Vision Pros Live Podcast
Original podcast
Where to listenCopy share link
The value of management with Scott Maderer and Jackson Calame.
10,254 words · 2 speakers
Um, but yeah, no, exciting, exciting times going into the, going into the end of the year. Um, this is, it's probably been one of my favorite end of years as an adult. That I've ever had, just, just really, just feels good to go into it and the resolutions will be fun. But, um, you know, twenty twenty five is going to take care of itself. I'm going to be riding this wave, uh, to just enjoy this last month. How about yourself, Scott? What's, what's new with you? We, we, we've met in a while. I went on your podcast, Inspired Studiouship. It was awesome. You have some really cool ways of like taking care of people to the next level that I'll talk about throughout the show. Um, but how's your, uh, how's your year wrapping up?
You know, honestly, it's been, it's been a really good year. I've, I've had, uh, we've had a lot of big events, both, you know, on the business side, but as well on the life side. Um, you know, business perspective, but my book came out this year. That was a big thing. That was a big milestone. I've had, uh, really good client success this year, both in terms of, you know, quote, my end of it, picking up clients, serving clients, all of that. Their end of it, they've had some milestones, they've hit some successes, they've had some, some things that they can check off in their business. And, you know, as a coach, it's always fun because you get to kind of, you have your own internal success milestones that you get to have fun with. And then you also have your clients milestones that you, you get to have fun with.
And then, you know, on a personal level, my, my wife and I moved this year. We've got a new house, uh, moved to a new town. You know, so that's obviously a lot of change on a personal thing. But again, that's one of the beauties of the business that I built. I deliberately built a business where I wanted something where if we needed to pick up and move, if we wanted to go someplace else, the business could just go with me, you know? And so because I deliberately built it that way. I think I was down all of a week while we were getting the home office set up and right back to business as usual. So that was fun as well.
That's awesome. And for those of you listening in, you visionaries who are perhaps becoming even more aligned with the podcast world and considering it yourself, we have another fellow podcast expert in Scott. So let's talk a little bit about inspired stewardship. I got to be on the show, super honored by that. One of the things that Scott did at the end was he had me record kind of like a promo reel about inspired stewardship while we were doing the wrap up. And it was great because it gave me the essence of already having experienced the show. And then I could kind of recap around what we had already talked about and experienced. It was just a really brilliant move. So you had a great coach. If you don't mind revealing, I'd love to know who the the coach was to help with your processes too. Tell the listeners, what is inspired
stewardship all about? Because I'm already bought in, but I'd love to hear it from you directly.
Sure. So inspired stewardship, like you said, that's my podcast. I've been doing it since 2018. At one time I was podcasting six days a week. I've dropped back down to about two days a week right now. But I've got over 1500 episodes because you're there for almost two years. I was podcasting six days a week. So that you had a large volume very quickly when you do it that often. As far as my podcast coach, that was a gentleman by the name of Jeff Brown. He actually has a podcast called the Read to Lead Podcast, which by the way, if people ask, you know, what are resources? I know we were going to talk about that. There's one of them. You know, I'll give you give you foreshadowing. And Jeff helps a lot with setting folks up,
not just on the mechanics of the podcast, because I think a lot of podcast coach focus on the mechanics. He focuses a lot on how do you interview? How do you ask good questions? How do you? How do you share things in a way that's effective? How do you do that piece of it? He was in radio for decades. And so he's got that personal experience of the radio background and all of that. He's also got one of the greatest voices you'll ever hear for podcasts. He's kind of got the James Earl Brown, you know? James Earl Jones kind of voice going on and does a great job around that. And so back in the very beginning, whenever I was starting the podcast, I hooked in with a mastermind and then hired him as a podcast coach. And I honestly think that was probably one of the best investments
I did is setting up from the beginning of not just doing this as a hobby, but doing it as something that I wanted to be a part of my business. I wanted it to have some, some milestones, some things that I could hit that that would really be effective for me. And I would honestly say for folks that want to get into podcasting, first off, it is an awesome tool. You know, I mentioned in the book earlier, everything in the book came from the podcast because I hate writing, but I love to talk. So by doing a podcast, I could take all of that content that I talked about and work with somebody else and go, hey, let's turn that into a book. You know, I was able to make connections through the podcast that if the person that edited the book, I made a
connection, the person that did the forward, the person, so the networking that you do. So yeah, you can use the podcast as like a marketing tool and I do that and I get clients through the podcast and all of that. But there's a secondary level of effect. If you set it upright and do it well, where you can use it as a networking tool, you can use it as a connecting tool, you can use it to produce other content, you can repurpose everything you do, you know, it's all these ripples that you can do. And that's one of the things as a coach that he set me up to do from the very beginning is not just look at it as one lane, but say, okay, how can you do this one thing and turn it into 17 other things?
Right. It's a compound effect. And it does that naturally. It's got that ability. When, when we are centered with our authenticity, it compounds our authenticity in unforeseen ways. And I think that's one of the neat things is you're the marketing, you may have even done it with that intent, but it's actually a byproduct.
It's second.
