Scott Eblin: Executive Coach and the President of the Eblin Group

Join Alex for a fascinating conversation with one of the OG executive coaches, Scott Eblin. Scott shares how he transitioned from the corporate world to starting his own coaching business 23 years ago, at a time when the profession was still in its early stages. He discusses the importance of running his practice like a business from day one to support his family.

Scott dives into how he found his coaching niche working with overwhelmed executives transitioning to new levels of leadership. This specialty arose from his own experiences as a young executive frequently finding himself in over his head.

The turning point in Scott's career came when he networked his way into the world of publishing, thanks to advice from coaching legend Marshall Goldsmith. His first book "The Next Level" opened up a world of new opportunities. 

Scott reflects on the evolution of the coaching landscape over the past two decades. While easier to establish yourself back then, the keys to success today involve building a loyal community and mastering multichannel marketing - not just relying on having published a book.

Don't miss this wisdom-packed episode with a coaching pioneer who continues to thrive by helping mindful executives navigate the challenging journey to the next level.

Transcript

Scott: My definition of mindfulness is it’s awareness plus intention, awareness of what’s going on around me and inside of me, extrinsically and intrinsically aware, and then once I have that awareness of what’s going on out there and with me unintentional, I can be intentional about what’s the next best thing for me to do or maybe not do.

(intro)

Alex: Hi, I’m Alex Pascal, CEO of Coaching.com, and this is Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. My guest today is an executive coach and the president of the Eblin Group. He’s the bestselling author of The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success as well as Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative. Please welcome Scott Eblin.

(Interview)

Alex: Hi, Scott.

Scott: Hey, Alex. Nice to be here. Thanks.

Alex: It’s nice to see you. It’s great having you on this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee.

Scott: Yeah. I’ve got hibiscus tea here instead of coffee. 

Alex: Yeah, I was going to ask you what are we drinking today. Hibiscus tea, I like it. I’m drinking peppermint. 

Scott: Yeah. Nice. Very good. That’s a good afternoon tea. No caffeine. 

Alex: Barely afternoon here in LA, it’s like 12:07. I already had my matcha earlier on and I’ve been thinking of renaming the podcast Coaches on Zoom Drinking Matcha and just have everyone drink matcha.

Scott: How long have you been a matcha person?

Alex: I mean, not many. Maybe five years. 

Scott: That’s a long time.

Alex: But after I went to Japan, it was like, okay, I’m pretty obsessed with matcha.

Scott: What’s the what’s the biggest benefit? I know this is like you ask me questions, this will be my last question. What’s the biggest benefit of drinking matcha?

Alex: It is so green, it just looks super healthy. But in terms of benefits that I noticed, it’s this prolonged release of the caffeine so it’s not like coffee where it wires you pretty instantly almost. It’s more of like the sustained energy that you feel throughout the day. That’s really what I like. Do you drink matcha?

Scott: I have but it’s been years. A buddy of mine was really into it and gave me a tin and when I ran out of the tin, I didn’t get another one. It was pretty earthy for my taste. Are they all like really earthy? 

Alex: They vary and there’s different types of soils in Japan that kind of produce different types of kind of matcha flavor profiles. It’s actually quite interesting. And also depends on how you drink it. Sometimes, I get some that I can totally do like Americana style where just a little bit of hot water and that’s it. Some that I probably put a little milk on it. And I usually make my own almond milk so I put that almond milk and then you can regulate how sweet you want it, how many dates you throw in the blender so I have a whole thing though. It gets kind of fun. And, sometimes, I just buy some coffee and make some coffee or go somewhere so try to change it up but I’ve been doing a lot less coffee the last couple years. But I like the name of the podcast, it’s an homage to Jerry Seinfeld so people seem to —

Scott: Yeah, sure. 

Alex: — and it gives us some cool things to talk about at the beginning of the episode before coaches listening in are, “Okay, I really want him to move past this stage of the podcast and get into the coaching stuff.”

Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alex: Awesome.

Scott: That’s my last question, like I said. I’ll let you lead, please.

Alex: No, you can ask as many questions. I mean, part of the format of the podcast is really to have a conversation and, sometimes, my guests ask more questions than others but it really just flows. 

Scott: I’ll probably be one of those. 

Alex: Well, I mean, I do have coaches on the podcast, right? So asking questions —

Scott: That’s the occupational hazard, for sure. 

Alex: It really truly is.

