Podcasts about scott for

Sarah is an invited keynote speaker, coach, real estate investor, and mentor. She is the host of the popular podcast “Where Should I Invest?” where she interviews fellow real estate investors on their specific strategies while providing audiences with valuable insights and actionable tactics for their own real estate goals.As a real estate investor, Sarah specializes in helping Canadians with homeownership. She has also helped students to grow from acquiring their first property to planning their retirement in approximately 10-15 years. Her results-oriented approach has been featured in The Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, Canadian Real Estate Wealth magazine, and 1010 News Talk Radio and she is often a guest on numerous North American finance-focused podcasts.Listen in as they discuss:Sarah's real estate investing strategyThe BRRR strategyKnowing when it is time to quit your jobHaving a mindset shift to be able to do what you loveSurrounding yourself with like-minded peopleGetting over the fear that's holding you back And, more!Sarah also shares her first real estate deal experience and what she would have done differently if she was handling that same deal today.TIP OF THE WEEKMark: My tip of the week is going to help you go deep so learn more, go to sarahlarbi.com.Scott: For email marketing, check out sanebox.com, have a free plan and then from one thousand people you can upgrade to five thousand people.Sarah: We provide real estate investing education for free, go on reiteclub.com. They can go to forums, marketplace and they can build your team that way, there are tons of great things. And keep doing what you're doing, like podcasts, and how I really learn is along the way as well. Educate yourself and take action. The perfect deal is not perfect on purchase, you can make it really awesome along the way. So get some decent deals, make them great and keep going.WANT TO LISTEN MORE?Did you like this episode? If so, tune into another one of our exciting episodes with special guest Ali Boone as we discuss giving up your 9-to-5 to live the good life. Isn't it time to create passive income so you can work where you want, when you want and with whomever you want?

Summary: Friends of the Building Better Cultures podcast, Ireland Together (www.IrelandTogether.ie) ran a series of mini-conferences focused on the next great reset—returning to the workplace. They asked Scott to facilitate a discussion on the Future of Work—what we will do, how we will do it and where we will work from. The panelists today are thought leaders in their own right, and during this discussion, they offer their insights into how work will be shaped by trends going forward. Our featured speakers are: Denise Black, Head of HR at Invest NI; Gillian French, CPO at Cubic Telecom; and Kevin Empey, Founder at WorkMatters. We hope you enjoy the conversation. Key Takeaways: Opinions about where work can be done vary widely. Employers should focus on gaining their employees' trust before moving into mandated reporting. Establish key contact points for in-person gathering. Companies should look at this as an opportunity to change the culture. Organizations need to include their employees in the conversation. Leadership is responsible for making sure these hybrid models are equitable.   Q&A:   Scott: Is there going to be any real significant change to the future of work?   Kevin: The future of work didn't start with COVID, and it will continue way beyond COVID. One example is the idea that business interruption is normal, that the frequency of change is happening more quickly. Another is that keeping an eye on the periphery is a crucial skill set. Finally, the ideas about how and where work can be done—as well as the expectations of management—are all changing as we move into the future. It's also not just what's happening within our own little bubbles, but what changes we can expect for our whole customer base and our suppliers with their own digital agendas.   Scott: If companies don't adapt to small change curves, they're dying. Gillian, what can we expect the future of work to look like for smaller companies?   Gillian: Generally speaking, smaller businesses are more agile and able to adapt to changes more readily than large, multinational companies. If smaller businesses can afford it, they should give their employees the flexibility that they desire. It will actually build social capital and build trust in your employees. It's ultimately about focusing on building strong relationships because those are the tools they need to successfully pivot when hard changes do come.   Scott: How do you balance the needs of the company and the needs of employers when they don't mesh?   Denise: I advocated that we start from a position of trust and empowerment. I said let's look at it based on the principles of four pillars to focus on when you come into the office. Those pillars are: to Connect, to Collaborate, to Client, and to Commute. And each team will look at what their responsibilities are and what pillars fit best. The key is to train the people leaders to think in this way. The other key part is establishing critical contact points, like team meetings, new starts and critical HR issues, most definitely. Other key feedback moments, too, like performance reviews or midterms.   If staffers haven't made up their mind yet, I encourage them to. As soon as my staffers made a decision and showed they were going to roll out a plan, the shoulders dropped, and they could say now they know what's going to happen.   Scott: And they can say, “alright, now this is what we're going to try.” Kevin, if organizations don't do something different after all of this, what is the impact going to be? What trick will they have said, do you think?   Kevin: I think there's an opportunity to leverage competition, talent and expertise from around the world. There is also the threat that if they don't act, they could be opening up their talent to other companies. You're engaging in a culture exercise as much as anything else. It allows the opportunity to show vulnerability, which can improve the culture in the long term, past when COVID is forgotten. They would be embedding some of those skills in the future.   Scott: We seem comfortable with contracting work from remote locations. What do you think it will take for leadership to feel the same way about their own teams?   Gillian: They are hard-pressed to make the argument now because we've proven that it works during the pandemic. They'd have to have a strong case for why those roles can't be filled remotely. One key thing I want to emphasize is that we need to squash presence privilege because it's unjust and it's a big threat to the hybrid model. My concern is that people will miss that and it will hurt our ability to fully capitalize on the culture change.   Kevin: We know that some people are nervous to come back, so many should embrace phases or waves of returning. And it should be stated that employees are wise to the problem of presence privilege, too. We are actually using technology to capture everything on a common canvas, so no one is disenfranchised. There's no doubt that these tools will help us.   Denise: A lot of people are asking about the deadlines, but my advice is to make the most of your day if you're going to go in.   Scott: Denise, how do you generate psychological safety within an organization?   Denise: It's intrinsically linked to the leadership in an organization. No matter what level you're at, the pandemic acted as an equalizer. And I think this helped us to see each other as equals again. I think psychological safety is something you have to work on as a team.   Scott: I think it was you, Denise, who shared with me the acronym “F.A.I.L.”—if it's not a failure, it's a first attempt in learning. Denise, do you have anything to add to that?   Denise: We kept the comms as transparent as possible, which I think built a lot of trust in the organization. We need to involve the members of our teams as frequently as possible.   Kevin: It's that trust piece. It's fundamental to the relationship piece, too. There's also a stretch element to this next phase because there's an element to psychological safety that requires more trust-building. And leadership needs to set that tone.   Scott: What do you all think about the question of gender equality in the hybrid work place? Denise, I might throw that one to you.   Denise: It's actually quite topical. Promotions tend to be very Belfast-centered—but now we know that that doesn't have to be the case in a hybrid model. I think this is going to help make the workplace more equitable by leveling the playing field in that sense.   Gillian: I see a lot of concern about this because many women dropped out of the workforce because of stresses of home life and so on—   Kevin: We just need to watch that the hybrid model doesn't get skewed so far as to be associated with the different genders or presenteeism and so on. It's really important that our promotion and development programs are agnostic as well.   Scott: To close, what's the most important thing that companies should be doing to reap the benefits of the future of work.   Denise: They need to start the conversation.   Kevin: Leadership needs to be involving team members in the conversation rather than forcing it on them top-down. Also, you need to make sure the technology is there to boost employee engagement. Try as best as you can to create what is as close as possible to a “normal” work environment.   Scott: For me, the jigsaw piece in the middle is that we should tell people really obviously that we have made decisions in response to your feedback.   Gillian: They need to provide flexibility or employees will leave. And they need to make sure everyone is treated equally. There's nothing more important.

The online buying experience is always evolving, so it’s table stakes for companies to be on their toes and ready to adjust when the market tells them to. Especially when the company we are chatting about today was founded in 1948! But being prepared to adjust and actually making it happen are two different things. At DICK’S Sporting Goods, its customers, who are referred to as “athletes” are truly running the show, and Scott Casciato, who serves as the VP of Omni Channel Fulfillment & Athlete Service at DICK'S, is the man who takes their needs and delivers a seamless experience to them via DICK’S ecommerce platform and throughout their 700 retail locations. And with their ecommerce sales increasing by 100% in 2020, Scott and his team have had to rethink many things like: how to scale up operations during peak seasons, why testing every iteration on the website is key, how to perfect the buy online pick up in-store experience, and determine how to take their athlete's feedback and transform it into a funnel for change. This episode brought back a lot of nostalgia for me, thinking about the days of wandering the aisles of Dick’s in my high school days looking for a new lacrosse stick or soccer shoes. So it was fun to hear about how much has changed, and  what investments the company has been making lately in creating the best customer experience possible for its athletes. Also, tune in to the end to hear Scott discuss the importance of great vendor relationships, how to future proof logistics, and the new in-store experiences that Dick’s is betting big on. Enjoy! Main Takeaways:The House Don’t Fall When the Bones are Good: Having a strong foundation is the most impactful thing a company can do to prepare for surges in traffic that might come during peak seasons or after highly-successful campaigns. You have to do the work, go through the load tests and constantly be improving the technology stack because there are no shortcuts when you are creating a scalable platform that can withstand anything you throw at it. With last year being a perfect case study to reflect on, dive into the data and pivot if needed so you’re ready for the surge!Bet On It … Then Test It: Building out an online experience that works requires constant testing. You can plan for outcomes and bet on how you think people will react, but until you test it, you can’t ever be certain. As Scott mentioned, following the path the data reveals can be surprising and sometimes opposite of what your intuition is telling you.Experiences For The Future: The shopping experience is going to continue to change, and the strongest companies are planning for the future by paying attention to trends and then creating experiences — both in-person and online — that will drive engagement with consumers and build trust and confidence in the company’s authority in the space. By investing early into an experience or a specific market, you set yourself up as the expert in that specialized vertical and become the retailer of choice for consumers.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hey everyone and welcome back to Up Next in Commerce, this is your host, Stephanie Postles, ceo@mission.org. Today on the show we have Scott Casciato, vice president of Omni Channel Fulfillment & Athlete Service at DICK'S Sporting Goods. Scott, welcome.Scott:Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.Stephanie:I'm really excited to have you. So I have this deep love of DICK'S Sporting Goods because there was a location in my hometown, eastern shore of Maryland, which I feel no one even knows where that is on a map. But back in high school, I would go almost every week and just kind of peruse through the aisles and look for new lacrosse sticks and shoes. And I didn't really have much money, but I remember just loving the experience and being there probably for three hours with friends, just kind of hanging out. So I was so excited when I saw you guys on the lineup where I was, "Yes, something I know well."Scott:Was that your sport growing up, lacrosse?Stephanie:Lacrosse and soccer.Scott:Nice, nice. That's great.Stephanie:Deep love there. So I'd love to hear a bit about how you got into this industry, because you had a funny quote where you said, "I don't know how I really ended up here," and I'd love to start there, how did you become the vice-president of Omni Channel Fulfillment & Athlete Service at DICK'S Sporting Goods?Scott:It goes back... I spent the early part of my career in software, supply chain software, and kind of even on the sales side, then moved into the operational side and then got into management consulting and did a tour duty in the management consulting ranks. And I got introduced to the founder and co-founder of a company called ModCloth that I was with previously. And they were looking for somebody to run fulfillment and customer service. And I just said, I don't know anything about, I mean, I know supply chain, but I don't really know anything about direct consumer fulfillment at the time. And the founder of that business was, "Yeah, I know, but you're smart enough to figure it out." Right?Scott:So and I have a bent for really high growth, high speed businesses, and it just kind of the way I grew up in my career and that was a really great opportunity. So I did that and I spent five years there scaling that business really significantly, hyper growth phase and it was awesome. I learned a ton about fulfillment and service. And then about five years in, I had this great opportunity to come to DICK'S. And the thing that was really interesting to me is, the question was how can we build a great service organization for DICK'S Sporting Goods? I'm like, "Wow, if I could do it at a much smaller company, what would it be like to come to such a great brand and try to do it here?" And and we did, right?Scott:And so we spent a lot of time building that for the first four years of my time at DICK'S and then had an opportunity to take fulfillment on. So it's interesting that I have some of the aspects of that, that previous role that I had only, a scale that is much larger and just been very, very fortunate to be with such a great business. And it's been awesome to work with the team at DICK'S.Stephanie:Okay. So you are leaving ModCloth, I mean, that's like strictly ecommerce and then you're coming to this, I would say very omni-channel company. I mean, you have over 700 locations across the US, quickly moving to digital, at least over the past couple of years. Tell me a bit about what that transition was like?Scott:I mean, and at the same time we were really building... We were just starting our transformation to building our own technology. So it was a massive... It was basically rebuilding what we had already had from an ecommerce business perspective. And I think fundamentally a lot of the things that I came in and the tools that I had were relevant, right? How you scale a business. I mean, that stuff is somewhat the same. I think one of the biggest changes was or a few of them were one, just having more teammates that knew a lot of stuff that could really help and drive the initiatives and the progress forward, whereas in a much smaller company, right? It's you're wearing so many different hats and you're doing so many different things here.Scott:It was a shock to me to say, oh, there's somebody that can help with reporting or data analytics and help us with these answers. So that was awesome. And then I just think we were all learning, right? So we were learning what we needed. We were learning what we wanted to be in customer service, we were learning what we wanted to have in terms of digital capabilities. We were learning how to run that business as we were deploying new technology, right? So how do you do pricing online appropriately? I remember a lot of conversation. How do you display things? What's the right... How do you check? What's the right checkout flow? And then we had, as all businesses do, you have to make a lot of trade-offs because it may not be the most elegant thing right at the beginning, but we just got to get it up and running, right?Scott:And so having those conversations can be tough, right? Everybody, and especially our business, we just have this DNA where we just relentlessly improve, right? And so it's tough to launch something and know that it's not the perfect solution, right, and then making sure that you go back and you iterate and you keep going, right? We just did that for a long time. But