The Difference Between Networking and Growth | Jay Abraham

On this episode of Strategic Edge, marketing strategist and executive coach Jay Abraham explains why most mastermind groups fail to create meaningful business results—and what separates high-performing peer groups from expensive networking events. Drawing from decades of coaching entrepreneurs across industries, Abraham outlines how accountability, structured problem-solving, and action-oriented collaboration can turn masterminds into powerful growth engines.

Key discussion points include:

•  Why most mastermind groups become social clubs instead of growth accelerators 
•  The role of accountability and action-taking in producing measurable business results 
•  How “hot seat” sessions uncover root problems instead of surface-level symptoms 
•  The importance of group composition, mindset, and execution-focused members 
•  Why cross-industry perspectives create stronger strategic insights 
•  How entrepreneurs can build their own effective mastermind groups locally or virtually 

Abraham also shares the systems he uses to drive follow-through, create peer accountability, and help business owners generate compounding growth through disciplined collaboration and execution.

Transcript

Welcome And The Mastermind Question

Announcer 0:00

I believe every human being was born to be great. I believe no human being wants to be mediocre. All I can say about Jay is I've known him for 35 years, and for four and a half decades, he has been the go-to guy to optimize your business. Jay is one of the top people on the planet who knows how to maximize a business and its reach to his customer. You're watching Strategic Edge with Jay Abraham exclusively on ASBN.

Jim Fitzpatrick 0:32

Mr. Jay Abraham, welcome back to Strategic Edge with Jay Abraham here on ASBN.com. Thank you so much again for joining us. I know that our viewers get so much out of your visits with us. So thank you.

Jay Abraham 0:43

You're welcome and thank you again myself for having me. I I am privileged to contribute.

Jim Fitzpatrick 0:48

Well, I'm glad you are, and we and so are our viewers. So uh let me talk to you about this designing masterminds that uh compound insight, access, and experience into deal flow. And uh I think this is a very hot topic. There's a lot of people out there that want to that are involved in masterminds, want to know about them, what have you. But uh Jay, masterminds are everywhere right now, every business community, every coaching program. But you've made a distinction between a mastermind that's really just a social club and one that actually compounds actions and experiences into outcomes. How does someone tell the difference?

Jay Abraham 1:26

Well, uh first of all, uh, I'm gonna give you one of my uh perhaps uh tangential answers, but I'll thread it back into the needle of relevancy. So I am obsessed with optionality. There people think there's only one way to do something. There's a myriad, and there's not a right or wrong, there are the right ones for the

Social Clubs Versus Growth Engines

Jay Abraham 1:51

objectives, goals you're after. So you got to understand what you want out of it. But excuse me, in terms of what you ask me, the vast majority of masterminds are one of two things. They're experiential, social, where you get together, you got a comfortable group of people, you do fun things in fun places, and and and um half the people are there for the fraternal camaraderie, half the people are there to sort of hustle and try to get deal flow for themselves just from the participants. And whenever anybody presents and speaks, almost every one of them is there to be somewhat superficial because they're trying to sell something. Sure. And I would I would chronicle and and categorize that as the majority. I have always believed that a mastermind group should be a vehicle for benevolently forcing someone to embrace higher performing probabilities, not even possibilities that are within their reach, and publicly helping them acknowledge the realization that they are achievable. And then through this collaborative but public environment, getting them to confirm and commit to taking action that will be reported back to the group the next time they get together. The problem with almost all training, seminar conferences is I mean, the stats are hilarious. 85% don't do anything. Uh, the majority of people who don't even look at their notes, that 9% is all they retain. It's it's a joke. My masterminds historically have been uh very unique, progressive, iterative, uh hot seat based, where everybody would come to me and they would be asked to identify in a prioritized manner the top problem, issue, challenge, constraint, uh uh bottleneck, and opportunity that if they could basically resolve even one of them, that their business would explode. Yeah. And they're then there, and we go round and round for days and days, and they have to take one at a time, present it, explain to me the rationale because a lot of people are dealing with symptoms not causes. I want to know why you think that is your biggest problem and why. You know, most people will say, I need more leads. Well, that's a symptomatic problem, but let's talk about what you're doing now, how you're doing it, what you're offering, where you're headed. And I try to bring reality to people in a tough love way. I have a colleague, I had a a I had a mastermind group, a very expensive one for a while, and that's all we did. They would come there, they had to bring their problems, their solutions, their scenarios, their their uh objectives, their opportunities. And we would just do each one would go through over three days, probably 11 different hot seats on them that kept progressing. But the beauty of that, when you do it right, is that you you you there's two kinds of of issues in your business. The ones you acknowledge and the ones that are um are uh not acknowledged. And what happens when you watch you know, no nonsense, penetrating exploration of issues that other people present, you realize that there many of their issues are actually similar issues that afflict, affect, or benefit you, and you've never even thought about it. So if you do it with intensity, it's not necessarily as fun as going on field trips and you know having all kinds of fun experiences. But if your goal is really to grow your business, to multiply its profitability, to elevate and escalate your your positioning, prominence, and status as a competitive superior force, it's pretty cool. But that's that's that.

