Unlocking Team Potential: Justin Coats on Integrating AI Without Replacing Human Creativity
The entrepreneurial journey rarely follows a straight path, and Justin Coats' remarkable evolution from Marine Corps helicopter mechanic to AI implementation visionary proves this point magnificently. In today's Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur Spotlight, we're diving deep with Justin, whose company empowers businesses to seamlessly integrate AI into their workflows. His unique approach—where thoughtful analysis takes precedence over rushed action—has positioned him as a leader in helping organizations harness AI to unlock their teams' fullest potential rather than replace human talent.
Hi, Justin! Thanks for joining us today. Tell us about your business. Who do you serve, how do you serve them, and what's the impact that your business and work makes?
We empower businesses to seamlessly integrate AI into their workflows, enhancing team performance and driving tangible results. We focus on providing AI literacy training, strategic consulting, and customized AI solutions.
We serve businesses by offering three levels of AI integration: "Educate" to build AI literacy, "Integrate" to develop AI policies and optimize workflows and processes, and "Build" to create and maintain custom AI software and digital team members. We tailor our solutions to align with each client's unique ecosystem, ensuring AI works with their people, not instead of them.
The impact of our work is to streamline operations, enhance decision-making, and automate tasks, freeing up teams to focus on creativity, strategy, and innovation. We help businesses leverage AI to achieve greater efficiency, productivity, and profitability while ensuring a human-centered approach to AI adoption.
Tell us about the moment you finally felt like you went from wantrepreneur to entrepreneur.
This moment came 5 years after starting my first business. I had started an Amazon consulting Agency in 2018 where we helped consumer product companies integrate Amazon as a profitable sales vertical inside of their business (in other words, we helped product companies sell their products on Amazon.com). But it wasn't until a year after we got acquired by a larger agency that it really set in that I was an entrepreneur, because I sat back, evaluated what was going on in the "business world" and decided to start another business instead of becoming an employee.
Identifying problems and then thinking about them obsessively until I have a realistic (often times it's only realistic to me because I dream big) solution to the problem and then starting to lay the groundwork and foundation for the solution to come to life is a natural state for me.
Describe the moment or period in your life/career that motivated you to make the entrepreneurial leap.
2012, middle of the summer in the middle of Kuwait, in 135°F temps in a non-air-conditioned bathroom finishing Rich Dad Poor Dad. As soon as I finished that book for the first time, something happened inside of my brain, like a partition was created that was specifically created for me to become a business owner. It took me 6 years after that for life to align at the perfect moment for me to start my first business, but that was when I knew I was going to be a business owner.
Fast forward to 2018, I was an employee flying UAVs over wildfires at night, assisting our brave wildland firefighters, when the requirements of that career path were no longer acceptable to myself and my family. At the end of a very real and difficult conversation with my wife, I said, "I'll just figure it out." Within 2 weeks, I had quit my UAV job, became an internal full-time employee for a product company as their Amazon guy and simultaneously launched Volitant, my Amazon consulting Agency.
Describe a tool, service, or software that has been a game-changer for your business. How does it contribute to your success?
haha. This will have to be ChatGPT, generative AI technology.
1. This is my business, providing AI literacy and integration and implementation of AI technology
2. This has allowed my business and team to complete roughly 4+ years' worth of work in 1.5 years
This technology contributes to our success by completely unlocking almost all of the potential inside every single person my company, allowing them to augment and enhance their skills, intelligence, and ability to perform and complete tasks that take a long time, are difficult to accomplish, aren't completely clear of how to perform them, or just down right don't know how to do. It's not about replacing them, it's more about providing them the space to explore within their own role how work gets completed when utilizing the world's smartest technology.
We know that success is very often a non-linear path. Tell us about a failure, pivot point, or lesson that changed your course or direction and helped to get you where you are today.
Non-linear; very true. My path has taken me from being a Marine Corps helicopter mechanic to being a certified commercial helicopter pilot, professional drone pilot, an Amazon consulting agency owner, and now the owner of an AI literacy, integration, and implementation company.
Throughout all of this, there are many examples of small failures, pivots, lessons learned, but I'd say the most recent impactful failure + pivot and painful learning lesson was investing over $20k into building, creating, and launching a digital course that failed miserably. This digital course was "How to maximize ChatGPT for your business", and this course didn't have any distribution and thus failed. In its failure was born the right path for what we're doing at the phase we were in and are growing through is doing our course, teaching, guidance person to person. This has led to our early success and will provide a solid foundation for us to grow significantly more in the coming years.
What unconventional strategy did you employ that significantly impacted your business?
Thinking above action, seeking and enjoying hard situations.
I'm the type of person who sits and thinks, ponders, and wonders on a topic for multiple hours without moving, eating, or drinking. For as much time as I input performing actions (emails, meetings, trainings, sales, etc.), I spend about 2 times that amount of time just thinking about the current state of the business, clients, customers, team, technology, and the future. This provides me the ability to understand very clearly the path we are on in our business but also humanity and what the next couple of steps we will be taking are.
And secondly, seek and enjoy doing the right hard things. We all have moments in our life that just plain suck, but there are some of those moments that are the "right" sucky moment where you learn something profound and impactful. Seek those moments, learn to identify and chase those moments and deal with the "suck" until you're on the other side, because the other side always happens and the learning and growth you get from those really hard times often times is worth the pain.
Obsessive analysis and thinking. Learn from everything.
What’s something you wish you knew sooner that you’d give as advice for aspiring or newer entrepreneurs?
That money is a form of energy and a tool to accomplish dreams, goals, or missions. Money isn't the end-all be-all; it's not the goal.
Where and how do you allocate your energy called money?
Want to dive deeper into Justin's work? Check out the links below!
The Tech Veteran Championing Marketers: Talgat Mussin on Measurement, Mindfulness, and Meaningful Work