it was a lot of fun and it's really tiring, but it was a lot of fun.Stephanie:So that's amazing. What was one of the maybe projects or things that you felt most strongly about that you got maybe the most pushback on that people are like, nope, that's not a good idea?Scott:I would say, well, we had a lot of conversation about how we were going to set up, for example, in my world, we were going to set up customer service. And we continue to evolve that. I think it wasn't that people were saying it's not how we want to do it, I think it was really more what I was saying about, we want to own more of that customer service experience, right? So we had always been outsourced. And as we moved, as we did the transition, and our previous outsourcer did a great job. And as we move to the next wave of that evolution, we decided we really need to keep an outsourced view in some form or fashion of customer service, but we really wanted to try to start to build our own, right, because we were, "Wonder what we could do on our own?"Scott:So this conversation about, [inaudible] how do you scale for the hockey stick effect that we have at holiday, right, while maintaining the great experience that we have? And we want to in source, but then we want to scale a holiday. We just had a lot of spirited debate about that. So that was part of that conversation.Stephanie:Very cool. And so are you guys kind of now balanced approach when it comes to customer service, depending on what's incoming and how to route it?Scott:Exactly. Right. So we have a team of internal service people that take various types of contacts, and then we have a few outsourced partners that we work extremely closely with. And we balanced the volume across there. And then at holiday time, we scale up across all. And so it's turned out to be... And we're measuring that experience relentlessly. So it's been a great symbiotic relationship, I think, across all three of those.Stephanie:Well, now that you've touched on holiday, I do kind of want to go into peak season and maybe talking about, I mean, you mentioned that you went through this big technology evolution and implementing new things to try and get to where you are now, what did that look like, especially when it comes to preparing for big surges? I mean, I saw your ecommerce I think went up 100% in 2020 or something, so you guys have had massive growth. What did it look like behind the scenes to prepare for that plus peak demand?Scott:I think it's been this... We're very happy that we started when we did, right? when you think about what happened over the past 12 months and what has happened in the ecommerce world and the growth that everybody has seen, we're fortunate that we started four years ago down this path. Because the foundation that we built really allowed us to scale this year really quickly. We've been through all the load tests dynamics that you go through at holiday, we've built the technology stack that can support the traffic that we knew that we were going to get. We've been through the trials and tribulations of how to test, what to test, where to find the failure modes, and we've got really talented people that work on that stuff every day. We've built controls internally to manage where things might not be working appropriately and to be able to balance that.Scott:And as you think about what happened last year, specifically with curbside, it is the example of, it took us four years to become an overnight success type of situation where [inaudible].Stephanie:[inaudible].Scott:Right.Stephanie:[inaudible]. Who knew?Scott:Totally. So I think it was scaling for holiday. We scale every year for holiday. I think last year was one that we didn't quite know, nobody knew what was really going to happen. But I think we over-prepared, and we executed an extremely successful holiday because we just had every... It was so great to see everybody so engaged in solving that challenge and really thinking through every aspect of what might happen in holiday from fulfillment through the web traffic through customer service. And we really came together as a team and figured out all the ways that things could go right and wrong and covered it all. And we had a great holiday season because of it.Stephanie:That's great. So what areas do you think businesses are maybe under-prepared? Is it in the fulfillment piece? Is it in customer service? What are some of the top pillars that you guys covered down on that maybe some people might not be fully prepared for?Scott:I think that we do a great job in measuring and really paying attention to the athlete experience across all measures, right? I think we've pivoted from, I think historically in most businesses have been in a place where you manage internally, right? You're managing things like conversion or traffic or speed to athlete and things like that, and to be the customer, traditional service levels and customer service. I think those are all important, but I think if you take the outside in view, right, and you're looking at things like how are we measuring the experience, what's happening to that customer when they're out there and they're buying from us? But are they buying from us again, right, as an articulation of their commitment to the brand?Scott:And then how do we influence that purchase behavior? And how do you think expansively about that in terms of not only the shopping experience online that they have, but the post-purchase, the delivery experience, the customer service experience, how are you really measuring that data and getting good information and causal information to figure out how you can drive really great lifetime value? And I think we do that and we're really starting to do that really well across our business. And we've gotten so much support for that outside in view, across our leadership team as well that it's become a real engine of thinking across our teams.Stephanie:I mean, it seems like that holistic view is really hard for a lot of companies to get to though. I mean, I hear about a lot of companies trying to consolidate their tech stack, marketing stack, put it all in one area that things actually are connected and you can have attribution and you can see the LTV. How do you guys think about having that view that allows you to make decisions?Scott:I mean, I think that it's philosophical at some level and don't get me wrong, it's hard because I think when you look at the business on a day-to-day basis, all retailers, right, especially those that are public are driving towards hard goals. We take a much longer term view of things generally across the business, which is really refreshing and great. And so it allows us to really make good decisions. When you think about what we're measuring, how we're investing, we're not investing, I mean, obviously we care about the quarter and we care about the year, right? Don't get me wrong, but I think we're making investments that are in the long-term interest of this brand and our customers. I think, we're a really large small business in that regard. And I think we've been able to energize our teammates to deliver that experience on the front line, but also make the investments on the back end of the house that allow us to do that.Stephanie:And I see you guys have been making some big tech investments. I saw, I think Commerce Hub, you did a multi-year deal with them. And I saw something about the vendor partner program that you have. We can kind of plug and play into a bunch of vendors and have an endless aisle. And I was, wow, that could be game changing to be able to pivot quickly and offer, get to the consumer, right, wherever they are, whatever they need, especially in times right now where it's very uncertain. So it seems tech is a big piece of that, towards that investment philosophy right now.Scott:It is.Stephanie:How are you figuring out what you need and how to put the proper pieces in place?Scott:I think we have over 500 vendors in our drop-ship program. And connecting to it has them, and understanding what the inventory is, and getting them to send us the right inventory, and then order information back and forth in real time is incredibly important, which is why we made the investment in Commerce Hub, it has been a great partner for us for a few years now. And it's easy to use. So I think that's that was great for that aspect of our business. I think our vendor relationships are super strong and we're fortunate that we have them because it allows us to be really creative in the way that we go to market. Scott:And I think we're also continuing to build great brands internally, right? And so if you think about, we just recently launched our first brand and it's been a great success so far. It's great stuff. We had got our [inaudible], if you haven't tried it, you should.Stephanie:I haven't. [inaudible].Scott:That's awesome. It's a partnership that we did with Carrie Underwood about six years ago, and it's quickly become our number two selling women's line.Stephanie:Wow. That's awesome.Scott:And then we launched our DSG brand a few years ago, or a year and a half ago, which is really a value-driven brand and with very high quality, right? So when you think about the continuum of our brands, we have very specific and different strategies and they're complex depending on what we're trying to achieve within a given brand or category within that brand. But I think we're fortunate that we've built such great lasting relationships, because again, I think it gets back to, we take a longer term view of things and we really, I think we treat our vendors as partners.Stephanie:Yep. So key, especially in this industry where so much is happening, so much is changing quick and people can get burned really quickly too.Scott:Right, right, right.Stephanie:It also seems being able to plug into a vendor system like that is important, especially around... It seems a lot of companies are doing private label type of things and launching their own brands. I mean, it's not fully reliant now on the big brands and being able to have that flexibility to pull people into your ecosystem that maybe could have never sold at a DICK'S Sporting Goods before, that seems amazing and really allows access in a way that wasn't here maybe five years ago.Scott:It really does. We're always looking for those bets to make with new and upcoming brands. And our vendor director job channel is a great way to sort of test some of these things. So that's definitely, you hit the nail on the head for us. It's a strategy that we actively have and it's nice because my team who manages that part of our business we'll work with our merchants to say, "What could our strategy be with the supplier or partner X?" Right? Some of these folks are small businesses that can't handle our volumes. So if we buy a little bit more, we can test some of them or we can test it in the vendor direct channel. So it's been a real tool for us.Stephanie:Testing's interesting too. I could see kind of doing AB test quickly and see if people like this product and if they like this one more, okay, here's what we're going to go. Maybe we'll circle back with you next year in a much less risky way to bring people in.Scott:We've gotten really good at testing and specifically on the site with how we're thinking about the experience online. And we test almost everything these days, right? I mean, there's some stuff that I think is just go do things, some go do things that we do. But I think generally speaking, we've really developed a muscle around building an experience and testing it and iterating on it to figure out what's really resonating with the athlete most. So everything from shopping experiences on our site all the way down through the conversion funnel to fulfillment, right? And speed and how we're communicating with our athletes.Scott:So I think we've learned so much, and I'm like constantly reminded when we get these, we all kind of make bets, right, when we launched these tests like what do think's going to happen? And I think I'm wrong so often, it's so important to test.Stephanie:Yep.Scott:Good. Because what you think the consumer is going to do they just don't. And even when you think about surveys, I think there's this everybody lies concept, right? And it's true...Stephanie:And depends on what state they're in or where they're at in the day.Scott:Right, right. So I think it's just so invaluable to us.Stephanie:And we do surveys on the show sometimes just to see who do you want on, and how am I doing? And it's, well, it's depends on probably where that person is, if they're happy, if they're sad, it could be different depending on the place that they're in.Scott:For sure.Stephanie:So what's an example of a test that you ran where you were so sure, you're like this one's going to win, everyone was kind of on board with one scenario winning and then the results come back and everyone's wrong?Scott:That's a good question. We just ran one recently that I did win on, which is the one that was top of mind for me coming into this. Let me talk about that one for a second. So the one we launched on same-day, we're trying to figure out what are our athletes appetite is for same-day services. And we did definitely get a lot of engagement on the test. I kind of thought it was going to be more than it was, but it was still interesting, right? So I think that's something that we're going to continue to have conversation on.Stephanie:They wanted it, the majority of the [inaudible]?Scott:I think they did. It wasn't as much as I would've thought, really.Stephanie:Because that's an interesting one that some people on the show said, people just want to know when it's getting there, they're okay if it's not same day, versus if it's more of a commodity product, you better get it to them the same day. And to kind of seems it depends what it is and how much delayed gratification someone can have on it, it depends, it seems.Scott:Yeah. Some of the tests that I think that we've run that have been less intuitive, I just think how products are set up on the site and how people search, right, and find products like you would think that sometimes when you put the best or most visible sort of notable product of the top search results, that's going to create a better conversion and sometimes it just doesn't, right? So it's really people come in I think with a lot of intent around how they're shopping and sometimes what you think is going to happen just doesn't because I think there's so many different ways that people shop.Stephanie:Yep. How do you think about shifting the website either, from what you learned from last year or when you're approaching peak season, are there certain key elements that you adjust knowing that maybe the consumer's are in a very different mindset than they were at any other time in history probably?Scott:Yeah. I think I can speak more to the way that we think about fulfillment in this regard. I always, I historically had thought, that's another example of what I thought was going to happen. I historically thought that during, for example, Black Friday weekend speed was really important, right? I need it, I want to get it fast. And it turns out that weekend in particular speed is not the most important, getting what you want is the most important, right? So getting the deal is the most important. I think it makes sense because most people are thinking, I've got three or four weeks that this thing can get to me. I'm not super concerned to get it next week, just to make sure that I get it, right?Scott:So that's one that we adjust in terms of making sure that we're really being honest with how we're going to fulfill. Thankfully we've got an extraordinarily resilient fulfillment network and we do really well in speed and but historically had been surprised as we've really measured that one over Black Friday weekend. It's really about getting the deal, not the speed.Stephanie:Versus Christmas when everyone's probably last minute shopping, it's probably opposite.Scott:Very different.Stephanie:Okay.Scott:Very different. And as you get into December and you get through towards the ground cutoffs and you get, depending on what's happening, the speed becomes a real issue. Last year was was nuts. I mean, FedEx was running commercials, right? They talked about the speed or buy early. And we definitely saw a little bit of a shift in terms of how people were thinking about buying.Stephanie:So how are you building up that resilience fulfillment network that you mentioned to be able to basically say I can offer anyone the endless aisle, we have unlimited of these, in one moment and then be, okay, now next month got to go, got to be there in three days or less type of scenario?Scott:I think you mentioned it when we kicked off the show, it was we've got over 700 fulfillment locations when you think about our store network, which is a blessing for us because it allows us to really, not only be closer to our athlete and get things there faster, but also allows for a lot of flexibility when... It's just load balancing, right? When you think about a business that has a couple of three, in my past one fulfillment center, when that thing gets backed up, or you have a labor problem or you have whatever the case, would be trucks that don't show up on the receiving dock or the outgoing dock, you're kind of backed up, right?.Scott:And so while that definitely happens across everybody's network, including ours, having all of these different nodes that are moving product out each and every really helps mitigate the risk. And so it also helps us, at peak time, it helps us staff up and get stuff out. And we have we've built a really sophisticated way to manage the way that orders are routing. So we're able to identify where we might have congestion points, for example, and try to proactively avoid those as we see those things happening, right? So we can move orders to one node or another, or block a node if we've got a weather issue or something, or we've got, in the fall when you have hurricanes in Florida, right, or in the Southeast, we're able to really change the way that our orders route to get product out of different places that aren't having those issues.Stephanie:And is that kind of done in the background where it's looking at all these different inputs and then kind of making decisions that you can come in and adjust if you need to, but it's already routing it for you in the background?Scott:Yeah. So part of it's automated part of it's people, right? And it's still a lot of people, right, washing the switches each day. But we've got a great team of people that are communicating, we're communicating out of our stores to my team and fulfillment. We're communicating from my team into stores and we're using the technology that we've built to really manage the capacity and the inventory across the entire network.Stephanie:It seems that is so important too you when you essentially have two business units when it comes to fulfillment, you've got your store locations with one set of data, inventory is probably very hard to track because it's always getting grabbed, it's always getting shipped out, and then you have just maybe a fulfilment center that's a whole different beast probably. How do you get to that consolidate view? Is that part of the backend tech that's kind of looking at it at a higher level, treating it all as one?Scott:It is and it's definitely complex for the reasons that you noted. And it creates, sometimes it can compromise how close we can get to the athlete if we think we've got a unit in Austin, Texas and we actually don't. The fortunate part is instead of canceling that order on you or that unit on you, it's going to go to maybe it'll go to a Dallas store, right? And we can still stay pretty close to you and get it to you. And we're also trying to look at things like, how do we keep packages together? Of course, anybody that's listening to this that manages freight will say, yep, really important from a cost perspective. And frankly, even from, as I mentioned earlier, that athlete experience, people want to get one box, right? I don't want to order three or four different things and get three or four different boxes. And sometimes that's unavoidable, but we're trying everything we can to not let that happen.Stephanie:Oh, blessing.Scott:Totally, right?Stephanie:I get, one company I'm not going to mention their name, they will send a can of soup, anything a bone broth. I mean, it's in these little bags and they just come one at a time. