← The Amazing Intern - Turning Your A.I. Curiosity Into Confidence
The Amazing Intern - Turning Your A.I. Curiosity Into Confidence
Ep 58: Streamling Operations - A Conversation With Jonathan Mast from White Beard Strategies
00:37:16
In this episode, Cary sits down with Jonathan Mast, founder of White Beard Strategies, who helps businesses and teams embrace AI through group coaching and training. Jonathan is passionate about moving people from being skeptical or unsure about AI to...
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- [00:00]
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- [00:31]
Jonathan Mast
You are no dummy, but you're kind of acting like one. You used to crush it in school, outsmarting opponents on the field and now, well, you're still smart, but not exactly challenging yourself. You could be advancing nuclear engineering in the world's most powerful Navy. You were born for it. So make the smart choice. You can be smart or you can be nuke smart. Become a nuclear engineer@navy.com nukesmart America's Navy forged by the Sea.
- [01:07]
Kerry Weston
Hey there and welcome to the Chat GPT Experiment Podcast. My name is Kerry Weston. I'm your host and this podcast is designed to help curious beginners better understand what ChatGPT is and how to find ways to use it for your personal and professional life. Battling with a couple frogs in my throat. It's been there for a little bit this time so I'm going to keep the introduction short. I'm excited to share with you conversation that I had with Jonathan Mast. Now Jonathan is a like minded soul in that he has been utilizing ChatGPT and sharing tips and experiences with ChatGPT. In fact his White Beard Strategies Group. He's got a community of over 300,000 entrepreneurs and business leaders and Jonathan reached out after one of the episodes like I've encouraged all to do if you've got a good story and he said, listen, I'd love to explore possibilities of chatting with you and talk about the community and what you've been doing, what he's been teaching. So I'm going to share that with you. Tons of good stuff in this conversation, resources for you to go to. If you haven't found that community, go check it out. You're going to hear links in the conversation, all kinds of really cool resources and tips and things to download and stories that can benefit you as well. It's called the AI Revolution. Facebook group is pretty robust. Found some really interesting things there. Yeah, but like I said, I've got the frogs that are holding me tight. So I'm going to kick out here and kick you over to the conversation that I had with Jonathan. Hey, listen, before I go, if you do have an experience or a case study or something interesting that you think would value the or be valuable to the community here, reach out, let's talk about it. ChatGPT, experiment.com is where you can get ahold of me. Okay, so here's my conversation with Jonathan Mast of White Beard Strategies. And as always, the most important component to you getting more comfortable and familiar with ChatGPT is your own curiosity. Okay? So until we talk again, do stay curious. Okay, Talk soon. Well, hey, Jonathan, welcome to the show.
- [03:31]
Jonathan Mast
Thank you for having me. Excited to be here and looking forward to the conversation.
- [03:35]
Kerry Weston
Yeah. So before we have that conversation, I always want folks to understand the perspective that you're bringing information to. So if you would, the three things I ask most folks to do, tell us who you are, what you're doing, but more importantly, who you're doing it for these days.
- [03:48]
Jonathan Mast
Well, I'm an old guy sitting down in Alabama that's fallen in love with AI and spend most of my time talking to businesses and teams about how they can implement and how they can use it. And what I do more than anything else is just group coaching. I have a large Facebook group online. I give away a ton of stuff for free because I want people to embrace AI. I think it's an amazing tool. I think that there's two camps. There's those that love it and there's those that are scared of it. And I want to take everybody in the scared of it camp and help them, teach them why they should love it and everybody in the love it camp and teach them how to use it better.
- [04:26]
Kerry Weston
I love that. I love. Yeah. And that's right in line with the mission of the show here. So I really, I think there's going to be a ton of value for folks because you're going to get to share. Let me pause here for a second. Most people want to know if they're normal, right? They want to know if they're the average, if they are behind, if there are experts that they don't know. So let me just ask you right out of the gate, what do you find when you have group trainings or you introduce people for the first time? Where's the average comfort level, the average knowledgeable level, just so people can kind of understand where they are in the matrix of normal?
