A Personal Note from Orion

You’ve probably heard of the team “being woke”, which in popular slang is used to refer to operating out of a higher state of consciousness. When we reach this level of awakened reality, is when we start  living the life that we want, regardless of the external pressures of society to live our lives a certain way.

To get to this level of consciousness, you do need to put in a lot of internal work, but you don’t have to do it alone. There are so many amazing workshops, courses, masterminds, basically communities of like minded people who are on the same internal quest as you are, and in banding together you’ll find the ultimate support and inspiration to keep going.

My guest today was a pioneer in the development of Masterminds. Jay Fiset has been in the field for over 30 years, and has dedicated most of his career to integrating a global movement of conscious creators  to organize their lives and resources around their passions and gifts. Tune in to learn how to access a higher level of consciousness and meaningfully connect with like minded people.

 

 

About Today’s Show

Hi and welcome to Stellar Life Podcast. This is your host, Orion. My guest today will teach you how to be more successful and how to create successful masterminds. He’s pretty funny and lighthearted and it was a really fun interview. I really enjoyed having him on the show. Jay Fiset is a bestselling author and a student of human nature. He can see and reflect your life mission in five minutes flat. He loves ideas but loves results even more. He can simultaneously laugh and cry for different reasons at the same time. He has never been starstruck, but he did not get a chance to meet Martin Luther King. Jay is dedicated to integrating a global movement of conscious creators and supporting people to organize their life and resources around their passions and gifts. And now without further ado, onto the show.

Hey, Jay, and welcome to Stellar Life podcast. It’s wonderful having you here.

Thank you for letting me be on the show. I am totally excited about it.

Thank you. Before we start, can you share a little bit about yourself?

In a nutshell, I have been in the personal transformation space for about 32 years, which means that I started before many people in the space were born. I run three core brands, one is called The Creators Code­­, that’s personal development. The other is Mastermind to Millions, where we help, coach and teach experts how to position, launch, and lead their masterminds. Then, there is a course called JVology – The Perfect Mix of People, Fun and Profit. That is where we assist people to build meaningful relationships and long-term joint ventures that help (1) create a steady stream of free leads and (2) a recurring income where they get paid when they don’t work. That is my business world.

My personal life, I’m a father of two crazy boys, one is 13 and the other one is turning 9 this summer. Married to my very lovely high school sweetheart, Cory, we’ve been together for over 30 years. In a nutshell, I’ve lead a blessed life and consider myself incredibly fortunate.

Wow. Your sweetheart will look back in time, and say “Wow, Jay, you’ve really changed. How did you become the man that you are today?” How would you describe it? How did you start because today you’re this refined, eloquent and successful man.

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You’re maybe confused with somebody else.

No. You know who you are.

There’s a lot of words to describe me but refined is truly not one of them. I am a farm kid that still curses, probably too much. But it is who I am.

Yes. You did a lot of good in the world and you did pioneer this whole idea of masterminds. You are one of the pioneers in the self-development arena. How did you start? Were you born this way?

That’s a grand question that could take this entire show. I’ll give you my two cent version of it. I grew up in Saskatchewan where work ethic is probably the most valued trait of anything. You could be a complete ass, but if you work hard, then you are a decent person. I was blessed to grow up in this very small community. We had 60 people on a good day and it was a place where people left their keys in their car, in case, somebody needed it. The house is open. If you wanted a sandwich, literally, go make one, just clean up after yourself. That’s where we grew up.

People truly had to collaborate there simply to survive. I think number one is I always grew up with a hell of a work ethic. The next step to that was that I always wanted, which was weird, European sports cars when everybody I grew up with wanted a big truck that had a lift kit and four wheels. I wanted little Porsches.

I always had a little twist on what attracted me and what I was interested in. That frankly meant that I had to go to work. In my younger years, I was very money-motivated. I was just willing to work, and not always refined. Just to put this into perspective, in high school, I sold pot out of the gas station that I managed at nights. Here’s the irony for fun and entertainment, I was the black sheep of the family for doing that. But it was entrepreneurial and I like to tease people. I was just in the happiness business right from the beginning. Here I am, I’m 52 now and I’m the only one in my family who isn’t using CBD oil. It’s funny how things come full circle.

Anyway, my point is that I was always entrepreneurial. I was always looking for a way to make money. And through a strange turn of events, I owned a construction company as a very young man in Calgary, with a business partner who went away on holiday and when he came back,  he was floating on air having this sense of humor – he was fun, and this was not his character. He was a bit of a jerk, actually. Very good at what he did but not happy.