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I just would have rather just gone to the store and picked it up myself than getting random of one item at a time."Scott:It's so wonderful when the customer experience need and the business need align, right? So when you think about, nobody wants to ship more packages to you, right? We want to get it to you, we want to get to you fast and we want to get it to you in one package. And that's also a great experience for you. It's the same thing we talk about with customer service, which is a traditional metric that people manage as average handle time, right? How long are [inaudible]? And I'm so careful, we collectively are so careful with this metric because it can be so disastrous to the teammate that's on the other end of the phone if they think they're being managed to a handle time, right? I don't want to just get you off the phone, however, and you need to use it for all kinds of different scheduling and making sure you have enough people on the team.Scott:But what's really aligned is generally people want to get to an answer pretty quickly also, right? I want to have an efficient, valuable use of my time. I want to get to an answer and then I want to move on with my day. So that's another example of where if we can do it right and align those desires, we're going to create an awesome experience.Stephanie:The unintended consequences, pizzas is such a tricky thing with thinking about designing roles and KPIs. I mean, I'm doing it right now. I'm thinking about sales and building a sales team and being like, oh wait, this might incentivize bad behavior.Scott:You got to really think about it, right?Stephanie:You just think really strategically about it.Scott:The outcome or the impact is very different than the intent in some cases.Stephanie:Yep. Are there any external inputs right now that you think companies aren't preparing for? I'm thinking about the algorithms that are kind of running everything behind the scenes when it comes to your fulfillment and things like that. Is there anything that you guys are watching now that maybe you weren't watching a couple of years ago and letting it help influence how things are routed or how things are kind of being redirected, anything like that?Scott:I mean, I think we're constantly trying to get to be more precise, and we're very fortunate that if everything goes right, we can get you an order really, really quickly. So we're really trying to pay attention to, where are things not going perfectly and we've called this thing the perfect order, what's our perfect order, right? And how do we get more of those? So we're spending a lot of time thinking about how we can perfect our fulfillment network. And I mean, it is, as you can imagine, just an infinite number of variables that dictate how this thing goes. But we're working a lot on that. I do not think that...Stephanie:[inaudible] like local stuff, because that's something that kind of came to mind. You're paying attention to weather and higher level things are you down in the weeds of, okay, well there's a festival this week here so that means... Is it that [inaudible].Scott:It can be. I mean, for example, when we're doing a hot market event, so Super Bowl, NCAA Tournament, they're national events, but their inventories largely local, right? So we're really paying attention to what the traffic is doing and the inventory is doing it at those local levels for sure.Stephanie:I'd love to talk about events a bit because I know that's a focus is the athlete experience online and in person as well. And I saw that you guys are opening more retail locations. You're opening, I think I saw a golf center, I soccer center, I mean, these full on experiences. And I'd love to hear how you guys are thinking about that.Scott:I'm glad you mentioned that we're really proud. We just opened recently the House of Sport up in Victor, New York, which is an expression of what we think the future can be for DICK'S Sporting Goods. And it's really an experiential retail location. So you can go in there, obviously we've got golf simulators and we've got fitting in there. We've got rock walls to climb. We've got an outdoor fitness field where we're doing things and we're engaging the community in different ways. So we're running clinics and figuring out how we can get local teams into their... Engaging in the community in this way has been a part of our brand since 1948, right? So I think, if you read the story of DICK'S and how we were involved in the Binghamton New York community, when the business was founded, it'll give you a sense for why this is important to us.Scott:And we just believe that, we say it all the time, we believe that sports makes people better. So how do we think about engaging in the community where we're at? We've done this forever in community marketing, and you see how we donate equipment to local teams and so forth. This is kind of another evolution of that, where we think we can make a big impact, we can change the way that people think about retail. And I think it'll quickly get to how do we merge the online and the brick and mortar or traditional retail experience? So I think that's a place that is really exciting to us right now.Stephanie:I was just thinking about, how do you create, you have a view where you know this person came in to this event and they were using the golf simulator, and they really liked this club. And then they either bought in store or maybe four weeks later they ended up online and bought the one that they were using? Do you feel you're moving in a direction where you're going to have that viewpoint? And it's not a hard time to get there.Scott:Yeah, I think we're getting there. I think we're really focused on data and analytics, right? And so I think our ability to stitch together these experiences, we're building that muscle. I don't think that we're totally there yet, but we've got really smart people that are thinking about this. And I think we're moving in that direction because that's the key. We're not really worried about what channel you buy in, right? I think it's more about, are we the retailer of choice for you, right? And however that experience, the experience that we can build for that, it's important to measure it because then I think it unlocks the investment in the targeted areas that are going to drive more of that for our athletes. So I think that's where we're really focused.Stephanie:Have you thought about creating essentially kind of a guide shop, but you have the soccer experience or something, and then just a small shop where maybe you can look at a few other things, but then essentially you're going back online to order whatever you played with and got to experiment with, or are you doing full on retail location as always, and then often this area we're doing our experience center?Scott:We haven't done really pop up experiences, guide shop experiences like that. We're moving more towards, how do we create a more scaled experiential experience in store and then how do we measure that in terms of who might go online to buy.Stephanie:Mm-hmm (affirmative). I love that. I'm excited to see... I need to visit one of those stores, especially the soccer one. I mean, I don't know what it's going to be happening there, but I want to be there.Stephanie:I want to hear, which I feel you'll have a great answer for is what are you all most excited about right now over the next one to two years? What are you most passionate about?Scott:We're excited about a lot of things. And as usual, we have a very full plate. So I think things that we've already deployed that we'll continue to refine, things like our curbside program or a buy and pickup in store program for online, we're really excited about that. That's got a long runway of improvement, enhancement, and creativity that's going to be placed into that program. We are really excited about this merger of... I'm really excited about the merger of stores and online specifically around becoming a trusted advisor to our athletes. So if you think about the breadth of the teammates that we have, and when you walk into our stores or you talk to our people online, everybody's got a passion, right? Your passion is lacrosse and soccer.Stephanie:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Scott:How do we think about unlocking that potential, right, in terms of then being able to help our customer, whether that customer is buying first player pair of soccer cleats for their son, to getting ready to play club soccer, to getting ready to go off and play soccer at a D1 level or beyond, right? So how do we look at that continuum of expertise and really become that trusted advisor, both online and in our stores? And I think that is incredibly exciting venture. And we do it well today. I think there's an opportunity to do it even better. So we're really excited about that. We're really excited about the assortment, right, that we're going to continue to launch online. I think it's going to be differentiated. I think it's going to keep our position in the market really strong.Scott:So I think the product that we put in there, the expertise that we put in there is going to be differentiated in the market, right? And that I think is probably more incremental and more incremental expression to the core business. And then we're going to continue to press. Game Changer has been a great business for us for years. And that team is great. And they continue to build a technology that service the baseball market. But we're always looking for different ways that we can expand or innovate across the industry.Stephanie:I love that, you know what? We need like, what do you do after college? I always think about that and I'm like, I loved playing sports. But then you start working, and then you have kids, and then you're, I still want to play, but how do I get back into it? And something is missing there, Scott. [inaudible].Scott:No, but I love... So that's who we want. That's another sort of persona that we really want to love to serve in our stores. Because I'm one of them.Stephanie:I'm your person.Scott:Right.Stephanie:We're the people.Scott:We're the people. And I think what we want to be able to do, I love talking about this. I think in our stores and online, our ability to listen and inspire, right, how do we help you meet that goal, right? "Hey, I'm doing a couch to 5k first time. I'm starting to get active." Or, for me, the 5'8 guy that always had a dream of the NBA that never came to fruition because my vertical is about that high. I still play. I want to make sure that I can get all the gear that I need to be competitive, right, or to achieve my personal best.Scott:So I love the fact that we can really positively impact people's lives in that way. And I think we want to make... I would love to make sure personally that anybody that walks into our store and knows that we're not just a sporting goods retailer, right? I think we want to make sure that we're helping, we want to facilitate you achieving your dreams. And then we talk a lot about that internally. So if we can translate or transmit that feeling to our athletes, I think that's really powerful.Stephanie:And also makes me think about creating custom leagues too, where it's, this is a different kind of league. It's not the traditional school. It's not even people creating their own volleyball leagues. It's we are a part of this. We're making sure that this can happen for people who struggle to even find those networks. I mean, I know back when I was in DC, I looked for where's some other women who play lacrosse? I don't really want to play with guys who are going to be checking me and I count find it, super hard to find. I mean, it's easy to find some sports in a community setting, but it's very hard to find people in certain other sports settings.Scott:You're right. There's a social, I don't want to, careful to say social network, but there is this idea of how do I plug into people that are me within a certain geographical area, right? That would be interesting. That's really interesting. Thanks for that one. Let me...Stephanie:Take it back to leadership. We just need a parenting kit. It's, here's everything you need so that we can go play our sports and then your kids are entertained. They get many lacrosse sticks. You go there and then I'll go off on my own so I can actually play, give me the kid.Scott:I love that idea.Stephanie:I want to think like such parents. Anyone who's not a parent is probably, "What are y'all talking about right now?"Scott:What are you talking about? Yep.Stephanie:Yep. All right. So let's shift over to the lightning round. Lightning round is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I ask a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready?Scott:I think so.Stephanie:Okay. So I'm sad, I haven't asked this yet and don't know this, but what is your favorite sport?Scott:Basketball.Stephanie:Oh, nice.Stephanie:And who's your favorite sports team?Scott:It's always been the Chicago Bulls since back in the day, which is probably blasted me because I live in Pittsburgh. So to not say football and the Pittsburgh Steelers is a problem.Stephanie:You'd probably get egged.Scott:Probably. But they're close second.Stephanie:That's good. What is the nicest thing anyone's done for you?Scott:Oh, wow. I'm going to struggle. I'm going to go to my kids. I think my kids being, this is going to sound so cheesy, but it's so serious. The way that my kids treat other people with respect and kindness, I think is the thing that comes to mind for me first. And I know that's probably not the answer that you would normally get.Stephanie:Nope, I like it.Scott:To me that's pretty important. So I'm really proud of them. And I think that's probably the best thing that somebody could do for me.Stephanie:I love that. There's so much you can learn from kids. I think about that all the time. So I'm the person who is here for those cheesy kind of kid answers. You're in the right space. What's one thing you don't know that you wish you understood better?Scott:American history comes to mind?Stephanie:That's a good one.Scott:I don't think that's on topic, but that's the first one that comes to mind.Stephanie:When you want to feel more joy, what do you do?Scott:It's going to sound crazy. I tell people, thank you.Stephanie:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Scott:Right. So I just believe that there's a lot... I get a lot of energy from being grateful, right? And so that's what I do. If I'm really feeling a little down or if I'm really stressed or some of the times the way that I work out and I get the endorphins mode going, that's one way to do it, and the other way is to be grateful for things. So I feel that's the way I get a lot of energy.Stephanie:I love that. All right. And then the last one, I mean, it seems you guys are very much ahead on a lot of things within the ecosystem. What do you do to stay on top of the trends? Are you watching other companies? Are you reading things, what are you doing to stay on top?Scott:I think it's a combination of experiencing and reading. I don't read nearly enough, it's hard, right? There's so much the content that comes out and not enough time. So I'm trying to just experience things out in the wild right? I'm talking to a lot of people, whether it's parents at a game or if it's just my own experiences online, and I'm trying to translate that to what's happening and why companies would do things a certain way. And then my team is doing the same thing. So I think we're trying to stay close. We're trying to stay close that way and certainly reading and engaging in conversations like this also kind of help.Stephanie:Good. That's awesome. Well, cool. Well, Scott, thank you so much for joining us. It was really fun to hear all about what you guys are up to. Where can people find more about DICK'S Sporting Goods and find you?Scott:I think www.dickssportinggoods.com. For the story of Public Lands and Golf Galaxy, and you can find me at LinkedIn, on LinkedIn.Stephanie:Amazing. Thank you so much.Scott:Thank you so much for having me. It's been a great time.