- [04:59]
Jonathan Mast
Normal today is not, I don't think, where it's being Presented as. In other words, I think that most people have probably tried things like ChatGPT and that and have generally been disappointed with the results and are not using it on a regular basis. I find normal today is people going, I think this AI is kind of cool, but I really don't know how to use it. I'm not sure what I should do with it. And on a day to day basis, candidly, we get busy and life goes on and we don't use it very much. And then all of a sudden something happens. Somebody introduces them to an aspect, an area of their life that AI can be helpful, for example, crafting an email and all of a sudden they're like, oh, I hadn't thought of that before. And it kind of opens up a door and then that starts to unravel a very large ball of string, so to speak, as we start going, okay, it worked really cool to write that email. I could write a couple emails today with that. Or I've been trying to figure, I wonder, you know, I've got a report that I have to do every week. I'm wondering if it could help me make that report a little bit better and maybe save me some time. And hey, you know what? I have the spreadsheet I've got to go through every month I've got to go through this spreadsheet, I've got to do a data analysis on and I've got to pull these numbers out. And candidly, it's kind of arduous and not a lot of fun. I wonder if AI could help me do that. And all of a sudden, over time, not overnight, that initial, ooh, there's a neat way to use AI that sounds kind of cool, turns into people going, you know what? I just realized I'm using it a couple times a day now. So normal today I think though is not even that far down the path. I think normal today is very the curious but unsure of where to even start. I really believe that's normal today.
- [06:40]
Kerry Weston
So to all those listening, you see you're normal, you're actually normal. You're not behind at all. That's awesome. That's awesome. So tell me, I know you're doing a lot of training, a lot of group training. You're clearly passionate about this. You are one of the folks I can just tell off the, right off the bat that you've seen this transform the way that you work, you've seen this transform the ways others work and you're so excited to share it because it feels like A gift, like if you can introduce somebody to cross that bridge from unknown to known, or you're curious to comfortable, like it almost feels like you've left them with a gift that's going to be long lasting. Right. Do you feel that way?
- [07:13]
Jonathan Mast
Oh, that's so much my hope, Carrie. Absolutely. I mean, I think there's so many people that are concerned about AI, wondering about AI. We've got plenty of fear mongers out there. I'm by the way, not one of those fear mongers. I'm excited about it and I think that most of the people that have a negative impression of AI are people that haven't actually used it. They've watched the news report, they've seen somebody do it. They're like, my mother in law who I love dearly, but you know, she hears some of the things I'm doing and she's like, I just don't know about that. My mother in law is 80 years old, but even she has started to go, hang on, could I use it to help me plan dinner tonight? You mean I could take a picture of what's in my refrigerator and I could plan. I'm like, yeah, mom, just try it. And she does. And she's like, that's kind of cool. I kind of like it. Now she's not working, so she's not likely to use it every day. But it still made her life better and she's having fun with it. You, you know, she likes to play cards and so she's used it to learn things about better ways and strategies to play some of the card games that she plays. Does that mean she couldn't have done that in a book? No, she could have bought a book off Amazon and done that too. But now she's got it on her iPad and her phone and when she thinks of it, she can learn things and she can do things. And so again, that's the exciting thing to me. Whether it's my 17 year old son or whether it's my almost 80 year old mother in law and everybody in between, I love that moment when you kind of see that light go on behind their eyes and they're like, oh, this has potential. And that's the moment I love.
- [08:35]
Kerry Weston
It's that spark. That's right. And yeah, and some of the shows that I've had, feedback, people have said, I never thought of that. Never think, thought you could do this. That sparked another thing. It's just that one door opening that allows people to go down that path. So from your training, I know You've probably got some guiding principles, some basic rules, kind of that one on one type stuff, that opening advice that you give groups, let's go down there. So if you, what's the advice, what's the rules, what are the principles that you start most of your trainings with so we can kind of understand how you present what you do.
