Unlock Your Potential, Achieve Greatness, and Make An Impact Affordably

It is so important to build proper business relationships no matter how small or how large your organisation is. Your potential biggest client, sponsor or donation for you and your organization is out there. Do not miss the opportunity to meet those connections at networking events or Masterclass Sessions

Steve Gaston says, “You have to learn more to Earn more, and every part of the group of businesses that I own or involved in has that purpose at its core. We believe that we value our client’s business as much as our own and therefore feel we try to be as competitive in all the services we provide. My Passion is to continually grow and add products and services that can make a difference worldwide by Launching UK & overseas projects that help business owners build better relationships, develop themselves as business owners, and make more profit.”

More Information at https://themasterclasssessions.com

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou
This is Hugh Ballou, founder and president of SynerVision Leadership Foundation, where leaders create synergy with a powerful, compelling vision, for our audiences, nonprofit leaders, clergy, and their board members who are business people. Now, I said they’re business people, we’re running a business. It’s a for-purpose business with nonprofits. So putting on our business hat, so one of the best inspiring business leaders I know is Steve Gaston for Glasgow, Scotland. Steve, welcome to the nonprofit exchange, pleased to give people a little sense of who you are, and why you do the work that you’re doing.

Steve Gaston
Thank you very much. And it’s great to be here today, especially with your community as well. And, and for myself, I’ve been very fortunate in life, you know, I’ve had many businesses retired young 30, boarded 32. And from that point of my mission has always to be helped other business people to achieve more, helped them do the things that I did get them access to the people who helped influence myself, that made a difference. And all the businesses are either created or created, sold right up to now, I’m 55. Now have all had that sort of mission. And its purpose is how we can help people get better and get more and I love helping people achieve their dreams, achieve their goals. And then that’s where we are now, in the sort of the programs and the businesses that have now is helping people in business, whether it’s commercial, entrepreneurial, or as you said, nonprofit, tap in to how they can get to that next level, and how they can really achieve what they really want to do if they want to do.

Hugh Ballou
Your background says dream big. Explain that widget. Yeah, dream big, you know, so many business or people in general,have massive dreams or whether we’d love to be. But a lot of people when they see, especially when they set their goals, they set it at a level where it’s so easy. That is just as the next stage for them.

Steve Gaston
Where I like to take people that work with me or I coach or our help or trying to influence us to see what’s if you could dream something that’s really out there so stratospherically out of the norm, to dream big, to dream where if something had happened to you yourself in life or in business, that would be a life changing moment for you. What would that dream me that the main purpose of that is when you understand that you can help share that dream with everybody else in your community, everyone else in your connections and everyone you come across in life, because you never know who might be able to help you achieve that dream.

Hugh Ballou
You know, that’s one of the things that holds us back. We start with the word nonprofit, and it puts us into a scarcity mindset. So going into this abundance thinking is is really important. You know, God gave us abundance in the world and we tend to put it down but it’s there and we are stewards of other people’s money. And so we tend to dumb it down instead of saying Okay, Let’s magnify it let’s think big let’s impact what we’re doing is impacting people’s lives. Now your your business one of your many businesses, but your, your, we’re going to talk today about one of them at least it’s the the masterclass sessions, so, I’m gonna I’m gonna let people it’s the it’s not any masterclass is the master class. So that would be your your L V. masterclass. sessions.com. Aha. So when people go there, what will they find?

