One of the fastest ways to learn how to create breakthroughs is to watch how the greats do it…
I’ve learned a TON over the years studying Jay Abraham. And this morning as I was catching up on his The Ultimate Entrepreneur Podcast I had one of those moments where I felt like he was opening the fire hose.
In fact, I was driving when it happened, and so I started scribbling notes on an old receipt. Then, I realized it was just too much, too fast… So I skipped ahead to another episode so I could come back and listen at my computer, when I could write a lot more notes, a lot faster.
And I realized that I could actually take those notes, add my thoughts, and translate them into a really powerful Breakthrough Marketing Secrets essay — so that’s what you’re getting!
First: what my son’s basketball team has to do with Jay Abraham’s thinking…
A few weeks back I wrote about The Architecture of a Skill — there, specifically applied to copywriting, but a universal model.
Principles are the foundation on which you build strategy, on which you build technique, on which you build tactics.
I explained how if you get principles right, your strategies, then techniques, then tactics all fall in line. If you come at it from the other direction and focus on tactics first but have wrong principles, you’ll never succeed.
Well, yesterday was my son’s last basketball game of the season. And with that, perhaps the last basketball game I’ll ever coach. (Though my wife told me the other day that my other son’s soccer team doesn’t have a coach yet…)
At the beginning of the season, I told the kids that I didn’t have any experience coaching… Or even any experience in competitive basketball. But I’d figured out one guiding principle in hockey, and I thought it would be helpful in basketball, too:
More shots, more stops.
Now, that’s actually more elegant than I started the season with. But the kids got it. And we made it our main mission all season to take more good shots, and stop the other team from getting as many good shots.
In the middle of the season, I realized the kids weren’t going for rebounds, so we added one more thing:
More shots, more stops, more rebounds.
These last two games were the two where we really had that formula in place. Last week, we won 14-0. (Assuming all shots are 2-pointers, as no official score is kept.)
Yesterday, we won 28-6.
More shots, more stops, more rebounds.
In the middle of the game, I heard the other team’s two coaches talking about, “Okay, do that offensive play we practiced.” They worked on tactics. I barely ever worked on tactics.
More shots, more stops, more rebounds.
Principles for winning that once we got those down, every part of the game improved. They played together as a team. They passed to the person with the open shot. They moved the ball to the hoop. They didn’t let the other team past the perimeter. They waited in the pocket for the rebound.
What the heck does this have to do with Jay Abraham and business breakthroughs?
Well, Jay is great at distilling down all the business tactics and techniques and strategies down to elegant principles.
The business version of more shots, more stops, more rebounds that Jay made popular?
More customers, spending more, more often.
If you were to look at your business once per week and ask yourself three questions, you’d create virtually unlimited breakthroughs…
— What can we do to attract and convert more customers?
— How can we increase our average transaction size and customer value?
— What can we do to get customers to come back more often?
And just like more shots, more stops, more rebounds is a principle that would apply for just about any fast-paced game with two goals (basketball, hockey, soccer, etc.)…
More customers, spending more, more often works for ANY business, in ANY industry — in fact, Jay has now helped created over $20 billion in growth in over 1,000 industries, according to his running tally. And frankly, I think if you were to actually trace his total impact, that’s probably an under-estimation by a factor of at least 5 or 10.
But now we’re almost 750 words and about 30 minutes into my 1-hour writing time, and I haven’t even gotten to the REAL MEAT of my message for today…
How Jay Abraham creates 30 or more business-doubling breakthroughs per day!
You see, I was listening to one of Jay’s older podcasts, promoting an event that happened last December, called The Entrepreneur’s Triumvirate. (I know, I told you I’m catching up — I’m a podcast binge-listener.)
For the event, Jay brought together:
— Daymond John, of ABC’s Shark Tank, plus FUBU and now a lot more
— Randall Lane, Editor of Forbes
— And Jay himself, the $20-billion “Preeminent Business Growth Expert.”
And in that particular episode of the podcast, The Triumvirate with Shark Tank’s Daymond John, Jay just spent a minute riffing on what to expect and what you’d get at this event.
I don’t know if he even realized what he was doing — or how powerful it was.
But here’s the thing. Jay is known for his hot seat-style seminars spread across multiple days where he breaks down one business after another, helping them clarify their biggest challenges or problems, solving them, and doing that rapid-fire in one business after another.
He has charged $25,000 for programs like this. Getting a bunch of businesses in a room, and tackling their biggest business challenges. And for the right businesses, that’s the bargain of the century… Because he can show a $500,000 business how to quickly double to $1 million, $1 million to $2 million, $5 million to $10 million, and so on…
Because why? Because he recognizes the PRINCIPLES behind rapid business growth, and breaks down a business until he recognizes what principle they’re either missing or not fully leveraging, installs it, and creates an almost instant breakthrough when that business leaves the event and puts that principle to work.