- [09:04]
Jonathan Mast
Thanks for asking. I think I start most everything by talking about that AI is like any other relationship and of course that always gets people to go what, what do you mean a relationship? No, it's not sentient, we're not, we're not having a relationship with another human being but we are creating a communication style and therefore it's important to learn how to talk to AI if we want good results back from it, if we want good respons, we need to ask it good questions. And I compare that Carrie, with if you and I were working on a project together and let's just say hypothetically you happen to be an expert at writing press releases and I needed a press release for my business. If I came to you and said hey Kerry, I need a press release and I turned around and walked away and you're like hey Jonathan, I got a few questions, you're like nope, nope, nope, I don't have time and I ignore you. You know how to write a great press release, you know the mechanics of it, you know what goes into it. But because I wasn't willing to give you any information, I wasn't willing to communicate effectively with you, you're not going to be able to create a press release that meets my needs. And that's what I think happens so often when we start using AI is we don't know what we don't know and so we don't know what to tell it or not tell it. And it gives us really rotten responses because they're very general. So where I like to tell people to start is understand that AI has been developed to make assumptions and if you don't give it information it will fill in the gaps but probably incorrectly. And people always go, well why is that? Well, OpenAI and the companies behind all these tools, they want us to use them, that's how they're going to make money. We need to become subscribers and if AI acted like a three year old and every time that we asked a question it went why? Why, why? We'd stop using it going I'm annoyed, I'm not going to do this anymore. And so it makes assumptions. So the first thing I really try to focus on is understand how to communicate with AI. And the best advice I give people there is one, talk to it in a manner similar that you would a person if you were texting them. Use it just like you're texting. And remember it should be a two way conversation, not just a one way instruction. So it's not just about giving instructions, it's then about responding. So when AI gives you a bad response or one that's not fully there, just if I was working with you, Carrie, I'd say, hey, that's great, thanks. But you know, I forgot to tell you, I wanted to talk about this and I wanted to promote this. Oh, and have that conversation with AI. It's not a one and done type process. It should be conversational.
- [11:26]
Kerry Weston
Yeah, that's, that's so good. And the, the analogy I've used in the past is treat it like an intern. Just the same thing as your press release analogy. Right? The intern comes in to sit down. It's not going to give you good stuff if you tell it to just go do something with no additional information. So love hearing that. What is it that when you have folks in your, whether it's virtual or in person, but you get to see the body language, you get to see the reactions, you get to see the feedback. What is it that makes people lean in? Like what, what topic gets more people to lean in and say, okay, like that's like, you got me on that. Didn't know that. Give me a couple of those moments.
- [12:00]
Jonathan Mast
I think one of the biggest ones is when we, when we teach people that you can train AI to sound like you. So if I'm having it write emails to help me write emails, I can actually train it in my tone and my style so that when it responds, it responds in a tile, a tone and style that's similar to Jonathan's. It's maybe not exact, but very, very close. That seems to be probably the number one thing that gets people to go, really? You can do that? Yeah, you can do that. And it's actually really simple. So that's, I would say is probably the biggest kind of lean in moment that I get. The other one that I get probably more than anything else is when they understand that again, still in the training mode, but we can create AI models that are trained on our data. So when I'm talking to business owners and for example, they understand they could take their employee manual and could upload that and they could have AI provide an interface between their staff and that employee manual. Because most business owners Understand that we have an employee manual and our employees all signed off that they read and understand the employee manual when they hired on. And we know that none of them actually read the employee manual. So when there's questions that come up, they go ask their co worker, they ask somebody in hr. They ask this when it's all in the employee manual. But nobody asks it because it's a big binder on my desk and I don't want to find it. Not to mention I've had three updates that have come through and I never filed any of those. So I'm not sure if I've got the right information. But what about if we could do that with AI? And now you simply had a bot that people went and talked to and said, what's our policy on holiday time this year? As I look into 2025, what are our holidays we're taking off, and know that as long as that information's in there, it's going to be brought back to that user in the way it should. And that's probably that second lean in moment when all of a sudden business owners in particular, but even staff start going, oh my goodness, you know, much time that would save me if I just, I could just ask questions and I could get that information instead of having to go one go find the document because Lord knows where it is on my computer or anywhere else. And then did I have the right version of that or not? But I could literally just go in and so, hey, I want to take time off for spring break. Do we have any holidays around that? And it could come back and go yes or no, or here's our policy or you know, how many I've been here this long, how many vacation days do I have? Or what's our sick time policy or anything like that. All of those things can then be handled that way and again, really expedite the process for everybody on the team.
- [14:24]
Kerry Weston
Have you worked with anybody or trained with anybody that's in human resources hiring on the application side of the business? Yeah, how are they or how are you showing them or what have you seen? I'm going to preface this by saying the interviewing application process is a time suck and it's becoming more so for a lot of HR folks. Right. It's hard enough to find people to apply, but then you got to go through all of the rigmarole of trying to get them to come in and all that kind of stuff. The, the pre filtering, shortening that HR cycle is really something that a lot of folks would want to do, but they don't really know how or understand how. So I'd be interested and curious to hear how maybe you've been interacting with some HR folks and what you're seeing on that side of the game, we're.