Scott: I think we annoy our friends and family with all the questions we ask. 

Alex: You know, I try purposely never to coach my friends or to get into the coaching style. I think I’ve maybe become too good at that where like maybe there are some times where I’m like, “Maybe I should put my coach’s hat on,” but I bifurcated those aspects of my life so much that I actually probably need to start integrating them a little bit more, but we’ll talk about that some other time. Well, it’s great having you. One of my favorite parts of these conversations is really to learn more about the journey that people go through. Coaching is still a relatively new profession. Maybe 20, 30 years ago, there were a lot less coaches out there that would say, “I’m a professional, full-time coach,” so I’m always fascinated by how people got into the profession so would love to hear a little bit about your journey.

Scott: Yeah. So I was probably one of those early coaches. I’ve been coaching professionally for 23 years now. 

Alex: Amazing. 

Scott: Twenty-three and a half, I guess. And I was a corporate executive. I was really — it’s really an interesting situation. The last company that I was in, I was head of HR for the biggest segment of Fortune 500 to Fortune 250 kind of company and had a really progressive CEO in the mid-90s, her name was Kathy Abbott. We’re still friends. But Kathy hired me and one of the first things she asked me to do was go find a firm that can provide coaches for everybody on the senior management team. So this is like 1996, it was really early and really early in coaching, it’s like Thomas Leonard was everybody’s role model back then, not that he was a bad role model but, I mean, it was that era of coaching as a thing. And we hired a firm and they were with us for the entire time I was there. I was there at Columbia for four and a half years and about three or three and a half years into that, I started thinking I personally have kind of done everything that I set out to do here and I felt like we’re going to start repeating ourselves and I had a low boredom threshold and the parent company was in an acquisition phase and I spent the summer with the acquiring company doing integration work and I knew for sure I didn’t want to stay after that and so I just started thinking what do I really want to do and, honestly, I thought about the ministry at that point, concluded pretty quickly that wasn’t the right path for me, and was moping around. My wife was tired of me moping around, “What am I gonna do with the rest of my life?” kind of thing, and she was working with a coach who was a coach for moms who wanted to go back into the workforce and her name was Nancy and she said, Nancy called her, she said, “Why don’t you talk to Nancy? Because like I’m out of ideas for you. Maybe she’ll talk to you,” and so I called Nancy up, she said, “Well, you’re not really my target market of moms who wanna go back into the workforce but we’ll talk for half an hour,” she says, “Tell me about what you wanna do,” and she said, “What do you like to do?” and I said, “Well, I like strategy. I like leadership development. I thought about being a minister, not gonna do that,” and she said, “You ever thought about coaching?” and I said, “Well, it’s not for me. I mean, I absolutely know what coaching is because I’ve hired coaches and I’ve had a coach for the last three years,” but it kind of got the wheels turning and kind of made a declaration, to say that by the end of the year 2000, I was going to leave and start a coaching business. And one of our coaches from the firm that we hired stopped by one day in October 2000 to let me know he was leaving his firm. He was gonna go to Capital One and we were living in Northern Virginia outside of DC back then, that’s where Capital One’s headquartered, and Capital One was just starting the what’s in your wallet thing. I mean, they were not nearly the size of the company they are today. But he’s going to go to Capital One, I said, “What are you gonna do there?” He said leadership development stuff and he said, “I hear you’re leaving Columbia, what are you gonna do?” I said, “I’m gonna go be a coach,” and he said, “Where are you gonna coach?” I said, “I have no idea but I’m gonna go coach.” He said, “One of the things we’re doing at Capital One is running their coaching program. Would you want to coach there?” I said, “Yeah, absolutely.” And so we started talking about it and he introduced me to his manager, his coaching manager, and so I left my corporate job in December the 1st of that year and had my first client at Capital One on December the 15th. Pretty crazy. 

Alex: Yeah. 

Scott: And Capital One has always had a big interest in executive and leadership development. Six months later, I probably had 10 or 12 different clients at Capital One and it was a great place to learn. They had a fantastic coaching cadre back then. 

Alex: I’ve heard about that, actually. 

Scott: Yeah, yeah. And it was an amazing place to coach. They had meetings of the coaching cadre every six months, they were very great about keeping you engaged with what was going on in their business so you had the right kind of context for coaching their executives and I just learned so much there from the other coaches as well as the people that were running the program, from my clients, I learned a ton from my clients there, and, for the first year, most of our business was Capital One and living where we lived out by Dulles Airport, I used to drive up and down the Dulles Toll Road looking at corporate logos on buildings saying, “Do I wanna coach there? And if I do, who do I know? Who can introduce me to somebody there?” and I just kind of networked my way on to different companies in the DC area and that’s kind of how I got started. 

