How to Build a Strong Team and Leverage AI for Growth with Jonathan Mast

Unlock the secrets to building a thriving team and harnessing AI for growth in this inspiring episode with Jonathan Mast. From overcoming multiple failed ventures and a pivotal period in federal prison to founding successful businesses like Valor Circle and White Beard Strategies, Jonathan's journey is a powerful example of transforming setbacks into success.

In our conversation, Jonathan reveals the realities of evolving from a solo entrepreneur to a visionary leader. He shares his strategies for effective delegation, hiring the right people, and cultivating a strong team culture. Plus, learn how his passion for digital marketing and AI, sparked during a chance encounter with an expert, has driven him to help over 400 clients achieve remarkable results.

Discover actionable insights on leveraging AI for growth, continuous learning, and building a motivated team. This episode is packed with valuable guidance for leaders aiming to navigate challenges and lead with purpose.

Books Mentioned:

• See You at the Top by Zig Ziglar
• Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell

Connect with Jonathan Mast:
To connect with Jonathan Mast and explore his insights further, visit jonathanmast.com/linktree. There, you'll find everything you need to join his Facebook group, learn more about AI, and engage with him directly. Whether you’re looking to dive deeper into his strategies or just want to reach out, this is the best place to connect.

Ready to Finish 2024 Strong?
Don’t wait until December to address your challenges. There's a few months left in 2024, now is the time to plan for a strong finish! Book a free strategy call with Dr. William Attaway to create a plan for impactful results. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Jonathan Mast
• 5:27 Hiring the Right People and Staying in Your Lane
• 10:16 Creating a Culture of Fulfillment and Service
• 19:21 Harnessing the Power of Artificial Intelligence in Business
• 24:19 Challenging the Status Quo and Making Decisions
• 32:47 Embracing AI as a Leadership Tool
• 38:15 Surrounding Yourself with Great People
• 41:38 Prioritizing and Delegating with 'Buy Back Your Time'
• 44:04 You Have the Power to Achieve Your Goals

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

It is an honor today to have Jonathan Mast on the podcast. With his roots in the digital world dating back to 1995, Jonathan has cemented his reputation as a visionary in leveraging artificial intelligence and establishing topical authority online. Over the years, Jonathan's foresight has led to monumental successes in the digital arena. His brainchild, Valora Circle, founded in 2010, is a testament to his prowess. Collaborating with over 400 clients, he and his dynamic team transformed into a seven-figure digital marketing beacon. In his latest venture, white Beard Strategies, Jonathan delves deep into the realms of AI, demonstrating its potential to revolutionize online business strategies. He is passionate about guiding professionals to not just navigate but lead in their niches by becoming undeniable topical authorities. He believes that by mastering AI tools, professionals can become more efficient, saving precious minutes daily and elevating their digital presence. Jonathan, I'm so glad you are here. Thanks for being on the show.

Jonathan Mast: 1:15

Well, thank you for inviting me. I don't know if I can quite live up to that amazing introduction, but I may have to reuse that. That was awesome, thank you.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:22

Hey, it's you man. I'm just, I'm thrilled you're here.

Intro / Outro: 1:27

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:44

I want to start with your story, because you shared some of this with me recently at a conference. We were both at where you were speaking and I think this is so absolutely fascinating. I'd love for you to share a bit of that, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Jonathan Mast: 2:04

Well, you know, probably like most of us, I got a couple of jobs right out of college and while I was doing that I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. So I tried a couple of ventures Most of them were miserable failures when I was in my 20s and so I ended up going to get a job because I had bills to pay and that worked out okay. I was in sales and I did very well in sales and being a salesperson, I had that flexibility to kind of have my own business. I mean, not really I worked for somebody but I got away with things that most people would never get away with because I was a good salesperson and fortunately, or unfortunately, they allowed me to do what I wanted to do, for the most part because I was a good salesperson. And then that house of cards that I learned it was ended up falling apart and caused some things to happen with me that really changed my life. One of those and I don't know if I shared this with you or not, I might have, but one of those was a three-year what I call my federally mandated sabbatical. Most people call that prison, and for me it was a three-year period that, candidly, god spoke into my life. As my wife said, he's going to hit you over the head with a two-by-four if you don't start listening. I didn't, and so I got hit over the head with a two-by-four and that looked like me spending three years in federal prison learning how to listen. I guess probably better than anything else.

Jonathan Mast: 3:17

But along the way, a really interesting thing happened, in that I'd been in sales for years. I've been very successful in sales. Obviously, I'd gotten into some trouble. Don't tell lies. That's what gets you into trouble. That's what I did, and in the process I remember, as I was headed down there, everybody in my family is like you know what are you going to do for three years? And I'm like well, I know a lot about sales. I really want to learn about marketing, and everything I know says that if you can read 10,000 pages, you're an expert, and I figure I got three years to read 10,000 pages, so do me a favor and send me some books. Okay, and people did, which was great.