R. Scott Malone is a long-time acupuncturist, martial artist, and meditation practitioner.He is especially interested and focused on the relationships between the energetics of the body, the heart, and consciousness.In this episode, we discussed a wide range of topics from acupuncture, to other types of energy healing, to how our ancestors participate in our healing, to the role of religion in our lives.To reach Scott- For acupuncture: infinitepillar.com For energetic tablework and consulting: esotericconsultant.comSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/grief2growth)

We are joined again by Scott For some beers. We have a mixed bunch once again before we travel to Mellow Mink! Next time we are at the Table it will be a Seltzer Episode lol Bud Light vs White Claw. Beer List: Imprint Beer Co: https://www.facebook.com/imprintbeer/ https://imprintbeer.com/ Thin Man Brewery: https://www.facebook.com/ThinManBrewery/ https://thinmanbrewery.com/ Forest & Main Brewing Company: https://www.facebook.com/ForestandMain/ http://www.forestandmain.com/ White Claw: https://www.facebook.com/whiteclawseltzer/ https://www.whiteclaw.com/ Our Merch Page!!! https://teespring.com/stores/banginbeers Donations: Tips And Donations Link: https://paypal.me/Black0586?locale.x=... Intro Music by Faith And Exile Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/faithinexile/ Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/faith-in-exile?fbclid=IwAR0KiNukaBIvGDrezHPIZIGQLrSx3QrRZxl3h90aTkq_5mw8rgkj0h6A1GA Our Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/IwepNetwork/ https://www.facebook.com/BanginBeersP... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iwepnetwork/ Audio Only Locations: Anchor: Anchor.fm/IwEP Apple Podcasts: Search IwEP Network Google Podcast: https://www.google.com/podcasts… Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3rz9RnY...

Guest: Scott Lalor started his undergraduate education at Brigham Young University where he studied economics and finance. After graduating he had the opportunity to work for a few local companies in Utah including Zango, Goldman Sachs, and England Logistics. He then got his Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Notre Dame. After receiving his MBA Scott recruited straight to Amazon at their headquarters in Seattle. A few years later he transferred to their Luxembourg office where he is currently living with his family and filling the role of Senior Vendor Manager. Overview: Have you ever wondered what it’s like getting a career in international business? Or how to manage diverse teams representing a variety of cultures and countries? Join us as we learn from Scott Lalor, Senior Manager at Amazon in Luxembourg as he shares with us his experience managing abroad. Transcript Meg: So first Scott could you give us a little bit of a background about yourself? Scott: Absolutely, first thank you for inviting me out. I’m excited to be back on campus and speaking about business. So, I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah and then out of high school I came to BYU. I played on the lacrosse team, had a ton of fun doing that. And then I spent two years on a church mission in California. I came back from that and focused more on my studies. I ended up graduating in Economics but also spent a fair amount of time in the business school studying finance. And then I ended up getting my MBA at the University of Notre Dame. Personally, I am married to my wonderful wife Allie. We have two boys ages eight and four. We absolutely love to travel, it’s one of our favorite things to do; my two boys have been to twenty-one countries already, so they love to travel as well so we passed that on to them. And anything outdoor-related hiking, biking, fly-fishing, and most recently I’ve picked up soccer or as my European colleagues a called it Futbol. I am still pretty bad, but I have a lot of fun doing that. Meg: Tell me a little bit more about some of your travel experiences… Scott: So, we’ve lived in Luxembourg for two and a half years. It has really become kind of our leap pad to the world. We’ve been able to travel to a lot of European countries and we’ve also been able to go a little bit farther. So, we’ve spent time in Israel, Turkey, Morocco, and Egypt. Some really some special places and it’s really taught our family about the world and different cultures. Just a few fun stories that I like to tell. First, a funny one. So, we were in Germany’s late one night visiting some Christmas markets and we were all hungry and so we went to this pizza place. They didn’t speak English, our German is quite bad and so my son ordered a pepperoni pizza for dinner and when it came out it wasn’t pepperonis like we know here in America, it was actually huge peppers across every inch of the pizza. So, he looked at me in fright. We all had a good laugh about that. So, we ended up picking the peppers off and enjoying now a cheese pizza. I would say, on the more serious side, we visited Egypt. Egypt as many know, has been through some real challenges over the past five or so years after Arab Spring and you know their economy is struggling. So, we went to a city called Hurghada which is on the Red Sea and visited Luxor and some of the some of the neat Egyptian sites that a lot of people know. When we’re there we got a taxi every day and went into the city and we met this wonderful taxi driver named Mohammed. We became close friends with him. The first day he picked us up and said, “Hey do you do you need a taxi the next day?” and we said, “Sure.” So, we ended up going with Mohammed four or five nights in a row. So, the third night he turned around in the cab and said “Are you interested in meeting my family and coming to my house?” And you know we were in Egypt in the middle of nowhere and we felt a little hesitant about that. We didn’t know how safe would be. I think what I’ve learned so much about living abroad is we have preconceived notions about people and countries and religion and often that is driven by what the media tells us. And so of course we felt hesitant, but we were able to build a relationship with him. And so, my wife and I just said, “Sure.” We ended up going to his parents’ house. Just to kind of paint a picture, it was a very run-down apartment. We walked in, still a little bit nervous and right when I walked in Mohamed told us to sit down on the floor. We met his parents, they were wonderful. But Mohammed ran out the door. So we were now thinking “Wait, what’s going on? You just brought us unto your home you ran out the door.” I didn’t know what he was doing, if he was going to get whoever. He ended up bringing his whole extended family in. So, all of a sudden, a whole bunch of kids can run in the door and his sister and his other sister and brother-in-law. They were speaking in Arabic and basically saying, “The Americans have arrived.” So, they made us tea and we sat on the floor, they showed us their wedding video, and his kids start playing with my kids. They were telling us about their lives in about the challenges that they’ve had with the Taliban and have his brothers fought terrorism and how his brother died in the Army. We walked away from this experience just loving the Egyptian people. It was such a special moment to connect with these people from a completely different part of the world, but they want the same thing that we want. Like a stable government, good jobs, and a safe place for our family. We actually still keep in contact with Mohammed. We’ve been able to support him in some ways. His mother is quite sick and unable to support him. That’s a really special experience that I was able to share with my family. Meg: Sounds pretty amazing. It’s one thing to visit another country, but really amazing thing when you can actually connect with the people. Thanks for sharing those cultural experiences with us. So now can you give us a little bit of a description of your career path, where you’ve been, what you’re doing now? Scott: When I was at BYU, I was very lost. All my friends seem to know exactly what they want to do, whether it be investment banking or consulting and I frankly didn’t. I didn’t know what to do. So, like I said I did economics and was interested in finance. I graduated around 2010 right after the financial crisis so there were a ton of jobs out there. The economy wasn’t doing great. So, I ended up starting a company called Zango. They have a big international presence and I knew I want to work in finance, and I knew I want to work in an international environment. I started as a treasury analyst managing the European business consisting of money movement, foreign exchange policy, and working to ensure that we have the right cash in the right places. So that was a fun job. I was then recruited by Goldman Sachs in their Salt Lake office working with hedge fund clients, so being both operational support and customer support to that. I learned a lot at Goldman. Very tough environment. After that, I was recruited by a company called England Logistics, also a local company here in Utah. It is mainly a trucking logistics company, but they had a separate arm where they did accounts receivable factoring. So, basically buying receivables from trucking companies and then paying out at a discounted rate. I manage that whole division risk and risk portfolio. So, we would analyze the risk of each receivable and manage the trucking companies that we work with. We grew really fast, had a big team, both from a finance standpoint and an operations standpoint. I learned a lot. That was like a crash course on management. Things are going really well but I always knew I wanted to get an MBA. I wanted a broader business education and I knew I wanted more International exposure. I ended up applying to the University of Notre Dame, I had friends go there, and got accepted. That was in Indiana and just a wonderful experience. I loved culture Notre Dame, and the people were really special, and of course the sports and the football games were extra fun. Out of my MBA I was recruited by Amazon. They came on campus and did four interviews in two days and then I was lucky enough to receive an offer. I started to Amazon in Seattle as a Senior Product Manager over a Prime Now. Prime Now is an ultra-fast 1-2 hour shipping and it was brand new. Honestly, the best way to describe it was like the wild west. We were trying to figure out how to continue to meet our customers promise, which is 1-2 hours, which is much faster than what we’ve ever done at Amazon. So, I got thrown in there when it was part of the product team. So, I help to define what selection our customers would want in 1-2 hours. It was more of a consumable base model than what you traditionally buy at Amazon.com. I did that for about two years and really enjoyed it. But that desire to do more international work was still in me. I hadn’t ever worked in-country and so after that two years I did a lot of networking in the different global companies within Amazon. I reach out to the London office, and the Luxembourg office, and Singapore, and any of the more English-speaking countries. I ended up finding this role in Luxembourg. When I started Luxembourg, I was a manager of vendor management for the automotive team. So, I’ve been doing that role now for about two and a half years. Meg: So now that you are working internationally will you explain to us a little bit more of the nature of your business interactions with different cultures and countries? Scott: The Amazon that Americans know and love is the retail Amazon. It’s basically three things in our business model, it’s selection, convenience, and price. What we try to have is the best selection of the whole world, which means a really broad selection. We always have good prices or sharp prices. Third is convenience and the way we think about convenience is that we can deliver it to you fast and that whatever products you want we have in stock. So, we’re basically taking that Playbook from the US and taking it to Europe. So, within the automotive team we’re were much younger. So, the automotive division that I work in has only been around five or six years. So, we’re building our selection, we’re making sure we can deliver fast, and that we have the proper prices. So, in my role as a Senior Manager I interact and my team interaction with vendors across the EU, the US, and Asia to sell products in our five Amazon EU websites. So, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and the UK. My team manages all aspects of the vendor relationship from introducing them to Amazon, to contract negotiations, and then to account management. I love it because we get a build a strategy the start of the year and how we think to grow this business profitably and then we got to go execute that strategy and we have full P&L responsibility. Meg: So, you mentioned that you’re kind of taking the amazon structure that they have here in the US and taking it there. What are the main differences of working here in the US versus what you do there? Scott: My experience is that Europeans have a more balanced approach to work life. Secondly, working a Luxembourg offers much more International diversity for such a small country. Luxembourg is a special place. Many people don’t know much about Luxembourg. It’s a tiny country that is in between Germany, France, and Belgium. It has about 600,000 and half of the people are expats or not from Luxembourg. That makes for a very International community that you just don’t find in too many places. I think big cities like London, and New York, and Singapore have that and so I would put Luxembourg out there. So, you get that international feel. A fun story that I like to tell or two different stories I like to share. So, my son had a party a couple months back at our house and all the kids are playing and there were 8 or 9 kids over there. The countries of those children represented where India, China, England, Greece, Italy, and Turkey. In his classroom there’s 12 or 13 different countries represented, and we love that I think it’s so cool. The conversations that we have with our boys about these different cultures and about how different parents are and different relationships are is something that that we love. Meg: I bet. And they’re probably learning a lot from their different experiences. Scott: Absolutely, we have conversations that we just wouldn’t have if we lived here in Utah or somewhere else. We’ve talked about currency and how a Euro isn’t exactly worth a dollar and why that is, and we talked about languages and how the different languages work. Both boys are learning French so that’s exciting to see them progress in their learning. And like I said we talk about culture because the way our friends’ parents interact with their children is different than us. Another funny story is our Italian friends invited us over for dinner on a Saturday night. So we said, “great, we’re excited,” good fresh Italian food. That was earlier in the week and so it was Saturday and so