Welcome back to The Daily Mastermind, George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. And I'll tell you what, I'm excited today. Jim Matuga is in the house, and he is the president of Interaction Media, as well as a new author, or maybe another author, but this book that's coming out, Humble Influence, is one that caught my attention. So, So, Jim, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, George. Thanks for having me on, man. Yeah, no, this is good. We got a chance to talk a little bit before the show, just some things that really stood out to me in my mind, and we'll go really heavy into that. But listen, if you're the first time listening to the podcast, you got to remind yourself why I'm doing this. I do this because I've learned lessons over my life from some of the biggest thought leaders out there, but I'm trying to share strategies and tactics that can help you. And it's such a noisy marketplace that the reason Jim stood out to me, and we're going to get into his background here in a minute, is because he's kind of flipping the script on what you would typically think of with leadership. And I know most of you listening to this are leaders. You may be leaders in your own way, whether it's a CEO, business owner, or whatnot, or maybe in your home life or your friendships and relationships. But there's some really good strategies and tips that we're going to get into today. So I'm glad you're here with us. The point of the mastermind is we're all working together to create that best life. And Jim, what I would love to do just for people that don't know you and look, you're a marketer, an entrepreneur, a business owner, you got your own podcast, and now you have this amazing book coming out. but I think a lot of times people will see you as, as this leader, right? This is this great background. And I would love for you to fill in the gaps a little and just help people to understand where you came from, like who you are as a person before we jump into that. Would you mind kind of filling that in for us? Yeah, absolutely. I graduated with a degree in, in journalism. So I'm a trained writer, but my specialty was in advertising from West Virginia university, WVU, the home of the Mountaineers. And I never left Morgantown. I'm a resident now here of Morgantown since 1988 and worked in the media business for all my life. When I graduated WVU with a degree in advertising, I wanted to be working on Madison Avenue, working on great ad campaigns for all the great brands. I wanted to be a copywriter. And I got into sales and And every time I took a promotion, every time I got a pay raise, it took me further and further from where I wanted to go. And then eventually I wanted to have my own agency. And what I kept learning was that every time I got that security in my career path, it took me further and further away. And finally, in 2011, I started Interaction Media, which is my own media marketing company. And so I've got a team of 15 on our team here in Morgantown. And we look at our business as a way to take our talents and abilities that have been ordained and blessed by our creator and go out into the marketplace and serve people. We represent great brands like WVU Medicine and West Virginia Lottery and a lot of small and midsize companies and a lot of nonprofits. So that's what we do. The why is mixed in there a little bit, too, with businesses ministry, so to speak. And, you know, that's that's the background. So I've learned a lot over those 30 some years, 38 years almost of my career. And that's what humble influence is. It's the culmination of all that wisdom and knowledge. Yeah, I was going to ask you, you know, I've been around enough authors over the years now to realize that's not a light lift. And so you chuckle, but I know you know what I'm talking about. So I wonder what is it that made you feel so passionate about really or inspired you to want to write the book Humble Influence and everything associated with it? Because you have a million things going on, but this message I think you feel pretty strongly about. So why this book? What inspired you to do it and what's driving that right now? Absolutely. Well, I've written two marketing books and it seems like everybody's got a marketing book that's in our sphere, you know, that does marketing. and those were like Amazon, Kindle, self-published books and everything. But this book was different because I attended a leadership conference April 17th, 2007, 18 years ago, George, believe it or not. And in that conference, it was a leadership conference put on by West Virginia University and there was a couple hundred people in the room and it was really neat. we heard from a keynote speaker, James Kuzas, who had written a great book, Leader's Legacy. And as I was sitting there, it was just on my heart that like, why is all this energy, time, money spent on developing leaders? But I'm not really a leader yet. I want to be a leader, but none of this is really applying to me. I want to learn how to be a great follower. and so I went back to my home that night and I said I'm going to write a book on how to be a great follower and that's the date that I you know started the document and it's lived on multiple computers over the years and last year I decided I need to finish this thing I've been chipping away at it for 18 years believe it or not wow anecdotes and little stories and notes and you know wisdom that I picked up along the way in those 18 years and I finally had an opportunity last fall to really complete the book and start shopping for publishers. And that's what I did. I love it. So this is actually not something you just decided you saw a need in the marketplace. You've kind of lived it. And it's interesting how you say this, because I talk a lot about leadership. We have a lot of great leaders on. You're a great leader. But I think one of the reasons that people think about leadership or try to train and become leaders is they believe that's how they're going to get the most influence. And it's sort of a thing they're chasing that they know they need that badge of leadership, that title of leadership to have influence. And you've really kind of flipped the script on that by saying, and you just said it, being a follower. So I think a lot of people hear the word follower and they're thinking, you know, social media and things like, you know, like, I don't know how excited they get about followers. So tell us what you mean when you say that and why, rather than chasing leadership, you felt it was important for that because it's kind of the theme behind the book, right? Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, George, I don't know if you would agree with this or not, but it seems, especially in American culture, we're trained up as kids, you know, to be great leaders. You know, you got to be the leader. The emphasis is on leadership. You got to lead the team. You got to be the captain. You got to be the, you know, the top of your class and all these things. And that's all great. And I'm not criticizing that, but what we've done, I think over the years and maybe even decades is we've relegated followers, the people that aren't the leader into this kind of secondary class, also rands, right? Not as important. And so what I'm trying to do with the book is, is say that, you know what, that's actually not true. Followership is actually power. Followership is actually influence in the middle. You know, most people, I believe, well, let's just face it, the number of followers in an organization or company or nonprofit or whatever it might be the leaders are a very small minority of the people The rest of us are followers and we all following somebody at some point I would argue And so the point is is that like it not a passive role It not a subservient role. It's not a secondary role. It's important. It's intentional. It is power in the middle. And so what we're, what I'm trying to do in the book, and I think I make a pretty good point is, is that followers are just as important as, as great leaders. And John Maxwell, I'm a student to John Maxwell and I've gotten to work with him over the years and learn from him in person and those types of things. And he says, everything rises and falls on leadership. You may have heard that said before. Everything rises and falls on leadership. I believe that. And if that is true, I believe that leadership rises and falls on followership. In other words, if we don't have great followers following and buying into the mission, having critical traits of a great follower, then we don't have great leaders. Yeah, I love that. And I, you know, I want to dig into a little bit of why and how you can be a great follower. But I think it's also important to kind of ask you, why do you think society, I get why we've kind of been led that way, but why does society overlook followership? And like you said, I think if you're not chasing leadership, it's almost just, well, by default, you're a follower. So it's a passive type of thing. But why is it that is all about leadership? Is there maybe some, some things you've noticed and seen as to why followership is overlooked? Yeah, I think it's just a value system that we have. You know, I said, you know, I used the example of a little league team, you know, and a parent wanting the kid to be a leader on the team. And I think this is the kind of the natural way that we look at things, you know, in our society here in America, especially. And, you know, I think that the principles that I bring out in the book are time tested. And I don't want to get in, you know, go down the spiritual realm, but a lot of the truths in my book come from the Holy Bible, you know, and these are time tested principles. These are, these are stories throughout the ages that we're still talking about thousands of years later, you know, and I feel like there's a lot of lessons, a lot of wisdom in that, you know, and so what I've done is try to package those kinds of stories and kinds of lessons, if you will, on how, you know, how important it is to be a follower and how important it is. If, if, if, if just as an example, if you'll let me go down that rabbit hole for a minute, you know, as Jesus Christ was, you know, forming his ministry here on earth, one of his first directives was to the first disciples. And he said, these were two guys that were fishing all night. He said, drop your nets, come follow me. He said, come follow me. That's how the movement got started by him just saying, follow me. And so two of the greatest followers of all time did just that. They dropped their nets and said, okay, yeah. And I'm a fisherman. So I understand fishing all night and not catching anything. yeah, I'd be like, yeah, I got to do something different. I make a little fun of that. I mean, let's be honest, success leaves clues, right? There's no reason to just try to figure it out on your own. These principles have continued to step up. And I think as a society, though, we just haven't noticed and leadership has been promoted. But I think one of the reasons is, I think as a follower, a lot of conceptions people have is that you don't really have any influence. And so maybe you could talk to the idea that how do you, you know, maybe you could emphasize a little bit about how you become an influential follower or it's not a weak, passive default label. Yes, exactly. It's very it's the opposite of that. It's it's it's very active. It's very intentional. And so one of the things that I've outlined, and it's available free on the website if anybody wants to pull this down and print out a PDF, I created what I call the Humble Influence Roadmap and how to become an effective follower. And it's basically nine steps. The book's 14 chapters, but I've whittled it down to nine steps. And it starts with, George, and you kind of used the term a minute ago, adopting that servant mindset. It's not servant leadership, but the servant mindset. Like, how can I serve? How can I serve? And if you can kind of be thinking about that, and I don't want to get too deep into the weeds. It's all in the book and everything. Understanding