What Jay did on that podcast episode was open up the fire hose and just gush out exactly how that process works, so if you were one of the 30 people they’d have in the room for the Triumvirate, you knew what to expect.
Here are the steps Jay said he goes through in creating business-doubling breakthroughs at a breakneck pace…
First and foremost, Jay isn’t thinking, “How can I write a sales letter for this company that will help it grow?” That’s very tactical thinking. It might be a byproduct of what comes out of his many recommendations (and those of the others in the Triumvirate), but it’s just the beginning…
Here are all the PROCESSES Jay rolled into one two-day event, and everything he was looking to draw from to identify the biggest breakthroughs available to each of the 30 businesses in attendance:
— Marketing makeover: what messages, markets, offers, etc. will produce the greatest result?
— Strategy restructuring: what opportunities are being missed int he the current plan of attack?
— Business model remodeling: is the current business model the optimal approach for the market, for the customers, for meeting the goals established?
— Competitive advantage enhancement or expansion: is there a clear reason why customers should choose your business over every option available to them in the market? What can be done to further entrench that advantage, expand it, or communicate it better?
— Access vehicle identification: what 5 or 10 other ways are there to reach your prospects and customers more effectively, for bigger impact? How can each be best leveraged?
— New distribution channel identification: what other ways are there to get your products or services to customers?
— Alternative revenue and profit source generation: once you have a trusted advisor relationship with a customer, how can you make more by helping them solve more or bigger problems and challenges?
— Contribution and value creation: what can you do to provide overwhelming and unmatched value in the lives of your customers, your market, your community in a way that establishes you as a preeminent authority in the market and a trusted brand?
But that’s just all the perspectives Jay, Daymond, and Randall will look at the businesses from — all the processes in the businesses that can be improved.
As for the event itself, it’s structured in a way to really get to the heart of each attendee’s business, and identify which of those areas are most relevant, impactful, and accelerative to address.
And so before attending, each attendee had to fill out a business assessment. The assessment itself was designed to look at the business from more than 30 different angles, many of which are totally missed by most entrepreneurs when they strategize and even try to take an impartial look at how to grow their own business.
Then, in the room itself, they do round robin hot seats. That is, each business in attendance gets a turn to discuss their #1 key issue.
The problem or challenge is identified, discussed, and solved. While the Triumvirate of experts gets first whack at it, Jay is immensely collaborative with the attendees, figuring at least one of the 30 in the room has a unique perspective to help get to the heart of the challenge. Their goal is to get to an actionable solution or solutions quickly, and move to the next, to the next, to the next.
Now here’s where it gets really interesting — and this is very unique to Jay.
After a few rounds of this breakdown-to-breakthrough process, Jay goes back to each attendee, and asks for their personal takeaways. He wants ah-has, action items, and the expected impact on the business of implementing.
I think this is particularly powerful for a few reasons. One, it challenges you to actually make sure you’re taking impactful notes. Two, it forces you to think in terms of actions you’ll take, to avoid the whole experience being mere intellectual entertainment. And three, it really adds depth and perspective to everything that was said, for the benefit of everyone in the room.
And then Jay takes it a step further.
He then asks each attendee to share perspectives beyond solving their own key issues, that they got out of observing everybody else. That is, as you watch and listen to all the other businesses’ hot seat sessions, you develop perspectives and insights that will also be impactful. And Jay challenges each attendee to bring this perspective back to the group.
By the time you’re done with an event like this, you have all the experts’ insights on all 30 businesses, all 30 attendees’ insights on their own businesses, and all 30 attendees’ biggest takeaways from looking at other businesses and thinking “How could that apply to us?”
It’s powerful!
The outcome of going through a process like Jay’s…
It’s no wonder that when you add up all the impact Jay has had in over 1,000 different industries, that it’s at least $20 billion.
It’s no wonder Brian Kurtz named him as a Titan for The Titans of Direct Response.
It’s no wonder so many people look up to Jay and hold him in such high regard as a business thinker.
Because here’s what he PROMISES and DELIVERS ON…
How to out-think… Out-market… Out-position… Out-strategize… Out-compete… Out-contribute value… Out-monetize… And outperform the competition…
For an out-sized and outstanding result.
And that’s all from just the first 11 minutes of that podcast episode.
I’m not trying to sell you anything of Jay’s (although I whole-heartedly recommend at least reading his Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got book).
Rather, I simply want you to understand:
- The power I’ve gotten and that’s available to you by learning to think like Jay, and attack business issues, challenges, problems, and opportunities from every angle possible… AND…
- The power that comes from finding the principles that matter most, and building all your thinking around the processes for best applying those principles.
Now I’ve cracked the 2,000-word mark and have gone over schedule, but I think these breakthroughs were more than worth it…
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