Doing it right. So you're, and that's what your show really represents to me as well. So I love, I love how deep you're willing to dive on that. I circled Jeff Brown's name because it's, it's, you know, we all, all of you out there, you, you guys have all signed coaches that you just were less than happy with. You're welcome to comment. How you feel about your past coaching experiences. I know most people, they're not too happy with how those engagements went. So the fact Scott, you speak that highly about Jeff says a lot, especially with the quality of podcasts and just human leader that you are, we're going to be talking about the value of management too. And just a little bit now as we, as we get ready to shift towards that though,
you've got a couple of decades of wisdom under your belt. I think you're at least 20 years old. Um, and I appreciate the value of the wisdom that you carry with those decades. So what are three resources that you recommend for visionary leaders that have helped you on this journey?
So that first one, I'm going to go back to the Read to Lead podcast. To me, that is a big one. Um, I believe, and that's the theme of that podcast, leaders or readers, readers or leaders. I think if you're any sort of leader or any sort of leadership position, if you're not doing lifelong learning and continuously pouring into yourself, you've, you're doing it wrong. You know, you know, that, that is step number one. And, and actually in the frameworks I use, you know, one of the first things I talk about is investing in yourself and, and that's a, a big piece of it. The second resource I would do is, and, and I use DISC for this, uh, DISC being a personality and communication assessment tool.
Um, learning more about communication, I, I would suggest DISC is a methodology of that. There's other ones out there and, and it could be other things. But whether that's learning to do a TED talk, whether that's investing in personal speaking and coaching around that area. I would use DISC and, and learning more about that as my actual suggestion. It's the way, finding a framework where you can understand not just how you communicate, but how other people communicate. So that you can actually talk to people and get your point across in a way that's effective and efficient and, and works. And then the third resource that I would give is,
And and I may be kind of short cutting or or circumventing what you were gonna say, but or what you would what you would count as a resource is, I honestly would suggest to people that having that thirty minutes of the day that they set aside for white space time is a resource, and this is one that's free, you know, you don't have to go pay somebody to do this, but actually putting that appointment on your your calendar, thirty minutes, an hour, forty-five minutes, maybe it's even fifteen is all you can squeak out, but doing it every day with consistency to have that blank time where you don't have anyone else that you're meeting with, you don't have not talking to any of your assistants, you're not talking to anyone else, but as a leader, you're spending some time in your own
thinking, in your own planning, in your own what is important to me, what is my why, what am I doing that is actually connecting to you, what am I grateful for, you know, those sorts of reflection questions and looking forward questions that we all need to be doing with a real regular cadence, and yet I think most of us don't set aside any kind of dedicated to time to do that. Then we get to the end of the year and we look up and we're like, uh, you know, what what the heck happened this year? And it's just putting that on your calendar and then enforcing that and really living into that.
Woo, I feel so validated, I'm gonna run around my chair real quick, because I love that you said that. It's such an important reality, and and those of you listening, yes, celebrate life too, my friends, it's such a great opportunity.
Absolutely.
The thirty minutes of white space, nobody's put it that way, we've had a few people talk about the value of meditation. And so we'll, we're gonna include the the chat GPT generated articles and guides that we created based on some of the prompts from the show regarding meditation so that we can look into that. The, the process of, of talking to other visionary leaders like Scott, like my friends, those of you listening in, you might consider the value of how, you know, your own podcast can help shape and refine your own vision. I cannot even begin to describe the amount of transformations that this has helped me accomplish as a leader. So about two weeks ago, I, I asked my assistant,
I said, "Hey Ange, can you do me a favor? I want to start having 30-minute prayer and meditation gaps after every single one of my meetings." Um, I, I don't, and I know we're gonna have to work, our, work on that for the schedule to get to be that often, but that's my new commitment level to what you talked about. You're talking about one 30-minute white space, which I, which I absolutely appreciate.
At least start there.
Yeah. And I know for myself, I'm just so good at shiny object syndrome, um, right? It's hard to do the full 30 minutes. And so if I only put 30 minutes, I'll probably only do three minutes, if not 30 seconds. Um, right? So the ability to kind of put that in helps me get more of a discipline. Many of you here on the show too, at 2:30, uh, dong, a bell goes off on my, on my clock during the show. Uh, that's my prayer bell. It reminds me to say a prayer, no matter what I'm doing, what I'm in the middle of, I can do two things simultaneously, just like I'm gonna use two hands at once as well, no matter what science says. Um, and I love that you talked about DISC. DISC is a definitely one of my favorite assessments.
DISC, Colby, Myers-Briggs, and StrengthsFinder 2.0. Colby's StrengthsFinder are my two favorites. If you had to boil down into one, any of those four are good starting points. If you haven't used those, I highly recommend maybe 30 minutes of white space. 15 goes to white space, 15 goes to starting to understand which assessments can help you progress if you're really that time, uh, limited. So Scott, those are phenomenal resources. Again, we're gonna come back. These tools are some of the best tools on earth for management in general. So Scott, you've already delivered, but we're gonna come back, dive in deeper with your vision for management and the value of it and how We're both implementing that in our brands and with our clients and Vision Pros. We'll see you guys on the other side.
All right. Welcome into Vision Pros Live with Jackson Callum. I'm your show host. We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building fantastic visions out there.