After what was one of the most amazing weeks of our entire business—we sold more, we had more fun and all those things. We were having a beer on a Friday afternoon, I said to Andy, “What the hell happened to you? It’s like aliens took over your body. You are not the partner that I started doing business with.” “What?” He looked at me, took a sip, and he said, “Ah, I took a course. It was a very powerful ticket.”

What I heard him say at the ripe old age of 19 was, “I took a sales course and that’s why we made more money this week.” It’s not what he said, but it’s what I heard. Soon I find myself in this course, which I think is a sales course, which turns out to be this intense personal development and transformation process. I wasn’t very happy about it at the beginning, but that became the core pivotal point for the rest of my life.

It helped me heal relationships. It helped me understand what my true motivation was. It helped me tell the truth about what I truly wanted in terms of serving and supporting my family, community and ultimately the world. And that became the business that I went to work for. I bought a couple of beers afterward and it still exists as The Creators Code, 33 years later. We’ve had 40,000 people through the doors of that program, in some way, shape, or form, whether that’s online, books, experiential programs, all of these pieces. It was really an awakening and an alignment of purpose that I was blessed to have, although resisted at the time when I was still a teenager.

That’s great. What do people struggle with the most when it comes to their mindset?

Do you want symptom cause?

I want both. I want everything.

We’re going to be here until 2028 if that’s the case. I mean that in all seriousness. Here’s the thing. I’m actually not even a fan of the word ‘mindset.’ I know that it is a popularization and short form slang for doing the work that is perhaps the most challenging in the universe, which is dealing with this tool that we have between our ears.

However, mindset implies to me that there is a right way to do it, there is a wrong way to do it, that I am going to fix my mind and set it to the right direction, on we go. I think that’s silly at best and harmful at worst. The truth is that what I really believe people struggle with, is consciousness. Consciousness isn’t something that you can get from a book. It isn’t something that I got in the first three days of this transformational program. Consciousness is a process of continuing over time to understand who I am, what my nature is, what my motivations are, what my protections are, what my playoffs are, how I show up in relationships. It is the awareness of my patterns and the ongoing dedication to continuing to align my pattern with what I believe my true mission on earth and in life is, and to make that real through relationships, business, contributions, and all of those pieces.

The mindset to me is not even a reasonable facsimile of what the real problem is. The problem is people aren’t taught how and when the chips fall, often aren’t willing to do the true work of consciousness. That to me is the core. Now, what people struggle with? Well, they struggle with resistance, they struggle with motivation, they struggle with relationships they work, they struggle with getting their needs met, they struggle with making enough money, they struggle with significance, they struggle with these 18 million other symptoms. But they all come back to one fundamental truth, which is committing ourselves to our consciousness is one of the most challenging yet rewarding experiences of being in this human body. It terrifies us because we are taught to look externally instead of internally. I don’t know if I can shorten it any more than that, Orion.

No, I know. That was amazing and I like that idea. Your mindset sounds very rigid, goal-oriented, and very left-brained. I like the idea of consciousness and the awareness of who we are because everything is happening in our conscious and unconscious mind. When we have the awareness, we can tap into resources to help us.

What are some of the tools that you teach to help people tap into their consciousness? Also, when you speak to entrepreneurs, if you say consciousness they think you’re like this woo-woo energy healer or something like that. I get mindset. I guess you sell them the mindset and then you give them consciousness.

Here is the truth. I don’t do much of that work these days. It’s implicit in everything that I do. We don’t sell too much of the personal transformation work these days. Quite literally, we will sell business solutions and say, “Hey, if you’re struggling, come to our consciousness work.” I have letter after letter, note after note of sayings like, “Your business stuff was amazing,” but what really moved me was the consciousness work. We actually don’t even directly sell that too much these days.

The key idea is this. Our core program is a series of experiential exercises and processes that accumulate into 220 hours, 140 different processes, exercises, and activities. It is the unique combination of that process that actually serves and support people to wake themselves up. Now, I want to be super clear about this. This process of consciousness is the process of waking ourselves up. There are tools, processes, meditation, affirmations, vision, future casting, and NLP. I can go for seven years about what the mechanics are. I’ll just say this directly because I’m often not popular for saying this. Here is a great way in which anyone can measure the consciousness of somebody that they’re working with. The more attached you are to your modality, the less conscious you are.

I’ll just give you a particular example so this makes sense. Fr example you happen to be a yoga teacher, a psyche practitioner, a meditation instructor or whatever, the more attached you are to that modality is the way to consciousness, that’s nothing more than a decoration of your lack of consciousness. The truth is that there is a unique path for every single one of us as human beings. I’m often skeptical and cautious, is the best way to put it. I’m often skeptical of people that are overly attached to their modality. Let’s be clear about this. I love the people that care about what woke them up. We need more of that. But for goodness’ sake, don’t get so attached. Everybody has to find their own way, they will do so in mostly different manners.

