Misfit Entrepreneur February 2020 - 183: An Incredible Conversation with the World’s Most Extraordinary Marketing Mind, Jay Abraham

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Dave Lukas Chats with Jay Abraham

183: An Incredible Conversation with the World’s Most Extraordinary Marketing Mind, Jay Abraham

This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Jay Abraham. Jay needs no introduction as the world’s top marketing and business growth expert and founder of the Abraham Group. Jay has worked with most of the Fortune 500, been featured just about everywhere on TV throughout the world to Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Investor’s Business Daily and he’s helped increase the bottom lines of over 10,000 clients working across a 1000 plus industries.

Jay’s become who he is because he looks at things in a totally different way. He has an uncanny ability to find overlooked opportunities and create significant profits where not else can see them.

Jay has probably forgotten more about how to succeed in growing a business than most of us will ever learn in a lifetime and I’m going to do my best to squeeze every ounce of wisdom I can from him in today’s episode. So, let’s jump in.

www.Abraham.com

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Show Notes

Jay got started in an unusual way. He was married at 18, had two children by the time he was 20 which meant he had the needs of a 40 year old in his life. He was fortunate and challenged enough that a bunch of entrepreneurs found him interesting and gave him commission only positions. As Jay says, “When you only eat when you earn, you find out very quickly what works and what doesn’t.”

That experience was his “trial by fire.” He began to jump around from industry to different industry over the next 4 years taking things he had learned in one industry and bringing them to other industries where the strategies were unfamiliar. Jay notes that he was sort of the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. He imported ideas from outside industries and combine them with other ideas to turbocharge results. It wasn’t that Jay was that great, but he had an uncanny ability to bring different strategies together in new and never before-seen ways.

At the 8:30 mark, Jay talks about “best practices” in the context of seeing beyond “best-practices” in your industry to create new ways of generating and growing revenue.

Studying other industries and what succeeds in them is like when you travel around the world to other countries.
It opens your eyes to ways of doing things and ideas you never thought of.

What is Pre-Imminence? Why is it so important?

It is the ultimate strategic philosophy that guides and governs your business.
It is a way of living.
It is the foundation on which a business, culture, philosophy is built.
It is based on premise that you want to be seen in the eyes of your audience as the most trusted adviser they could ever turn to in the category that your business serves – for life.
You want to be seen as the only viable choice for your solution/service.
Second to that is being able to provide people with authentic advice in their best interest – not in yours. Sometimes your product or service is not the best fit.
Your role is not transactional, but transformative. Making clients lives better, safer, happier, more enriched, etc.
Look at your prospects like clients, not customers. Customer is a someone who buys a commodity. When you approach things for “customers” you commoditize yourself.
A client is defined as someone who is under the care, well-being, and protection of another.
Clients are 3 categories:
- People you transact business with
- People you employee
- People who provide products/services to you
You must strive to examine and explore and understand these people in every way possible so you can serve them in the best way.
People should be better off every time they interact with you.
Then it is translated into your foundation.

Patterns of success you’ve seen throughout your career?

The ability of the entrepreneur to understand and appreciate the dynamic that their target audience is experience.
The best ones are the ones that have been there and done and suffered through the challenges they set out to solve.
Intention and attention – external focus is important.
The ability to listen. To listen to the market. Ask questions and utilize the answers.
Passion, purpose, and a sense of possibility
- Passion for the people the product or service will help.
- The greatest can genuinely rally people together for the purpose and give them the sense of possibility.

Biggest problem with business growth?

The more success entrepreneurs get, the more distant they become from the initial purpose.
Money is interesting. We are rewarded in our lives for the quantity, quality, consistency of the problems we solve for others and opportunities we make possible for others.
When we stop doing that, the rewards diminish.
The biggest mistake people make is trying to make money first vs. trying to solve problems.
Value is the key to everything. If you know how to create value, you’ll never truly fail. There will be setbacks, but you’ll win long-term.
You are playing a long game in life, even if you don’t know it, you are accumulating your whole life. It compounds one way or the other, good or bad.
If you build something solid, it will serve you for years to come.
There is much joy in playing the long game, it is much more fulfilling.
You have to constantly look to make things better, but if it’s built solid with the right intentions, it serve you well.

How can someone use the Socratic method to close more deals and grow their business better?

If you want to ethically own relationships, you want to ask a lot of questions and listen deeply to the responses. You can then build on every answer
This build trust
You’ll understand their needs very well.
They will feel understood and appreciated.
Anyone that interacts with those who transact business with you, should practice this method.
When you ask the right question, you uncover better ways to add value, create more need, and better serve.
Assumptive thinking is the kiss of death.
Assessing is the process of question – most salespeople don’t do this. The dialogue should be about adding value, not manipulating.
By mastering soft skills, you can 3-4x outcomes. It’s geometric.

The first thing Jay does with a new client is look at how a client is performing in all areas of their business because most of the time, they are not optimized in any of the areas.

At the 46 min mark, Jay talks about how to sell better. It’s best to just listen.

One thing you can do now to grow your business?

Create a serious, focused referral strategy.
Referrals are the easiest and best way to grow your business.
There are hundreds of ways to get referrals – stop and think deeply on how you can do it in your business.
Doing nothing is much more dangerous than experimentation. You must start trying strategies.

One way to improve your processes is to look at the people doing the work in your business, see how the best is at certain things, and then take what they do and teach it to the others doing the role, the whole group will improve.
When you find who is better what, you can take all the best practices, put them together and teach everyone making them better.

At the end of the day, there are 3 ways to grow a business:

Increase the number of buyers
Increase the size of the transaction
Increase the number of transactions
Working on one will make a big difference, but you get geometric increases by improving all 3 together.

Best Quote

When you only eat when you earn, you find out very quickly what works and what doesn’t.

Every human being has value. You can’t appreciate the value if you don’t take the time to examine and explore it. How they see life is a denominator in how you impact them.

Every time you interact with anyone for any reason in your life, you need to make them better off for interacting with you.

Listening is more powerful than talking. And listening can help you learn to grow outside your comfort zone and understand in new ways.

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