What's up everybody? Welcome into another episode of Vision Pros Live. I'm your show host, Jackson Callum, founder and CEO of First Class Business. I literally almost forgot my name right there. Um, that was awesome. I've got Scott Mader on today and Scott is from a, he has a show called Inspired Stewardship. And to be honest with you guys, when I first heard of it, like I did not care if he was even good at it or not. I was just so excited to hear somebody use the words inspired and stewardship together and to focus their life and attention on that. Now in all reality, he is quite awesome at both of those things. He inspired me tremendously. I was excited to get him to come over to our show and, and get to interview him about all things Scott and management happens to be the topic of choice for the day.
He's got depths well beyond that in terms of marriage, family, all the good vibes and things we typically stand for on Vision Pros. Scott's become a great friend and he does get a little bit of an automatic pass because he's also in Texas and we have a thing for Texans. Um, so on the sponsorship side, we have some resources for you as well. Uh, we swapped one out today. We had a surprise one. So we've got Opranayas at Trabaho para Latinos. That's Opportunities for Work for Latinos. Our program Opportunities has now expanded into the Philippines and into India as well. And what we're doing is what we're looking for leaders that come from those cultural backgrounds who want to be on those podcasts because we have Spanish podcasts.
We got the Indian podcast coming out. We got the Filipinos podcast, leaders who will inspire the rest of the world. The people we're trying to help, we're bridging the economic gap to North America, South American, rest of world. And while that doesn't necessarily directly affect you. Most of you out there have explored the idea of VA relationships. You call it virtual assistants. We call it virtual abuse. I'm really, I'm just really sad and tired of seeing so many entrepreneurs not taking interest in the lives of the people that they're helping. And we try to facilitate a relationship between what we call digital ambassadors, which are very well-trained virtual assistants, and the ability to help and support entrepreneurs who are going to take care of them and help them build an awesome vision for their life. So that inspires you. Let us know.
Go and check out opportunities, organiza-satinasmo.com for, for the people who speak Spanish. Then there's learn and grow rich. Um, when I saw Zach Omen's brand, I like immediate red flags. I was like, I'm gonna grow rich, sounds so spammy and so like, but their values, their virtues, learn and grow and be rich. Rich is an abundant virtue. Zach is an abundant man. I have fallen in love with this man and the best of ways for business. He abides by the same principles of First Class Business, which is why I'm excited to announce Zach Omen is our new chief financial officer at First Class Business. And the reason why we've chosen Zach above all the others that we've worked with in the past is Zach's at scale.
He offers his services to the world and has built procedures, resources and templates to help him do that. And his executive prowess to talk deeply about things that are difficult and hard and do so in a fun way and also explain things with extreme clarity. Um, I am so grateful for having found Zach Omen in life. And if you're looking for somebody to help on the financial side, there's a reason I hired him. The only thing that I am asking you not to do, please don't contract him at a financial level where he has to abandon First Class Business. Um, that is the big favor that I ask. That is one of the reasons why entrepreneurs don't share their best resources. But I'm like, nope. If he wants to stay, he'll stay. Um, but I highly recommend always recruiting the best of the best by going after them
as the best of the best, not in fear or worry or doubt. Otherwise, they probably won't want to work with you. Then there's the water project. The water project is something that is near and dear to my heart these days. As I meditated, like Scott said, took time for the white space to think through this and I had to. I've never been thirsty in my life, not like truly in thirst. These kids, these families, they have to sometimes go three to five miles just to find a source of water. It's oftentimes not clean. You can imagine what that would be like to have to go find water in a ditch or something. And it broke my heart as I thought about it and then also made me realize that, wow, we got millions of people out there. Who are able and willing to celebrate access to clean water.
The way my children celebrate Christmas Day and even beyond probably. And the water project to set this up to where you get to pick the community that you're going to support. So you get to see the project come to fruition. They give you updates by social evidence or proof that it did happen. And you get to learn about how these projects occur, sand dams, borehole wells, et cetera. Really cool process to be involved in. Again, I'm no, I'm not affiliated with this project. It just inspires me. Figure it's one of the most needed resources on earth. And I gotta do my part. I'm gonna rock this microphone and inspire people to talk about it. If you've got the financial power to invest in it or to give back to, please do. If you don't.
My hope is that you'll at least take the time to talk to somebody about it because you never know, they might end up donating 10,000 or 100,000 or doing something beyond. We've got eight billion people to help. So if you're thinking of another cause that's near and dear to your heart. Drop the link in the comments. Let us know about it. It's something that I will personally explore. My team will probably explore. We might talk about it on the show. Again, we have so much opportunity to do good in subtle and small ways that sometimes we take for granted. I hope you join me in that effort. Without further ado, Scott Mater, thank you for being here to bless the lives of our visionaries. Welcome to Vision Pros Live.
Thanks so much. I'm happy to be here.
Yeah, absolutely. So Scott, as we talk about the value of management, we've got the ability to cover the basics that ChatGPT could cover. You know, or to help people with the basic search of what is management or what is manager? I think we kind of got to cover that, but I'm really looking forward to, to dive into some of the heftier aspects of management, some of the ways that we may overlook. How we may not be applying it as visionaries and how do we remove some of those blind spots for people that are tuning in? So I'm going to leave it that broad. Where do you want to be in?