Going back to your question, I need to set that contextual frame. In terms of what tools do we use, the answer to that question is absolutely everything. It is absolutely everything. The key piece to it is that it cannot be just mental, spiritual, emotional or physical. By the way, the physical is just another way for transformation. It can’t be any one of the four aspects. It has to be some unique and interesting combination of those four, that is like a secret combination on our soul. And it’s our job. It’s one of the reasons why consciousness work is so darn challenging for many people. We’ve got to find what that combination is, and when it happens it is magical. From our perspective and approach is we use experiential activities and processes that tap into every aspect of our lives as physical and spiritual beings here on earth to help people get their own fingers on the lock combination for themselves.

That didn’t really answer your question except to say, “I’m a particular fan of meditation. I’m a particular fan of visualization. I’m a particular fan of affirmations. I’m a particular fan of self-care as a spiritual practice.” But everything I say to you, that’s about my own personal combination. They might not be yours and this is one of the pieces that just need more conversation. Just because you’re a hammer and everything looks like a nail, that doesn’t mean that’s true.

I think you answered my question perfectly because this is the way I view the world. I have a method called Orion’s Method. When people ask me what’s Orion’s Method, I’m like, “Well it’s a lot of things. NLP, visualizations, affirmations, movement, emotional work, healing, tapping or whatever the person needs. There are a few stages but everybody is in different stages and everybody needs different tools. I studied. I went to more seminars than the 1% of people on planet earth. I’ve studied so many methods, whether it’s learning about my body and my movement.

I traveled to India, to the spiritual world. I did a lot of things. When I coach people, I tell them, “I studied so many things and I can give you a very long list of everything that I studied.” When I coach someone on it, I studied only 0.0001 of what’s really out there or what’s really needed.

When I coach someone and I need to create a breakthrough and I don’t know the answer or what tool to use, I just allow an opening and I connect to the universal Google that has all the answers. Then, I get to download and somehow I know what to say and do. But it’s not the things that I studied, it’s more about the state of beingness.

Or it’s going to your state of beingness, or it’s the embodiment of all the things that you studied that have contributed to that state of beingness, that allows you to tap into what I called, as a kid, the mind bank. I thought everybody just had access to that. I remember teachers asking me how I knew something in school and I always answer, “my  mind bank.” The teachers call my parents and like, “you got a weird one on your hands.”

You’ve got a special one. I don’t like it when people say weird to somebody who’s so special and enlightened. That’s not right.

Well, growing up in Saskatchewan, I was a weird one. I can live in it. It’s okay for me. I really do think that you would be a living, breathing example, Orion, of this idea of exploring and dedicating yourself to the work to get your fingers on your unique combination. When you have your fingers on that unique combination, then that’s what shifts our state of being. It’s not very difficult to see when you spend a little time to feel and to experience somebody who has their fingers on that or somebody who does not. That’s not rocket science. I proceed that each and every moment that you, I and anyone else on planet earth has spent in that process of discovering consciousness, builds and contributes to our capacity to be. And that’s a cumulative effect.

Nice. You do a lot of work around the mastermind and I think that was coined from the book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill?

Yes.

And he’s talking about the power of mastermind and how when great minds come together, whether in person or in your mind’s eye, we can have great inventions, find great answers and do great things in the world. What does the word mastermind mean to you?

Everything you said is absolutely true. I will add my own personal stand to do this. When a mastermind is selected, vetted and guided well, then, the relationships that come to pass is an experience of being in a group of human beings that are willing to stand for the best in you even when you may have temporarily forgotten. That whole thing of “I’ll stand for the best in you even when you have forgotten. I’m here for you to stand for the best of me even when I have temporarily forgotten,” what that really boils down to are acts of love.

In business-business mastermind world, that sounds like a weird thing, but the truth is, a well-matched mastermind is truly an act of a loving community that stands for the best of one another, to live their mission and make their unique contribution in the world. When that happens, there’s nothing more powerful under the sun.

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When you create a mastermind, how did you go about creating one? How did you start your first one?

By accident.

It was your mind bank.

A little bit. Yes, actually. For us, what transpired is that we were leading these incredibly powerful personal development processes, exactly the same things. It was my big wakeup call and it serves the path. Many of these types of organizations would fly into a city, do a bunch of courses, and fly out. Often, they tell us a story of, “Oh, we changed their lives and all the rest.” But what was unique for us is that we set up a shop in Calgary and we delivered courses consistently in Calgary for the better of 30 years and frankly, we still do, just not the same volume.