Alex: That’s great. Thank you for sharing that. I actually heard really good things about Capital One coaching. I don’t know what’s happened since but I remember many years ago hearing there’s some strong interest in coaching and —

Scott: Yeah.

Alex: — and integrating it with the business. I love how they would spend time with the coaches, giving them context. Context is always so important in organizational settings. 

Scott: Totally. Yeah, absolutely, it is. And it’s interesting, I’ve worked, gosh, a hundred different companies probably, very few are that deliberate and intentional as they were back then about bringing their coaches, and I’d say maybe 10 percent of the companies that I’ve coached have been that methodical about it. It’s enormous to help your coaches be more effective. So anybody who’s listening from a corporate internal coach manager kind of role, I would highly encourage a systematic kind of approach to keeping your coaches engaged with your business.

Alex: Many coaches that leave an organization and start doing their thing oftentimes don’t think about the fact that they’re becoming entrepreneurs. How was the transition for you and running your own coaching business? 

Scott: It’s funny and I appreciate that you use the term “coaching business.” That was one thing, my wife and I started the company together and, 23 years later, we’re still doing it together and we were always super intentional around thinking about it as a business because we had kids who were in grade school and middle school at that point, a lot of obligations and so it had to work and so a lot of the people that I knew back then in coaching would refer to their work as a practice, as a coaching practice, and our mantra was it’s not a practice, it’s a business, and we’re going to run it like a business and we have to present like a business. Our target market, honestly, was Fortune 500 companies. There were a lot of that presence in DC and so I’ve traveled a lot corporately and I was ready to take a break from traveling and keep the work local at that point and so DC was a great market to do that in a Fortune 500 kind of context. And I coached people like me, people that were probably in over their heads, as I certainly was as an executive, and how do you get out of that successfully and expand your aperture and really learn what’s expected of you in these kinds of roles and that’s really where I focused first. And when you start a coaching business and if it’s going to be your sole livelihood, there’s a number. There’s a number that you’ve got to hit to support your family or support yourself or whatever your financial goals are. And our goal the first year was to make at least as much as I made in my last corporate job and we did. And it’s just, you’re doing everything, right? You’re delivering the work but you’re also administering the work initially. We don’t do that anymore. We have people that help with that. But you’re marketing the work. I mean, yeah, so it’s a lot.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. Did you find a specialty early on? I know that you like helping leaders with their mindsets and behaviors and kind of thinking about kind of what’s next in their careers but, oftentimes, as you start growing that business or practice, you find that you have this recurring theme or you’re specializing in a specific area. What was that journey like for you?

Scott: Yeah, I think you have to find your people. I mean, a good coach can probably coach anybody on anything, right? You don’t have to be the subject matter expert, but I think it’s important to have resonance with your clients and that your clients have resonance with you. And like I said a minute ago, I pretty quickly gravitated towards people who were doing what I did in corporate world. For a long time in my career, I’ve obviously aged out of this, but for a long time in my career, I was the youngest whatever, I was the youngest manager, I was the youngest vice-president, I was the youngest member of the senior management team and so that’s a good news, bad news scenario. The good news is you get to do a lot of stuff early and the bad news is you don’t know what you’re doing. And like I said, I found myself in over my head a lot. And what I found was the expectations of being an executive are always really high but very rarely clearly defined so what I really focused on was, folks, folks who were in their first executive role, broadly defining executive, not senior executive but they’re a senior director, they’re a VP in their companies and what I ended up on was behaviors that you either need to pick up or you need to let go of to be successful and meet the expectations of people in a role like yours, because it’s very different than what you were doing and the picking up is usually the easier part because they’re usually intelligent, high-achieving people that can learn quickly, letting go, much harder, because that’s more of an emotional challenge and the underlying core emotion is usually fear, “I’m afraid to let go of what made me successful up until now,” “I’m afraid to turn it over to my team because it may not be a good outcome,” “I’m afraid to not be the subject matter expert because if I’m not that, then how am I adding value?” So people really — that’s the kind of person that I help. “I’m overwhelmed by everything I’ve got to do, how do I sort it out and kind of have a rhythm or a methodical approach to this?” Those were the kinds of people that I coached because I knew their world and I think that was really instrumental. It definitely helped us grow the business more quickly. It also led to my first book, The Next Level book, and it was a good decision to focus on those kinds of people.