You know, I think, and I'm going to go back to something that you said while you were sharing some of the resources a moment ago. I think a lot of times we look at management as kind of the operational stuff. It's kind of like what I was talking about with the podcast coach, right? Where it's all about the the technical stuff. And for me, and it's honestly, it's why my brand is Inspired Stewardship, is I look at management, I look at leadership, I look at those things through that lens of stewardship. What does stewardship mean, right? Stewardship means whatever resources I've been blessed with by God, my job is to manage those resources, not own them, not control them, not hold on to them, but manage those resources, not just
for my benefit, but for the benefit of everyone around me. That could be my clients, that could be my customers, that could be my employees, that could be that VA, you know, that we're mistreating, that could be the people that don't have water, that could be all of those things that you were just talking about are part and parcel of that circle of of managing those resources that we're blessed with. And so for me, it's changing that frame of reference is where we have to start, because everything else comes secondary to that. I think that's a lot of where the shiny object syndrome and all of those other things come from, is we're looking at everything from a very practical, bottom line, you know, the
nuts and bolts kind of mindset, when if we reframe it and look at it as a stewardship, a gifting, a a management kind of mindset, not ownership sort of mindset, it begins to let us look at these things a little differently and think about things a little bit differently and make decisions differently.
I love that. What you're exploring is something that I think we have a really hard time to hard time doing, especially as English speaking Americans. And and I it's not a it's not so much a call out on our culture or our politics as it is when you live in Europe and you've got several languages around you, right? The you realize that there's lots of definitions to lots of different words. Our mixing pot is in our melting pot in America is starting to kind of get that, but If we isolate around one concept of love, right, we we may like the romantic love, we may miss out on the understanding that that love's more universal and that there's more applications. You're talking about that from a management standpoint, a metric, key KPIs.
I think a lot of people end up saying, well, it's not about the numbers, it's about the people behind the numbers. And yes, and yes, you know, why, why are we creating a fight about an opportunity to explore that maybe there's more definitions or paradigms or perspectives that we don't quite have access to. And I love that you're talking about that. The one minute manager, another great, easy resource that that talks more about the human side of being there for people in a quick, efficient, diplomatic way to help people achieve great results. So yeah, let's dive further into that.
You know, you were just talking about the one minute management manager and we talked about DISC earlier. I'll give you a real world example. So I worked in the corporate world for 11 years, right? I was a senior leader. I had leaders reporting to me. I had staff reporting to me, had a big team, you know, all of those sorts of things. And this was right at the same time that I began learning about DISC. And I realized real quickly, wait a minute, I'm, I'm a DC. So I'm a high driver, high results oriented guy, very task oriented, very, you know, set up the systems and the processes. Those are my giftings. That's what I'm really good at. Well, a large portion of my staff weren't wired like me, you know, they were on the other side. They were much more the S's and the I's, which were more
interested in, in fun and or status quo and people connection and those sorts of things. So I literally set up a, an event on my calendar that popped up every Wednesday at a certain time and it would list three people's names. And I had to get up from my desk, leave my office and go to the cubicle of those three people and visit with them for five or 10 minutes. They were my S's. They were those people that needed that people connection. Now, those of you that know DISC are like, wait, I's also need the people connection. But remember, I's were coming to my office. I didn't need to go seek them out. They came to me. You know, they, they stopped by in the morning. Hey, how you doing? It's like, I do great. So I visited with them. I was already having contact with them, but the S's would just
sit there and keep their head down and get their job done. And nobody would ever go check in on them. Well, I started doing that. And what was amazing is the productivity of my team like doubled.
Hmm.
And it wasn't, I didn't, it wasn't anything weird, you know, in terms of I didn't do anything magical. But what I did was I just let them feel like a human being.
It was magical to them.
I reached them the way they wanted to be reached, you know? And, and by the way, they knew there was an event on my calendar. They knew that their name came up, you know, on a schedule. They knew that I took notes while we were talking so that I would remember, you know, oh, their kids' names and that kind of, you know, I, I was, I was making an effort to actually learn them. They knew that it was work for me in a way, you know, they, they understood all of that. And that actually made it more valuable to them, not less, because people are like, well, it wasn't really authentic if it kind of had to pop up on a calendar. It's like, absolutely, it was authentic.
Yeah.
It was authentic for them, you know?
You, you cultivated that. You put the effort into generating that because you valued them that much.
I love it. And, and so that's an example of, and again, it's that framework of looking at it not as a, oh, I'm, I, I didn't do it so that productivity would go up.
I did it to connect.
Well, another big thing on that, with the calendars, right? A, a calendar, most people, so I could be wrong, but I think most people associate the calendar and the task or the activity on the calendar as something that is a chore that has to be done. But in my life, my calendar is chock full of things that I get to do. They're the opportunities in my day. They're the things that I'm excited about doing because I've created a life around doing the things that I love doing. So there's, if, if we have that mindset that the calendar is a chore and the things that I'm stuck doing on here are negative to me, then it's actually, if that's your mindset, that's you stuck with that.
Nobody's forcing you to look at the system in that way. So keep going, Scott, this is a beautiful example.