Jonathan Mast: 3:51

But a more miraculous thing happened, and that's at the second day I was there, and this is, of course, as you can imagine. Showing up to prison is not the most amazing thing. I should clarify. I was at a camp, so there weren't bars or anything like that. It was kind of like a college dorm. And the second day I'm there, a gentleman who I'd met the day before, who actually gave me a pencil and a piece of paper to write a note to my wife and said hey, I've got somebody I want you to meet. And so he walks me as you can imagine, it's like walking through a dormitory wing. He walks me over, walk over to this older gentleman at the time Again, this was about 20 years ago and he says so, roger, I want you to meet Jonathan, and Jonathan, I want you to meet Roger. I'm like great, great. I'm looking at this gentleman. I have no idea who he is, and Terry the gentleman introduced us. So, roger, jonathan wants to learn marketing while he's here and I thought you two should chat. And I'm like Terry, why are you saying this?

Jonathan Mast: 4:46

Little did I know that Roger, who also was on his federally mandated sabbatical, was the Dean of Marketing for Ohio State University and had been for many, many years. And he looked at me very seriously and said are you serious? Is this what you want to do? And I said yeah, I've got three years. I want to use this to learn so that I can learn more skills. I've always thought sales and marketing went together, and Roger agreed to personally tutor me for the next three years because unfortunately his sabbatical was longer than mine, and so I had the opportunity to learn from just a brilliant man about marketing.

Jonathan Mast: 5:17

And as I then got out, decided that of course, as a felon, it's a little bit harder to go and get a job somewhere, because most people you have to check that box that says yes, I've screwed up in my life, and so I really focused on starting a business and launching that and was blessed to be able to do that starting Valor Circle, as you mentioned, and we really focused on the marketing side of web design. In other words, how do we start bringing that together? How do we? At the time when I did this, most web developers were developers. They focused on making sure the code worked well and everything else. They didn't spend near as much time making sure that the website looked good and converted, and so I used those skills I learned. We grew the business. We were blessed, as I mentioned, blessed beyond measure, grew the business, hit seven figures with it a number of years later and candidly realized it was a really hard slog to do that on project-based business.

Jonathan Mast: 6:12

It was at that time my wife had come into the company because I'm a sales and marketing guy, as I mentioned, not an operational guy, and if it had been left up to me, we would have been myself and two other people that were looking for jobs Because just on that quintessential ADD visionary entrepreneur guy, I would have drove them absolutely crazy. But she joined in, helped bring some organization to that and some operations, and we sat back and said in 2021, if we have to do this again, it's too tiring, this is just way too tiring. Way too many cogs, way too many moving parts. And so we met a business coach at that time by the name of Josh Nelson, who I understand you just spoke at his event down in Miami recently, and Josh and his seven-figure agency taught us how to convert what we'd done on a project-based business into a recurring revenue model. And I'm thrilled to say we went from seven figures in projects to eight months later. We totally revamped the business, totally redone everything, and we're now focused on doing that on a monthly recurring basis and had rebuilt up to seven figures in revenue, and that was probably one of the most dramatic business shifts that we'd ever made, but it was absolutely critical because it carried us through and was a huge blessing to us as we continued to grow. That because that recurring revenue combined with a recurring services model really fit our clients well. It fit us well and just brought with it a lot of benefits as we grew.

Jonathan Mast: 7:37

In 2023, it would have been last year it became apparent that my ADD entrepreneurial style as we grew as a company as I know you can relate I know the value of SOPs and I know the value of processes. I just I'm not the guy that likes to follow them, if that makes any sense and one of the things we discovered really quickly was that as we grew and we implemented some amazing policies and procedures and had an amazing team, but Jonathan would get involved and go oh, I'm going to help out and I would jump in and I would try to fix something and in the process I wouldn't follow our processes, I'd get it done and the client would be happy. And then a month later, whether it was a website or a marketing campaign or anything, our team would get back involved, because I, of course, had lost interest in that and stepped in and moved on to some other fire to solve. And they'd go what did you do last month? And I'm like, oh, I did this and this and this and this. And they're like that's not how we do it. And I'm like, yeah, but it all worked. And they're like, okay, no problem, We'll just redo everything that you screwed up.

Jonathan Mast: 8:36

And so we decided it was a good time, with AI coming on the scene, for me to step away and pursue that entrepreneurial bug that has never left me. And so I decided to start another agency, white Beard Strategies, and, as you mentioned, we're really focused on AI and how businesses can leverage that to save minutes or, as I try to promise people, an hour or more a day if they start implementing that within their organization and with their teams. And I'm just a huge believer that it's a tremendous technology. It's a tremendous wave that we're on, and this time, at 55 years old, I'm not going to sit and go. I should do something about that. I'm actually going to get involved and help people out, and it's been a tremendous year now that we've been doing that.