Alex: Tell me about The Next Level book. So how did the idea of writing the book come about and tell me about the process and the outcome of writing? Was that your first book? 

Scott: Yeah, it was. Yeah, so about three years in to our coaching work, 2003, a mutual friend introduced me to Marshall Goldsmith. Marshall, back then, he has 100 Coaches now, I’m sure you’re aware. Back then, he had an organization he called The Alliance for Strategic Leadership, A4SL, and there was going to be a meeting of the A4SL network in La Jolla outside of San Diego and —

Alex: Hey, I grew up — part of part of my — I grew up in La Jolla so actually my parents and my sister still live in La Jolla. 

Scott: Now you live in Beverly Hills, you grew up in La Jolla, you’ve had a rough life. That’s awesome.

Alex: Well, I work a lot. 

Scott: Yeah, yeah, I get it, I get, but it’s a very nice place to live, for sure.

Alex: Love La Jolla, or when you call customer service somewhere and they ask you for your address, La Jolla.

Scott: Yeah, exactly. Nobody knows how to pronounce it. But, anyway, I went out to La Jolla in January 2004 for this meeting of A4SL and, I gotta be honest, I was like so intimidated by everybody there and I went to this dinner in this really fancy restaurant at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club where the meeting was with 30 other people and everybody there, it’s like, “I’ve written four books, I’m working on my fifth,” “I’m coaching Al Gore, the vice-president,” blah, blah, blah —

Alex: That’s the problem that you find when you hang out with Marshall. I love it.

Scott: I know, that’s exactly it but I was literally so into like, I was just like, “I got nothing here,” the baby coach and head of HR at a gas pipeline company. I mean, this is like not that interesting. I literally started hyperventilating, I was so freaked out. I had to go to the bathroom to gather myself. The rest of that weekend was kind of weird because I was just like I don’t belong with these people, but Marshall got up, every time he got up to speak, he kind of said the same thing and this one point, which is everybody here needs to be thinking about writing a book because that’s how you differentiate yourself in this field is you write a book and so I was like —

Alex: Sounds like Marshall. 

Scott: I’m too nervous to talk to anybody so I’ll think about what book I’m going to write and I just started taking notes and I was like, you know, that thing that they all lied about, you want to write what you know and I started thinking, okay, what do I know? Well, I know what it’s like to be a young executive who feels like you’re in over your head and the expectations are high but they’re not clear. Okay. So what’s that like? Well, that’s like moving to the next level. Okay, well, maybe that’s the title for the book. And then I said what’s the core challenge of that? Is it keeps start, stop, doing well, sort of that, but it’s really more emotional, it’s more like picking up and letting go and then I just started outlining. What do you have to pick up? What do you have to let go of? Just in my own mind and my own experience. I came up with — there’s a table in the book, this is the third edition, there’s a table in the book that has that pick up and let go, there’s nine — ten chapters total but nine chapters in the book on nine distinctions around picking up and letting go, like pick up confidence, let go of doubt, pick up regular renewal of your energy and perspective, let go of running flat out until you crash, pick up team reliance, let go of self-reliance, pick up accountability for many results, let go of responsibility for a few. I mean, just — and about five or six of those nine, I had a rough idea of that weekend and then I got a book called The Shortest Distance Between You and a Published Book and I started reading through that and one of the chapters, early chapters in that book is you got to write a good book proposal and here’s how you do it and an outline of how you write a book proposal. And I wrote like a two-page outline of a book proposal and one of my early clients who was in a nonprofit at a previous job as an acquisitions editor for Jossey-Bass and so I knew she had done that. Jossey-Bass was eventually bought by Wiley. And I said, “Marla, would you look at my book proposal?” she said sure and so she wrote it and gave it back to me with all kinds of notes on it and I took those and turned it into a four-page proposal and then an eight-page and then a ten-page or a twelve-page. And then she introduced me to some editors, and they amazingly liked it. And I didn’t like the initial contract I was offered and I talked to other coaches that had published books in DC. One of them introduced me to their publishers and they liked it and, next thing I knew, I had a contract. It’s crazy. But I just kind of networked my way into that too. So first edition of that came out in 2006. Like I said a minute ago, we’ve had three editions since then. It was a life-changing thing for us, by us, I mean Diane and me. The opportunities that opened up were insane and it really did change. 