- [15:10]
Jonathan Mast
Seeing the exact same time sucks that you talked about. It's like, oh, my goodness, how do I go through all these resumes and how do I narrow it down to the people that I really want to talk to? Bringing that up, it brings up some, you know, ethical considerations, and not that I'm that worried about those, because I do think it's not an AI ethics, it's a business ethics. You have ethics or you don't, but it brings up. We don't necessarily want to have our AI evaluating stuff on the wrong criteria, so we don't want to have it bring in and evaluate incorrectly. We. What we've done with most of our HR processes that we've developed is we've helped in that interview process, specifically around how do I handle all this influx of applications? And we've created what we call a toggle question, something that the user needs to do that's very visible and very easy for the AI to identify, but also demonstrates that they read the rest of the ad. They didn't just go, oh, that looks like a fun job, and apply to it. So, for example, it may be something as simple as, if you're interested in this job, use the word chocolate in your subject line. Something is. Then what we'll do is we'll have AI look at all the responses that come in, and it doesn't necessarily look at their whole resume, although it could. It's not looking at everything there. It's just looking at the subject lines and going, okay, did it include the word chocolate? If it does, you pass the test and now you go on. What we found, though, that's interesting in that process is depending upon the job, typically only about 20% of the responses will follow that instruction. And so it weeds 80% of the people out. Now, unless you're hiring where a position where attention to detail doesn't matter, then that's a good way to start filtering those out. And AI can help because instead of you going through and determining which 80% didn't do that, even though that's relatively quick, we can now have AI do that that much faster.
- [16:57]
Kerry Weston
That's interesting. That reminds me of the school. You know, you're back in school and the teacher passes out a test and tells you to read all the instructions before you start. And Half the class just starts reading, you know, answering the questions.
- [17:10]
Jonathan Mast
And then I was in that half of the class. Yes.
- [17:14]
Kerry Weston
Instructions 10 is put your pencil down and don't do a thing.
- [17:17]
Jonathan Mast
Right.
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Kerry Weston
That's interesting. Now when you get to you, you started to go into integrity and whatnot and you start to get into sensitivity and, you know, private versus public information and that kind of stuff. What do you instruct, what do you teach? What do you, what are you telling folks when you get into that line of whether I should load this into a public database or not?
- [17:38]
Jonathan Mast
Well, the, the, probably the first question we often get is what about AI ethics? And I don't mean to dismiss it, but I, I don't believe that AI has brought with it new ethics that we didn't have in the past. In other words, if you're operating on an ethical principles, I think you're going to do just fine with AI. I don't think it brings in, personally, I don't feel it brings in new things that we need to know, decide what we're going to do. But data privacy is a really big issue, and I think that's something that every organization needs to look at and define what works for them on a personal level. I'm probably less concerned about data privacy than I should be, but mainly because I've assumed that, you know, at this point in time, Kerry, as we're talking, anybody who really wants to know where I am and what I'm doing, knows where I'm at, knows what I'm doing and has access through, if nothing else, just the information that Google's able to collect on me. You know, there's, there's so much information that's out there. So again, I probably am not as particular as I should be from a business perspective, though. One of the things we talk about a lot is the benefit of using the API of these tools to connect. And if our audience isn't familiar with that, that simply stands for Application Program Interface. It's a way to talk to the software without necessarily using the interface. And all of the companies have promised us that if we're using the API, they're not going to use that data for training purposes. And can we trust them? I don't know, but I believe we can. And the reason I believe we can trust them is that there's so much money flowing into AI projects right now and major institutional investors that are putting money into that. If there's a privacy breach, that's going to devastate every one of those investors. And so they're asking those questions. A few people that I know that are in those circles, they're very clearly asking those questions, and they're making sure that the management of the companies they're investing in are steadfastly sticking to those promises when it comes to data privacy. So I think, like most things in life, I think we need to be rational, but we need to balance it with convenience. You know, Google knows more about me than I probably wish they would. But I really like it when I'm looking for a place to have dinner, and it knows what type of dinner I like and where it's at. I really love the fact that, you know, it knows where my home address is when I hop in my minivan and I'm like, okay, I'm not sure how to get home from here because I'm in a different spot. I like those things. Is Google using all of that data? Sure is. It knows what stores I'm driving by. It reminds me what restaurants I need to give reviews on. And I don't always love that, but I love the convenience part. And so it's that balance. And that's what we talk to a lot of our clients about, is determining where that balance is for each organization. Because what works for me may not be the right balance for you, but we want to have that discussion and make sure that then we've taught our teams. For example, if we're dealing in. I worked with a mortgage broker the other day. We don't want to be uploading financial data and applications into AI and have that data necessarily out there. Are there solutions? Sure. There's local models that we can run inside a network and keep our IT folks happy with all the precautions. So there are ways around it. But it's an important discussion to have.