the mission. You know, how often is it that we're in a company and we just don't even understand what the mission is? Maybe it's a mission statement on the wall, but we don't, you know, we can some esoteric. Somebody in marketing came up with a slogan or something, but really understanding that. And how does that align with your heart, your purpose, the things that you want to accomplish in life? It doesn't have to be 100% lockstep, but how can you tap into something about the mission, the organization that you're in? I mean, think about that. That can be powerful just in and of itself. I create a list of key traits, for instance. Okay, I'll mention a couple of them. You know, obviously, humility and being able to serve without necessarily needing the limelight, right? That's a follower. Something like curiosity. being curious in your role wherever you're at in an organization is extremely valuable things like courage we don't think of courage and followership those two words but i'm telling you having a heart of courage where you are willing to say you know what i think that we should be doing this and being bold enough to tell the leader that you're working with or somebody on your team hey how many I mean, you've probably seen it in your own career where somebody says, well, I could have told you that wasn't going to work. Well, why didn't you tell me? I didn't have the courage, right? So having courage, being proactive. You know, that's one of Franklin or Stephen Covey's top seven habits, right, is being proactive. But being proactive, thinking like, how can I add value to this relationship that I'm in, in a company, in a nonprofit, whatever? And then, of course, you know, things like effective communication are important. And then I, there's just a couple of the steps that I outlined, but those are the kinds of things that I'm talking about. When I say it's an, it's an active role that you're in. It is a powerful role. It is an influential role. Yeah. I think that there are a lot of what you would think of as leadership characteristics that transfer right over to followership and, and, and that you don't have to be that part, that one person. So I, I think that's huge. And I do like your, your tie-in. And we were just doing a couple episodes the other day with a gentleman that's got, you know, million views on his TED talk and things. And one of the ideas is this personal mission statement. And I think as a follower, when you can tie your personal mission into the corporate mission and be proactive and have influence, now you're aligning, right? Like now you can really – you don't have to be the leader to do that, and yet you are a leader in your own right. But it is a mindset. And that is, I think, what all of it is, leadership, followership, and things as that. I would love for you to share, because I do think this is a great, I always try to get people to just shift the way they're thinking, because that is the point. Your inner world is going to create all your outer world examples. Maybe you could give us some examples, whether it's at a team level, an individual level, real world examples. I sure you have tons of stories in your book of just you know some ways that you know you might illustrate that humble influence in action Like do you have any you know stories or examples of what you would suggest to the listener Yeah, I think, you know, from my perspective, growing up in the media business, you know, it was a dog-eat-dog world, you know, growing up in the 90s, coming into, you know, even in a small community, a small state that we were in. And my number one goal was like, how can I, it spurred the book on how can I become a more effective follower? And I started looking at these examples back then and even into the early 2000s, mid 2000s. And I would always try to figure out like, how can I best serve this person that I'm responding to? And sometimes, you know, I've had leaders that I've worked for that have not been very good to me, you know, but I always try to figure out a way. How could I tap into that? And I would do it anyway. You know, I would I would try to figure out what are they trying to do to get they're asking me to do this particular role. How can I best serve them and tap in and try to find that inner strength, something about that mission that they were on? And I think it also comes down to George. I'll share another little anecdote. Just recently as last week, I was talking with a CEO of a tech company here in our part of the country. And it was really fascinating. I said, what's one of the biggest challenges you're facing right now? And he said, well, as a CEO, I'm pulled in a lot of different directions. And I feel like I'm an OK leader, but my people don't follow well. I was like, ah, he goes, that's what your new book's supposed to be about, right? How can I tap into that? I said, well, tell me more about that. He said, well, I just I just want them to do the work, you know, that I tell them to do. You know, I said, well, that's that's how that's who that is who this audience is for the book is your people. But how can you equip them to better understand what you're trying to do? How could you as the leader give them a tool that can say, OK, let me learn and work on these traits that would make me a better follower? How do I know what the vision is? Am I sharing that with them? How do I tap into their, like you just said, their personal value statement, right? How do I get that to happen? So those are the kinds of things that I feel like are real. I don't know if those were good examples, but those are real life examples of people saying, well, you know, leadership is hard, followership's hard, but if we can work together and have a blueprint, almost a roadmap, like I called it, I think that would be very helpful. And that's what we're trying to do. Yeah. It's, you know, you talk about the idea of this leadership trap and the idea that whether you're a leader or an individual chasing that spotlight, I think what it does is it shifts your mindset away from what, like your title of