So Scott, what would you say is your why of what you do?
You know, the why, and I love that question because that's actually something I ask a
lot of my clients too, is try to help you find your why.
For me, my why is I really gain energy and get passion from whenever I work with other
folks and help see them finally kind of connecting the dots and able to do whatever it is that
they believe they've been put on the planet to do.
I call it living after calling.
So I was a school teacher for a long time.
That was still my why then.
It just showed up in the classroom with the kids.
I really didn't care as much about the content I was teaching.
It was about getting them to go, wow, this is what I want to do with the rest of my life.
I was in the corporate world.
I developed leaders.
I worked with clients, but the developing leaders part was the part that fed my passion
because that's where I got to see, okay, wait a minute, this is how you can do this.
This is how you can change your life.
This is how you can help the team.
This is how you can succeed.
And then now as a coach, it's even more authentically in alignment with that why because I'm able
to really do that with my clients and help them clear the weeds and get rid of the stuff
that's in the way so that they can do what is authentically what they're supposed to
be doing.
And when that happens for them, then it's like that's my why.
That's now happening for me.
That gives me my energy.
What would you say is your calling, Scott?
That's it.
That ability and that desire and that chance to help other folks really discover what is
deeply, passionately most important to them.
I talk a lot to people about priority and we make that word plural nowadays, priorities,
and say oh, there's more than one one thing because the word priority means the one thing
that comes before all other things.
When you make it plural, it's like the one things that come before, that doesn't work.
You've got to have something that kind of trops everything else.
And so helping that person that maybe is a small business owner that says at the end
of the day, my family is so important to me, but I haven't made my daughter's soccer game.
I haven't been able to be there at the recitals.
I haven't been able to spend time with my wife and help them clear the weeds and get
down to the nitty gritty so that they can actually still have a business that works.
But instead of being a slave to that, they can actually do the thing that they say is
most important and be in alignment with that and make it to the kids' soccer game, go to
the recital, have date night with your spouse, those sorts of things.
Because you really can do both.
And helping people do that is what I'm called to do.
That's amazing.
Wow.
How did you get started into this path?
The path to wisdom is always having a lack of wisdom, right?
I think, you know, it's sort of how do you get experience by not having any experience,
right?
It's sort of the same thing.
So my wife and I had our own journey where we had a financial situation.
It was extremely tough.
We were in a lot of debt.
I wasn't making very much money.
I felt like a failure.
I felt like I wasn't able to really do what I was meant to do.
I was actually suicidal because of the finances and the situation.
My wife and I nearly got divorced.
Then we were able to kind of turn that around and decide, you know what, we're going to
have to do something different.
We can't just keep doing the same old thing.
We changed what we were doing pretty radically.
We paid off $78,854.42 in two years, 11 months while making $55,000 a year.
People can do the math and go, wait a minute.
How does that happen?
It's called you live on nothing.
You just get really radical.
I'm not saying everyone should do that, but I'm using that as an example of we said we're
going to really do things in a different way so that after that two years and 11 months
of being crazy radical, we can now be more in alignment and do the things we want to
do.
I work from home now.
My commute's 30 seconds.
I'm able to go have lunch with my wife.
I'm not on a plane all the time like I was at one point, those sorts of things because
we've changed the way we look at the world.
When we did that, what happens is you start doing things that are weird and people look
at you and go, what are you doing?
How does this work?
Some of them are like, what are you doing?
They're accusatory, but others of them are like, what are you doing?
Would you show me how to do it?
From that naturally came this idea of working with other people and helping them restructure
their life and make decisions about what they wanted to do.
It's not that the decisions they make are the same as the decisions I made.
That's not the point, but to help them then say, hey, let's get clear on what we want
to do.
Let's get clear on how we want to do it.
Then let's really go all in, burn the boats, make radical changes so that we can actually
do it and then see them do it.
That's how that got started.
That's awesome.
From your journey of doing something else in life to going in and giving clarity to
people, where did that come into play?
How did that transition?
I think a lot of it, again, it showed up from an early age.
My mother's joke is that I've been a coach since I was eight years old because I was
always that kid, even at a very young age, that other kids came to for help.
In high school, that always stinks because I was always the guy that all the girls asked
for advice on their dating life.
I was always the friend.
Later, that actually turns out to be a good thing, but in high school, it's like, well,
this stinks.
But then I was able to always be that person.
When I was in college, I was a tutor for other kids.
I was doing things.
It was never perfectly in alignment, but there were pieces of it that showed up that made
me go, huh, that's when I really come alive, when I get to do that thing.
I think it's a process of discovery for all of us.
There's a couple of activities I do with looking forward and looking backwards where you can
kind of extract nuggets.
I was doing that.
I didn't do it as a formal activity like I do now because I didn't know it, but I was
doing it by accident where I constantly was kind of experimenting and finding these nuggets
and then pulling out from these nuggets and going, okay, that's what feeds my soul.
Now I want to do a little bit more of that.
How do I do more of that?