- [20:47]
Kerry Weston
So I agree with you that I'm less concerned than I should be about data security. I love it when I get into my truck. I've got a display on the front of the truck, and the minute I turn it on, the display pops up and it says, you're 12 minutes away from my son's basketball practice. I.
- [21:04]
Jonathan Mast
And I'm like, exactly.
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Kerry Weston
You love that stuff. And then you don't. Honestly, if you take time to think about it, how did that happen? Your brain's going to fry because of all the things that you have access to and connected to.
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Jonathan Mast
So true.
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Kerry Weston
Right? So I just say, hey, that was so true.
- [21:18]
Jonathan Mast
Yes, exactly.
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Kerry Weston
It moves on. So you are. I can tell just by talking to you, Jonathan, that you geek out over this like, you're like me. You get excited over maybe I can. And maybe you've stayed up, like I have a few too many nights where you've kind of gone down a rabbit hole and saying, maybe if I could, I maybe will it. And I'm going to ask you this. What you are to the point where. Where most people will find fascinating and interesting has become ordinary and routine for you. So let me ask you as one that would be using this over and over again. I'll define this as AI as a whole, but sure, it's a chat GPT kind of realm. What surprised you recently? What have you been able to do that you're like, that is really cool. Like, what boundaries have you pushed or what tasks have you been able to do or result you've been able to get that would have surprised you in a pleasant way?
- [22:07]
Jonathan Mast
I think the one that surprised me most recently has actually been in the area of AI images. So with the influx of a tool called flux, and there are some others out there and the ability to train it and what's called a lora, an L O R A. And I don't remember what that stands for, but it's something resonance, and it doesn't matter. I've been absolutely blown away that I can do a virtual photo shoot and do it in minutes. Just the other day I was asked, I'm speaking an event in April, and they said, hey, we've only got one headshot of you. Can you send a few more over? Candidly, I didn't. I don't have that many that I like. I've had a couple photo shoots done, and probably, like most people, I don't really like the way I look in most of them, so I don't have a lot of headshots. And this event's taking place in a specific location and everything else. And I thought, you know what would be really cool is if I could actually show myself in a similar location. And so I did. I went into AI and I pulled it up. I used my trained model that I'd uploaded about 35 of my images to, and I said, all right, let's show Jonathan in this scenario. And did every picture come out perfect? Oh, no, not at all. But in about 30 minutes, I created probably 45 images, and five of them were really good. And I sent him off to the event organizer and he's like, hang on, when were you there? And I'm like, I wasn't. It's an AI photo. But it even fooled them. It was so cool. And so that's one of the things that I think continues to blow my mind. I think we're going to see a lot of advancements in the image in the video area coming up that will do that. And to me, that was great fun. I enjoyed that. And it wasn't just, wow, surprising how good it was. It was also almost geek out, giggly fun. I really just enjoyed that.
- [23:48]
Kerry Weston
I'm glad you've. I'm going to ask you in just a second what tool you're using, whatnot. But I'm happy to hear what you just said because I've, I've been very disappointed with cameras recently and I've noticed that most of the pictures of me, the camera, there's something wrong with the camera. I get older, fatter, there's less hair, there's something in the lens. I've just got a, maybe it's a lens upgrade that I gotta have, you know what I mean? But I've been really disappointed at the quality of cameras recently. So what, what tool are you using to do that exercise?