What’s fascinating is that, instead of flying in and out, I would play soccer with my kids and my grads. I would run into a graduate who I knew had big visions for his or her business, working behind the desk at Starbucks. I actually was in long-term relationships, seeing what people did.

The truth was this. For most people, the gravity of the life that they designed with the beliefs they had is that they would have this glimpse of what their life could become. But they go back to the life they designed and the gravity of that life would pull them back to the same way as they were. The only real difference is that it hurts a little bit more because they have a glimpse of what’s possible. That just genuinely sucks.

Believe me, I’ve been there.

We all have. That’s the honest-to-goodness truth of it.

You go to this wonderful seminar and like, “Yes, I can conquer the world,” and then you go home and you’re like, “Sh*t…”

Yes, and other expletives if you’re from Saskatchewan. So, what we came up with is, not through any great research or any of those pieces, I believed that what people need was moral support, more community, more raving fans, and more acceptance in that domain. What we did about 25 years ago, was that we started putting together mastermind groups for longer-term support. We started internally, hundreds of them. I taught people externally, thousands of people on how to do it because we had done them in more range of arenas, both personal development and professional development. Literally, what we did is we took the course that we did and taught our facilitators, coaches, and trainers on how to run mastermind groups. And then, we made that available publicly with a little bit of marketing support. That’s really how the entire brand of Mastermind to Millions started.

A couple of days ago, I was in Arizona attending the Genius Network with Joe Polish. It’s just a lovely group. We talked about some consciousness ideas and then some business ideas. Really lovely group of people. There was a small discussion about masterminds and Joe said, “Well, I don’t call what I do a mastermind, there are so many masterminds out there. We are a network of people that connect.” What’s the difference between a network and a mastermind?  What makes your masterminds effective?

That’s a great question. Number one, I appreciate Joe’s distinction. In my mind, the largest I’ve ever really felt like we were still effective was about 16–18 people. By the way, that number is 12, so let’s just use 12 for the sake of argument. In most cases, when we get beyond 12, what happens is that the depth of the relationship is too much for people to manage.

I want you just to think of it from this perspective. As we add people to a group, the complexity of the group doesn’t go up in a linear fashion. It goes up in a geometric fashion, meaning that it is exponentially more complex by just adding one person. For example, there’s me and there’s you, so there’s you and me, and then there are our relationships. There are three dynamics going off. If we added my dear friend Christian, then there’s my relationship with Christian, your relationship with Christian, my relationship with you, the relationship between the three of us and all of our distinctions there that we keep adding.

What happens is this. We, as human beings, cannot manage really more than 10–12 of those things in any meaningful, deep way for a span of time. We just don’t have the capacity. This is why—what I’m going to call true masterminds which are less training, less brainstorming, and more this one-on-one depth of experience, one of the reasons I use the example of when it’s done well it’s an experience of love—that is different from a network because we can’t manage the same depth of connection.

The network is still a powerful and amazing thing, but it’s just different. I really appreciate, respect, and admire Joe for calling out that distinction because there are tons of people out there calling their premium, high-ticket programs masterminds when there are 150 people in there. We can genuinely mastermind to that in terms of what its true nature is in that circumstance. Does that make sense?

It makes sense and I totally agree. “But I just got to know this person. Now, I’m going to the next one and I’m going to interact with somebody else. Then, I have to find a way to nurture my previous relationship.” It’s really hard. Joe is freaking phenomenal human being. I think in the past, those gatherings were very formal. Now, they’re very open. People talk about drugs. They talk about sex. They talk about everything and it’s quite nice to have this level of honesty among the members. It’s nice.

We’ve all been to a personal development process, right? Not just business but also including the personal development process.

Yeah. So, you take 12 people. Take me to the process of creating your mastermind. You take 12 people. You invite them in.

Let’s back that up before we let anybody in. This is a complex process. I actually have a digital program called Launch Your Mastermind 90 Day Bootcamp that is probably three regular digital programs. That’s how comprehensive it is. If we can do the 10,000-foot view, we go through something called PPSP. That acronym of PPSP is the starting point for anyone to run a successful mastermind in my mind. I’ll just go through what that stands for so that people can really get their head and heart wrapped around it.

The first P stands for promise. What is the promise of the mastermind? We’ve got a little bit of a paradox here because if you think of it from this perspective, the greater influence, the more well-known you are, the more sort of celebrity that you have, the less important and the less significant the promise is, because people just want to be associated with you, hang out with you, talk to the person who wrote the book that changed your life. So, you’ve got to keep that in mind.