we text them and said, “okay what time should we come over? us Americans usually eat dinner let’s say 5 or 6 p.m.” and they said, “come over around 8:30 and we’ll start eating at 9 p.m.” So, we kind of laughed, our kids typically go to bed around 8, but all Italians culturally they have really late dinners. Kind of as a joke we bring our two boys in their pajamas because we knew we were going to be over there till 11 or 12 and we were thinking about getting up early in the next day. So that was a funny experience. Meg: That’s funny that you mention that because I noticed even when we were in Luxembourg there everything seems to close a little bit early. The city goes to sleep. So, what’s the day to day like at your job in Luxembourg? Scott: It’s quite similar to my time in Seattle. Generally, working in Europe the way I described it is that it is a little bit more complex. You have the EU, European Union, which bring some unification to working in those different countries, but every country has its differences. So, whether it be different currencies or different languages. Logistically each country does it a little bit differently, the regulations I would say or less unified than the US. So, when we manage 5 websites with 5 different languages and multiple currencies it’s a little bit harder to scale and to accomplish some of the things that we need to accomplish. So, it becomes challenging you have to be really creative about where you spend your time and you have to ruthlessly prioritize on the most important things. Meg: Sounds like you have a little bit more steps along the way. So, how do you approach management and leadership when working in a multicultural team or working in a multicultural environment? Scott: This is something I’ve learned a lot working internationally. The first thing I would say is listen more and talk less, which is hard for me. I would say one of the greatest takeaways from working and living abroad is it has made me more unsure of myself and how I think the world works. And I mean that in a good way. Regardless of who you are if you live and grow up in the same location your whole life you come to believe your surroundings are how the world works or how the world should work. When you get thrown into a different country, a different culture, you see other ways of solving problems and you say to yourself “wow maybe there is more than one way to solve a problem. Maybe the way we do it isn’t the best way or maybe there’s other ways.” And even better you say, “you know these people and these cultures they understand something that I don’t understand.” So, I love that as I’ve re-evaluated how I think about different cultures and think about the world. As a manager I’ve learned that diversity is so important in building a team. If you can build a diverse team then you can tap into different strengths and have greater outcomes. I’ve also noticed if you have people that are all the same whether it be all from a country certain country or from a certain part of a country, or all male or all female it often quiets the minority group. The ideas aren’t as good, because not only do the majority think a lot alike and agree with each other, it can hurt the team dynamics. So, being attentive to diversity on a team is super important. I try to make sure that everyone has a chance to speak up and has a platform to share his or her opinions. Meg: Has it ever been difficult for you in trying to form teams and deciding who should be on what team? Scott: Yeah cause the core of what you do is your people. Our Vice President said it the other day. He said, “our main focus is to build and develop our people. Luxembourg makes it a little bit easier maybe then some locations. So, within my vendor management team we have people from Italy, Germany, France, Turkey, India, America, and the UK. That geographical diversity is so valuable, and you know the questions you asked was “is it difficult?” I think it’s really difficult. Also, from a female perspective I work in the automotive world and there’s these preconceived notions that it’s only a male driven culture. And so, we’re trying to be the leaders in the automotive world to bring with more women into it. We as a leadership team focus a lot on that and not only just wait for female applications to come in but go out and recruit female employees. That’s been really important for me and it’s led to such great success. Meg: When it comes down to it would you say the diversity really trumps the specific skill needs, or is it a balance of both? Scott: That’s a really hard question to answer. Let me answer it in this way. At Amazon we don’t believe so much in industry knowledge. We specifically have on our application “no Automotive experience necessary.” Which I think it completely different than a lot of other companies. We believe if you’re smart and you can meet our leadership principles, core values, and our culture we can teach you about the automotive industry. But it’s very difficult to teach culture. It’s difficult to teach diversity. But if you can build a strong culture and you can build a diverse team, we can teach you the necessities of the industry. Meg: That’s an interesting perspective that not many have. I like that. Does your approach to vender management differ between different countries? How? In what way? Scott: For sure. As mentioned, different cultures approach business differently and to get positive results I have to adjust accordingly. For example, Italian vendors that I work with, in my opinion, value relationships more than other cultures. In the US when I worked with vendors everything is very email-based. We didn’t necessarily build a relationship. It was more of a transactional relationship than a personal relationship. I’ll give a story to illustrate what I mean. As I mentioned my vendor managers and I we go out and we try to bring vendors onto Amazon. So, we were working to sign a vendor on Amazon, this was a very important vendor, we called them and sent them emails and tried to convince them to join Amazon for years really. Things were just not moving. We could always get kind of wishy-washy answers and “yeah we’ll join” or “yeah we’ll do this” but we just never saw the results. Finally, my Senior Vendor Manager and I got on a plane down to Milan, drove a couple hours, and went to meet this vendor face-to-face. We shook their hands, we visited their factory and we sat we and just talk for a half an hour 45 minutes about them, about the history of their company, about their products, about them personally. And then after we built that trust, after we got to know each other, after they looked in our eyes and trusted us. Then we could actually talk about business and the conversations we had there so different than the ones we had on our phone. What I learned from that experience and others like that is that each culture has a different style of doing business. To be successful you first have to be aware of these differences. It has taken me a year to really understand these differences. Secondly, adjust accordingly. We had a lot of success with that vendor after that meeting and we’ve had subsequent meetings where they’ve come to Luxembourg. Now they know me personally, they know about me, and they know about our business. So, it required a higher level of trust than what I’m used to. Like I said once I realize that then I’ve become much more successful in knowing what’s important to these vendors. Meg: That’s very interesting. And that kind of leads to my next question. What would you say are necessary skills that you need when working in vendor management with different countries? Scott: What we call vendor management at Amazon other companies can call different names. We’re kind of like a sales team and we’re kind of like account managers. We do both functions. The way I would answer that question is first you have to have good strong interpersonal skills. Like I said earlier you have to be able to listen. Close your mouth and listen because what’s going to come isn’t maybe what you expect. Because each business has a different strategy and different philosophy and that’s especially true of the international level. So, being able to listen, to ask questions, and being able to build those relationships at a personal level are absolutely necessary. Second is negotiations. We negotiate every day. We have interest and the vendor has interest and sometimes those are aligned and sometimes those aren’t aligned. You have to be creative to find solutions that benefit both parties and where both parties can gain. You have to understand where there is value for them and where you can add value. Sharpening this negotiation skills is really important. Third is data analysis/finance. My core education, like I said, is economics and finance. You can’t own a P&L Statement, you can’t own an income statement if you don’t understand how the income statement works. So, things I learned at BYU and the Notre Dame, just those core fundamentals of how the income statement interacts with the cash flow statement and the balance sheet. Because I know that I can then take action that will impact those different line items. So being able to both understand the financial aspect and then the data analysis comes when you have millions of rows of data and how to tell a story. At Amazon as you can imagine we have so much data, more data than you could ever want. Data about what customers are looking at, what customers are clicking on, what’s the click-through rate, what’s the sell through rate, how often are we out of stock when someone comes and looks at a product, and our pricing. It’s easy for new employees Amazon and other companies to get totally lost in this data. We’re in a world of data now with the internet and with cell phones. So being able to know what data is most important and really sharpening those data analytics skills. And like I said in Europe at least you have to be able to deal with ambiguity. You have to deal with uncertainty. For example, you have situations like Brexit or certain situations like we’re having in Turkey where the currency devaluations day over day 25%. You don’t necessarily have those experiences in a more stable environment like the US. You have to wake up and be ready for whatever comes at you. So, dealing with ambiguity because there are more political, economic, and cultural differences and so sometimes you just have to roll with the punches and figure out the best solution. Meg: Sounds like flexibility is a big key needed for success. So, it seems like a big part of what you do has to do with effective communication with different countries. Have you ever had any miscommunication because your expectations were different from another’s? Or just in general? Scott: Yeah, very good question. So, speaking about myself and where I’ve grown is I was too direct. And I would say on the cultural Spectrum Americans are more direct or one of the most direct cultures. When I first arrived in Europe, I found myself mostly in internal meetings being very direct with people. Not necessarily in a rude way, but just like very direct to the point and I maybe missed some of the small talk and miss some of the relationship building. I remember after about a year my boss took me aside and said, “Scott I appreciate your hard work and you’re doing great things, but you need to be less direct.” And that took me by surprise. I guess at first I was a little mad. It’s hard to receive criticism or feedback when I thought she was wrong. But in retrospect she was totally right. What I learned is to be successful in the long run, in any culture, is you have to make friends. You have to make allies both internally, within your company, and external. What I mean by that is don’t just think about the business problem. Don’t think about people as somebody’s who is going to help you solve a business problem or a transaction. But get people on board. Get them on your boat. Get him going in the same direction, because you’re going to need those same individuals at a later point. When you work for a company for multiple years you interact with those same people whether it be in your department or in the finance department or the marketing department or in operation. You’re going to need those people again. You want to make sure you keep a high standard, you keep a high bar, and your work quality is high, but you don’t you’re not so driven in a way that you burn bridges or hurt long-term relationships. Meg: That’s a good piece of advice for us to all keep in mind. With that, what other kind of advice would you give for someone who is planning on working internationally? Scott: I think there’s a few different ways. I think it’s hard to find a job internationally direct from the US to a foreign country. I found it difficult. I tried that but it is very hard. What I’ve seen most people do is get hired within a local company that has operations globally. You do well in your current role, receive high feedback, and let your manager know that you want to work internationally. Then after a year or two or however long you go connect with those local Global office. You build a network there. When hiring internationally if the hiring manager already knows you fit the company culture and you have a track record and they can communicate with your current manager it makes getting hired a lot easier. So that’s what I did at Amazon. I worked for two years in Seattle, built a really strong relationship with my manager, told her exactly what I want to do next, which was work internationally. So when the call came in from my next manager she was prepared and we were all on the same page in terms of what my skill-set was and what was what I was able to accomplish. Meg: So really prove yourself and then the doors will open. So how could a student like me prepare for a future job in international business? Scott: The first things I would say is be curious. I would read about the different challenges that are going on in the world. I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, which has an international section so I can stay up to date on all the trends and all the world events both politically and economically in Europe, Asia, and America. So that first will give you an understanding of what’s out there. Secondly, I would say just be brave and get out in the world. Whether it be a vacation first, or a volunteer opportunity, an internship, or something else. My biggest message to young people today is, the world is a big beautiful place and has so much to offer the mind and soul. I love the different cultures, the food, the people, that I’ve been able to experience over the last few years. They all provide an element of excitement and joy. So those connections you make both personally and professionally will be some of the most important connections and the most important things in your life. Meg: Thank you. We really appreciate you joining us today and all your insights. Scott: Absolutely, great to be here. Thank you!