- [24:16]
Jonathan Mast
So for that we actually are using an AI tool called Flux F L U X. And it's, it's an interesting model because it's actually designed to be downloaded and ran on your computer, but you need a honking computer to run it effectively. Unless you want to. You're a very, very patient person. So I use it, it's made by Black Forest Labs. And I always encourage people, if you want to use it, don't go to Flux AI because that's not the real company, it's somebody copying them. But if you go to Black Forest Labs, they've got four to six different companies that they recommend. And I picked one of those companies and they provide a hosted solution. So I basically go out and I get to pay per image. Much like if I'm putting gas in my truck, you know, the longer I drive, the more gas I got to put in, the more images I create, the more, more money I'm going to spend. So it's not free, but it's not expensive. That photo shoot, by the way, that I did the other day cost me, I believe, $5.80 and about 30 minutes of my time. No, Some people look at that and go, that's crazy. I'm not gonna spend $5 to do that. To me, it solved a business problem. I needed more headshots. I didn't have time to, one, do it. Two, I just moved a couple months ago, so I don't know any photographers in the area where I'm at. So then I'd have to do the research and hopefully find a good photographer. Then I'd have to get dressed up, which I hate to do because even as we're recording this, you know, I'm here in my baseball cap and my shirt and probably I could wear the shirt, maybe not the baseball cap. And I just, I like being comfortable. And so it would have been a time inconvenience and obviously a cost to pay the photographer. Now I think the photographer would have done a better job. Let me be very clear about that. I think they would have, but I didn't have the time to do that. And so that ability to pull all that together and do that for a few dollars in a few minutes was just mind boggling to me.
- [26:01]
Kerry Weston
And if you find a photographer that can do it for $5.85, I'd suggest running away too.
- [26:06]
Jonathan Mast
By the way, they're not going to do a good job.
- [26:08]
Kerry Weston
Yeah, that's right. I'm going to steal that line. Jonathan, I like the gas analogy. The more you drive, the more gas it's going to take because there is that. I guess we've been spoiled, haven't we, that everything should be free, everything should be accessible. We want R and D, we want the latest features, but we don't pay for it. We've just been thinking that everything should be free. So I do like that analogy. I'm going to have to use that again. Now are you doing a lot of your training in person these days?
- [26:37]
Jonathan Mast
No, I, so I speak in person once or twice a month at different locations but most of what we do is just like we're doing here. It's being done virtually via zoom or something like that. In fact, I've got a one coming up in just an hour and you know we're going to be doing that with a group of about 70 people from all across North America and some actually from Europe and a couple from Australia that you know, we're, we're doing an hour long brainstorming session and it's all happening on zoom. And that, that, that's probably, if I do one to two in persons a month, I probably do one to two zooms a day for comparison.
- [27:16]
Kerry Weston
So let's, let's dig into that because you said brainstorming, so what does that look like when you do a brainstorming session virtually? Is this an AI brainstorming?
- [27:24]
Jonathan Mast
Good question. So this is actually for. I recently did a group training on how to build out custom GPT. So if People wanted to learn how to do that within CHAT GPT. We walked through and, and trained everybody how to do that. And one of the things I'm just a huge fan of is I want to over deliver on everything. It's just kind of my premise. I believe if I do that my business will grow and everything will be good. And I just, that's my overall philosophy. And one of the members in the group reached out and said, you know, I've got so many ideas going through my head. We did that training about three weeks ago. I got so many ideas, I just don't know what to do. I'd really like to just brainstorm with somebody about it. And I said, well, instead of brainstorming with somebody, how about we get everybody that did the training and offer it, we'll do it for free, we'll just, we'll hop on. And so we're, we've, that's what we're doing here. We're literally getting on and going to help people come up with ideas. The one thing I find with AI and especially in this case with custom GPTs, is a lot of times people have ideas and then they start second guessing themselves. They're like, oh, that's not a good idea, nobody's going to be interested or no, that's not going to help me or oh, that's going to be too much work. And one of the things I really try to encourage people to do is experiment with AI, try it out, it's not going to hurt you or bite back. And if it, you know, it's like my creating those images, I created 40 something, I kept five. I didn't hurt anybody because I created 40 images. I didn't, you know, I'm not filling up any landfill or anything like that. So everything's pretty good from that perspective. And AI is not going to bite back. So if you're not sure, try it. The worst thing you go is go, ah, that didn't work the way I wanted it to. And so this brainstorming session, yeah, it's just a follow up to a training that we've done in an effort to try to really help those individuals dig deeper in and get some validation for some of their thoughts.
- [29:08]
Kerry Weston
You mentioned a couple of things here. Brainstorming custom GPTs. How often are you reverse engineering your end result of working with something like ChatGPT, for instance? You start down a path, you refine it, you give it feedback, you revise it, get it better, better, better and then at the end you say, great I want to come here faster next time. Can you help me with a prompt or can you help me with the conversation that would, that would basically encapture everything that we've done. Are you doing any of that almost daily?