The less well-known you are, the more significant the promise of the mastermind is. You’ve got to be really clear of what will be different in the people in 12 months as a result of participating in this. Will it be that they’ll have access to this incredible genius network? I know Joe talks a lot about addictions and all sorts of things. Will it be that they will face their addiction and get themselves into some sort of support process for that? Will it be that they’ve added a zero to their bottom line in terms of making more money? Will it be that they feel the relationship with their family or will it be that they have re-engaged in a spiritual revolution in their life? It doesn’t matter what it is, but that promise must be clear, powerful, and articulated in a manner that makes sense.

The next P is called positioning. Positioning has two key components to it which is this. The first is, you’ve got to be perfectly clear about who cares about that promise. This is the beautiful thing about masterminds. In the world of digital programs, in the world of entrepreneurial coaching, in all those pieces, we have come up with a promise and something as meaningful to quite frankly tens of thousands of people, to be remotely successful in a digital launch.

The truth is, that promise only needs to be meaningful to 8–12 people. The promise can be incredibly highly personal. This is a little tip if any of you are actually trying to build a mastermind. If the promise speaks to the internal dialogue of your member, that they haven’t been courageous enough to say out loud yet, you’ve hit gold. That is how your prospective member—this is the positioning piece—knows that you’ve been there, you’ve done that, you’ve understood it, and that you are in fact qualified to be their leader. If you can’t reach the internal dialogue that they’re not courageous enough to necessarily say it out loud yet, odds are really strong that you’re not their leader. You haven’t been there, you haven’t done that, you’re not the person that’s qualified to lead it. Does that make sense?

Yes. I’ve heard the idea of getting your prospect’s mind and know what they’re saying to themselves when nobody else listens, and then when they say something else to you, I’m like, “Uh, but I don’t live inside their minds. I’m just guesstimating. How do I know their conversation in their mind? I have the sense that I can lead and give them what they need, but how do I articulate the conversation in their mind?”

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Think of it this way. What are the issues that they’re facing, that they may not have articulated yet to other people? I’ll give you a couple of examples so this can make some sense. When I start doing entrepreneurial work, I started telling a particular story about beginning to scale and to grow a business. I had a reckoning with myself.

One night, I was driving home from the office at [11:15] PM. I was worried about making a payroll. Everyone else in the office who I was going to be paying had left at six. As I’m driving over this bridge in downtown Calgary, it strikes me like a ton of bricks. “Son of a bitch. They don’t work for me. I work for them.” Now, I will bet you, Orion, that almost every single person who has ever hired an employee has had a reckoning like that with themselves, but not too many people talk about it.

One of the things for people to know that I am their leader in terms of scaling a business is I’ve built multiple seven-figure businesses. It is not always a walk in the park, contrary to what you might see on Facebook with people sitting on the beach with their laptop. Here’s what it really looks like. It looks like sometimes putting people’s payroll on my freaking credit card. The truth of ourselves when we’re the ones working until almost midnight when everyone else has gone home so that the business continues, they don’t work for you. You’re working for them. If you have set it up in that manner, you have made a mistake and it’s a mistake that you need to fix, and I can help that.

That’s reaching into their thinking about, that they may not have the courage to say. No entrepreneur is building a business and trying to scale or launch and say it’s like, “Oh, I just realized I just screwed up all my hiring and I’m actually their employee.” That doesn’t sound so sexy. It’s not a great social media boost.

Yeah. Nobody will say that.

Exactly, but there isn’t a single person who’s done it, who hasn’t faced it, I guarantee it. I know that because I’ve walked that path not once, not twice, but about seven times.

I hope you don’t do it anymore.

Here’s the honest-to-God truth. Just to be clear about this, this is one of the mysteries. In fact, the gift I’m going to share with your community is going to talk about the recurring cycle as things change. For example, I’m in the middle right now of designing a new software platform for joint ventures. It’s something the world has never seen before. It’s something that we are, in many ways, feeling our way around in the dark, doing an inordinate amount of testing, experimenting, and trial-and-error to figure this out. We’re in a business spot again, the shock of all shocks, I have never been before, and I’ve got to keep an eye on the additional expenses in that process to make certain that I don’t land in that spot again.

As the business evolves and grows, if you’re really growing a business, that stuff will happen again. The first time it happened, we were doing six figures. Then, it happened at seven figures. This time, it’s going to happen at eight and nine figures, and we’ve got to continue to adjust it and apply the lesson on six and seven figures to eight and nine figures.