Well, and, and that brings us to the other framework. If, you know, we tend to put things, and I think this is a very Western culture, American kind of mindset thing. And it gets back to what you were talking about. We tend to want to put things into either or kinds of boxes, you know? So either my calendar is a chore and everything on it is horrible. Or I get to live the life I want and I'm spontaneous and you know, I just kind of live freely and come as you know, YOLO and all of that. And it's like, okay, real truth is that's two extremes, you know, that that's two ends to this long continuum. With a bazillion data points in between the two. Yeah. Why do we say there's two? There, there's a million, you know, and more often than not, it's a both and. So guess what?
There are days on my calendar when I block off a whole day to just do whatever, you know, and, and if, and if I'm not real productive that day. Okay. That day wasn't set up to be a productive day. That day was set up to do.
It was intentional.
Uh, for to rest or to recharge or to, it was intentionally set aside. And I can choose to be spontaneous too. If something comes up on my calendar, it's like, you know what? I'd rather do this other thing than that. Okay. I can choose to do that. But the trick is to make that active choice. I, I think the framework and, and we all do this. And it's, you just said it. We have that I had to do it mindset. And that's one of the first things I get. I try to break my clients from saying, you know, I had to do this. No, no.
Likewise, likewise.
To do it.
We do not, we do not have to use the word have to, need to.
No.
Gosh, I'm obligated.
It shows. That gave you the power because otherwise you're abdicating your power. You're literally saying, I have no power.
Oh.
And you're, you're a slave to whatever is out there.
Right? Exactly. The whole, oh man, I love.
But our language, our language is how we see the world. That is the reality we create. It's. The way we describe things, people don't understand how incredibly powerful it is to just tweak a word.
We're gonna play a game real quick. So here's, here's our visionaries. If you're writing down right now, I have to fix my language. You're missing the point.
You're missing the point.
I get to, I
Get to, choose to, I have an opportunity to
I want to, right? What a blessing it is to, there's, there's so many alternative mindsets and I know most of, most, most people in the world would kind of be like, man, they're just lost in the fluff. Man, I'm happy in the fluff.
The fluff is not really changes thing.
I'm happy, right? You said something earlier. I want to call us back. I want to go back to this attention point because it was such a beautifully articulated form of leadership that is so uncommon in the world that would dramatically increase profitability, increase productivity, and help people connect at such a, such a bigger level, level. You had a chance to say, uh, the VA that they are mistreating, or the VA that you are mistreating. You chose to say the VA that we are mistreating. We're, and which means, and I was like, I love that you said that because,
oh, I'm guilty as charged, of course, with not being perfect with my relationships. I am a human being who is fallible. I have lots to learn in life. And the opportunity to help leaders step into owning that we're still moving, we're going to make mistakes. We've made mistakes in the past. We're all learning. We'll create, to me, I think that's one of the greatest keys to creating more trust, better conflict, more results within companies. Thank you, Patrick Lencioni, five dysfunctions of a team, um, you know, for talking through that as well.
Great resource.
Where, um, have you always been able to speak with this concept of we when it came to negativity and?
How did you make that transition? And so, visionaries listening in, if you've got executives working with you, team members working with you, I can almost guarantee you that somebody in your life is struggling with this concept, even if you're already past it. Learning to articulate it and approach it is a great thing to do to strengthen the power of your team. Scott, how'd you, how'd you get to where you include yourself in those moments?
You know, I, first off, the, the question was, you know, have I always been like that? Absolutely not. I think for me, a lot of it came out of my, so my first career, you know, I'm like a lot of us, I've done a lot of different things in my life. My first career was actually as a school teacher. And for 16 years, I taught in the public school system. I taught science, I taught in a private school, you know, I've taught in those kinds of environments. And I think that, believe it or not, is where a lot of my real leadership training came in. And, and beginning to learn to change some of the ways I say things, some of the ways I think about things, some of the ways I do things. And at first glance, you know, somebody that's been in the corporate world their whole life
is like, school teaching teaches you about, but it does because...
A lot of ignorance in the corporate world. I'm gonna say it for us.
You're in a room with 100 and, you know, 150 people throughout the day. I mean, it's not all in one...
150, insubordinate, insubordinate individuals, people who don't want to be there, don't want to learn a lot of times, and don't really respect you. And, go ahead.
And, and don't have any real reason. I can't fire them, I can't get rid of them. So I had to learn to be like, okay, I've got to manage this environment, I've got to lead in this environment, I've got to get them to buy in. And so I began to shift the way I talked about things. And like you were talking about, I versus we, or you versus we, you know, it, that's a small shift, but it's a big shift because all of a sudden it's like, okay, we've got this situation, how are we going to fix it? And once they learn that you really meant that, and you actually want their input, and that their input's valuable, and that you may actually even take their input and do what they say.