Jonathan Mast: 9:21

I've been able to serve again just dozens of more clients on this, some large multinational clients, some local businesses and everything in between, and I just absolutely adore being able to see the light bulb moments when I'm working with business owners and all of a sudden they go oh my goodness, I could save an hour a day, I could probably save more. Wow, we could actually improve our margins and while I'm improving margins, I could deliver more to my client. I can do all that at the same time, and so that's what we do with a lot of our clients and I just I love it. So sorry, that was a lot more than just the beginning story, but that's kind of how we got here.

Dr. William Attaway: 9:56

That was phenomenal. So many pieces of that that I just want to explore. I mean, just dig away. So so, building Valor Circle with, with your perspective, I mean you are obviously the visionary. You were obviously thinking EOS. You're obviously the visionary, the one who sees what nobody else sees yet and he wants to see that come into reality. Absolutely, as you began to build a team and as you began to to find people to join that team, and as you began to find people to join that team, what was leading like for you as you began to grow and to scale Valor Circle? For a lot of entrepreneurs, this is a challenge. They start a business because they're good at something. They're good at a product or a service, but as they find success and begin to grow, they have to hire people who then look to them to lead. What was that experience like for you?

Jonathan Mast: 12:16

Well, I'd love to say it was seamless, but that'd be a bold-faced lie. It was hard. It was harder than I ever imagined. Candidly, I never envisioned that it wouldn't be easy to lead, because sales have been easy to me, marketing had been easy to me and I never imagined all the other things that would come with it. But what I learned very quickly, like you said, is that as I started, first I identified the things that I sucked at, and there was a long list. The list of stuff I was good at was a lot shorter, but I tried to focus then on the stuff I was good at. And I was fortunate enough to have a business coach that said look, you can't be everything to all people and it's okay. That was first realization. As a business owner, I didn't have to be everything to everybody. Then it was identifying okay, here's what Jonathan's good at and everything else I needed to hire somebody to do. Because if I wasn't any good at it, even if I hired somebody and they did it 80% as good as what I thought I was doing it, it was likely going to be better than what I was actually doing.

Jonathan Mast: 13:17

And we began on the operational side, bringing in some operational excellence and I think one of the hardest things for me to learn as a leader at that point was the fact that there were disciplines and lanes that we needed to stay in. In other words, I, being a sales guy, I knew lots of people, and so I'd talk to somebody that you know was doing credit card processing at the local networking event and yeah, we'd love to talk to you about that. And I'd go talk to my operations manager and she'd go shut up, we have enough, we have a credit card processor, we don't need another one. And I'm like yeah, but but. And they're like stop. And I'll never forget, my operations manager sat me down by the way, it happened to be my wife and she said this is going to work. We both have to stay in our lanes. You're the visionary, you know what you want this company to be, you know where you want it to go, and that's great. But you can't get there without me and my team. That was the truth. I couldn't have. And she goes, so you stay in your lane and you handle sales and marketing and everything else you leave up to our team to handle. Now, I had veto rights, so obviously, if they were going to do something that I thought was stupid. I could, I could dive in, but I really quickly learned.

Jonathan Mast: 14:22

Probably the biggest leadership moment for me was learning to trust the people that I'd hired to do their job well and to steal from an ex-president Trust, but verify. But that meant all I had to do was verify. I didn't have to get involved. I didn't have to help figure out what was our accounts receivable process. When somebody didn't pay, what was the contract supposed to say? I let my ops team handle it and, obviously, when it came to the contract, our attorney got involved. But I didn't have to be in the middle of it. All I had to do was when it was all said and done and the people that I trusted to do this said all right, we're, we're ready, jonathan, take a look. I could take a look at it and go, yeah, yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh, okay, good, and let them do their things.

Jonathan Mast: 15:03

And that was probably the biggest leadership thing for me to learn was to let go of those things I wasn't good at because I felt I felt I had to, had to keep my fingers involved. And when I did that almost like I shared with you earlier in the story with the processes. When I got too involved in areas I wasn't good at, I screwed things up and I made my team's life difficult, and I've never wanted to make my team's life difficult. I want my team to love what they do. I want them to have the same passion that I have. No, they don't all, and that's okay. But my grandfather told me growing up if you hate what you do, you'll have to work every day of your life. If you love what you do, you only have to work a few days of your life. And I want my team to be in that same spot. I want my team to love what they do, to be fulfilled by what they do, and we really started that from day one, from our our first hire.