Alex: So Marshall was right. 

Scott: Marshall was completely right. I’ve told him that. I’ve told him that several times. Yeah.

Alex: It’s a very different landscape today. There’s a lot more authors, a lot more coaches, it’s hard to differentiate yourself. It’s not only getting the book done but the book needs to really highly differentiate you, further specialize you. As the profession grows, some of the challenges that were not there at the beginning when it’s kind of like a little bit of a gold rush moment, where, yes, there’s a market for coaching. They want qualified coaches. Wow, you have these books? And it’s really good. And now you’re doing coaching based on some of the premise of the book. And now it’s like, okay, well, most coaches have books, the bar has been lowered in many cases in terms of just there’s a lot more tools, there’s a lot of more framework, a lot more people that have walked those paths before. So, how have you experienced the landscape changing since 2006?

Scott: Yeah, it’s definitely changed a ton and I feel very grateful. Like you said, I don’t know if I call it a gold rush but —

Alex: Maybe that was a little much, maybe not a gold rush. 

Scott: Yeah, it’s a little overstatement at some level, but I’m very grateful that we got into this when we got into it, because it was easier. Honestly, it was easier to establish yourself at that point, not just with a book but as a coach, even, I think it was easier, probably than it is today. But in marketing, so you can write a book but the thing is, you got to market the book. Lots of people who are first-time authors feel like, “Well, the publisher is gonna help with that.” No, they’re not going to help with that. Unless you’re — pick an author, Adam Grant, right? Adam Grant does great work and I’m sure his publisher is helping him market his books now but he’s a good example. You’ve got to build a community and he’s an extreme example of that, or Simon Sinek is another extreme example of that. My community is much smaller but it’s pretty loyal. And the challenge today is it’s not, like you said, it’s not just the books, there’s so many other channels that compete for mindshare. How do you break through all the content out there and all the noise so that your people find you? And I think that — you asked me to give advice but if I was giving advice to somebody who’s just thinking about it, I’d have a super, super clear idea, this is a question a publicist asked me when we were releasing The Next Level for the first time in 2006, tell me who your must read audience is, your should read audience is, and your could read audience is. That was a really clarifying question for me. And we focused all of our promotion, all of our outreach on the must read audience. And the other thing we did was the book was one channel for a set of ideas and there were lots of other channels through which you could share that content and monetize it. And so our intention was to build our business around the content of that book, The Next Level, which we did, and we still do at some level, even today, not as much as we used to but a lot for 10 or 12 years. That’s exactly what our business is based on. And we monetized the content through group coaching cohort programs, through 360s, through self-assessments, through speeches, you name it. And that’s, I think, in the prep for this conversation, I’ve mentioned in the prep that I’m working on a third book, which I may or may not end up doing, because I have to really question is the value, is the juice worth the squeeze, basically. Is the value there for me at this point? And do I want to work hard enough to let the people who could benefit from the book know that it’s there, because you’ve got to work pretty hard to let them know it’s there so they can benefit from it. So it’s sort of a cost-benefit ratio really, right? Is the psychic and time investment cost of writing it going to be less than the benefit that the market can get from it? I’m working that out. I’m working that out in that question.

Alex: So this new book that you’re writing, what was your inspiration?

Scott: It’s basically where my work is today, which is I had a participant in a workshop I was doing for GE back when GE was still the original GE —

Alex: And before they sold Crotonville. Did you hear? They sold their leadership development —

Scott: I’m sick — I got to teach at Crotonville several times, like in the pit, where Jack Welch used to teach. I love their Crotonville. 

Alex: They just sold it like a couple of weeks ago.

Scott: I know, I know. I’ve read the articles. Yeah, it’s an amazing facility and it was such a cool thing —

Alex: First page of the Wall Street Journal, that tells you something. 

Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was it was a special place. But I had a guy at a GE workshop come up to me on a break. He says, “You know, I control the weather.” And I said, “What are you talking about, dude? You’re delusional,” and he said, “No, like, however I show up —” he said that to me, he said, “I control the weather and someday you’re gonna control the weather.” I think they get like, however you screw up, your team is going to show up that way, right? “Yeah, exactly.” That idea really resonated with me so I think a lot about that idea and the connection between the way you manage yourself and how effective you are in managing yourself and your life and your physiology and your physical, mental, relational, spiritual aspects of your life and the impact you have as a leader because of the way you manage yourself. And that’s what this third book would be about. I’m working on that stuff anyway. I work on that all the time with my clients. It draws on my second book, Overworked and Overwhelmed, which is really about this framework that Diane and I developed for ourselves 25 years ago that we’ve shared with tons and tons of people at this point called Life GPS and it’s three questions: How are you at your best? What are the characteristics that describe you when you’re in peak performance mode? What are the routines you have in your life, physical, mental, relational, and spiritual, that enable you to be at your best? And then if you are consistent with those routines and at your best more often than not, what outcomes would you expect in three big arenas, your life at home, your life at work, and your life in your communities? And I’ve written a book on that, I’ve written a book about the next level, and this third book would kind of be the nexus of those two and a good bit more focused on leadership impact than the first two books were and just kind of making that connection between the two. 

Alex: And I know you’re a certified yoga teacher.

Scott: I am. Yeah, yeah. 

Alex: How do you make that into, as you were describing your book and thinking about practices, how do you bake that in into your own practice, both for yourself and your clients? I practiced yoga for a long time and I haven’t lately. I bought a reformer. I go to the gym and I play a lot of tennis and I have a reformer so I think I just switched from like the yoga approach to just having the Pilates machine at home. But I’m missing. I did yoga the other day, it was amazing. I forgot how good it is.

Scott: Yeah, you live in the best place outside of India to do yoga. I mean, Los Angeles has some of the best yoga teachers in the world. That’s one of the main things I miss about living in LA is the yoga there is fantastic. So how does that affect my work? I mean, yoga is a really holistic thing. There’s a philosophical component to it, a physical component to it, there’s a mental component to it. Did you get into the eight limbs of yoga when you’re going to yoga?

Alex: That rings a bell but if it just rings a bell, then I think the answer is probably no.

Scott: So this is just like geeking out on yoga philosophy and I won’t remember it all at this point, but there are eight limbs basically components of yoga. So a lot of us think of yoga as like warrior two or whatever, right? 

Alex: Yeah. 

Scott: Well, that’s part of the asana. That’s the physical movement part of yoga. 

Alex: I do remember the asanas and the physical postures.

Scott: Yeah, that’s the fourth limb. The first two limbs are about — they’re called the Yamas and Niyamas, they are basically rules for living. The third limb is called Prana and that’s breath and that’s the life force and that prepares you for the asana. And the whole point of the asana is to kind of get you in a place where you can go inward. There’s a meditative limb, it progresses, and the eighth limb is called in Sanskrit Samadhi and it’s the unification of you with the life force. I don’t think I ever got there, but, I mean, that’s the goal, right? 

Alex: Samadhi, yeah. 

Scott: Samadhi, yeah, yeah.

Alex: I’ve actually experienced the Samadhi and it’s kind of like life changing. When everything becomes one. I’ve experienced a couple of those through meditation. It’s like unbelievable.

Scott: I think what it did for me personally was it made me a lot more aware of everything related to me, my body, my outlook, my stress levels. Taught me how to manage my stress very effectively. We have an autonomic nervous system in our body and there’s a parasympathetic part of that — a sympathetic part and a parasympathetic part. The sympathetic, it’s the fight or flight response, which we all know about. The parasympathetic is called the rest and digest response and most people haven’t heard of that, I’ve learned, and the sympathetic response, fight or flight, we can’t really actively choose to activate that. Why would you? It just sort of happens and I think, in our everyday, stress-filled lives, where most of us are kind of in a chronic state of fight or flight. We’re not in acute fight or flight, like in physical danger, but our body is reacting as if we are because there’s all these inputs and all these things we’re worried about and thinking about that we haven’t gotten to yet and what’s going to happen with the election or this or that or any other thing, right? That’s the gas pedal. On the other side of that is the parasympathetic response. That’s the braking system, the rest and digest response. There’s a lot of things you can actually do to consciously activate that. And so I have multiple sclerosis and that’s one of the biggest reasons I got into yoga was a friend of ours, who’s a multi-degree health expert said I should do yoga, resisted that for a while, but eventually gave in and she was right. I mean, it changed everything. And I’m very fortunate. I don’t think it’s all yoga. I think a part of it is just luck. But I don’t really have any symptoms with MS 15 years later from diagnosis. 

Alex: Amazing.

