Making It – Episode 149
Masterminding Success and Balance (Jay Fairbrother)
Jay Fairbrother: I’m Jay Fairbrother, and you’re listening to Making It. I run a business called sixfiguremasterminds.com, and we help coaches, speakers, healers, and thought leaders to create intimate, exclusive mastermind programs, not only to scale their business, but to create more human connection on the planet. The experience that most shaped my development was my father dying suddenly of a heart attack when I was ten years old. And the way I reacted was like most ten-year-old kids would, I withdrew. I disconnected. I got angry at the world, became a lone wolf, and it really shaped a lot of my development, including possibly why I ended up becoming an entrepreneur as that lone wolf streak developed at an early age.
I struggled a long time in terms of my childhood development, thinking that I wouldn’t live much past 45 years old, which is how old my father was, and just giving me that feeling that I’m out there on my own and there’s not much I can depend on. I felt that I had to be careful, that everything I had built up including quite a bit of success, would be ripped away just like my father was. I didn’t set out to be an entrepreneur. I’ve had nine different businesses, and in almost all of those cases, I didn’t necessarily set out to create the business that I ended up with. What I did is react to an opportunity that presented itself granted from situations that I put myself in, and many of those opportunities I earned my way into. So most of the businesses that I’ve started were an opportunity, and I, in a calculated way, took the leap and took the risk.
My first business was actually a fundraising business, and we helped arts organizations and nonprofit organizations to do membership and fundraising. And I was pretty lucky in that first business. Within a couple of years, I scaled it to a million dollars in revenue, and I got stuck at that level. I plateaued at that million-dollar mark, couldn’t seem to get beyond it. And that’s when I joined my very first mastermind. That was 25 years ago, but I still remember that very first mastermind meeting that I walked out of and said to myself, oh, my God, I finally found my people. These other entrepreneurs were just like me. They had the same issues and the same problems, and they were going through the same frustrations and challenges that I was.
From that very first mastermind meeting, I was all in on the mastermind concept. And over the next few years, I joined every mastermind I could. I started joining them, facilitating them, and eventually creating them. When I was starting out, what I wish I had known more of is this idea of balance and work life balance because I certainly sacrificed time with my family and personal time as I was building, especially that first business when it started to get large and complicated. It’s so easy to get sucked into it and not create boundaries to do that.
One of the best quotes that I ever heard was at an entrepreneurial conference, and a lot of it was around the time management aspect of carving out free time and making that sacred. And one of the keynote speakers was the guy who founded Kinkos. And it was a joking kind of a comment, but it really stuck with me. And basically what he said is that as a CEO or business owner, if you take vacation for a week, you come back and you’ve got a week’s worth of stuff piled on your desk. If you take vacation for two weeks, you come back and you have two weeks’ worth of stuff piled on your desk. But if you take vacation for three weeks, people actually have to start figuring out how to do business without it depending on you, and they start to get things done. So when you have a three-week vacation, you come back and there’s a lot smaller pile on your desk.
He was quipping and being funny with that remark, but it really stuck with me, and it reinforces the idea of delegation. And that’s part of creating the boundaries and creating the freedom and the sacred time off that a business owner really needs to help recharge and even increase productivity and creativity because you get those breaks. I think some of the most common. mistakes that people make, especially if there’s a point in business where you figured out the basics and you have revenue and you have clients, and then it’s a question of how do you scale? How do you leverage your time, leverage your expertise. And I think the mistake that a lot of people make is they keep hanging on to what got them there instead of evolving and adapting.
And so, for instance, in my first business, one of the hardest things I ever had to learn and do was to start firing clients, because I loved my clients and some of them, I had built really strong relationships with. But as we grew and evolved the business, the clients weren’t the right fit any longer. We needed to have bigger clients. We needed to have clients which generated more net profit. And so letting go of some of those early clients, that got you to that great point where you start to feel like you’re making it, that’s one of the hardest things.
I don’t know of many entrepreneurs that have not had setbacks in their journey. I’ve had some massive success but I’ve also had some spectacular failures along the way and many bumps along the road through the entire process. I sold my first business in 2004. And life was pretty good. Over the next few years, I traveled extensively. I bought three other businesses. I invested in many different types of things. And then in 2008, the world financial crisis, now called the great recession, started. And over the next few years, I lost everything. I quite literally went from being a multimillionaire, living in a mansion, to living in my friend’s basement, bankrupt, broke, divorced, alone, humiliated and ashamed.
I had spent 15 years building this identity as this really successful serial entrepreneur and there I was, not even owning a car. And the only reason that I made it through that really difficult time were the couple of masterminds that I was in and the people in those groups supported me in ways that went far beyond a basement to live in and a car to borrow for several months until I could get back on my feet. And I honestly don’t think I would be here today without the support from the masterminds.
To me, making it changes throughout your lifetime, how you define that? In the early days, I wanted to build the big company, the 800-pound gorilla in my industry. It was all about growth and revenue and that kind of thing. And then I think as you get older and get more of those types of experiences under your belt, it’s more about balance and being able to enjoy your life and create the freedom lifestyle that most entrepreneurs just dream about. And that’s what I’m working towards now. So my definition now is more along the lines of creating the size of business and the income that makes me more than comfortable, but balancing that with a lifestyle that I can work when I want, where I want, and for whom I want to.
Right now, I don’t have that balance. I work very hard at it because I want to get it to a point where I can start working in the balance. But I have learned that lesson the hard way. So I’m working on making it. Why I’m so passionate about masterminds and helping people create them starts with the story of losing my father when I was young and disconnecting from the world. And if you think of the world we live in today, there is a lot of disconnection. In fact, the World Health Organization recently has created an entire commission to study the global crisis around social isolation and loneliness.
And to me, when we are working with clients and trying to deliver really life changing transformations, it’s not about training and content. It’s about giving them that safe place where they can really be vulnerable and have those deeper discussions that allow for that deep human connection to develop. But the key is developing that safe space where people can show up as who they truly are, without agendas, without masks, and be in a container where they can feel safe. They know it’s confidential. They know they’re not being judged. And the only agenda that people come with is to help each other be better, grow, flourish, and thrive.
This is Jay Farebrother, and you’ve been listening to Making It. You can find me at sixfiguremasterminds.com. That’s S-I-X figure masterminds dot com.
Cassandra Topperwein: Making it is part of the Mirasee FM podcast network, which also includes such shows as Just Between Coaches and Once Upon a Business. To catch the great episodes that are coming up on Making It, please follow us on YouTube or your favorite podcast player. And if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a comment or a starred review. It’s the best way to help us get these ideas to more people. Thank you and we’ll see you next time.