Jonathan Mast: 15:50

It was, like you know, I came from a corporate background and I remember literally the phone ringing at two in the morning because my boss, the owner, the CEO of the company was in Australia and he wanted to talk and he didn't give a rat's butt that it was two in the morning where I was, and I didn't want to be that boss. I didn't want to be that person. So we kept our staff in the US and we focused on the fact that, from eight to five, I want you to give your heart and soul and your best effort to our clients. I want you to amaze them, I want you to do everything you can to serve them fully and make their experience amazing.

Jonathan Mast: 16:24

But when five o'clock rolls around, I want you to know that Jonathan's not going to be bugging you. I'm not going to be calling you, I'm not going to. I want you because we work for our life, for the things we want in our life, and I wanted my team to do that. And those were all lessons I had to learn because I came from an environment where it was very natural, at 10 o'clock at night, if I had a question, to hop on the phone with somebody, and I had to learn that if I wanted the environment that I wanted, I wanted that team that I needed to also give them the freedom to operate during the day, but also the flexibility and the freedom to know that I wasn't going to interrupt their life outside of that, and for us that worked really well.

Dr. William Attaway: 17:02

I believe that every organization, every company, every team has a culture. You either have a culture that you have created on purpose or you have a culture you didn't mean to create. Every team, every company has a culture. How would you describe your culture for your team, for your company?

Jonathan Mast: 17:23

I think, more than anything else, I want to focus on two things for our culture. One, I want every member of my team to be fulfilled in what they're doing. I don't believe they're. I believe in the value of work. I believe it brings meaning to our lives when we do it well. And I believe in doing things well. Not everybody agrees with me on that, and that's okay. Not everybody should be on my team, but I want our members to be our team members to be fulfilled.

Jonathan Mast: 17:54

Secondarily, I want to serve our clients because I believe at the root of my being that if I add value to my clients, my clients will make sure that I'm doing just fine financially. If I focus on doing well financially not that that's not important it is like we got to pay attention to the numbers. But if my vision, my, my core was about serving my clients and I had to learn the hard way that means there have to be boundaries in place and sometimes you have clients you have to let go because they want to be served at a different level or in a different manner than is appropriate. But when we find that right mix, everybody wins in the process. My team members win and they're fulfilled and they get to grow.

Jonathan Mast: 18:24

My clients win because they get the services that they need and they get to grow, and I win ultimately because not only do I have a work that I love to do, but I'm able to share in the profits of that and the fruits of that labor because, again, we focused on delivering value to our clients. So, like you said, I think it's a very purposeful thing. You either grow your culture because you intend to or you grow your culture by accident. And I'll be honest, the first couple of years we grew it by accident, and then we started realizing myself in particular, I didn't like the culture, so we needed to make some changes, and that required some purpose and, probably more than anything else, me as a leader, changing my mindset, because people followed my lead and that was a part of that learning process along the way.

Dr. William Attaway: 19:11

You know you keyed in on a very important truth there and the reason I ask about culture, listening to how you lead your team and what you want for them that has to start at the leadership level. It has to start with the business owner. If this is something you can't delegate, you know we talk about delegation, how important that is, how critical it is to scaling and growth, and it is 100%. But you cannot delegate your responsibility for culture and your intentionality there, not only in saying this is what I want for my team, not just what I want from them, and that's an important distinction.

Jonathan Mast: 19:47

It is what.

Dr. William Attaway: 19:48

I want for them, what I want for their lives, what I want for their families, what I want for their work experience, their impact. That's critical. But you know what I loved most about what you just shared? You said, hey, we built this thing and some of it was by accident, and I didn't like it, so we changed it.

Intro / Outro: 20:07

That's so good, that's the truth.

Dr. William Attaway: 20:08

It's so simple. It's so simple it's easy to run past that. But do you know how many people I talk to who have a culture they hate and they continue. They think, oh well, it's just what it is? I love the intentionality you brought there.

Jonathan Mast: 20:25

I don't know if it was intentionality at the time, to be honest with you, or if it was just stubbornness on my part, because of the fact that I'm not the type of person that accepts no as an answer. I guess, being in sales for as long as I have been I don't look at any problem and go well, that's just the way it is. Because if I don't like it I mean my wife doesn't always appreciate this but if I don't like the way something's working, I work hard to change it, and rarely am I in a situation where I'm willing to accept the status quo. If I don't like the status quo Now, does that cause some problems in life? Sure, it does. But it also means from my perspective, I believe I lead a more fulfilled life and hopefully allow others around me to do the same. Because of that intentionality and that just belief, that core belief of mine and I don't know where it came from it's just instilled in me that you don't ever have to settle for the status quo.