Scott: And yoga was a big part of that, for sure. And learning how to manage my stress was the bigger part of it, right? Because if you have a chronic illness, you have to manage your stress because all the systems in your body that either elevate or de-elevate fight or flight are triggered by stress, and if you’re not managing that effectively, you’re going to be sick, like physically sick, and certainly less effective as a leader. And so I think about that stuff a lot in the context of my clients. I think most of my clients are in a chronic state of fight or flight. Hopefully, less so after I’ve worked with them but that’s where they start and it has a huge impact —

Alex: Hopefully.

Scott: — has a huge impact on them personally, has a big impact on their life expectancy, most importantly, but in the immediate term, it has a huge impact on the weather they’re creating as leaders. It’s much stormier weather system, usually, if their chronic fight or flight. Therefore, it has a huge impact on the organizational health and that’s kind of why I want to write this third book is how does all that hang together? So, yeah, you asked me how yoga is influenced my profession. It’s like can’t separate the two at this point because it’s just how I think about it all. It’s all connected.

Alex: That’s great. It’s funny when you say Samadhi, I’m like, yeah, I’ve had one, so casual. It is the ultimate experience, right?

Scott: Yeah. And one last little geeky thing. The root of the word yoga is yoke, it’s the yoking, the bringing together of different aspects of life and existence, and that yoking, bringing it together, that’s what I try to do in my work, whether I’m approaching it from the perspective of a yogi or, at this point, it’s just kind of embedded with me. I don’t really think about what the source of that is anymore, it’s just the approach that I have to it.

Alex: Yeah, I was going to ask you, do you talk about yoga with clients? Is it kind of behind the scenes, you don’t talk about it but you implement some principles? Do you do both?

Scott: Yes, I used to do a ton of speaking before COVID, I do 40 or 50 speeches a year. Quite often, if it’s a workshop kind of setting or even a keynote sometimes, I’m talking about the self-management piece, the routines, physical, mental, relational, spiritual, and I’m like what’s the killer app on each of those domains. If you’re only going to do one thing, what should you do? And one of my answers for physical is just move, so if we’re in a keynote setting or a workshop, it’s been a while since anybody here has moved, we’ve been sitting down for a while, get up and I’ll even do like a little 5-minute very simple yoga routine and people love it. We end with — you remember lion’s breath where you stick your tongue out and go, “Aaaahh”? And so I’ll have them do that three times, louder every time, and it’s the goofiest thing ever to hear like a thousand people in a keynote going, “Aaaahh,” at once, or even on Zoom, if you’re doing a virtual workshop. It’s just fun and so people get really energized by it. But what’s interesting about it, then you ask them to observe, how do you feel right now? Describe how you feel now. “I’m energized, I feel happy, I feel,” yeah, and I said, “And two minutes ago, none of that was there, right? You can change your state that quickly,” and that’s just kind of the point I’m trying to make. And it doesn’t have to be something complicated. Just have to be — My definition of mindfulness is it’s awareness plus intention. Awareness of what’s going on around me and inside of me, extrinsically and intrinsically aware, and then once I have that awareness of what’s going on out there and with me, I’m intentional. I can be intentional about what’s the next best thing for me to do or maybe not do, to say or not say, based on that awareness.

Alex: Love that. As we come to an end of this great episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee, any parting words? Anything you like to share that maybe we didn’t get to in this episode today?

Scott: Who do you think is watching us right now? What is the primary audience? Is it coaches?

Alex: Yeah. In our ecosystem, we serve primarily coaches so it’s mostly coaches that run their own practices or, like you said earlier, their own coaching businesses.

Scott: That’s a question I always get the feedback interview with is what’s your one best piece of advice. What’s your one best piece of advice for my client? And I’m trying to think, do I have one best piece of advice for the coaches there? Have faith. Have faith that you’re making a difference. Have faith that if it’s your livelihood, you can make it work. Have faith in your colleagues. Have faith in your clients. Just have faith. And I don’t mean that in a religious sense necessarily. If that’s your modality, great. Just believe in yourself. That’s another way to say have faith. Believe in yourself and believe in the impact of what you’re doing and the difference it’s making and the value it’s providing and don’t underestimate and don’t undersell your value because what we do has a lot of value.

Alex: I agree. Thank you for joining me today, Scott. Did enjoy the conversation.

Scott: My pleasure. Thank you for asking. Nice to meet you, Alex. Thanks.

Alex: Likewise.