Also, they're like, well, wait a minute, we can do something different. Yeah, we can do something different. What are you, what do we need? You know, what, what, how can we make this situation different? And so it's that balancing act of, and that doesn't mean it's lawless and everybody gets to do whatever they want, whatever they want. That's again, one extreme of a continuum. And there's a lot of points, but it also means I'm not running a top down, you know, walk in here and everybody's in handcuffs and sits in the same chair and does everything the same way every day. You know, there's a continuum and we work along that continuum. And it really comes back to that framework. That's when I started to learn it. And then when I went into the corporate world, I realized, oh, wow. You know, the, the same skills that I was applying
there, apply here. And now as a coach, same thing. The same skills I was applying there, apply here. In marriage, same thing. Nonprofit world, same thing, you know, same thing.
I feel so ignorant right now. And that's one of those opportunities, right? As, as leaders, like, do we choose to embrace that or hide from it or run for, or put ourselves down for it? I, I can fully, wholeheartedly say I feel ignorant without feeling any lack of confidence, visionaries, because we're all learning, right? It's, it's an opportunity. So you've hit some, like, I, for all you listening who are gonna be like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe I didn't see that. Um, no, I couldn't, I couldn't see that teachers had that powerful management skillset until Scott just now opened my eyes to it, even though I've been saying that for years about stay at home parents and how stay at home parents are some of the best managers in the entire world. And if they ever do want to go into the corporate world, then they need
to go in with absolute confidence and self-assuredness that they know how to help people win, because that's exactly what you do as a stay at home parent. And you can't fire your kids, you have to, and you want to love them. So there's an incredible amount of wisdom, leadership and stewardship that comes out of that and the hospitality industry as well is one where you can't fire your guests or no matter how rude they are and how bad they might be at the table, you got to find a way to serve them and serve them in a way where they at least feel loved, whether you love them or not, that's still your choice. But I didn't think about the
Even back before I was a teacher, I was a waiter. That's another one. I was a waiter in a restaurant. You know, that's the same thing. You have to learn the same sort of skill set. So if I think about it.
I cannot wait to recruit more teachers now. Like you've just empowered me to realize the strong connection there and help connect that. Sometimes it's about opening people's eyes to visions they're not looking at too. Right?
And again, that's back to that we tend to put things in boxes, you know, teaching is a skills. And again, is this true of every teacher? Oh, probably not. But but it is true of the really good teachers. Stop and think for a minute. The teacher that you remember, and most of us have it, that teacher or two that we're like, man, you know, Mrs. Jackson, she was awesome. You know, whoever it was, right? You somebody could you say it right now.
Richard Gonzalez, Mrs. Patterson. I had some great teachers, but
Those were the teachers that I'm talking about. You know, those were the ones that you realized, oh, you felt empowered. You felt even if it was a subject, some of sometimes they were in this class that I was like, I was the worst at. But they were so good because they still made me feel valued. They still made me feel important. They still made me feel like I was able to to make progress, even if it wasn't something that just came naturally to me or I was gifted in or whatever. Those are the teachers and that's the skill set that I'm talking about because we also all have that other teacher that we can think of. Say that name. Say that name.
Nope. She doesn't get the credit. Nope. Not happening.
Don't say those names, but we all have that teacher too. That's like, you know, same thing happens in the working world, right? We all have the bosses that were bosses and we all have the bosses that work bosses.
I'm gonna tie this back to management in a different way too, because when we learn to, when we learn to self-manage, right? When I've learned to get the most out of my management capacities, I can reflect on that really awful teacher and how many lessons I learned on how not to lead. I can also reflect on the times when I was able to overcome certain situations or other students were able to overcome certain situations. So the history book is still wide open and it is powerful to learn from the good, the bad, and the ugly.
You can always learn something. You just gotta figure out what you're supposed to learn. You know, everything has lessons in it, absolutely. Even if the lesson is, oh, I don't want to do it that way.
Speaking of lessons, my absolute favorite question to ask, Scott, if this was the last opportunity you had to share advice with the world and share something powerful, what powerful lesson can other visionaries learn from your experience?
Yeah, I think that the most powerful thing that I've learned is that frame that I've shared earlier of moving from trying to put everything into either or kinds of boxes and beginning to look at the world as more of a blend of both and of finding a way that you can have as many of the pros from as many different parts of it as you can and limit the cons, you know, right? Have as many wins for as many people with as few downsides for as many people. And those sorts of thinking where it's not a matter of thinking about it from, you know, how are we going to make this happen? It's just, this is going to happen.
Now, our, our trick is just to figure out the route. It's going to work out that way. What route do we need to take to get there? Because I think a lot of the times, the reason we don't do that as leaders is because we get tempted to look for the quick and the short and the easy. And usually the paths that lead to the most wins.
Involve going out of your way. They involve taking a few extra steps. They involve bringing in some more resources. They involve widening the circle as opposed to narrowing the circle. And so it's finding those ways to widen your circle and look for the the both and rather than the either or.
I love that. And so I don't know if it's more tricky or not in our current world, but it because I didn't live in the past world. But it feels like it, you know, we live in a world of of gamified opportunities. Right. And I there's nothing negative about that in and of itself. But if we've built our life around apps and mechanisms, Jeopardy. Again, newer apps that puts you on a time limit for everything that you do, right? And you're trying to race the clock to get it done. That's where you get the reward and the highest form of compensation and yada yada like. It it's hard with all of that external time based pressure. To take a step back and appreciate the value of, well, this is my favorite mouse pad in the world.