Jonathan Mast: 21:15

You know when, when I got done with my federally mandated sabbatical, I had a number of people go basically, jonathan, your life's over, nobody's ever going to trust you. You lied, you got in trouble. You went to prison, your life's over, go find a factory job. And I remember just in my my core going you're nuts, I'll find people that believe in me and I'll prove that. And I had to. Did that mean my, my road may have been hard? Yeah, okay, I screwed up, I had. I then had to prove myself and I was okay with that, but I never was willing to accept that my.

Jonathan Mast: 21:47

You know, I got released. I was about 40 years old and I never expected or accepted at that point in time that my lot in life was already laid for me. That's just not who I am as a person. I believe life is 99% of what we make of it and only 1% of what happens, and I wasn't going to allow my past mistakes to define who I was moving forward or the impact that I believed I was intended to have.

Jonathan Mast: 22:15

And I don't. I'm not one of these people that has a God complex that believes I'm going to impact millions of people, but I absolutely believe that I can impact the people around me to raise that, that water level, because when the water level goes up, all the boats float higher and that means that I can help those around me as well, and, selfishly, I'm doing it because it's what I want. I mean, it's what I believe is best. So, yeah, I don't know if that fits in with any of that, but I just never bought that. If I don't like this, then okay, then let's change it, because I would not want to spend my life as a leader and I definitely fall into that role accepting something that I thought was unnecessary, and I don't want my team to do that either.

Dr. William Attaway: 22:59

I think what you're describing is the difference between a victim mindset, where you are the victim of your circumstances or your situation. Or you know, well, if I just had a better team, well, if I just had better clients, well, if the economy was better, well, I mean, that's so easy to slide into. And what you're describing is the opposite of that. No, no, it's 99%. What I choose to do is proactive. It's an understanding that you are in the driver's seat. As I often say, you get to choose, Absolutely. That's an incredible gift. That is an incredible gift, and the minute we slide into a victim mindset, we abdicate that gift.

Jonathan Mast: 23:37

And I don't see that in you.

Dr. William Attaway: 23:38

I don't see that in your journey.

Jonathan Mast: 23:40

No, I've never really thought of it that way. Different things impact us, but I remember reading a book by Zig Ziglar when I was probably 19 or 20 years old, and I don't remember the story accurately so I'm going to mess this up, but what I remember was that back in the early late 70s, early 80s, when we had all the economic problems that we had, that there was a life insurance salesman that decided that he was going to be the number one life insurance salesman and while every other life insurance salesman was talking about, oh, the economy sucks and gas prices are terrible and there's an oil embargo, and oh my gosh. I was a kid then. So I don't remember all the details, but I do remember. I remember my parents deciding were we going to drive an hour away from where we lived in order to do something we wanted to do because gas prices were so high? And Zig Ziglar shared the story of this agent who took the opposite approach. In the middle of all of this, he hired a driver to drive him around because he realized that those days we didn't have Zoom like we do now. He literally had to go visit all of his clients and he could get all his paperwork and everything else done, if he did it while he was driving between appointments. And so he did that and he became the number one sales rep for this insurance company in the entire nation.

Jonathan Mast: 24:54

He refused to accept that the economy was terrible and therefore nobody was going to buy anything. He refused to accept the fact that he was oh woe is me I've got to deal with. No, he made a change and I just fundamentally believe that, especially as leaders, we all have that ability to make that decision. We may not realize it, but within us is that ability to make a decision that I don't have to accept this. I don't have to deal with the status quo. I mean, as we're recording this, the economy has been better. Gas prices are high, food prices oh my goodness, you go to the grocery store. I can't believe how much money it costs to buy food anymore. I could bemoan that I could deal with that. I could go oh my gosh, I just don't know how I'm going to do it. Or instead I could go yeah, you know what it sucks when I go to the grocery store. It costs more money. I guess I better work harder, because I got to figure out how I can make enough money, because I still want to eat steak, and that's a decision to make, and maybe to some people that seems arrogant, but to me that's just deciding what I want in life. I'm okay eating ground beef if that's all I can have. Again, I spent some time in prison. Trust me, the food sucks. I'm okay with eating what I have to, but I also know that anything in life that I want to attain is available to me if I work at it and if I make a plan to achieve it.

Jonathan Mast: 26:14

I don't want a Lamborghini. I probably wouldn't fit anyway. I'm six foot four and almost 400 pounds. I wouldn't fit in a Lamborghini. It's not what I want. So what do I drive?

Jonathan Mast: 26:23

I drive a big Ford dually pickup truck. That's massive. I don't think they make a bigger truck because I like that. Now, people think I'm crazy. Go. Why do you drive that big pickup truck? Because I like it, and I really don't care if people think I should be driving a sports car Because I like driving my big pickup truck.