- [29:37]
Jonathan Mast
Yeah. In fact, I often look at projects in a reverse order. I probably because I'm 55 year old guy with ADD and I did get diagnosed so I can claim that with, with pride. I'm, I know where I want to go, but I'm often not sure how to get there. And so one of the things that I love AI is that ability that I can say, okay, I'm at point A, I want to go to point B and I'm not sure how to get there. And what I love doing at that point is say what do you need to know to do that? In fact, one of my favorite tactics is to ask ChatGPT or Claude or whatever model you're working with to interview me. So you know, all right, I want to achieve this goal. I'm not sure how to get there. Here's where I'm at. Will you please interview me, ask me all the questions that you need so you can help plot a plan to go there? And why I love that is because I find I'm not wasting a lot of time. I'm not guessing what I need to tell it. My ADD brain isn't going on all these rabbit trails going, ooh, bright shiny object, we'll go there. I'm able to then go in and often in minutes give the AI model what it needs in order to give me that pathway and then I can determine very quickly do I need help moving along that pathway or not? Do I need help writing something, creating something, ideating further, or am I good with that and can I run with it?
- [30:54]
Kerry Weston
Yeah, that's so good. One of the things I've gotten really well familiar just because I do it so much now is I'll have a conversation either with a client or a sales prospect. I'll, I'll, I won't record it. I do a lot with recordings, but let's just say I didn't record it. I'll, I'll get it out of my brain as soon as possible. So I'll come back from the coffee shop or whatever it is and I'll sit here and open up the microphone and talk to chat GPT and literally just tell, hey, listen, I just had this conversation. I'm going to give you all the stuff that I remember in no particular order. Just going to get it all out of my head. And then I want you to organize it for me because I want to be able to do something with it later. And I find that it's become such a normal part of my routine that I don't think much about it. But when I share it with people that aren't familiar with ChatGPT, that's where I get the. You can do that, you know, it's the circus music. Right. Can I just get everything out of my head and you figure out what's important, you organize it, you make sense of it, you give me some insights. Right? Because we've done the hard part. We've listened, we've applied our experience to the situation. We've pulled information, we've been empathetic. Right. We've been curious. And then a lot of people, especially in sales, Jonathan, you've seen this too. They don't know what to do next. They're rushing to get the proposal or they're rushing to fill some sort of quota. And they don't take that intermediate step to really get the thoughtful insights and get all their thoughts organized and do something meaningful with that time that they just spent. And for me, that's been probably one of the more routine game changers is just talking and just that you make sense of all the stuff that I just said because I know there's something in there. I just don't. Don't know what it is. Right. Do you do stuff like that?
- [32:30]
Jonathan Mast
I do. In fact, one of my. Somebody asked me the day if you had to lose one of the tools that people don't know you use or you don't talk about a lot, what would you miss the most? And to me, it's my meeting note taker because it's.
- [32:45]
Kerry Weston
By the way, Fireflies.
- [32:47]
Jonathan Mast
I use Read AI. I think there's some other. I know there's five or six very good platforms out there. I always tell people, why do I use Read AI? Because it works for me and I've been using it. Yeah, it's the one I signed up for. Does it mean it's the best? No, it's. I have not found they're doing anything that I. They're continuing to make advancements, so I'm happy. But I, you know, there's. There's a lot of good platforms out there, but what I love about it is, you know, I have a custom GPT, for example, being ADD and having a lot of meetings. I spend time and then I will, hey, Carrie, let's do this. And I'll forget about it because literally by the time I get off and then my messages pop up or an email pops up or whatever else, I've forgotten what I committed to. So my assistant goes through every day at the end of the day and takes all of my read AI transcripts. And we've got a custom GPT that's programmed that she simply uploads it to. And it's already predefined with the questions that I want to ask. And those questions are, One, what did Jonathan promise that he already forgot about? Two, what are we waiting on from the other person in the meeting? Is there anything we're meeting, waiting on? And because I am in sales, because that's part of what I do as the owner of the company, it then also analyzes the entire conversation and said, okay, based upon what we do as a company, what I do as a person, and we've trained it on that, what are some sales opportunities, in other words? So when I'm done talking to Kerry for that meeting, maybe I didn't think about this group training program or this mastermind or something else. I didn't. And then the last thing it does is it's programmed in with our key trusted partners. So it also then looks and says, okay, based upon what was discussed in there, are there any introductions that you should make based upon this meeting and those three things? Basically, my tasks, what other sales opportunities may be there, and who should we make introductions to? Have really been a game changer. I know that's an AI word, but it's one I use because it allows me to do things so much more efficiently. Like you said, I, like many salespeople, I'd get too busy, I'd focus on other things and I'd forget to go back and go, who could I introduce Carrie to? Now, I don't forget because it's literally part of my process and, oh, what do you know? I need to make this introduction. And then that happens in most cases and. Or here are the things that I promised I would do. And now not only do I know about them or I may have forgotten about them, but my assistant and my team can find out and they can take care of those for me. So that's been a, again, a total, total, absolute game changer for me.