Hot Seats That Find Root Causes

Jay Abraham 6:05

And now giving you some context. In answering your question, how does it generate, how does it generate deal flow? It generates deal flow properly done, no matter whether you like my intense one or you want to just have an experiential fun one is is the more people know not only what you do, who you do it for, how you do it, and the more they know what you believe to be your issues or your opportunities, and the more people that have experience in alternative ways to address it that share with you is so like me, when you talk to me, you're not really talking to uh a Malcolm Gladwell type person with 10,000 hours. I have over 185,000 hours of frontline of capitalism experience all over the world and about every kind of industry with about every kind of strategy, business model, distribution, et cetera. So you're getting all that, but you're getting the equivalent of that if you get into the right kind of a group where people are coming from different walks of life, different experiences, different contextual understanding of an issue. And if they are the right uh type of a member, they're there to contribute to one another and to learn from others. So the the answer is threefold. One, there is almost always uh synergistically or uh surreptitiously going to be alignment where somebody or multiple buddies in that group is a prime prospect for you or a collaborator with you, or they know somebody they can introduce to you to that will blow up performance. Yeah. Also, if they give you superior ways of doing what you're doing, that will generate a lot more deal flow. But but there's two kinds there's vertical ones. You have those frequently in the automotive side of your business, 20 groups, where all the same size or type companies come together and they look at each other's uh PL and they basically uh analyze everything, and each one shares breakthroughs and innovations they're doing, and that's very good. But a different kind of very good is when you can get access to all this uh expansive perspective from outside. You will remember, and I don't know, we've done 17, 18 shows so far together. One of them I think I introduced, my belief, called funnel vision over tunnel vision. Yep. And uh just to summarize it, almost everybody in an industry pretty much follows the herd. They do the same thing the same way. Oh, yeah. Some better, some worth, and all you can possibly expect from that is incremental growth. But if you borrow success approaches from outside the industry, where very frequently, not always, but most always, you're gonna find higher, better, more profitable, safer, quicker, less capital intense, less risky alternatives, you're gonna you're gonna grow more. So it's it depends on on what you're after. I personally like diverse groups where there is an alignment in size because if you have a little you know solopreneur and somebody who's got a $200 million company, they're not really they're not thinking playing at the same uh at the same value sort of scale. But if you get people about the same size from the maximum number of walks of life, uh it's pretty profound, but you've got to be able to have somebody who runs it who knows how to stimulate, mine, uh uh concretize, and then replay the breakthroughs and the golden nuggets that are coming out, because sadly, most people don't

How Masterminds Create Deal Flow

Jay Abraham 9:55

even recognize how profound certain almost elegant sounding concepts are if they're not from their world.

Jim Fitzpatrick 10:03

Sure, sure. Um let's talk about who gets in. You've kind of touched on it already, but you've uh said admission by status, such as revenue, title, brand alone, actually undermines what makes a mastermind valuable. Um, what should what should you actually be selecting for? I know you mentioned just a few of them already.

Jay Abraham 10:23

So let me be very candid. I have a prejudice towards people who do shit. Excuse my vulgarity, who take action. It's okay. Many masterminds have a prejudice towards people who can write a check for 25 or 50 or $150,000. Yeah. My criteria is number one, you have a you have a deep curiosity and an open-mindedness, and you're not rigid in your mental paradigm. Number two, you have a prejudice towards action related to that. You're a monster of execution. Third, you're not wedded to tradition relative to your industry. Fourth, uh, you are very directable and fifth, six, whatever it is. You're collaborative. Now, everyone doesn't, I mean, honestly, a lot of the masterminds are there for just the monetary purposes. They're not there as much to uh to stimulate never-ending compound continuous growth and profitability, which is what I've always defaulted for in the stuff I've done or the ones I've helped clients create. Sure.