Jonathan Mast: 26:39

Some people love it, Some don't. I wear hats. Why? Because my hair is a mess underneath, candidly, and I don't have a nice clean head like you do. So I'm in Some people go why do you wear hats? Because I like to wear hats. It works, you know, and it's easier than me trying to make sure that my hair looks good, because I really don't care Again. I make decisions that fit the life I want to live, and I think we all, as leaders, have the ability to do that. But even more than that, I believe we have the responsibility to those around us to lead them to that same opportunity. I want to teach my team, my staff, that they too can make those choices, and hopefully those choices involve working with me. But if they don't, that's okay too, because if it allows them to then pursue their goals and their objectives and live the life they want, I'll find somebody that'll work for me then that's not a problem. But I want to lead others in that process, and it's just got to give the way I'm wired, I guess.

Dr. William Attaway: 27:37

Jonathan. There was so much goal there. That is so much insight. I'm just grateful to you for sharing so honestly and so openly from your journey so far, and I love the authenticity that you bring to this. You know, not trying to fit somebody else's picture of what you should be as a, as a business owner, as a leader. This is who I am, and you lean into that and make no apologies for it, and I think that every person who is listening, including me, can benefit from that, because I believe that is leaning into who you are and how you are wired, and we always lead best from that place.

Jonathan Mast: 28:22

Well, thank you for the kind words. I guess the solution to that is spend three years in prison and you'll learn that it changes your entire perspective on what matters in life.

Dr. William Attaway: 28:31

As they say, whatever it takes right.

Jonathan Mast: 28:33

I don't recommend it, by the way. It's not something I want to redo, but it was very impactful in my journey. It was something that I needed because I am strong-willed and I am a little stubborn Okay, a lot stubborn. I needed that time to. I'll literally never forget. I mean, growing up I cared a lot about what other people thought of me. I cared a lot about all of that and I literally remember sitting in Morgantown, west Virginia, which is where I was at, sitting on my bunk one day and going. I guess I don't really need to worry about what anybody around here thinks of me as long as I'm doing the right thing. In other words, I don't want to do the wrong thing and get back in prison. That wasn't my goal. That screwed my life up. But if I could serve others and some people didn't think it was a great idea, okay, no big deal If you didn't like the fact that you know and I worked for when I was in corporate America.

Jonathan Mast: 29:27

I worked for a guy. For example, I lost my executive parking space because I decided to buy a brand new Honda Accord. I bought a brand new Honda Accord because I was planning on leaving the company and I wanted a good, practical car. I wanted to get rid of the BMW I had and nothing wrong with BMWs, they were great cars, they were lots of fun, but they were really expensive. So I bought a brand new Honda Accord and I'll never forget day one. I parked in the executive parking. I had a spot and his assistant came over to my office about a half hour later and said somebody's in your spot with a Honda Accord. I go no, no, that's mine. I bought that. Okay, hang on. About a half hour later she came back and she goes yeah, the boss wants you to know you don't have a spot anymore. We don't park Honda Accords in the back, and that really bothered me at the time.

Jonathan Mast: 30:14

But I really have used that as something to kind of embrace, going forward, that I want to be who I am. I want to be authentic. I don't want to offend anybody. My goal is not to offend. I want to serve. I truly want to serve. But I've found that I have the ability to serve much more fully if I do that as myself, as opposed to trying to do it as someone who I believe the world wants me to be. And that means do I have flaws? Yep, I do Absolutely. Is that okay? Yeah, guess what, we've all got flaws. And, as a leader, I think, accepting that one, I do Absolutely. Is that okay? Yeah, guess what, we've all got flaws. And, as a leader, I think, accepting that, one, I do have those flaws and, two, that my team's going to have those flaws and that within that, we can still be flawed and succeed and excel and do some amazing things together, and that's my hope.

Dr. William Attaway: 31:00

You know you serve a lot of people through White Beard Strategies. You are a thought leader and on the front lines and front edge of AI. Ai is something that I think a lot of leaders who are listening maybe leaning into, stepping into maybe tentatively, maybe hesitantly, and I imagine there's more than a few people listening who are looking at it with some disdain and perhaps even some fear I would love for you to share from your experience so far. I mean you do everything from the consulting that you do. You have a Facebook group around AI that what? 170,000 people.

Jonathan Mast: 31:41

Yeah, 170,000 as of this morning. Yeah.

Dr. William Attaway: 31:45

Astounding. You run challenges. I mean so many ways that you are stepping into and equipping and serving people in this area. What can you share about AI that you think that the leaders who are listening need to?

Jonathan Mast: 31:59

know. Great question. I think the biggest thing I want to share is AI is not something to be feared. When we act from a position of fear as leaders, we tend to make poor decisions, same as when we act from emotional decisions. I've learned emotional decisions don't tend to be the right ones, or at least not the longstanding right ones. My emotion plays into it, but I still need to have logic behind that. I need to plan. So the biggest thing I'd want to say to anybody listening from a leadership perspective is one those around you are looking to you for cues on what to do about AI and, as a leader, I want to encourage you not to be fearful of it.