The bullshit story in digital marketing and building businesses is that you only ever deal with the problem once. That’s bullshit. The truth is, you deal with the problem with the context and the consciousness you have at the moment and the experience, and that if you are truly growing, evolving, and scaling both yourself as a human being and your business at the same time, you’re going to get into newer territories or you’re going to view it as the same fundamental problem, but just slightly a different tool kit. And we hope that it isn’t as challenging, that it isn’t as long, that it isn’t as hard.

But make no mistake about it. There aren’t that many build challenges about scaling a business. You got to make more money than you spend, you got to figure out how to get that product, service, or experience into the right hands, you got to make sure that this hacks department doesn’t take it all, and you got to manage these crazy things along that we call people. That’s a different scenario at six figures, seven figures, eight figures, and nine. Does that make sense?

Yes. I want to ask you so much about work-life balance, but before we get there, I still want to go back to the mastermind and that—

PPSP. The first is promise, the next is positioning, which is who cares about that promise and how do we communicate to them that we can actually deliver that promise? That’s about being inside the heads of the people so we can have the conversation, we know what that conversation is, and we can address it. Otherwise, they will not see us as their leader.

I’m going to say something really fast here before we do SP. There are only two reasons why masterminds fail to launch. Number one, the promise isn’t clear, or number two, the people that care about that promise but do not believe that you are their leader. Those are the only two reasons. If you have a perfectly clear promise, and people understand and get it, but they’re not signing up, all of that is feedback that says they don’t see you as their leader. You don’t have enough influence, you don’t have enough results, you don’t have enough whatever for them to say “yes” to that.

By the way, that’s a tough pill to swallow for people who are sure that all they need is a great promise and that they’re smart enough to do all that stuff, but it happens time and time again. Launching a mastermind can be one of the greatest reckonings of feedback in the universe, to be perfectly honest.

Now let’s go to PPSP. So, we got our promise, we have our positioning, then and only then do we do structure. Here’s the honest-to-goodness truth. The structure of many masterminds simply copies the structure of my mentor who had a mastermind. Do you remember seeing that movie Multiplicity where Michael Keaton figured out how to clone himself, but every single clone was a little dumber and dumber?

No, I haven’t. Should I?

It’s the cutest thing. Basically, the premise is this. It’s like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. It keeps getting a little degraded along the way. It’s the whole movie of him doing that and he ends up with six or seven clones of himself, each one slightly less capable than the first. It’s funny.

Here’s the honest-to-goodness truth. There are a bunch of masterminds in the world today that are copies of copies of copies of copies, where people aren’t perfectly clear about what the structure should be. Here’s why structure comes after promise and positioning. We must design the structure so that it will fulfill that promise 10 times over.

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What I hear people doing time and again is that they make up the structure, then they make up the price, then they try and figure out the promise. That is completely bass-ackwards. Promise first, then positioning, then structure, and the structure uses this criterion, what will deliver on this promise 10 times over. If you do that well, that’s going to tell you the structure.

Then only at the end of those three pieces do we then choose the price. Again, I can’t tell you how many rooms I’ve been in this, like, “Hey, I want to launch $25,000 over mastermind.” It’s like, “Well, good for you.” “Can you help?” “Probably not. That is your starting point.” I don’t really give a shit how much money you think you’re going to make. What I care about is what does it promise or what is it going to contribute to your client. If you’re starting at the price point, you’re already doing it wrong.

Absolutely. People selling $100,000 masterminds that had no substance at all. They were just good salespeople.

You and I both.

It’s quite upsetting to see that. I want to go back to positioning. For example, me. I want to open a mastermind one day and I don’t have the mega-celebrity status. How do you begin to have people see you as their leader?

That’s a great question. I’ll tell you one of the things that we teach in our Launch Your Mastermind Bootcamp, there are six modules. One of the modules is called Fill Your Mastermind with Ease. That process is aimed at building influence and relationships.

Here’s the honest-to-goodness truth that I think glossed over, particularly in our digital marketing world. Masterminds are an intimacy purchase. I see people try to sell people into an intimacy purchase when they’re still down at the awareness stage. Think of this as a step in a stage process. If you’re trying to launch a mastermind, your first step is you’ve got have people aware of who you are, what your stand is, what the promise of this mastermind is, the fact that you actually run one or all those sorts of things.

