Meet Ryan Mason

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ryan Mason a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Ryan, we are so deeply grateful to you for opening up about your journey with mental health in the hops that it can help someone who might be going through something similar. Can you talk to us about your mental health journey and how you overcame or persisted despite any issues? For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.

The truth is, I never expected to be someone who struggled with anxiety. I thought I was built for pressure. I was winning in my auto sales career, selling over 300 cars a year. I had systems in place that pulled in leads on autopilot, I was happily married, and I felt like I had a grip on everything. Let me run you through how I fell into a panic disorder and what I did to claw my way back out.

Let’s flash back to 2020. I was nine years into a strong career in the auto industry. Then COVID hit. Illinois started shutting everything down. Luckily, auto sales and repair were deemed essential, so we kept rolling, but everything around us was falling apart. The media was nonstop panic. People were scared. Supply chains collapsed. New inventory dried up and the used market exploded. Stimulus money was flowing. The industry was hot. The pace was relentless.

Front-end sales were booming. We couldn’t keep cars on the lot. Customers were skipping negotiations and paying more than ever. But behind the scenes, it was chaos. Older cars with higher miles were causing more issues. Parts were delayed. Techs were overwhelmed. Vehicles sat in service bays waiting on parts. It was a nonstop grind.

On paper, 2021 was one of my best years. But I didn’t realize the price I was paying until it hit me hard.

One Monday morning, everything changed. I had worked all weekend, dealt with a stressful customer issue, skipped my workout, and rushed through breakfast. Suddenly, my heart started racing. My hands and feet went numb. My vision blurred. My chest tightened. I thought I was dying. I couldn’t breathe. I told my boss to call 911. The paramedics checked me out, and after a series of tests, the ER doctor said something I wasn’t expecting.

“You had a panic attack. It’s just anxiety.”

That didn’t sit right with me at the time. I didn’t believe it. I wasn’t stressed in that moment. I thought anxiety was what you felt when you misplaced your keys. I figured something must be seriously wrong. So I started obsessing over my body. Every heartbeat. Every sensation. I became hyper-aware and afraid of what it all meant. That fear created a loop. And that loop created a disorder.

It got worse. I started having panic attacks in drive-throughs, on highways, in stores, in social situations, even sitting at a stoplight. I avoided caffeine. I avoided heat. I avoided anything I thought could trigger it. My world got smaller and smaller. I went from thriving to barely holding it together. I was still showing up for work and the things I needed to, but I felt like a shell of who I used to be. I distracted, exhausted, and barely holding it together.

This is when I hit rock bottom. I had a panic attack at a red light and something in me snapped. I decided to try something different. Maybe the doctors were right. Maybe it was anxiety. Even if it wasn’t there was no way I could live the rest of my life like this. I ordered half a dozen books on panic disorders and agoraphobia. I started reading and learning everything I could.

That’s when I found ERP. Exposure and Response Prevention. It teaches you to confront the fear head-on instead of avoiding it. So I did. I put myself into situations that triggered the panic and stayed there until the sensation dropped by half. I forced myself to go for drives. I went into crowded stores. I sat in discomfort instead of running from it. Over time, my reactions changed. The panic went from overwhelming to manageable. From manageable to mild. Then finally, it faded away.

What surprised me was that other areas of anxiety faded too. Things that used to make me uncomfortable didn’t even register anymore. It was like I had trained a new part of my brain. I learned how to stop treating fear like fact.

During this season of growth, I also made a major shift. I left the auto industry and launched a marketing agency called Elevated Ideas. I took everything I learned about sales, systems, and attention, and started helping others build brands they believed in. At the start of this year, I published a book called Likes to Leads. It shares my full story, from childhood through every challenge and breakthrough, including a deeper look into this mental health journey. I wrote it for people like me. People who needed to hear the hard stuff and know that they could still win.

You can find it on Amazon under Likes to Leads by Ryan Mason.

If you’re reading this and you’re in that dark place, I want you to know that it’s possible to come back. You are not broken. You are not alone. Take the next right step. Then take another. Over time, that’s how you build momentum. That’s how you win.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

After over a decade in the auto sales industry, I stepped away to pursue my own business, Elevated Ideas. For the last two years, I have run this marketing agency full time. As a learned to advertise for myself, that slowly morphed into a full time career. My primary focus is helping small business owners generate leads through digital avenues like search engine optimization, paid advertising on Facebook and Google, and backend automation to help qualify and retain leads. For locals I also specialize in drone photography and first person view fly throughs of their business with drones.