Jonathan Mast: 32:35

When the industrial revolution came around there and I've done a lot of research on this, because I hear people constantly saying oh, but Jonathan, this AI, it's going to take our jobs, it's going to ruin my company, it's got oh my gosh, what's going to happen? Well, you know what? In the industrial revolution, our great, great grandparents, new people, and maybe have been those people that were like no man, this internal combustion engine, this is going to ruin life, it's going to take all our jobs away. I mean, what's going to happen to the horse and buggy whip. Now I live in an Amish community. They're thriving here, no problem, but not not like they were back when the engine came out.

Jonathan Mast: 33:09

I'm old enough to remember, because I was in the workforce when the PC came out. That was right when I was in college and I remember plenty of people at that time going I ain't going to use that PC thing. I got a ledger book, I got an abacus, I got a daddy Merle, whatever you know, probably not the abacus. Okay, that was a joke. But I've got an Addy machine with a tape. I don't need that spreadsheet stuff. I've got a typewriter. I don't need this word processor stuff. Well, initially they didn't, but over time what we found is it brought efficiencies. Were there downsides to the PC? Are there some great nostalgia things? I can think back to the 1970s, before we had PCs in our desk. Sure, but overall I wouldn't want to give up my laptop and go back. Not the case.

Jonathan Mast: 33:50

I saw the same thing happen around 2000 with the internet. When the internet came out, I was in 1995-ish when that first came and became commercial and everybody was like either this is amazing or oh my gosh, this is going to ruin us. I mean, do you know we're going to be able to access nasty things on there? I mean, it was all kinds of stuff. And all the naysayers in the Industrial Revolution, all the naysayers when the PC came out, all the naysayers when the Internet came out, they've all been wrong. We didn't all lose our jobs, did some people? Yeah, there was a change. The people that made buggy whips learned new skills, got new jobs, but they didn't become destitute and sit on the side of the road and need handouts. The human nature is what we are. We saw this in COVID. We step up, we figure things out, we work through things.

Jonathan Mast: 34:46

That same thing is going to happen with AI and as a leader, especially as a business leader, I believe it's your obligation, it's my belief again, to serve others, to serve your staff, to serve those around you, and AI will help you do that better and more efficiently. Earlier we talked about I tell leaders all the time I'll help you save an hour a day with AI. Imagine if you could spread that across your entire team, whether you're a small company of 10 people or you're running a large organization of thousands. Imagine if we could help impact by giving one extra hour a day to every person on your staff One. They might get caught up on the stuff they need, but what else might they be able to do? They might have time to think about what they're doing and find an even better way to do it, a better way to help you make money, a better way to serve your customers, a better way to live life. Ai is a tool that will help us do that if we embrace it.

Jonathan Mast: 35:31

The other thing I want to say about AI and everybody goes my goodness, my expertise isn't going to matter anymore, because I don't need you to be my business coach anymore, my leadership coach, because I can just go to chat GPT. Ai amplifies the skill and experience that we have. I'm not a heart surgeon and I could learn a lot about heart surgery by asking chat GPT and Claude and Gemini. It'd teach me a lot, but anybody that was dumb enough to let me cut open their chest would probably die as a result. No pun intended, because I'm not a heart surgeon.

Jonathan Mast: 36:03

So when we're taking the zero amount of knowledge I have in multiplying and if we remember from math class back in middle school zero times anything is still zero. But if I'm a nine, if I'm already a great heart surgeon, I'm already a great business coach, I'm already a great manufacturer, I'm already great at whatever. And now I multiply that with AI, I'm going to be factors and multitudes ahead of where I would have been had I not done it. And I'll end with this. The reality is, if you, as a leader, don't embrace AI, your competitors will. It's that simple, so good.

Dr. William Attaway: 36:36

Jonathan, how do you stay on top of your game? How do you level up with new leadership skills? You have to lead at a different level today than you did five years ago. Oh, absolutely. And five years from now that's going to be true again. How do you continually level up?

Jonathan Mast: 36:54

Well, a couple of things. One I surround myself with amazing people like you. I attend conferences and I think things like that. You and I were talking pre-call about attending Some. I speak at others. I attend because I want to be poured into as I'm going to use your words, it's what you said because I need to have that happen In order for me to be able to pour out. I have to fill my cup as well, and I choose to fill that cup with people that I believe are either ahead of me or can teach me things in that race. Now it doesn't mean I'm not willing to help. I'm not willing to help. I'm happily willing to help, and I love working with people that are in startup mode as well, because even there I can often learn a lot. But I love more than anything else surrounding myself with people like yourself where I can learn and I can just by being in the room. I get I get value from the conversations we have. You know, the ability to break bread and talk about things. That's probably the number one thing I do. So I spend money traveling. I spend money going to conferences and being very purposeful about who is going to be at those, so that I make sure I'm surrounding myself with the people that I need to grow.