Making authentic relationships is extremely important when meeting new people in all aspects of our lives. How do you make these connections to start expanding your network? Well, it’s as simple as doing something that you enjoy doing. Today, WTR welcomes Scott Holmen, founder and CEO of Agency73 (https://www.agency73.com/) and long-time successful entrepreneur. In today’s episode, we discuss how if you put a strong investment into relationships, it could be the key to growing your business. WTR Discussion With Scott Holmen, Importance Of Relationships Scott Holmen Website: http://scottholmen.com (http://scottholmen.com/)   Website 2: https://www.agency73.com/ (https://www.agency73.com/) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-holmen-63aa6410/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-holmen-63aa6410/)   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scottholmen (https://www.facebook.com/scottholmen)   Twitter: https://twitter.com/Agency73 (https://twitter.com/Agency73)   NOTES [00:27] Kevin: Today, we’re joined by guest Scott Holmen. He is the founder and CEO of Agency73 and long-time successful entrepreneur. One of the things that we've both found in business is that overtime, business can benefit from the relationships that we have [01:11] People and business revolve around relationships [01:19] Would you mind sharing a little bit about where you came from and what inspired you to get to where you are today? [01:33] Scott: I've started a lot of businesses that have been across a lot of different industries. I didn't go on the traditional path and become an expert in any one thing, I just got addicted to learning and trying things and starting businesses [02:09] I've gone into it not knowing much about that industry and I just loved learning and meeting people and trying new things (has worked out) [03:58] Kevin: I've always had a saying that goes when you realize how much you don't know about a subject, that's when you're an expert [04:10] Scott: The more I learn the more I realize how much there is to learn which makes it super enjoyable [04:26] Kevin: Why do you think it's so important to focus on relationships in business? [04:33] Scott: For me, it's fun. All of my clients have become friends, a lot of my clients were friends first [04:57] It's a very natural thing when you put yourself out there, at least for me [05:30] I'm always making introductions, which end up coming back to me which has grown our business without the need for marketing [06:22] Kevin: It doesn't feel good when you don't have a connection to people (ex: cold calling) [06:47] Scott: Cold calling makes you appreciate the authentic relationships that drive business (get to see the contrast) [07:43] Kevin: So you build your business primarily with relationships. Can you talk a little bit more about how it's built up your business? [07:58] Scott: On the client side [08:17] After years of meeting new people, you start building up a great network of clients [08:22] Because these people know and trust me, I do great work [08:48] Politely asking if they can bring other people into your world [08:53] On the team side [09:12] We haven't had to really post job descriptions (network) [09:30] You really have to get out there to make a good use of your time (can be doing fun things to network too) [10:17] Kevin: Do you have any suggestions for our WTR listeners about how they can go about meeting new people? [10:25] Scott: I would say go do something you love (ex: surfing, golf, etc.) [10:32] Find a group of people who are doing something that you really enjoy doing [10:44] When you build relationships with people with a common interest at the core, there's more depth there already in the relationship [11:15] It's not just number of hours you spend with them, it's about getting to know them and the people who are...

This is a special episode courtesy of the Dorks Delivered Youtube channel where Josh interviews Scott Aurisch about his life in business and what motivates him. Josh Lewis and Scott from NRG Boost Fitness talk about taking the plunge in business in the fitness industry. Watch this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX1YaTk2bl0&t=22s Josh: I've got Scott here from NRG Boost Fitness and today we're going to be talking about taking the plunge in business. My understanding is you've been in business for a while and about 12 months ago, you decided to go for some brick and mortar. Scott: Yeah, exactly right. I've been in the fitness industry now for over 20 years but in business for myself for coming up to 8 years, and very close to 12 months in my own premises. Josh: Right. Are you loving it? Scott: Absolutely loving it. It's probably been one of the most tiring years of my life but certainly the most fulfilling, from a professional standpoint. Josh: I think it's a big discipline thing. You get your own business and you take a plunge and you do something that you're thinking, should I or shouldn't I, and if you take the risk, sometimes against all odds, and it's not that you fail, you don't fail, you make sure you don't fail. Scott: Exactly right. You sort of get rid of that safety net and you're just forced to step up and it's an enormous growth experience and I'm really pleased that I did. Josh: That's cool. And has there been any milestone moments over the last 12 months that really stood out as a, ‘I've made it’? Scott: Yeah! Probably no one moment, just lots of little moments along the way, where, when you do take a moment to reflect back on where things were... Pretty much 12 months ago was when I was in the planning phase for opening here, which all came together super quickly. Once I've made the decision to make this happen, things just seemed to fall into place, which is something we might talk about a little bit later on, but as the year has unfolded, just sometimes when I'm training somebody that I've built a good relationship with, in some cases over the years, but in some cases, people I've just met this year, it's in those moments that I realise what I've achieved, when you make those connections with people. So that's what I mean by what some people would regard as little things, rather than big milestones, but they're the most rewarding moments for me. Josh: That's cool. Prior to running out of brick and mortar, how was your business beforehand? Scott: I was working out of a local gym and I'd been there for several years, and it wasn't that I got to a point where I was unhappy, but I did feel like I wasn't growing professionally anymore, and I just needed a new challenge that would present that opportunity for growth and freedom as well. Josh: Cool, cool. I guess you haven't looked back. You're 12 months in. What sort of aspirations do you have for the next 12 months? Scott: Yeah, I guess I haven't looked too far ahead, which is probably something I need to get a little bit better at, but certainly, consolidating what I've achieved in the first 12 months, and I think one of the keys to that is building good relationships with my client base but also other industry associates that I have contact with. So I'll definitely be looking to build on that over the next 12 months in a way that is sustainable in terms of my energy and my own health and wellbeing because, as you would know, when you work for yourself, you can get a little bit focused on the business and some of your personal life can tend to suffer. Josh: Absolutely, it can go by the wayside. Scott: Yeah. Josh: It becomes a very addictive, very addictive thing, having your own business. Scott: It certainly can, and in my situation, where I'm preaching to people about achieving balance in your life. It's really important that I practise what I preach and set the example of having a balanced lifestyle where I'm looking after myself and looking after my personal relationships outside of work as well because your business might be firing on all cylinders but if some of those other areas of your life begin to suffer, that's going to impact on you as an individual at some point, and then ultimately affect your business. Josh: Yeah, completely agree. It's all about having balance. Otherwise, the whole system breaks. Scott: Yeah, that's right. Josh: If you were to go back to the moment while you were working for someone else and you didn't have your own business, can you remember what made you take the step and take the leap towards doing everything, wearing all the hats, and doing the payroll, doing your taxes, doing everything underneath your own banner? What was the catalyst towards the move? Scott: Yeah, probably just a couple of little moments. Again, it was nothing major. There was no massive falling out with anyone at my previous workplace, but just piecing a few things together and just some little frustrations and I thought it was time to take control of things myself and when you run your own business, you get to do things your way and you are absolutely responsible for everything that occurs. So, yeah, it was nothing major and just a couple of little things and I do distinctly remember in those moments thinking, yeah, I've got to do this because there was a lot of thought that went into it beforehand but when I eventually made that decision, like I said earlier, it all just fell into place. Josh: That's cool, that's cool. You do a lot of stuff for communities, and I understand you've gone back to the school that you went to and you've helped them out. Tell me more about what happened there. Scott: Well, I was fortunate enough to be contacted by the Logan PCYC who run a lot of great programmes and one of them is called the Deep Blue Line programme, which is in association with Queensland Police, where they visit local high schools and present an 8 to 10 week programme to a group of students of various ages. I was invited to come along and speak for one particular week about the importance of exercise and nutrition and, yeah, it was pretty cool. But one of the schools I got to visit was my own old high school that I had not stepped foot inside for 25 years and it was my Back to the Future! Josh: That would have been weird. Scott: It really was. It was a really cool experience, though. The place had not changed. It had been really well maintained over that time but it was just like going back to how I remember it. And then to go back as an adult, as a professional, and feel like you're adding some sort of value to a place that played a role in your own development. It was very fulfilling for me, and I've been back a couple of times since as well. Josh: Was there any old teachers that you saw and you were like, ‘Oh, no… Sir, what are you doing?’ Scott: No, no. Very much a turnover of staff but while I was at the school office, I did look at the boards with all the photos and the honour boards with the kids' names and that sort of thing. And just to tie that into NRG Boost Fitness here, I've actually got three old schoolmates as current clients. Josh: That's cool. Scott: Yeah. So that's also something that I find very rewarding as well and makes me feel really good. Obviously, we all run businesses to earn money. Josh: Ideally, yeah. Scott: Yeah. You've got to earn a living. You've got to support yourself and your family, but for me, I think one of the keys to my success is that I don't focus on just the dollars. It's about a lot more than that. It's about personal fulfilment and things that make me happy and the fact that I've got three guys that I'd probably fallen out of contact with a little bit over the years but have reconnected with in recent years. They're now current clients, and I'm helping them improve their lifestyles. Josh: That's cool. So you've been in business for a long time, you've got your bricks and mortar now, have a rough idea of where you're wanting to go. If you were to do it all again, would you change the order of events or what would you do differently? Scott: I honestly don't think I would change a great deal. One of the things I think I got right from the outset was as professionals, as entrepreneurs, you would have to read a lot about the importance of beginning with the end in mind, having a clear picture of what you want your business to look like, and it was the clearest example in my life where I was able to come up with a very clear picture of how I wanted this place to look, how I wanted this place to operate, and doing that, and putting effort into getting those details right from the start, allowed me to almost follow that to the letter and it was amazing watching that unfold. To have ideas go from just words on paper through to, a little over two months later, from when I first decided to undertake this venture and then to actually open my doors, it was literally two months, but the reason it was able to happen so quickly is because I was clear on what I wanted and things literally just fell into place. There was no forcing or pushing. Things just sort of fell my way. Josh: That's very, very serendipitous, or lucky, I guess, or fortunate that that worked out that way. Scott: Yeah. So just to answer your question in fewer words, basically, beginning with the end in mind was the most important thing that I did and I would recommend that for anybody else looking to do anything similar. Josh: Cool. A lot of people get into business and they think, ‘Oh, in two years' time I'm going to retire. I'm going to make a million dollars,’ and have these huge thoughts of grandeur and they don't necessarily make the appropriate planning before jumping in and understanding the depth of the water and realising how deep it goes and how much is actually involved in running your own business, especially when you're starting up and you need to be the person wearing all of the different hats. You need to be the technical person, you need to be the administration, you need to be the marketer, the salesperson, you do all of the different things all at once, and as you said, you want to have a balance in your business, you want to have a balance in your life. Was there any steps that you went, ‘Oh, shit, I need to learn more about this,’ or, ‘I need to learn more about that,’ or things that you went, ‘Oh, wasn't expecting that to be a hurdle?’ Scott: Yeah. Not really. That's probably another thing I think I got right—the scale of the venture that I took on, I think, was appropriate for that first leap. But the point you make about a lot of business people taking the plunge but not realising the depth of the water they're diving into, in my industry it might be somebody that says, ‘Oh, I can run a gym,’ and they take on this big operation and then it's not until they're in it and they realise what an undertaking it is. So I was pretty happy to start with a personal training studio that's literally a couple of hundred metres around the corner from home, so it suited my lifestyle and I've been really comfortable with the size of the jump, so to speak. There have certainly been things that I've had to learn as I went along but that was the whole point to begin with—to learn new things and challenge myself. Josh: I think it's very sensible the way that you've gone about the business because, as you said, a lot of people might just go in and they jump straight into a lease but they don't have any clientele and they have no idea about marketing. They just think they get some business cards and then they will come, build it and they will come, and that's not how it really works. I think it's great that you're in the IT world, they call it agile development, where you try and make the smallest profitable item first and then you build upon that. A good example would be Uber. So you don't start with an autonomous vehicle that's driving everyone, tens of thousands of autonomous vehicles driving everyone around countries. Instead, you start with an app that allows for people to take in that step until they've saved up enough money to then be able to move onto the next ventures, and Elon Musk does the same things. Josh: And you've done the same thing in where you've built up your clientele, you've created a rapport and the message is strong and your social content in strong, and the community that you've created around your business is very strong. Different events that I've been to with Scott have been 60, 70 people upwards. Your opening day here, I don't know how many people you would have had here, it was stacks, so it shows the belief and the message that you've instilled in all the people that you have come here is very strong and the allegiance of people. Scott: Well, I think, getting back to one of your earlier questions about community, I've done things outside of here for the broader community, but I placed great emphasis on the importance of building a community within your business, in much the same way that a café might do the same thing. There are hundreds of cafes, Brisbane wide, and what makes you choose one over another? It’s generally the one where you feel most welcome and almost like it's a second home, and so that's what I try to do here, again, not in a forced kind of way but just in an organic way, and it's been another very satisfying thing for me to observe, friendships being formed and I know that some of my group members socialise outside of here, that didn't know each other previously but they met through NRG Boost Fitness and that's sometimes more rewarding than dollars. Josh: I think just, straight on the friendship situation, it's something, it's a place... I come here myself and it's a place that I feel very comfortable in, and I've brought multiple friends here because I find it's a good time to be able to catch up and see people while having a workout, as opposed to catching up and having a beer and a pizza, which is lovely as well, but it's not as great for your waistline and your health, and I can definitely say you...we, two and a half years ago, met for the first time and I told you my goals and you said, ‘That's not achievable’, in nicer words, in the timeline that I wanted to achieve it in. You said, ‘Look, see how you go’, I think, and I tried really hard, twisted my ankle, stopped trying as hard for a while, but I continued to persevere and 12 months later I achieved the goal that I wanted to, the weight that I wanted to, the percentage of body weight that I wanted to, and I'm very impressed with the results I was able to get from you. But it was not just the journey of the weight. It was also the friendship that was made along the way, and a great example would be Scott coming over and surprising me of a lunchtime and taking me over to see the jolly old Saint Nick. Scott: That's right, yeah. Coming up to a year ago. Josh: Yeah, that's right. We were able to sit on Santa's lap together which was… Scott: For the first time in probably 30 years! Well, for me, anyway! Josh: For you, yeah! And I thought it was great that you definitely went above and beyond and I don't think there would be many business owners, or especially PTs, that would do that level of commitment towards the friendships and the bonds that were created within the community, so it's a testament to the way you create your business. Scott: Thanks, Josh. Josh: I'd like to cut across to a quick video that discusses more about taking the plunge and we'll talk more about that afterwards. It's big, it's wet, it's wild. That's right. It's Niagara Falls, and if you've ever been here or any other large waterfall, you might have wondered, what would it be like to just jump in? So, there was this time when Sam Patch, who was the first daredevil to take the plunge over Niagara, all the way back in 1829. He shot to fame and his slogan became part of a popular slang. The slang was, ‘Some things can be done as well as others.’ It's a great line. You could take it to mean that our achievements are equal, or you could also take it like we are trying to do our own thing as best we can, or maybe he was telling us that we can do those things that others think are impossible. So what about you? What's your Niagara Falls? What's that big challenge that you are scared to take on? Well, let me tell you, it's often much easier than you think once you just commit to it. For Sam Patch, he was actually pretty disappointed with the crowd that turned up for his first successful attempt. There was bad weather and he'd been delayed, so he announced that he would do it again a few days later. This time, 10,000 people turned up and he cemented his place in history. So, if old Sam can jump off Niagara Falls twice, there's nothing to stop you taking the plunge. Whoa! Josh: Good to be back. I thought that was pretty good. So we went through that you can sort of see sometimes it's not the first time, the first step, but just taking the plunge and just being the person that commits to that can really make a big difference in your business. So it's cool that you've gone through and you've done that and you've experienced that firsthand and you didn't, in a sink or swim situation, you were able to swim and, if anything, swim very, very well. Scott: Yeah. Well, just one point I'd like to add to that, Josh. As any person should do when making a decision to go into business or not, you're going to come up with your list of pros and cons, and you'll have your moments of bravery and you'll have your moments of fear and ultimately, for me, it came down to a fear of financial risk and when I really thought about it, I then fast-forwarded to when I'm 80 years of age and I look back, and if I hadn't done this, what would have been the reason that I didn't and would I be comfortable with that decision? And if it was just a money thing that held me back, I think I would look back and regret it and be disappointed that I wasn't bolder at the time. So, yeah, I think it's a useful exercise sometimes, to fast-forward to when you're in your final years, will you wish that you had have taken more risks? Josh: Definitely, I agree completely. I've always looked at it like, who would you like to see standing there at your funeral and... as dark as that is, who would you like to see standing there, at your funeral, and what was the reason you were remembered? And hopefully, there's a legacy that you've left behind, whether that be children or even just a nice smile in helping someone out and that's there some memory that you've left there. So it's work your way back from there. Scott: Yeah. And it might seem a little bit dark to some people but it's an extremely powerful exercise to take yourself through as well. Josh: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Definitely. So what would you say would be the life tip or quote that you live by? Scott: Well, there are probably a few but one that I have been thinking about recently is not being a victim in life and basically taking absolute personal responsibility for your life circumstances. I just believe that as soon as you blame somebody else or other people for your situation, is when you give away your power. Sure, bad things are going to happen in your life and some will be other people's fault, but it's how you respond to that really makes the difference. So I really try to remember that all the time and take the appropriate action. So there might be people out there who are unhappy with their job and it's as simple as changing jobs. I understand that it's scary in that moment but if you're truly unhappy, you have the power to find a better job. Josh: Absolutely. Scott: And if you're overweight, you can continue blaming this, blaming genetics, whatever the case might be, but ultimately, if you eat better and exercise, you're going to improve that situation. Josh: Absolutely. And it's all about baby steps and getting the understanding, sometimes understanding your weak points and turning them into your strengths or at least having recognition towards them so you know how to work and come out of your comfort circle, to grow into a better person, whether that be through weight loss or a change of job, or a change of marriage, or whatever the situation is, it can all make you a happier you. Scott: Yeah, exactly right, Josh. Josh: Cool. And we're going to do something here. So we're going to do a shout out. You've done really, really well. Public speaking and especially in a global audience, like YouTube, can be scary. It's all imprinted in stone forever. It's going to live on longer than us. This could be our legacy. If nothing else, this is it. Scott: Don't stuff it up. Don't stuff it up! Josh: So you've done really, really well and I really appreciate your time that you've given me today, and I'd like to see if there's maybe another business coach, leader or business that you think would benefit from having a review and that the public would benefit from hearing from. Scott: Yeah, well, certainly one of the best things I've done in recent years in terms of developing my own business expertise, for want of a better term, is I undertook an internship with a business called Create PT Wealth. I attended a free workshop. It was probably over three years ago now, and that, in itself, was a half day, full day workshop that was highly valuable and I took a lot out of that and I realised the position my business, and I'll use the term business fairly loosely because at that time it was a fairly poorly structured business, and it made me realise what work I needed to do to make a real business. Scott: So I then undertook an 18-month personal training business internship and it covered all sorts of things: business systems, marketing, the whole gamut of things. At the time, I could not afford it, well, I told myself that, ‘You can't afford this,’ but something in me knew that I needed to do it and it wasn't an expense, it was an investment in the future of my business. So that was another time where I took the plunge and found a way to afford it and what I learnt in 18 months has been a massive reason behind where I'm at today, in terms of having my own premises and being very happy with my professional life. Scott: So Create PT Wealth is the name of the business and I would strongly recommend that anybody else in the fitness industry or a personal trainer seek them out and see what they can offer your business. Josh: Cool. Is there anybody particular at PT Wealth that stuck out for you? Scott: Yeah, well, certainly both Brad and Jason were both extremely helpful, right from that initial workshop and I also had a business coach, Leanne, through that time as well, that I would check in with, every fortnight, and just have a phone conversation, and it was a good way to be kept accountable. She would set me certain business-related tasks that I would need to report back to her on in the next fortnight and that's a really important thing, is accountability, because sometimes it's easy to make excuses to yourself but when there's somebody else that you've got to report back to, I found that that really kept me on track. Josh: Definitely. Scott: Thank you to Create PT Wealth. Josh: Cool. Well, I think we should all take a deep breath and give yourselves a clap. That's awesome. Thank you very much. Scott: No worries, Josh. Thank you. Josh: Awesome. Read about the interview: https://dorksdelivered.com.au/business-tips/interview-with-scott-aurisch-of-nrg-boost-fitness?highlight=WyJzY290dCJd I hope you enjoyed the episode. Every little bit helps and a small thing that you could do, as a token of appreciation, would be to jump onto iTunes and rate and review to make sure that other people can listen and get the same helpful help that you guys had. Thank you, and keep good.

Scott Vaughn is an intuitive healer, who specializes in helping others see through old belief systems that no longer serve them and empowering them to take charge of their own lives through recognition of their spiritual gifts. Scott shares a supernatural event from his family history — the story of his great, great grandfather Parks, a preacher who floated to the ceiling of his church and stayed there. MENTIONED ON THE SHOW DUNE by Frank Herbert Bene Gesserit LITANY AGAINST FEAR I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. Bene Gesserit "Litany Against Fear" from Frank Herbert's Dune Book Series © 1965 and 1984 Frank Herbert Published by Putnam Pub Group ISBN: 0399128964 GUEST LINKS - SCOTT VAUGHN www.scottdouglasvaughn.com www.scottvaughnphotography.com The Grandpa Story Scott's original post about the levitating preacher HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT Scott: I'm Scott Vaughn. You got that part right, I know that. I'm a professional intuitive in Johnson City, Tennessee. I do a lot of work, a lot of readings. When I first began my work, I was doing a lot of healing work. I'm sort of a, was a reiki practitioner who sort of woke up one day, and, not that all reiki practitioners need to wake up, that isn't what I'm trying to imply. I was going along about my married life and, this stuff has always been in the background for me. I was always, probably a little bit more claircognizant I would say, if I was putting a term on it, than I could have recognized at the time. I always seemed to know some things that I was not supposed to know and it seemed to make people more uncomfortable, now that I think about it, than I was able to access at the time. But somewhere around 2012, I think it's in the summer that I actually met you on the street side in Chattanooga, I ended up having a health issue and turns out I had had some elevated liver enzymes. I went to the doctor about it. That this is a theme. I've had elevated liver enzymes for a long time. So I went to the doctor and she said, We're gonna send you and get you an ultrasound of this liver. So they did an ultrasound of my liver. She said, We didn't find anything. I'm going to send you to a gastroenterologist. And of course, I was a really great hypochondriac in those days so that just absolutely fed those wonderful impulses and urges that I had going on at the time. So she sent me to a gastroenterologist and he said, We're going to do a CAT Scan of your liver. This was around, I think, maybe Memorial Day of 2012. That's 6 years ago now. Hard to believe. But they call me back, the nurse, she says, Hello, we have found something on your liver and we're definitely going to need to take a look at it. We're going to have to schedule you in for an MRI. And as you know, medical tests always... you don't get them the next day. It was like, 5 weeks out. So of course I was scared shitless. What I had to do at that point, I was working a fairly rigorous spiritual program, and I had to really put myself back into that, because I had, not really thrown that out. I just wasn't as rigorous in my practice as I had wanted to be. And as I began to do that, I don't know what happened. I began to wake up, and went to the local metaphysical shop, which was not really a place that I hung out, to be honest with you, at that point, and had a chakra alignment. I don't exactly know what happened there but I began to... He put some sto... This is how I would have described it then. He put these rocks on me and he left the room. And then I started seeing all these dead people. So that's how I talked about it then, so that's how I'll talk about it now. I started hearing, I mostly hear things, rather than see things, although I do see things in my mind's eye as well, but my mind's ear is, I think, more developed. I began to hear these conversations with people who had passed and favorite aunts were coming by, my grandfather was coming by, my father was, had not passed yet but he came by later. We can talk about that later. And after that, just began to start having what I call.. just sort of mind-blowing awarenesses. Began realizing that I needed to follow a slightly different path for my life, and I'd been working, and did until fairly recently, in higher education, in academic advising and higher education administration. I was at the point in my life where I was really ready to go very heavy into that conference-going world and writing articles and all that stuff that people do in the academic world. It sort of just really called all that into question for me and... This is not what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to do something else. So... took a few classes here and there. I enrolled in a ministerial program that was being offered out of our local metaphysical shop that's named Atlantis here in Johnson City, and the teacher, my teacher, who was offering it, just... I happened to be in there one day, probably buying a stone because I was getting an interest in crystals and things like that. And she said, Hey, I'm teaching this class. I don't know if you might be interested in it. And for some reason, which was very seemingly out of character for me, I said, Yeah, I'm interested in doing this! It was the Alliance of Divine Love, it's a metaphysical, ordinational ('ordinational' is not a word), but it's a metaphysical sect, it's not really a sect either, but it's a metaphysical type of ordination, with 3-years long course, and that was a really good experience for me. And the only reason that I really want to mention that is if you had, if she had come to me a year before, maybe 2 years before: I never would have encountered her. That's one thing. I would've just been like, No! Hell no! Like, You're crazy. I don't