the book, which is, you know, humble influence is the, you know, counter conversation to leadership sometimes. And, you know, for followers, you know, there is a lot that you can do. And even as a leader, because a lot of our audience is, are the actual leaders that, you know, humility, service mindset, and things make a difference. How did this, I'm curious, because you've been working on this book a while, but now you've coming out with the book. Has, has this, has your lens as a business owner changed because of this book and this topic, you know, because you've been in business a while and maybe you were like me or most, you know, we're chasing leadership and things. Has this book, it might be their chicken or the egg, right? This book has helped with that, or this is why the book came out. What has changed in your way of looking as a business owner? Well, yes, I think it's a great point. And man, putting this work out there is very, it's teaching me a lot about humility in and of itself, okay? Because I'm putting myself out there in a large way. And I feel like the feedback that I get from my team, like I said, there's 15 of us on our team. And it's really interesting because I try to be a leader that emboldens all these and encompasses all these traits that I'm talking about. And I'm not perfect by any means. I have my good days. I have my really bad days. But what I try to do is try to make sure that service is at my heart. I want to make sure that, you know, realizing that living my values is extremely important and that more is caught than taught. You know, we know that about our children, right? But when I'm out there and I'm having an interaction with a client or somebody in the community, and I'm not living up to these values that I'm talking about, that comes back on me. and then I lose credibility. And so everything that I do, I'm under the microscope, I feel. And there's a lot of pressure there as a leader, but trying to equip people, you know, here in my company, Interaction Media, we have what's called a culture of leadership. And we talk about leadership constantly. And I remind, you know, even somebody who may be just out of college and, you know, they're not leading anybody, but I said, you're leading our clients. You could be a leader in our community. I want you to get involved with Rotary and the Chamber of Commerce and, you know, BNI and all these different things. I want you to get involved with those things. And they see me doing it and they say, okay, yeah. And then I explain the why behind it and then try to tap into that purpose that they're trying to accomplish. A lot of these younger people, you know, they don't necessarily know their purpose yet. You know, I didn't really. And you don't need that to be able to make influence, right? That's right. Yeah, that's absolutely right. A lot of it's wayfinding. You're just trying to find your purpose in life, trying to find your role in the community. And I think if you can create a culture where people feel valued, they feel like they can make a difference. And that's what this is all about. You don't have to have the leader role to make a difference and have an impact. You can be leading from the middle. Yeah, I love that. And I like that term leading from the middle because I think it really is a form of leadership. How do you, you've spoke to this a little bit, but how do you create, you've spoken on kind of an individual level of influence. How do you create that culture? What are some things you've done specifically in your company other than encouraging them to do those things to create a culture of followership? And not just as a leader work on your individuals with that, but to create that as a company culture. Yeah. If it's okay, I'll share the hard truth about it. Back in 2019, so seven years ago or so, I learned this idea of business as ministry. I'm a person of faith, and I'm a Christian, and I'm not embarrassed about that at all. And when I heard that term, business as ministry, it spoke to me. And I thought, wow, you know, I can't necessarily go off for a year to Honduras or Ethiopia or Guatemala. But here in Morgantown, West Virginia, I could I could use this as my mission field and I could take those talents and abilities. I've been blessed with my team and we could talk about how do we use that in the marketplace. And so we do things like our Monday meeting. We start every Monday with a nine o'clock meeting and we have gratitudes. everybody all 15 of us go around the room and we share something that that we grateful for on our hearts And it may be something that happened last week in the company It may be something happened over the weekend I do a teaching. I mentioned John Maxwell. I use a devotional that he wrote several years ago. And we do a lesson on leadership. And then somebody prays over the meeting. And that's how we start each week. And, you know, they see that and then they understand, like, that's how I live my life. That's not just something for show or whatever. You know, that's that's me. I'm I'm bearing my soul. I'm putting myself out there, you know, in a big way. And so they respect that, I believe, because they tell me that. And then, you know, that's that that sets the tone for how we go about doing things. We have a focus on leadership. We have a heart of generosity and a heart of gratitude. Yeah, it's it's it's shifting the perspective and the focus. Right. Because I think most people in business, business owners, leaders, and followers, they're all chasing the success, the sales, the revenue, which is all important stuff in business. But the minute you focus on gratitude or you focus on something outside just the KPIs of the corporate organization, you now shift the mindset into something that's more of a servant, humble, focused influencer. And I think that's probably there's probably a lot of ways, whether people are faith based or not, you can shift your mindset away from just the objective. Right. The goals. Exactly. Well, you know, what you're talking about is the culture. Yep. George. And I, you