Um, The Effective Executive by Dr. Peter Drucker. And I it's a constant reminder for me about his chapter, Know Thy Time. And understanding that, you know, it's my best thing to do might be to go sit on a wall for two hours.
Or go for a walk.
I love walking. I do the walking more than the sitting because I'm in a stationary place most of the day. Um, and that's usually how I pray. My best is when I go on a walk. Um, it's it's easier for me.
Some of my best reflection time is going on a walk.
Um, you know. I don't close my eyes right when I'm walking across the road by any means, but um, you know, you gotta be safe in how you do these things, but.
You don't have to close your eyes to pray, though.
Exactly. Um, exactly. And so the the challenge for all of us is in a world where almost where we just have constant bombardment of get this done fast, finish this to do list, get all these things finished. You have time limit to do this. Do we do we have the self discipline, the self management skills to say?
I'm in control, not that timer.
Well, and it's also changing the frame where it's because here's the thing, we wear busy as a badge of honor.
Right. Busy is broke, busy is broke.
All we talk about is busy, right? If somebody asks you, how are you doing? 90% of the time, we give one of two answers. The answer one is I'm doing okay, which is really just a non kind of generic way of saying, please don't talk to me anymore.
Let's move on. And the other answer is I'm busy. I mean, that's what we say in our culture. Those are the two answers. Here's what busy means. Busy means I got a lot of things done.
Has no, it says nothing about the value of those things. So literally, if you sat in your backyard and you picked up a rock and you walked to the other side of the yard, you drop a rock, you walk over, you pick up another rock, you drop, and you did that all day long, you just moved rocks from one side of the yard to the other side of the yard, you, you qualify as busy.
Right.
Okay. Most of us would not say that's a real productive day, but you, you're busy. So, you know, that's where I try to talk to people about being productive or, or walking on the things that are truly.
I have a nuanced question for you about this. I'm gonna, I'm gonna rudely interrupt you. I get to do that because it's a podcast, guys. But here we go. This is so important to me, and I'm hoping this helps also other visionaries. You chose to include yourself as a leader and saying, you know, we like to say 90% of the time that we are busy. And I'm learning as a leader, when I don't actually use certain words because I've trained myself out of it.
Is it appropriate for me to continue to say we related to that when I've kind of abandoned it entirely or not? And so I've got to ask you, Scott, do you actually tell people you're busy still these days? Or is that a habit that you abandoned at some point along the way? What does it look like for you?
I, I probably have not completely broken that answer out of my, my language. There's probably still times when I'll say that. I tend to say I'm productive more than I'm busy, you know, or, or something like that. But yeah, there are still times I say it.
I want to hear your perspective on my.
Culturally, it fits sometimes, you know?
That's right. And here's a, here's my next perspective on that. How do you, how do you go about? As a diplomat, right? As a podcaster, host, and somebody who's guiding a large majority of people, what's the line there? Am I overthinking it in terms of, oh, man, I don't want to use that term because that literally doesn't align with me, even though everybody kind of says it like that? What is your advice as a spokesperson?
So I think it's like all the other language things that we've talked about. I think the first step is awareness of it and thinking, okay, why am I saying that? In other words, again, if I'm saying I'm busy and it's more of a kind of like the okay, it's really just shorthand for, I'm going to give you an answer so we can move on. And that's sort of intentional or behind, you know, that's really the mindset and the mentality. I don't know that it's good or bad. It's, I don't think it's, I think it's more value neutral. Does that make sense? Because it's really more than it's more about the grease that we use to keep the wheels of conversation moving and that kind of thing. On the other hand, I think like if I was to use it routinely, so like I don't use that with clients,
you know, as an example, because in that setting, in that framework,
You don't use which part?
The busy. I don't use the phrasing busy because there I'm in a relationship where that is what we're working on is those frameworks and that language and thinking about the way we're thinking. So that's where I think sometimes it has a difference in terms of what setting you're in, what everything else that you're in. So are you overthinking it? No, probably not. If anything, I would say maybe think more about when do you want to use it versus when don't you? You know, it's because it's intentionality is really the important part.
Yes, it is. I, man, I love that. I really appreciate, one, appreciate you validating me so I can just know that I was right. I'm just kidding. I appreciate the concept because it's one of those things that I think a lot of leaders take for granted and a lot of leaders have a desire to go to the next level, the next level, the next level of their careers. I think one of the things that holds most B, C, D, and E. Leaders back from becoming A-list leaders is the lack of intentionality with word choice. If you're not intentional with your words and you're a loose cannon with an audience that you're guiding,
the audience is going to feel confused and the confused mind says no, and you get for you never even going to make the history book of leaders who didn't make it. Because you didn't make it. All right. So that's, that's one of those things that I, I strive to be very intentional about and
sometimes it feels like you're an alien, right? When, when you're one of the
The only one not using the word, yeah.
Right. So the word hope, that's my big example right now is I love the word hope and what it truly means in terms of belief and the virtue that it is. Yet we live in a society that almost exclusively uses the word hope in negative context. I hope he doesn't screw that up. Oh, I hope we don't have to go through this again. We have tarnished the value of that word in large predominance. Help me see if I'm wrong on that though. Do you, do you, what, what examples and communities do you see us using the word hope in a positive and uplifting fashion, the way that I think the word was intended?