Steve Gaston
The master class sessions.com really goes back to when in my previous career, I was doing so a lot of stuff globally. And when it was in different countries, I would actually go out into the countries. And what if the people were like, and I meant to me many countries were quite a lot of the business owners and people in those local communities of all they thought they were really doing really, really well. When you actually look at the poverty in the countries and places that they could really do so much more if they could get access to people that usually the blue chip companies keep heading, the keep them hidden there in that sort of network and they really go from one blue chip company to another blue chip company, and they train their directors, their leaders, their main people, how to get better. That means that the normal business owner, entrepreneur, you know, etc, like nonprofit, committee board or whatever, to get access to these people because these people cost a lot of money. Some of these people can be charging 20,000 pounds or half a day, or $20,000 for half the sale. Trying to come in and work with these blue chip people and their leaders. So what I did the masterclass sessions is I want to change that I want to bring those industry experts and I want to bring them to the local community of business owners globally, the appraisers that everyone can afford. So far, for example, have had, I don’t want to meet names, too many of the names that mostly came to deliver. But I’ve got one, for example, you came along, spoke last last month for us about leadership. And it was absolutely phenomenal. I’ve had Joe Foster, the founder of Reebok Comm, and talk about how you took Reebok, from a business that was zero to 4 billion euro. So when you’re learning from people who have got experience in actual real experience, they have not learned from books that are many, many people out there see that industry experts, and they’ve never actually achieved the experience. They’ve never actually developed a business. These people walk the walk and talk the talk, they come and deliver golden nuggets to our community. So you can take those golden nuggets straight away and implement them into your business, implement them into your nonprofit organization, implement them into your new startup. So you’ve you’re learning from people who have already made the mistakes, and they’re stealing your correct path. And the masterclass sessions is all about getting those golden nuggets, and we have a live session every month except for January, I’m on holiday in January we have a session every single month, February 10, through to December, we will get an industry expert coming talk life about something that could be a bit marketing, about leadership, it can be about sales, it could be about life in general, it could be health and wellness. It’s something that’s going to influence and help you in your business acumen to make you become better.

Hugh Ballou
And you can do all the masterclass sessions, and you can do it with some of the leaders in your nonprofit, you know, it’s a, it’s a tax exempt for purpose. Business is not a for profit business. However, installing some really sound business principles helps us be better stewards. So the monies that were really custodians of the money, so thinking differently, moving our brain into a different, different paradigm, you know, what is that we need to do differently? Because we’re at Steve, sometimes we’re kind of in a rut, and we get burned out, because we’re trying to do too much saving money, when in fact, we could accelerate the revenue if we really thought differently. So

Steve Gaston
you have these, these sessions and when, when this airs live, it’ll want to be this past, but there’s, there’s one every time so people every month except January, and and in the East Coast, United States, it’s 8am. When you have them, it’s 1pm. In the UK, it’s we should have a closed captions on here. The I think as Winston Churchill said a Great Britain in America, two countries separated by common language.

Hugh Ballou
So you know, we have some different and even the subset of American English is southern English, which we sort of have our own dialect, but I get it, I get it. So when you have these experts, you talked about the leader of Reebok, that’s pretty high. So how do you? How do you find people like that, to learn from and then to share with others? So what’s the criteria for selecting these guests? No, yeah, great question that

Steve Gaston
I’ve been very, very fortunate. I’ve been influenced and I’ve had many mentors throughout the years and quite a lot of the people who have had coming to speak over but we have you get access to the recordings as a member now going back to October 20 that everything is recorded now from all the experts and and I probably about 25% of people who have had already on muscular stations have been mentors to myself throughout the years from when my youth through.

Steve Gaston
And and that’s one way that I’ve approached them and said, You really helped me and my businesses could you know, come and help other people share your great golden nuggets and your great advice. And then there’s other people who have the eye maybe followed read books about maybe someone like yourself who said, Steve, have you? Have you ever heard of this person? You know that they did a session where I was x y Zed you really need to go and see them you need to go and listen to them and I’ll go and visit them goons to open specials that online. I wouldn’t experience what they’re delivering. And if I feel that their message and their their and their topics are really on par for what our business community really require. I will then reach out to them and say I’d love for you to have a conversation. I’d love to talk about how you could help influence others

The Sooners globally through the masterclass sessions, and through that conversation, the fifth interview process, I get the feel of are they going to be able to deliver what our people in our community require?

Steve Gaston
And get them on board, I’m really quite pleased, don’t just reach out to people and say, let’s have a chat with you. But I do a lot of research first on, they have to walk the walk and talk the talk, there have to be there have to be doing something that’s really showing making a difference that the speakers have got the next couple of months. I’m your one who’s a national business person who’s global customer, then I’ve got one who’s co written, massive fix globally, that I’ve been best sellers globally, that I’ve got coming. So these are all people that again, they make a difference.

Hugh Ballou
There’s so much wisdom, the British conductor composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, has said that is known to have said, music did not reveal all of its secrets to just one person. You could change the word music to leadership, business, you know. So there’s a lot of wisdom in that and you learn something, you’re number 357 of my interviews here. And every single one of those interviews, I’ve learned something from an expert like you. So there’s a lot of wisdom and the more you learn, the more you’re aware, there are other things on the horizon that you didn’t even know about.