Jim Fitzpatrick 11:30

Sure. So walk me through what a session actually looks like in a mastermind that's built to compound, because I suspect it's different from what most people experience, right?

Jay Abraham 11:41

Yeah. So here's how I used to do it. And we've talked about maybe doing one for your organization. So, first thing is before anyone came to the very first meeting, I have a 200 uh question assessment. You've seen it, that I have them try and answer. And I say try because most people never thought about their business in terms of all the correlations, implications, and quantifications that really are the drivers of growth. I actually invest up to a couple hours each trying to read them, study them, reflect. Uh, sometimes I'll, you know, even go and look at their competitors and I ask them a lot of things they've never thought about. I want to know about their competition directly and indirectly. Indirectly means people addressing the same problem but with different kinds of generic solutions. I want to know why their, excuse me, their competitors are more successful, less successful, what their strengths are, things that they would never even thought about. Then they come to the first one and I make them spend the first couple hours making sure that everybody knows who they are, what they do, how they do it, who they do it for, what they think, not what is, but what they think their biggest problem, challenge, opportunity is, and why. Then we start a series of round robins where I usually have a colleague or two that have different skill sets up on stage with me. We go around the room and we basically have somebody pose their problem. I am very strong on Socratic interviewing to try to uncover what they're really trying to say and reinterpret it. As I'm learning it, I spend time re-articulating it in real time to everybody so

Who Belongs In The Room

Jay Abraham 13:24

there's no implicit confusion. We normally come up because I've done so much so many times, so many places, we come up with an interim, uh, an interim uh actionable solution or or resolution in 10, 15 minutes, and we go to the next, the next, the next. And when we're done with the first round, I do something no one ever does. I go backwards and I make everybody share two things. One is what they think I told them to do and why and how to hear if they even heard me. Yeah. And two, one big breakthrough they got from hearing me do it from somebody else. That's great. That's a great, great exercise. Then we do it again. Then we do uh a this is the first day, usually I do three day ones often. Then we then we stop and we ask them to tell us if we stopped right now and they went back, what would they do with what they've learned? And we encourage everybody at the break not just to fraternize, but to share any idea, insight, or or even just reinterpret what they heard to everybody. So that this is like if you have a hundred people, you're getting a hundred perspectives compacted into every moment. I love it. We we do this for the first day. We do it about six times. Wow.

Jim Fitzpatrick 14:47

Then you've got to get people too that that uh I'm sure that you've got to win over in this early on because there's those that go that are spectators and then with with the spectator mindset, and then those that go in to say, no, I want to participate, I want to get the most out of this mastermind. Um, right? I mean, you've you've got to have those those people in the group that are like, I don't, I'm not so sure I want to get involved.

Jay Abraham 15:12

I have an advantage that uh most people don't. Uh, and this is not arrogant, again, it's clinical. I'm very negotiable. I have done there's it's rarely a business, an industry, an approach that I haven't been exposed to at a very high level and haven't had to fix, solve, improve so that I can start a conversation with questions that immediately resonate with the person to uh convey I really understand their business. Right, connect with them, sure. And so that sort of catches the knock this this uh block off my shoulder people off guard and it opens them up. Yeah, I am very curious and I'm very respectful, but I want to understand. I want to know what brought you this. You and I, when we first met, I want to know how did you how did you end up here as most people, yeah, but most people don't care. But your origin story gives you enormous insight into what drives somebody. That's right. That's right. Um, they go, ah, yeah, we built it and then we've been here for a long time. Well, I want to know why. I want to know drivers you've never recognized that are throttling or motivating or springboarding or constraining. Yeah. And and and I usually bring experts that are not there to make my

The Compounding Session Framework

Jay Abraham 16:30

experts do it because I've helped them and they're doing it in contribution. They don't come to you know to tease about something and try to sell their consulting services. They come to contribute. And I usually bring somebody who's a master of of um operational efficiency. I bring somebody who's better at digital marketing than I am. Uh I bring a guy I like a lot who's the world authority on um on uh theory of constraint. Uh I and then after the first day, I look, I spend time thinking about what are the most universal issues that have been uh presented. And then that night I usually can get on the phone or text one of my other colleagues who's an expert in that area and get him to do a cameo, unexpected, uh sort of a Zoom break-in where he or she uh talks about their skill at that problem and then does some interactions. So it's very fluid and it's very original. That's my approach. That's doing it, and in the last day, we make everybody summarize what they've learned. We make them prioritize it on a hierarchy of action. We ask them what they're gonna do when they go home and how they're gonna do it, and how they're gonna be assured they're gonna do it, because most people don't do anything. We make them put it in their calendar, and frequently I will assign a colleague to be uh their accountability officer.

