels, is when you have a group where one person thinks like, you know, I I'm just not as far along as some of these other people. I feel like I'm falling behind. Or, even worse, you have a couple of people who think, you know, I'm above the rest of these people. I really, you know, am losing patience with the kinds of questions some of these people are asking and that kind of thing. So doesn't mean that everybody has to be exactly the same, or that to be in exactly the same industry or that kind of thing. There's lots of ways to build in diversity, but there's has to be that commonality. I often say that for every single mastermind meeting, if we go around and do like, Okay, what's your big takeaway from the meeting? If I hear nothing in the takeaways, other than I can't believe how much we're all alike. I know I'm succeeding in running that mastermind, because that take that piece of his right there. That is the magic. It's like, Oh, my God, you were talking about this problem. I may not even have that same problem, but I can foresee that I could have that problem someday. And I identify so much with you and your problem, because you're so much like me, not in terms of having a similar personality or a similar industry or that kind of thing, but I see myself in you, and that's really the power of peer learning, which is really important. It's a whole different style of learning than what we're normally accustomed to, where we have a mentor, coach, a guru who's talking at us or teaching us or on their soapbox, you know. And I know we're running, we're running all the time. But the thing about peer learning is that, like, especially when you're dealing with Type A personalities, entrepreneurs, you know, for me, if I mean even people, I pay my mentors and I pay a lot of money for their advice. It's usually like the third or fourth time they tell me something that it actually that's I start to allow for it, right? Like we sometimes we get a little defensive, maybe stubborn. But if I hear you in a pure situation, in a mastermind and I hear you identifying a problem, like, I get it the first time. I'm like, oh, that's what I need to do, because it was my idea. Like, I came to the conclusion myself. So that's the power of peer learning, and that's the magic that is created at masterminds.

I love it, and again, I love that it's all about connection. Talked a lot about how technology and AI is really separating us, and that this is a really good way to bring us together. The name of the show is leading with purpose. And I'm curious, what does that mean to you? Leading with purpose?

Well, that is a mic drop moment. I think we should leave it right there. Jay, I'm so grateful for the work that we get to do together and then get to play together, and the light that you shine out of the world. I really do believe that all of the different masterminds that you're helping to people to create are creating that this ripple effect that is raising consciousness and the heart with which you share can be felt, and it's one of the things you're most known for. I just feel honored to be on the path with you.

My mission is to create a little less loneliness on the planet, one mastermind at a time.

Beautiful. Thank you, Jay. Thank you all for listening. We'd love to read your comments. Please feel free to share. We'll put the links down below to follow up with Jay. Thank you so much. Thanks, Mark.