Steve Gaston
There’s a membership community or there’s a membership, the masterclass sessions, it’s very reasonable. And you get access to the master classes. Is there more that you get access to the membership? Yes, there is. Thank you, you know, one of the extras I talk about, you need to work hard. You need to play hard. I need to raise my heart in business, or if you’re involved in any form of being involved in business. So the work hard part you should be doing. The play hard part you should be doing with the rest heart. And the rest heart is where we come in, actually, because you should as a business owner, and like you said, we should be learning something every day. We should be learning every day. There should be something we’ll learn. I’ve read every day I look at watch podcasts. I’ve done a whole range of things. But one of the extra things that we brought into masterclass session was the rest heart. Anyone that does become a member of the masterclass sessions, a gift a holiday voucher, it’s a four-star TripAdvisor apartment voucher they can use in any of 30 countries globally, up to the value of I think, is 1500 pounds, which is about $1,800. And that’s my gift to the members because they’re working hard. They’re learning hard. They’re playing hard, they should rest. Every business owner or someone’s holding nonprofit, nonprofit, if you’re on a board, it’s intense, you’re doing stuff that is really, really important. You need to take that you need to take the break, you don’t if you don’t, you’re going to burn out. So as part of the membership, we give this voucher that you can use and every time you renew every year I give you another venture. So I’m giving you a holiday every single year, you just need to play the flights and the taxes that the little bits that that’s involved in that. And also plant a tree, or plant a tree for every single member. Because it’s part of our corporate responsibility to do something for our planet. So for every member that joins us and renews, I plant a tree for them, we’ve got plantation that we helped support in Africa, where we plant a tree for them.

Hugh Ballou
That’s amazing. That’s amazing. Pay it pay it forward, because trees live a long time. And they really, they eat up a lot of co2. That’s that’s what they need. And they give off oxygen. It’s like, oh, yeah, that’s a great plan. So thank you for being sensitive to that. So I’ve spoken at many, many conferences, and people come and take notes. Then they come back to another one. And they asked the same questions they asked before so there’s some people would take notes and put them away. So what did people say who have attended your sessions? What difference has it made in their lives? And have they taken away tangible, tangible tactics they can implement? Yeah.

Steve Gaston
Every single master class session, feedback from our attendees, is that oh, my goodness, I didn’t know how easy it was to do that thing. There’s always one golden nugget that one of our industry experts is delivering. That’s so easy to implement that they do it either says the finished they’ve put it into the processes, or they’ve got it the following day. They’ve put it into the business strategy.

And that’s one of the things that makes a difference between math masterclass session is for all levels of business from New Starts to multinationals, because the multinationals have staff, their staff that need to learn. And half the time they’re not educating their staff properly. So means that multinationals can actually send the staff along if need be to learn those golden nuggets to help them do things easier. But is the simplicity like from your session last month, there was two parts in your session that I thought, Oh, I love that. I wrote them down or put an asterisk next to them, guess what, the next day I was speaking to my team aboutwhatever and, and that’s the difference of masterclass sessions. You may be taking notes, but one thing we are a community are all about saying what can we action, and I always do a call to action, and you heard me sing the call to action? What are you going to do to deal with the information that you gave us last this this session, what you’re going to implement tomorrow, or today or by next week? And it’s all about that call to action and the accountability our members have with each other as well. I want to point out to people who are listening or watching this, that it’s it’s not just presenting, you know, there’s a presenter, but there’s dialogue, there’s interaction, and like you said, You challenge people, you’ve What did you learn? And what will you do differently? And actually, there were a half dozen people that made appointments to talk to me, and had some really good follow up questions. So that so you saying what you just said made my day because all of us who are leaders are primarily influencers. And if we influence people to do something, step up their game, and actually, we’re always working on ourselves. But you highlighted something really important here? Do we invest in our staff and volunteers and board members and nonprofits? So having someone come with you said to you being the only interpreter, and people who bring groups, everybody hears a different piece, and then they come home? And they pull their ideas and say, Okay, we’ve built a strategy because we, we attended together. So that’s just a great idea. So we don’t as leaders invest enough in our employees, our staff, one of our members, has team people in the business, I think, and as you said, and what they do the following week, they have a meeting based on what did you learn the master class sessions last week? What can we do to make their life easier and better through the vase and, and the challenges that were raised during that masterclass session, and if they have that, as part of their business strategy, every single month, have that one meeting with the team coming together? So as you said, they bring the certain parts that they thought was important to them. And they bring it together as a team.