How is more of that going to show up?
It's an evolution over time.
I've run my own businesses.
I've worked in retail.
I've been a school teacher.
I've worked in the corporate world.
I've done all of these different things, but when I look back on them, the pieces that
were authentic to my calling were always the pieces that gave me energy.
The pieces that weren't are the pieces that took away energy.
Don't get me wrong.
There's always a certain amount of you just got to do it because you're alive and there's
work that needs to be done.
I always joke and say very few people I think have a calling of, yay, I get to do the laundry
today.
This is my calling.
That laundry just has to be done because you need clean clothes, but there's parts of your
life that you can get more and more in alignment with that calling.
When that happened for me, I just kept leaning into the more.
So over time, that evolved and grew and I was very deliberate and intentional in finding
places that I could go, skills I could develop, activities I could do to come more and more
in alignment with that calling over time.
That's amazing.
What would you say to what you are today and the radical step you took for two years to
pay off the debt?
What held you back all those times from becoming who you were supposed to become?
I think what always has held me back and I think it's true for all of us to some extent
is we all have those limiting beliefs.
We all have the scripts in our heads that tell us you're not good enough, you're never
going to be able to succeed at this, you're a failure.
That voice tends to tell us what I call the P's, which is it makes things personal.
So it's not I failed, it's you are a failure.
That's the script in my head.
It's not that it's permanent.
So it's not only I failed this one time, it's I always fail.
And I've got that voice saying that too at times.
And then the third P is pervasive.
So it's not even I just failed at this one thing, it's I fail at everything.
So I'm a failure, I'm always a failure, and I fail at everything.
Most of us have heard some version of that script in our head.
I for sure have heard that voice and it showed up from my father, it showed up from other
people in my life.
And even though they're saying things that they don't mean it to come across that way,
that's the script that we internalize.
That's that message that we internalize.
And until you get clear on what that message is and realizing that, by the way, that message
is actually there to try to protect you.
It's actually a good thing.
It's there to try to keep you from making a mistake.
It's there to try to keep you from being embarrassed.
It's there to try to keep you from being hurt.
It's trying to do a good thing.
Unfortunately, it's doing it in a way that's not helpful.
It isn't really good.
But it's trying.
It's not a bad voice or a bad message, but you have to learn how to get in alignment
with that and kind of dance with it, for lack of a better word.
So do I still have that voice?
Only on days that end in Y.
The rest of the days I'm good, but every day that ends in Y, I have that voice in my head.
But I think over time, I've leaned into it more.
I wish if I could look back and do it again, I wish I would have learned how to dance with
that voice much younger and much earlier.
I think it would have gotten further faster.
But at the same time, I don't regret the journey that I've been on because it's kind of what's
got me to where I am today.
That's amazing.
What you mentioned resonates with me so much.
There's a lot of times where we unknowingly, unknowingly say that to other people as well,
and we don't realize it, what they take from it.
And I can look back to countless times where if I said something to my wife, but I didn't
mean it that way, but maybe she took it that way, or someone else I came and counted on
like, I didn't mean it that way, but they took it that way, they could be a lot detriment
to it.
And being more aware of what you say to people and what you speak to can help people a lot.
Absolutely.
What you shared, I think, goes directly to my next question.
According to your experience, Scott, why do you think leaders hide from funding their
vision?
And how can those leaders then lean into funding their vision?
So I mean, I would say the number one reason and short answer, right?
Do it in one word, fear.
It's fear of failure.
Most of the time, or fear of success.
In my experience, I think fear often shows up out of what I would call social fear more
than physical fear.
I'll use public speaking as an example, just because most people are, you know, this is
something that most people can relate to.
You know, I've done a lot of public speaking.
I did my first speaking event when I was like 12 years old.
And people are like, wow, how can you get in front of a crowd, you know, and speak from
the stage and you don't look like you're afraid at all?
You know, you're, I'm terrified.
You know, I have the same fear of public speaking that everyone else does.
But I've realized that that fear is a fear of being embarrassed.
It's a fear of being socially ostracized, of having the tribe cast you out.
And usually when it comes to whatever your vision is, whether it's funding your vision,
whether it's just living it out, it's this idea that if I go and do it, somehow or another,
people are going to look at me and they're going to think, you know, they're going to
think I'm an idiot.
They're going to think I don't know what I'm doing.
It's imposter syndrome, right?
All of those things that show up in our head.
And sooner or later, they're going to figure it out.
And then I'm going to fail.
And then I'm going to be embarrassed and I'm going to be cast out and I'm no longer going
to be a member of the tribe.
And when you have those social anxiety kinds of fears, it's hard to overcome because it
literally feels like you're going to die.
You know, it feels like a lion's going to eat you and your body reacts the same way
it would react as if somebody jumped out of the, you know, jumped out of the room and
scared you.
Your body has all of those same sorts of physiological reactions.
And yet there's not somebody standing in front of you that you can react to.
It's all inside your head.