I work with service-based businesses that are great at what they do but often struggle to keep their pipeline full. We help them fix that by setting up systems that work while they sleep. Whether it’s building a lead-generating website, automating follow-ups, or improving local visibility, the goal is simple. More quality leads with less wasted time.

At the beginning of this year, I also published my first book, Likes to Leads, which is now available on Amazon. The book is broken down into two parts. Part one walks through my life story and the lessons that shaped me. I talk about growing up with a parent who battled addiction, surviving a tornado that tore my home apart and left me climbing out of a bathtub in the middle of the highway, and the mental health struggles that led to a full-blown panic disorder. More importantly, I share how I fought my way through all of it and used those experiences to grow.

Part two is for small business owners who want to start building momentum with their own content and digital strategy. It covers practical ways to generate leads organically before you are ready to hire help. The book also includes access to a free 30-day video challenge that walks readers through the entire process step by step. Watching people take action and see real results has been one of the most rewarding parts of this journey.

Whether you are a regular person, a sales guru, or a business owner, I promise you will get value from this book. And if you’re ready to elevate your online presence, we’re here for you. Check out the book on Amazon and visit ElevatedIdeas.com to see how we can help you take the next step.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The three most impactful traits in my journey have been tenacity, a willingness to fail, and consistency.

First, tenacity. You cannot beat someone who refuses to quit. I was not always the smartest or most experienced in the room, but I was almost always the one who kept showing up when others gave up. You do not lose until you give up. Eventually, you can succeed at nearly everything. When things got hard, whether in business or personal life, I didn’t look for a way out. I looked for a way through. That mindset is a cheat code. If you are just getting started, decide right now that you are not going to quit when it gets hard. That one decision puts you in a different category than most people from day one. Because guess what, it is going to get hard. There is a reason everyone doesn’t do it. Expect that and keep pushing.

Second, the willingness to fail or look stupid. This is huge. Most people never start because they are afraid of how they will look. They fear what others will think if they mess up or fall flat. I have failed publicly more times than I can count, and I have learned something valuable every single time. Early in my journey, I tried launching offers that flopped. I made content that got no engagement. I pitched things that no one bought. But every one of those experiences made the next version better. If you are afraid to look dumb, you will never move fast enough to learn. Embrace those losses and learn from the losses of others. It is temporary. Growth is not. Also, give yourself some grace during those learning moments. Remember that social media is a highlight reel, and everyone else is either failing quietly or living in a comfort bubble you would never be content in anyway.

Third is consistency. This one is boring, but it matters more than anything. You can have all the talent and vision in the world, but if you only show up when you feel like it, you will lose to someone less talented who shows up every day. In the entrepreneurial world we call it the overnight success that took ten years to build. The reason I was able to sell hundreds of cars a year, build a personal brand, and start a successful agency is because I kept showing up. Even when the views were low. Even when I wasn’t sure it was working. The compound effect only works if you keep swinging. If you are starting out, commit to a routine that forces progress, even when motivation fades. It becomes a large numbers game. I know that if I show up and produce a certain number of leads, I can convert that to a certain number of appointments, which will lead to a certain number of dollars. Then it is simply about ramping volume instead of chasing shiny objects.

You do not need to have it all figured out to start. You just need to keep going, be willing to learn out loud, and stay consistent. Do that long enough, and you will outlast 90 percent of your competition.

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

Right now, my biggest challenge is scaling without losing the quality and personalization that got me this far. Elevated Ideas started as a solo operation where I handled everything myself. I built the systems, ran the ads, closed the deals, and followed up with every client personally. That level of control worked early on, but as demand increases, I’m realizing that doing it all myself becomes the bottleneck.

The hard part is handing off responsibilities without handing off the standard. When people work with me, they’re trusting me with their business. That’s not something I take lightly. So the challenge becomes how to grow and bring in help without things slipping through the cracks.

What I’m doing now is building out SOPs and onboarding processes to make my product quality repeatable and standardized. This will allow me to spend more time working on the business instead of inside it, which is something a lot of entrepreneurs resist for too long. I’m being intentional about creating systems that don’t just replace me, but extend my way of doing things so clients still feel that same high-touch experience. Not everything should be AI or automated and I know this, but there is a dance to find that line.

It’s not easy. Growth exposes the gaps. But I’ve learned that bottlenecks are a sign of momentum, not failure. If you are hitting friction, it means you are moving. The key is learning how to adjust without stalling out.

That’s where I am right now. Still growing. Still learning. Still building smarter instead of just grinding harder.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://elevatedideas.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_ryanmason_/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ItsRyanMason
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsryanmason/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ItsElevatedIdeas