Hugh Ballou
I was on a group yesterday, and one of the business leaders on there said that he had multiple businesses in his career. And every January, he’d sell his business, and then he’d say, I’m going to buy it back and he and ask employees, should I buy it back? Is it worth it? What should we need to do better? That’s pretty bold, very transparent, being very vulnerable. And most of us are afraid to ask because we might not we might hear something we don’t want to hear. But this makes it more important. What do you say?

Steve Gaston
Oh, exactly. You know, it’s learning from amongst the learning from failure. But when you’ve got other people who are especially inside something, and you can go to the outside and look within and then see, what do we really need to do a positive change. Because sometimes you don’t realize you’re on a negative spiral. Because you’re to it. Sometimes you’re taking yourself out, and you’ve got and then you’re trusting a lot of people to advise you and you’re the single, we can maybe do this a little bit better, not worse. Sometimes I there’s one thing my father said to me when I was very young This is he always said, I’m not very smart. But if I give you 1000, things of hate CFOs and things to you, one thing might be the game changer for you. And I’d rather I’d rather offer you the 1000 bits of advice. So you get that one bit of advice that could make a difference.

Hugh Ballou
Yeah, you’ve inspired lots of thoughts today, you know, we’re Time flies by when you with Steve guests. And this is just like, amazing. So there’ll be a transcription of this in the pot and the where you go to V nonprofit exchange and other the http://TheNonprofitExchange.org is where you’ll find this interview and all the others and you can subscribe there to whatever platform that you want, and get it on your smartphone as a podcast. You can also watch it, watch the replay on that page. So Steve, I want to talk about our community a minute and then come back and then let’s do a summary. You know, what do you want people to do as a result or what’s the challenge that you have for people? So SynerVision, has a community and you can find it at http://NonprofitCommunity.org nonprofit, community dot o RG, that’s a free portal, you can sign in there, I’ll approve you later. And then you can network with nonprofit leaders around the globe. We have people from six countries in there, we’re building it out. And then there’s another level. Once you’re in there and you see value, and you want to get more value, there’s an influencer level. So you can email me say, I’m ready to apply for that influencer level. So we have all kinds of this show will be in there. Along with dozens of workshops. We do workshops every month, we’re doing one this week in America about leadership, nothing happens without leadership. And the whole point is reframing our thinking, realizing we’re in a for purpose, business, and getting outside of our normal process. So we can learn from people like Steve Gaston. So, Steve, you’re invited to join nonprofit community.org. And we’re going to send people to the masterclass sessions.com, which will be in the show notes, people can click on that and they can go and sign up. And there’s just a wealth of stuff. Very different from what we have in the supervision community, but not conflicting, it is complimentary. And it’s an additional like you’re opening a door to a new room of knowledge with a whole knowledge fault library resources. So you’ve inspired me today. Steve Gaston, what do you want to leave people with today? No.

Steve Gaston
There’s one thing I did when I was sitting with clients, and we say do you want to be in the next 1%? You know, people should be improving daily. By 1%. Most businesses that make money or most nonprofit organizations, they say what can we do to make ourselves better? Sometimes it’s not that big change, it’s that 1% change. If you feel that you want to be moving in that 1% Or do you know someone that striving to be better? steer them to the masterclass sessions, first of all, steer them to you, whew, first, because who might be able to get their golden ticket? If you know you first go and experience the masterclass sessions, but you need to speak to you. First for that.

When you experience the masterclass sessions, you will want to be part of the community because once you see what you can do and how you want to achieve more how easy it is to do it, and how easy it is you can dream big. You will want to be part of the masterclass sessions we have more members in 23 countries globally already.

So, it’s a great community to be within. There’s also a great community to knit work and build your relationships with as well and as you said, it’s not just about the content. There’s also the community level of it as well as being around and surrounding yourself with people with similar mindsets.

So if you want yourself as a business owner or your team or your staff to be in that sort of mindset get them along to the master class session so we can help them improve. So we can help them develop. We can inspire them to help you to profit and also let them have a rest of the navigate as well.

Hugh Ballou
You can tell his fans are passionate about the network and the mastermind is where you pull your thoughts with other people’s thoughts because nobody knows it all. Steve Gaston thank you for being my guest today on the nonprofit exchange. Thanks very much. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you

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