Jim Fitzpatrick 17:57

So that's right, but that's making that that is making the most out of a mastermind class for sure.

Jay Abraham 18:03

But most of them don't do that. Most of them have a bunch of superficial speakers, yep. Uh, any of which are there if they're not being paid, they're there to sell. Sure, they have a lot of experiences that are fun, and it's a fraternal uh, and I I just my whole life, Jim, has been uh dedicated to producing continuously multiplicative or multiplied performance. And I'm not I'm not comfortable being an entertainer. I don't want to do intellectual entertainment. I don't, and and uh I've had I've had groups that uh they they rebelled against that, and I gave them freely to another colleague who who runs an experiential type one where it's just fun. They go on trips, they get to meet billionaires, but they really don't walk away with anything actionable. Right. I I think that the role of a mastermind is to is to tough love confront whatever think is constraining you, and then look at what's really constraining you and whatever limitations you think are out of your control, and then break uh the the the uh the facade of perspective, but that's how I do it. I hope that's not too complex.

Jim Fitzpatrick 19:21

No, I think in fact, I I've been to both types of of mastermind classes in my in my time. And uh, and I you're right, I get so much more out of the ones where you know the presenter uh and the organizer will really drill down into these different topics and what have you, but then also hold us accountable as students or members of the mastermind class that we're in. And uh that's what that's what I want in in a you know, joining a mastermind. Um I that that's the reason that you're there. That's why you're paying the money that you're paying, and taking more important than the money, taking the time out of your busy schedule as a business owner to join in and to be part a participant in a in a in a great mastermind class where you're actually getting something. Because I've been to the others that you mentioned where, oh, I can't believe we had dinner with so and so and he owns such and such, and to your point, he's a billionaire. And you know, I don't really learn anything from by having dinner, you know, with a with a billionaire, other than the fact that they're a billionaire and I'm not, right?

unknown 20:22

Yeah.

Jay Abraham 20:23

So the and there's two other derivatives I'd like to talk about because you're not asking yet. It might be in your questions that I'm preempting you. So there's no reason

Build Your Own And Prove It

Jay Abraham 20:32

that anyone watching can't create at very least. If you can't find the right one or you can't afford the right one, there's no reason you couldn't create your own mastermind. Uh, no matter where you live, no matter what business you're in, you can find people in similar size businesses, you can find people in uh in different industries who you can bring together virtual on Zoom or in your neighborhood or in your city. And then there's also leads groups which get together to learn about each other and start appreciating each other and referring. But business does business multiplies for many reasons if you're in a really serious and and a heavy duty, really, really result-based mastermind group, because as you watch, people come back and they report growth, they record, they report achievement, and that reinforces the vi the the the viability and the performance probability of these concepts so that maybe they were foreign when you heard them last session. But now, you know, I'll give you an example. I you know this because we've talked about it a lot. I love joint ventures, strategic alliances, yeah. Uh all the different ways you can you can harness other people's access, credibility, databases, and and uh I I Did an intense session with everybody and I walked through every business and gave them application methodology for a derivative for an application that was sliced and diced just to their situation one time. And the next time we met, nine 90% did nothing, but two two of them did it. One of them 600% increased their business, the other added another million uh million seven to his 12 uh of of ABITA, not not of of revenue to his 12 million dollar SAS company. And then the next month, a lot more people did things because they saw that it was real and they saw that, and I would interview them so graphically, well, tell me what you did. How did you overcome just doing it? And so I get people to reveal the kind of stages of uh impediment and constraint that keep people from really achieving all that is available.

Jim Fitzpatrick 22:57

Wow, that it that is fantastic, and that's what makes you the Jay Abraham uh world uh business coach out

Final Takeaways And Sign Off

Jim Fitzpatrick 23:05

there, crisscrossing uh the globe, helping companies all over. And we are so uh blessed to have you here with us today. I know that as I mentioned before, our viewers and our subscribers get so much out of your visits and these shows that you you do with us here at ASBN. So we're very grateful and we look forward to the next time together. So, Jay Abraham, thank you so much.

Announcer 23:27

Thanks for watching Strategic Edge with Jay Abraham, exclusively on ASBN.