- [35:17]
Kerry Weston
And by introducing people to vendors and associates, you're doing that for what purpose? Just to be.
- [35:24]
Jonathan Mast
Just to add value.
- [35:25]
Kerry Weston
A good fellow.
- [35:26]
Jonathan Mast
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just to add value. I'm a big believer in the old phrase that a rising tide raises all boats. And I find that when I help others in what they're trying to achieve, they help me. As a result of that, I don't have to go ask them. I don't have to beg them. I don't have to go, oh, would you please recommend me? I just, if I can help you, people feel a natural obligation to then help the people that help them. And I just find it, being a sales guy, candidly, I find it easier. Instead of begging for people to promote me, I'll just promote them. And if they're good people and everything else, it will come back and they'll start promoting me.
- [36:02]
Kerry Weston
Yeah, that's so good. And that's, that's just a general principle. Right. Treat others as you'd want to be treated. And I think it's great. Yeah, exactly. Appreciate it. Hey, really appreciate. Speaking of appreciation, you spending some time with me having this conversation. There's a lot of similarities here between how we approach our work and our day and our. And just our mission as a whole. Is there anything, Jonathan, that you wish we would have covered or a point you wanted to make sure people heard that we didn't get to talk about?
- [36:27]
Jonathan Mast
We kind of covered. But if I can do a final point, it's just to encourage everybody, no matter where you're at in utilizing or not utilizing AI, you're not behind the. You've still got ample time to go ahead and get started with it. But the time, I do believe, is now. In other words, don't wait another year because things are going to move ahead that much faster. We're at a great crossroads of a time when AI is very capable and very manageable to start getting involved in utilizing it. And I just want to encourage everybody, find something simple you can do with it today. Have it help you write that email that you're just going, oh, I don't know how to say this. Have it. Have it. Just tell it. Send it the email that you know. Carrie, if you sent me an email, here's the email, here's what I want to say. Please write it for me now. Don't copy and paste it. You want to edit it. Okay. But do something simple like that and just start using AI.
- [37:18]
Kerry Weston
Well, Jonathan Mast White Beard Strategies. If people want to find out more about what you're doing and what you offer, where do they find you?
- [37:26]
Jonathan Mast
Easiest way is just to go to jonathan mast.com linktree. I've got ways to connect with me there and links to, like, the free Facebook group I run and that type of stuff as well.
- [37:37]
Kerry Weston
And I just want to say, as I, as I share with others, if they have a use case or an idea or something that they want to share, they should certainly reach out because I want to talk to more people and share throughout the community. That's how we learned, that's how you did. That's how we found. That's how we met. And I appreciate you doing that. I think this conversation has been very valuable. Thank you again. And I want to, I want to follow what you're doing because I think there's a lot of good there's.
- [38:00]
Jonathan Mast
Well, thank you for having me. Yeah. It's been great to meet you and I appreciate the time.
- [38:05]
Kerry Weston
Good. We'll talk soon. Be good. Okay.
- [38:07]
Jonathan Mast
All right. Thanks, Gary.
- [38:15]
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- [38:47]
Kerry Weston
You're pretty smart when people talk about you.
- [38:50]
Jonathan Mast
Too smart comes up a lot.
- [38:52]
Kerry Weston
So why are you trying trying to prove them wrong?
- [38:54]
Jonathan Mast
Why aren't you pushing the limits of science and powering the nuclear engines of the world's most powerful Navy?
- [39:01]
Kerry Weston
If you were born for it, isn't.
- [39:02]
Jonathan Mast
It time to make a smart choice?
- [39:04]
Kerry Weston
You can be smart or you can be nuke smart.
- [39:08]
Jonathan Mast
Become a nuclear engineer@navy.com nukesmart America's Navy.
- [39:13]
Kerry Weston
Forged by the sea.