It's all inside your voice and that voices that are talking to you.
And so until you recognize that that's where it's coming from, you can't really begin to
overcome it.
And so for me, it's that internal fear of that social exposure, you know, imposter syndrome,
those sorts of things.
That's what holds leaders back.
And what can they do to lean into funding that vision?
Well, again, it's recognizing that that's where that fear comes from.
And then actually doing the hard work on yourself to actually lead into that fear.
And almost again, I always use the phrase dance with it because, you know, just like
when you dance with somebody, somebody's leading, somebody's following, you're kind of reacting
to the music.
But if you've ever really had that moment when you're dancing with someone and you both
kind of get perfectly in sync and you're leaning into the music, it almost feels effortless.
And yet at the same time, there's tension to it.
And there's a dine, you know, dine-a-sism to it.
There's a feeling of energy to it and a connectedness and they're pushing back against you and you're
pushing against them.
And it's dynamic.
It's sort of that same way with the fear until you can lean into it and kind of dance with
it and get energy from it and give energy back to it, but give energy back to it in
the right way.
You're never really going to overcome, not overcome in terms of get rid of, but overcome
in terms of being able to do it anyway and lean into it.
Public speaking, they tell you it's not about having butterflies in your stomach.
It's about making those butterflies fly in formation.
You know, when it comes to funding your vision, it's not about overcoming the fear of failure.
It's about recognizing that fear, leaning into it and going, yeah, but I'm going to
do it anyway.
And it's going to work and it's going to be okay.
And then not doing it in an unwise risky, you know, this isn't about going all in at
the poker table.
It's about doing those sorts of calculated experiments to really discover what is it
that you need to do and that prove to yourself that it will work so that you can lean into
it with more energy.
Yeah.
If you get to the nitty-gritty of it, Scott, of like the basic steps to funding your vision,
what would you say to those people like, yeah, I'm scared to go public speak?
But Scott says, hey, you should just recognize that you're scared of public speaking and
go do it.
Do it anyway.
And someone who's anxious about it or someone who is actually like go and start sweating
or something of that sort, they've tried in the past and they've failed, the words didn't
come out of their mouth.
What do they do in that case?
And they can be applied in many scenarios.
Sure.
Right.
Well, it could be public speaking, it could be starting a business, it could be talking
to your wife, right?
Whatever it is, I always look at things in terms of frameworks or processes or systems.
I tend to think in terms of the high level and then we can apply that to many different
scenarios.
Right?
So in general, I think to do anything that you find intimidating, the four kind of stages
that you have to go through is the first stage is investing in yourself.
This is spending some time and energy on you.
And I start there and a lot of times people push back and they're like, yeah, but that's
selfish.
It's not.
It's necessary because until you get clear on what are those internal voices saying,
until you get clear on what are you feeling, until you get clear on what skills do I need,
what skills do I have, what skills am I missing, this is that practice time.
And for public speaking, this is doing it in safer environments.
I'll give you an example.
Go on somebody's podcast, maybe a teeny tiny one, the one that like three people listen
to, go on there and be interviewed.
Number one, that person would desperately love to have a guest, so you're going to make
their day.
And number two, you're practicing in a low risk environment.
You're just going and sharing your message in a low risk environment.
Do it for your family.
Do it for your friends.
Do it at your church.
Do it anywhere where you already feel safe and start that's investing in yourself.
That's spending the time and energy on yourself to begin to identify what's holding you back
and to begin to fill some evidence that, hey, wait a minute, maybe I can do this.
Second step is invest in others.
So this is when you begin to kind of scale it or go do it for real, for lack of a better
word.
When you go out and you do that event that's maybe at the rotary or something that's, there's
more strangers in the room.
You go out and you take your business and you begin to actually put something out there
and see if people will buy it.
You begin to actually put it into practice.
That's investing in others.
And you begin to do that and get feedback and scale and revision.
And sometimes you have to go back and do something again at your self level.
And so it's a dynamic process.
And from that, what will happen is naturally you'll begin to develop some influence.
It simply means other people will begin to recognize that, wait a minute, you're doing
something.
And when they start seeing that you're doing something, it's just like I was talking about
earlier with my wife and I going and doing some really weird stuff.
And people started going, hey, could you show us how to do that?
It's the same sort of thing.
That's developing influence.
And people begin to look at you and go, hey, you know something.
You're doing something.
I should lean into this.
I need to support this.
And from that, you then develop an impact.
And I call that impacting the world.
And the world here doesn't mean you go talk on a stage with 50,000 people and do all of
that.
It might.
But it means that you're now putting something out that because you have influence, because
you spent some time on investing in yourself and investing in others, developed your influence,
it now begins to have an impact and change other people and change what they're doing.
And so as you do that arc, that means that you're going to be leaning into those ideas
of funding your vision, whether that's monetary funding or whether that's just with skills
development and exercise and effort and boots on the ground and sweat equity.
It doesn't matter.
You're putting in that time and energy to make it happen.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
It's going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.