know, when I started down this path in 2019, I was really cynical about it and skeptical. And I was like, I don't know. I mean, yeah, culture, let's go culture, you know. but I committed to it and over over over a couple of months I started seeing the results of it and then I went all in and uh in 2019 we had this mind shift uh doubled the company then the COVID hit and everything and our company just took off and uh we've since that time we've doubled in in revenue top line and this year we're going to double again I mean well yes there's something to it. And I'm not, I'm not like taking any credit for that at all. No, it's, it's culture, culture leads to a team effort. Right. And it's one of the reasons I'm so big on the power of the mastermind, because exactly when two or more people are working in the spirit of harmony to a common objective and that's outside just success. Um, there's a, there's a leverageable influential effect to that. And it can only be done in my opinion through, you know, servant leadership, you know, humility, right? Yeah, yeah. Napoleon Hill had something going there in 1943 or whenever he wrote that line, right? I mean, these dang success principles keep showing up. I don't know what's going on with that. You think about that, even that book. I mean, those are foundational truths that don't waver, you know, honestly. And he was right. And, you know, so I feel like, you know, I mentioned, you know, these leadership books and all the material that's been written. And so, I mean, it's just regurgitated, right? And to some degree, you know, that's what humble influence is about too. It's just, I've taken these principles and like you said, flip the script. I like the way you said that because that's exactly what it is. And they're intertwined, you know? And like I said, you can't have great leaders unless you have great followers. Yeah. And I think what I'm learning over the years, I'm getting a little older. I'm starting to, my kids at least tell me. So I'm realizing that, you know, you can learn and you can grow and you can constantly challenge yourself and get outside your comfort zone, but it's always going to come back to a combination of self-awareness and self-introspection, right? Like how am I creating impact? How am I creating legacy, making a difference? Because ultimately we all want to feel like, and we're looking for those emotions, not the things, the emotions, but we want to feel like we're making a difference. And so this whole topic of influence and humble influence and leadership influence and things I think is so important, but it does begin internally. So we're kind of getting to the end of our time. I just want to leave with a question like this. How would you, what would you recommend? What would you direct? What would you say to people that are listening to this to say, okay, what should I do? Like, where should I start with this? And how do I begin to, you know, implement this idea of humble influence? Where do they start? Yeah. I mean, one of the easiest things. I have that free download. Just go to the website and download the Humble Influence Roadmap. I think it's pretty neat. It's kind of intuitive, but it spells out nine steps for folks. I also think that the idea of stay humble, that's my hashtag, stay humble, because I feel like that's a reminder for me every day. It's very easy to take credit for things. It's also very difficult to take the responsibility and the blame when things go wrong, you know. So staying humble, I think, puts you in that neutral position where you can just be like, OK, I can have empathy for my team. I could I can lead with courage. I have conviction. I have a passion. I want to make sure that my people are equipped, that they have the tools to do their job. And just, you know, from a from a humble influence standpoint, just realizing that leadership is influence and influence is leadership. And so that's what I'm kind of getting at is like, I think there's a humility there and there's a responsibility to lead with a sense of humble influence. Yeah, I love it. That's a great, great, great message. And you said it earlier, and I always like to point things back out to our listeners because you start your meetings with gratitude. And I think an easy road, safe road to immediately get to humility is gratitude because gratitude is going to shift you from, you know, you, you, you to outside. And, and so, uh, humble leadership and humble influence, I think is a great topic in today's world where it's all about being the spotlight and everything else. Um, you, what the, the biggest thing I've learned from kind of what your message is, is this, you can be an influence and a leader with humility and you don't have to be that hard overcharging, title toting, you know, leader type of deal. So there is influence, there is impact, there is legacy from that. So I really appreciate your messages on the episode today. Where's the best place for them to connect with you? It's probably your website, right? I can put these links in our show notes as well, but what's the best way to... That'd be great. For the book, it's humbleinfluencebook.com and my company's interactionmedia.com. Perfect. Yeah. I'm going to add that to our show notes and, you know, might even try to get you back into our Academy Mastermind just to get some deep dive topics. But listen, guys, I appreciate you joining us today. You know, the power of the Mastermind is real. I mean, when you collaborate with people to think differently, like Jim and the success he's had, I think you're going to make changes in your life. So do me a favor and share the show. And just remember, no matter where you're at, whether you're crushing your goals or you're dealing with things, you know, it's never too late to start creating that life that you're meant to live, the one that you want to live. So So take action. Go check out the free download and stuff that Jim's got and look forward to talking with you more. Hit me up on the Daily Mastermind and we'll talk with you again tomorrow. Have a great day.