Now, from awareness, let’s say 100 people become aware of you, 10 people might say, “Orion’s a cool woman. She’s done all sorts of amazing things. I’m going to follow her and all sorts of things.” It actually moves up from awareness into a relationship. They’re looking forward to a podcast being released. If they know that you’re born to the Genius Network, they make sure that they book a time to have a coffee or to go for supper with you. They’re building this piece where they begin to care about you. That is the foundation of the relationship.

Now, it’s your job to take that foundation of the relationship up to where you actually have influence, this is one of the things where I think people make this mistake over and over again. They confuse a relationship for influence. The truth of the matter is that many people have a whole bunch of different motives in relationships, and you having influence over them is not always one of them. It’s clear that I can say that. So, it’s your job to figure how do you move that relationship from just relationship up to you having influence.

We teach this thing called Wine, Conversation, and Cash, which are these little mini masterminds where we bring people together, create a safe environment, understand what their mission is in the world and what support is that they need all those pieces. That’s beautiful work.

From that influence, we begin to then build intimacy and that intimacy of the process of disclosing more and more of who I am to another human being. That is the foundation. When we’re in the influence and in the intimacy range, that’s when a mastermind offer does well. People keep trying to do it, down at awareness and relationship, and it’s like going on a first date and jumping into bed. Does it work sometimes? Yes. Is it sustainable? Not generally.

Not always sustainable. I love that because we live in a world where everything is very surface-level and people get people through all kinds of manipulation techniques, into their funnel or into their programs, and I love how honest this is where, “Yeah, let’s just build the relationship. Let me get to know you better and let me connect to you on a heart level. Then, I can offer you something that I can give you. And each is whether to take it or not, but it comes from a beautiful place, not from this surface place.”

Correct.

Good job. You did well.

As I sometimes say, “It’s just not my first canoe trip. I’ve been down this road a couple of times.” Honest-to-goodness, one of the most consistent things that I tell people in the process of launching a mastermind is just slow the hell down. Just slow down. We don’t need to raise this thing. Do you want to sell four people in the mastermind that has to renew in a year and you’re worried about it? Or do you want to naturally attract 8–12 people that will be with you for 10 years? Which would you prefer? This isn’t a sprint. This is a marathon or an ultra marathon. It’s a different way of thinking about it.

It’s a great way of thinking about it. I really appreciate it. It aligns with the person that I am because I learned all kinds of techniques but sometimes it doesn’t resonate and sometimes it’s about just the human connection that we’re all missing. That’s why people go to those small masterminds to take them from isolation to true relationships in person.

Yes. You and I on the same page. I’m actually doing a cool project with a friend and a client of mine, Alina. It’s called The Big Idea Retreat.

Alina from JVX?

Yes, Alina Vincent. Exactly. And the aim of that whole event is for coaches, consultants, and people who are in what I’m going to call helping professions. To hear about it, to be educated by people from outside of our little bubble or outside of our little world. Things like aerospace, health care, changes in the law related to the economy. One of the most scientifically proven leaps forward in treating depression is psychedelics. Denver, by the way, just legalized mushrooms.

Yeah, I know. Mike Cadoux, yeah. That’s wonderful because people can use those drugs for good and it has tons of benefits. And that’s a whole new podcast.

It is. Here’s my point of what you’re saying about people coming together. Our culture and our world is going to change more in the next 15 years than it has since the beginning of time. We need to be comprised of what those changes are because what will happen is that we will be more connected digitally and still have this sort of Teflon separation that is going to require these masterminds, require these communities, require all these pieces.

That’s what the whole idea of The Big Idea Retreat. It is for people to… This is the change in healthcare. This is a change in the economy. This is a change in aerospace. This is a change in nanotechnology. This is how it’s going to affect us coming together in these small groups for real relationship. I’m just incredibly excited about it because I just think it’s so damn important and people are underestimating the influence and the needs for these connections.

Where is the event?

That’s going to be somewhere in the Bay Area.

Nice and how can people find the event?

They have to reach out to me. I wasn’t trying to plug it. Frankly, I was just trying to make a point of how important it is. I don’t even have a website for it, yet. It’s in November, but if they want to find out, they better reach out to me on social media or something like that.

All right. And the address is?

Just go Jay Fiset on facebook.com. That’s the easiest way.

Okay. I know you wanted to mention that you have a gift for our listeners as well, right?

Yes, I do, actually. Something that I absolutely love and is tied to every bit of the conversation around that we’ve had. It’s a short little course, but it is a powerful course. It’s called The Marginal Success Trap. It is a contextual frame and a process for people to understand where they really are at their business and how most entrepreneurs get stuck in a business that works, too good to quit, but not good enough to give them the freedom that they desire and the reason why they started it. They get stuck in this, it’s working, but not quite enough to get the car that you want, not quite enough to send the kids to private school, not quite enough to have the holidays that we want, but too good because I can’t quit and leave my clients and my receivables, then, then, then.