You know, I, I think,
I, I think you're right in a lot of ways in terms of, I think we've, we've kind of changed the word hope to mean.
Here's an example from a business perspective. Let me, let me give you a little more context on that. Right? So, uh, when an entrepreneur says, are you confident that we'll be able to accomplish this by that date? Um, and my response is, yeah, I, I hope so.
You hope so. Um, you know, like, what, what do you mean? You hope so? Like, why are you not confident? I'm like, oh no, no, like I'm, I'm totally confident in hope. Um, but there's that, that almost everybody would miss the context of that in a business environment.
Right. Yeah. I, I think we've changed the word hope to sort of mean, i- i- i- this is why I think that reaction that you just talked about happens. To sort of be more of this, i- it's like, well, we don't know, you know, ho- hope is the opposite of knowing. And it's because we value so much that confidence of knowing, but here's the truth. I mean, stop and think about it in that situation. If you answered, oh, I know we can make it. You know, in that first, in that first question, oh, I know we can make it. Would you really know? You know, is it, is it really a hundred percent confidence? Can you really guarantee it? Can you really? And the odds are probably pretty good. No, you can't.
Where hope really does mean that, again, it's not the opposite of confidence. It's, it's more about the, the faith of it. It's more about the, I'm, I'm believing this is possible.
I learned.
Based on evidence and not evidence, you know?
Yeah. You gave me something huge, Scott. So, um, just exploring this with you allowed me to realize ultimately, I haven't been paying attention to the true reality of that experience. And that there's two people in that equation, right? So, um, in my case, I'm actually, I'm not harsh, but I'm very strict about the types of client relationships that I have and how we approach things. So if I have a client who's doing that and they react negatively to the aspect of how I'm using hope in that context and, and, uh, conversation, they're not very well aligned with me.
There's something missing.
Because they are attempting to make me project a yes man scenario and attempting to coerce me into, uh, promising something that I can't promise. And there's ultimately an underlying threat that exists thereof. If you don't hit this, there will be consequences. You know, if you don't accomplish this, then if you're not going to guarantee me victory in life, and I don't work with people like that. Um, you know, like, no, no, um, one, I'm not going to lie to you. Um, you know, two, everything in possible existence says this should go well, but your obsession with, you know, manipulating my confidence is the actual problem in that scenario.
Um, and I think as leaders, we have opportunities to reflect on both ends of that equation. Do we accidentally do that to our team members sometimes with things that we want and hope and expect from them? And on the other side, when we're taking on contracts or relationships or business partners, or trying to explain our vision to others and they just don't get it.
I think this is where that white space advice comes into play, right? We need to honor what Scott gave us. We have the opportunity reframing to honor what Scott gave us in terms of, that's also why it's really helpful to have thirty minute of white space in your day. So you can consider these things outside of the pressured context of a given situation. Scott, I'll let you wrap up. We're at the end of the show, but by all means, man, what do you got for us at the end here?
Well, and and just kind of bouncing off what you said, I think it's also why it's so important as leaders that we have a curiosity mindset. All the time and it's so if if there's misalignment on the word hope, you know, get curious about that. Why? You know what? What is it behind that misalignment? Is it like you said, that they've got a really closed mindset and they're looking for a yes man? You'll just tell me the way it is and tell me that reality is the way I want it to be and blah, blah, blah. Or is there a different reason? You know, because I again, I don't yet know, but but I'm there's a trigger here. I need to get curious.
I think if we did a better job of asking more questions as opposed to making more statements as leaders. That right there is another one of those little statements that would just dramatically up level your leadership. But as leaders, it's so scary to ask questions because the minute you ask a question, you're admitting you don't know the answer. You know, and that is a fear thing that we have to overcome because you know, truth is honestly, asking a question doesn't mean you don't know the answer, but it does mean you're sincerely curious.
Brought it up, though, you know, because how do we step into that, Scott? And just kidding, we're not going to answer that, right? You guys can ask Scott that on your own. And through chat GPT, you can also ask how to explore those types of things. The the curiosity factor is huge. Shout out to Tom Fox, who was on our show this week, and that was one of his top three resources. Was making sure to remain to be curious. Also a fellow Texan. Go Texans today. Um, and go.
I literally have a note on my desk that lives on my desk.
Questions. I love that. That's fantastic. Those types of notes are so helpful. Thank you for being here, Scott. Those of you listening in down below the show, you're going to see the action steps you can take to get involved in Scott's Live. You can also Google him, of course, and then down below the action steps that exist there. Everything from his book to his podcast will be there. I'm sure he'd be excited to have you on his show if you qualify for that. So look, you know, if you want to come and share your vision with us, top right corner says be our guest. If you want to be a guest of Scott's, then we'll have a link down there too. So you can check that out. Down below the action steps, we'll also have the list of all of the resources that we talked about. So you can dive in and, and explore all these opportunities at different levels.
My request for you on that is only do it if it's not adding to the noise in your life. If it's adding to the benefit and the productivity of your life. And we look forward to seeing you guys on the next episode of Vision Pros Live. 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. This is 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.
Page updated November 13, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