Jonathan Mast: 38:02

I think the second part of that is just accepting that. You know there's a lot of people that are my age. I'm 55 now. There's a lot of people in my age going. Well, you know what. It's time to start slowing down Time, to start just letting things coast a little bit. And you know I'm not going to worry about pushing quite as hard and I get that, I trust me. I don't want to work as hard as I used to, always either, but I never want to give up on that passion for learning, because I don't care whether I'm 55, 65, 85, hopefully someday 95.

Jonathan Mast: 38:30

I don't ever want to stop learning and I think, as a leader, that's part of what we're called to do is to continue to learn so we can continue to lead those around us. Let's face it the reality is most people in the world, if given the choice, are not going to step up to lead, they're going to look around and see who's going to do it for them. I'm not going to make any apologies. I'm one of those people that's going to step up because I'm not going to wait for somebody to do it. If I see a vacuum, I'm literally going to try to fill that.

Jonathan Mast: 38:57

It's what I do. It's just my nature. I believe that makes me unique. I believe the other leaders listening to your podcast today it makes them unique and it's a great fundamental skill and trait that we need in society, because without leaders, everybody's going to falter and it's okay for you to step into that role. And just because you step in doesn't mean you think you're better than anybody else. It just means you want to step in and lead and you want to be that example. So never stop learning in that process.

Dr. William Attaway: 39:28

Such great wisdom there. In all of the things that you have read and I see the books behind you there I mean you're a continual learner. Like you just said, you're always learning, always wanting to get better and grow. Is there a book that has made a big difference in your journey, one that you would recommend that if a leader's listening and they haven't read it? Man, you need to put this on your to-read list.

Jonathan Mast: 39:49

There's a lot of them and a bunch of them are behind me. I'm sure I've got this one back there, but the most recent one that has had the most impact I read about a year, a little over a year ago, and that was Buy Back your Time by Dan Martell. No-transcript. I have the ability to do higher income producing things than mow my lawn, as an example. There's nothing wrong with mowing my lawn. I don't begrudge the people that do. In fact I'm thankful for them, because I don't want to do that, not because it's a bad thing, but I'd rather spend that two hours learning something to focusing on helping another client, helping somebody else succeed, and in that process, hopefully I can earn enough money to pay the lawn guys to take care of my lawn, and now I don't have to worry about it. And so Dan Martell really taught me in that book, not just about somebody to take care of my yard, but really looking at my life and my business as a combined factor, cause if you're an entrepreneur, they are, let's face it, your life and your business. They're very intertwined. How can I look at that to figure out where I can actually pay people to get me more time, because most entrepreneurs that I know.

Jonathan Mast: 41:30

I know I'm at least guilty Maybe I'm the only one but we tend to take on too much and we tend not to have the time left for those around us. I don't have the time to go golfing, to go fishing, to ride my motorcycle whatever the case may be because I'm blessed to be able to buy the motorcycle. That's my passion, but I don't have the time to go take it for a ride very often because I'm too dang busy. But I don't have the time to go take it for a ride very often because I'm too dang busy. If I can figure out a way to buy back some of my time and AI may be one of the ways to do that hiring people to do things that I don't have to do that's another big part of that. That allows me again to be able to focus on the activities that I can provide the most value in, and why wouldn't I want to do that? So that's probably the most impactful book I've read in the last year, so good.

Dr. William Attaway: 42:06

As people. As we wrap this up, people will often walk away from a conversation like this with one big idea. If you could define what you want people to walk away with, one big thing that you want to make sure they remember, what would that big?

Jonathan Mast: 42:23

idea be. You can do it, and it's up to you. I love it yeah.

Dr. William Attaway: 42:28

It's so good, man, Jonathan. I could talk to you for another hour and I'm sure we will continue to talk offline. This has been so incredibly helpful. I know people are going to want to stay connected with you and continue to learn from you and about what you're doing. What is the best way for them to do that?

Jonathan Mast: 42:46

Well, the best way to get in touch with me is just to go to remember my name, jonathan Mast M-A-S-T. Go to jonathanmastcom, slash linktree. You'll find everything you need to connect with me, to join my Facebook group, to learn more about AI, just to bug me crazy if you're a troll jonathanmastcom, slash linktree.

Dr. William Attaway: 43:05

Jonathan, thank you for your generosity today with your time and with the wisdom and insight that you have gained so far. I can't wait to see what's next for you. Me either, I'm excited. Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Dr. William Attaway: 43:53

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader. I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Intro / Outro: 44:36

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.