If your promise speaks to the internal dialogue of your audience, you’ve hit gold. Click To Tweet

It provides a contextual frame to think differently about your business and to evaluate yourself from your business on five key points, which then tell you what you must adjust to break free. I just love that thing and it’s called The Marginal Success Trap. If you are an entrepreneur who has ever struggled with anything in terms of time, freedom, staff, driving across the bridge at [11:50] at night being pissed off, you should do that course. By the way, that course came from those conversations with myself, going how is this possible? And that’s the answer.

We only have a short time left together. This was such a pleasure. You are a wonderful person to talk to and you’ve got so much knowledge. Share some more knowledge with us. What are your three top tips to living a stellar life?

My three top tips to living a stellar life. I think number one, family first. That’s just the simplest thing in the universe. If we can’t get our relationships working at home, we shouldn’t be too busy doing much anything else. I’m blessed with my family. That’s number one.

Number two is it is our task as human beings to continue to wake up. Either we step into that work in a proactive, heart open willingly way, or God, spirit, universe. Think about it, life itself will grind us into that decision come hell or high water. The truth is, you can do it the easy way, you can do it the hard way, it’s going to happen. It will happen through a divorce. It will happen through business loss. It will happen through parents passing away. It will happen through challenges. If it’s going to happen anyway, why not just decide that part of my role here on planet earth this time around, whatever you believe about that stuff, is to dedicate myself to the awareness of who I am, what I really am, and what my role here is on planet earth. So, do it open. That’s number two. Dedicate yourself to consciousness in a proactive, positive way.

The third thing, the big picture is this. When number two is done, it’s your job to align your life and your resources around your passions and your gifts. Life wasn’t meant to be hard, life wasn’t necessarily meant to be grand, but it doesn’t mean that you’re on difficult spots. But when we consciously dedicate ourselves to aligning our life and our resources around our passions and our gifts, things get beautiful. That, to me, are the top three things.

Wow. Thank you. Those are beautiful. I really appreciate it and thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for being here.

Orion, I sure appreciate it you having me and this was a great conversation. I look forward to us reconnecting in another way at another time.

Thank you and thank you, listeners. Remember, put your family first, keep connecting to your spirit and consciousness, take and find higher levels of awakening, and awakening is an ongoing journey. Align your life and resources around your talents and gifts, and live a stellar life. Until next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

✓ Continually improve your skills and knowledge. You can take physical and online courses, attend seminars, or even browse through YouTube tutorial videos. Make every day a learning experience.
✓ Develop a deeper consciousness of who you truly are by taking NLP lessons. Learning about your strengths and weaknesses can help you find your path and excel with your natural talents.
✓ Look for mastermind groups you’re interested in that can help boost your self-esteem and improve your network.
✓ Cultivate a good work ethic. Your work reflects your life principles. Aim to be of service and always present your best work.
✓ Don’t hesitate to share your own gifts with the world. If you have knowledge of something important, teach. If you have the right skills, serve.
✓ Embrace honest living and don’t try to hide your flaws. People tend to connect with you more when they realize how human you are.
✓ Learn how to run a mastermind yourself and help more clients live a better life with the help of Jay Fiset’s Launch Your Mastermind 90 Day Bootcamp.
✓ Be an influential leader. Build rapport with the people around you. If they see you as someone reliable and compassionate they will be more likely to follow you.
✓ Be clear with what your priorities are and put work into your relationships.
✓ Check out Jay Fiset’s website for information on coaching services.

Links and Resources

About Jay Fiset

Best selling author, student of human nature, can see and reflect your life mission in 5 minutes flat, loves ideas, but loves results even more, can simultaneously laugh and cry for different reasons at the same time, has never been star struck (but did not get a chance to meet Martin Luther King). Jay is dedicated to instigating a global movement of Conscious Creators and supporting people to organize their life and resources around their passions and gifts.

Disclaimer: The medical, fitness, psychological, mindset, lifestyle, and nutritional information provided on this website and through any materials, downloads, videos, webinars, podcasts, or emails are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical/fitness/nutritional advice, diagnoses, or treatment. Always seek the help of your physician, psychologist, psychiatrist, therapist, certified trainer, or dietitian with any questions regarding starting any new programs or treatments or stopping any current programs or treatments. This website is for information purposes only, and the creators and editors, including Orion Talmay, accept no liability for any injury or illness arising out of the use of the material contained herein, and make no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the contents of this website and affiliated materials.