want anything to do with... No! It wasn't that I had anything against it from a religious standpoint. It's just that I thought, I thought people who are like who I've turned out to be were absolutely crazy. Funny the way things shift over time for you, and... So, went through that, and it became very apparent that I needed to... It was just time for me to start working with people and I kept hearing this strong message: You need to work with others. And I'm like, Wow, I don't know, I'm like, Why? I'd taken a reiki class several years before and that was a lot of fun. I did it, and work on, you know, put my hands on some people, did it for myself. Thought it was a real neat experience. That summer I also felt the need to take that second level of reiki and... so I opened up the following year. Just started seeing folks in my house, in my living room, as a matter of fact. I put up a massage table in my living room and started working with folks. One of my very first clients was a guy named Dennis (if you're listening Dennis, Hey!) turned out to be a very dear friend over time. I performed at his wedding last summer to his partner. I was working with Dennis and I was doing all the stuff. And in those days, it was a very formal preparing the space and making sure everything was very quiet and very sacred and taking it with just the utmost seriousness. I had these agate wind chimes that were really pretty, but when the air conditioning would blow, it would sound, clink clink clink. It was annoying. I resist the word cacophonous because that's really pretentious, but they're... I had to call it out and say it was pretentious, but it was cacophonous. It was annoying. And I remember saying, just looking up, Can't you do something about these horrible wind chimes? I can't focus on Dennis. And I got a very, very clear message back, and I still laugh about it. You don't need to worry about the wind chimes because you're not doing any of this anyway. Slade: Ooo... Scott: And I was like, Shit. But that was a very strong message for me, very early in beginning to do my work. And then, and just logically followed, I knew that I was also supposed to do readings as well but didn't know how that would work. But I knew that was coming for me. I remember one of the, the very first psychic fair I participated in, I didn't know what to call myself. I was more in the room with the healer folks, but towards the end, I was like, I'm really here to do readings. I ended up doing a couple of readings for folks and it seemed to... I don't remember them very well, which I usually consider that a pretty good sign that something decent happened, if I'm staying out of the equation and not screwing it up with my conscious mind, and everything sort of logically followed after that. I felt like I just needed to probably stop seeing people outside of my office or outside of my house, because I live in a condo and it was just... went and had to keep it clean all the time and I didn't like to do that, so decided it was probably a good idea to open up an office that was right over the hill from where I was living at the time, and began to do readings, mostly I used to be doing healing type work and it wasn't exactly reiki that I ultimately began to do that I am doing now. I don't exactly know what I would call the methodology that I have but it's not a lot of hands on. It's a lot of chanting, it's a lot of frequency, and just sending energy back and forth for folks. It's a lot of Spirit Guides. It's a lot of calling in the Medicine People from other cultures, and allowing them to hold the space and allowing that work to continue. But began doing readings. Primarily my work now consists mostly of doing readings instead of doing healing work. That's sort of not the focus as much now. It's just turned out more that I'm doing readings. And, I was told very early on that, the people that I would end up working with were probably going to be people who were not necessarily always sold on the new age path, the whole metaphysical thing. That the person I was going to be working with, you know, anyone who seeks me out, I feel like I work with whomever I'm supposed to work with, but the majority of the people who come my way are folks who are disappointed in organized religion and in the church and things like that. But they haven't been able to find a way to replace that with anything that's meaningful. These are folks who are sad sometimes and disillusioned about the way they've seen spiritual matters handled. And folks who really want to... They know there's something more but they may have been taught all their lives it was not okay to seek those things. Because that was not allowed. There's a strong threat of that, especially here in this culture in east Tennessee. So that tends to be a lot of the people who come my way. One of the things that I feel very strongly that I'm supposed to do is sort of, the Hermit card in the tarot is one that I sort of embody. Just sort of holding the light up for folks. Slade: Mmm... Scott: You know? Standing there, along the path. The nice thing about that card is, you don't know what's in front, you don't know what's behind. But there he is, holding the light. And that's sort of what I've been feeling lately, that I'm supposed to embody. Is holding the light up for people and interpreting the things that are given to me to offer to them as insights for them along their path. Slade: You're a Lantern Bearer, Scott! Scott: A Lantern Bearer - that's cute. I love that. Slade: I actually have an episode about the Hermit tarot and how I re-named it the Lantern Bearer, because... yeah.. Scott: You know what? I may have stolen that. That may be where I've heard that. I may be stealing from you and I don't - Slade: I stole it from someone else. Scott: Okay. Slade: There was a, I don't know if there's one of those decks floating around out there where the Hermit card is actually called the Lantern Bearer, or someone somewhere has used that term, and I was like, Ooo, I like that! Scott: I'm sure Hay House has put it out somewhere, you know? Slade: Right. Yes. Copyright whoever said it! But I do have an episode about it and the episode's mine. I want to talk to the audience for just a second and let them know that, for those of you listening to this conversation, Scott is a friend of mine and he's an honorary member of the Automatic Intuition community because he was sort of teaching himself while being friends with me, but yet I still needed him to be a part of that group. I've wanted to interview him since day one of this podcast but here's the thing with interviewing your friends. We could talk for hours about anything, and it may or may not necessarily be fun or interesting to anyone listening. So far I think you're doing pretty good, but... So the challenge was to find the right focus topic, and with so many of the guests on the show being intuitives and healers and peers, Scott and I were kind of brainstorm texting about this for months, like, What should we do an episode about?? And then I see this post on Scott's Facebook wall titled, "Concerning The Time My Great-Great Grandfather Floated to the Ceiling of the Church—And Lingered.” I read the story and I lost my mind over it. I told Scott “THIS” this is what I want to talk to you about. Nobody else has this story. This was months ago. Scott: Great! Slade: Go ahead and say something while I clear my throat. Scott: One of the things about the story is that, a lot of times I'll re-run myself on Facebook. You know. Nobody really notices that much about that as the person doing it. People think, Oh this is great, you just put it together now. No, this is a re-run from last year. You liked it then too. But I think the first time I put that out there, maybe 2009, I was in a much different head, I was in a much different heart space than I am now, okay? So there was a lot of, the original version of that, if it's still out there and I don't think I went back and edited it, really conveys a lot of the skepticism I had at the time with it. And then the latest version comes from what I would say is a more heart-centred, really knowing, just from a much more knowing place and much more loving place and a much more... I'm very open to the possibilities of everything that could have happened when he floated to the ceiling of the church and lingered. Slade: Okay, so... let's just... You've got to tell us this story. Your great-great-grandfather floated to the ceiling of the church. I'm just going to let you tell us... Like I've never heard it before. Tell it to me. Scott: Okay. Like you've never heard it before. Because a lot of times when I'm talking about this story, I'm talking about the story itself, which is different than telling the story. It's the story about the story. It goes that my great-great-grandfather had started out, I think, in the hills of Tennessee and then south eastern Kentucky of a town Jellico, Tennessee. That's about two hours above, maybe an hour and a half, an hour above Knoxville, if you take Interstate 70. A very remote mountain area. If you were writing a book about Appalachia and you really wanted to find something that seemed almost cliche it was so realistic, you could find that. And so, in the back woods, probably a Baptist minister, okay, and my understanding at the time is that he was a very straight up and down Baptist minister, very read-the-scripture, the talk-a-lot kind of guy and was making a pretty good living as preacher back in the woods. Around the early 20th century, this wave of Pentacostalism started sweeping through the country, hitting about, in the mountains (my electricity just went out as we're talking about this - Hello, great grandpa, great great grandpa Parks). So (electricity's back) so this wave of Pentacostalism starts sweeping through the country, probably hits the area in the early 20th century in Jellico, and... So he began to preach... I don't know how familiar you are with some parts of the Bible. Over in the book of Corinthians, it talks about the spiritual gifts of healing, of prophecy of times, of people being able to interpret speaking in other tongues and people being able to put their hands on other people and they be healed from things. He began to preach those things and a lot of people followed him as he started a new congregation. He took his congretation with him and they moved and started something else. The people who went with him were all into it, but a lot of people in the community, it was heresy to them. So, the story goes that three men, allegedly from the Baptist church, came in to break up the service. They had guns and they appeared in the very back. My great-great-grandfather, I'm going to start calling him Grandpa Parks, or grandpa. Grandpa Parks was up there preaching and he saw the men and he said, If you come one step closer, I pray the devil smite you. And they walked closer. And of course, people in the church were starting to really panic and get nervous. My great-great-grandmother, Grandma Parks is sitting there thinking, she starts to pray, and at that moment, the Spirit of God picks him up from the pulpit and he rises to the ceiling of the church, and of course, Grandma Parks is there and she's like, Oh God, he's about to be 'transa-lated', was the word I heard. He's about to be transa-lated, just like Enoch. He's about to be transa-lated just like Enoch. She thought he's gonna... People are like, He's gonna go through the ceiling! He's gonna go through the ceiling! And, of course, you know, he's just as surprised as anyone, right? So the look on his face... really, you know, he's described as looking like he was scared, because, not because of the men at the back at this point, because he really just didn't know what was happening. And moved him through the congregation, through the middle of the congregation. You know, there's the rows on either side, right through the middle of the church and put him down right in front of the three men with the guns. Thus, after that, he was left alone. Now the story also goes that the three men, one of them, shortly after went blind. One of them dropped his gun, took his place in the church service and shut up. Okay? He joined up. And the other one, at some time later, you know, who knows, history tends to conflate times, he killed himself. Yeah, so, sort of like the three men on the cross maybe, or the Holy Trinity there, I don't know. But there were three of them. Outside of that, this entire denomination in the mountains, they call themselves The Church of God of the Mountain Assembly in Jellico. They're still there! There are still... You can look them up on Google. The Church of God of the Mountain Assembly headquarter in Jellico. That's one of the things that they talk about in some of their literature, was the time when Brother Parks was lifted to the ceiling of the Church, and that was a sign that they were doing the right thing. They were on the right track and that their message had weight and that began to grow and spread. There are quite a few, interestingly enough, Jellico's in the coal mining area and as the mines dried up, people went north. So a lot of my family, as well, went to Michigan. I have quite a bit of family in Michigan, or had been in Michigan at the time. So there's quite a bit of that church now in Michigan as well, which is interesting. And so, the amazing part of that story for me in that whole thing is it's sort of like a litmus test to my own spiritual development for me, when I look back. I was told the story as a kid. I was always fascinated by family stories. I know this is not the focus of what we're talking about, but I have equally interesting stories from... Nobody levitated, but people getting, sticking knives up their nose and dying from that, the other side of my family. I'll talk about that later. It's my uncle, Hugh Ballard, on my dad's side, who stuck the knife up his nose and died. But, I was always fascinated somehow, I sort of became like R2D2 for my family. They implanted stories within me as a small child and it tended to speak to me in the wrong way and I just start projecting holographs of stories that make people uncomfortable, I suppose. I don't know. Slade: I'm kind of that person in my family as well. Scott: You're a storyteller, so... Slade: Well, I think that... It's weird because I had aunts that would do genealogical research and stuff like that. And they would always give the stuff to me. Like, they didn't give it to their own kids. For some reason, people identified that I was the one to give it to. They felt like it would get told somehow, or it would be preserved, or just cared about, in a way, by me, that other people wouldn't. And it's true! I do care about all that stuff more. But I do wonder, what would possess you to think this, like, 7 year old boy wants to know about all this stuff? Scott: I've often wondered that, but it came to me from my mom's side of the family and my dad's side of the family. I've ended up with all of the family pictures. I've ended up with all of those things. But my ancestors, 'ancestors' is using that term broadly, my family members who have passed, my ancestors, some of them were alive when I was alive, they figure very prominently in the work that I do too. So that's another matter entirely that we can talk about in a minute. Slade: Here's something I want to ask you about, because... Scott: Please do! Slade: And I have to say, all the months that we tried to think of a reason for you to come on the show, and then all the months since we decided what the reason was, interestingly, two days ago in real time, I interviewed Ian Allen, who is a friend of yours, who also lives in Johnson City, and part of our conversation was about how supernatural, mystical, what we consider new age topics were viewed through the filter of Christianity. So you have some crazy, I mean, full-blown witchcraft going on, but it was all in the name of Jesus, you know what I mean? So I was wondering what your perspective is on that sort of weird mishmash of Christianity and the supernatural stuff which is not traditionally thought of as everyday Christian. Scott: Right, you know, I've been thinking that you were going to ask that question. I've not had an answer for it all week. Because I've had that in mind as well and I think that I was raised in a very traditional Christian family environment, and those kinds of things, though it's very conservative religion, a very evangelical religion, generally speaking, the belief was, a lot of those things that happened in, you know, the early church, we didn't have access to them in the current church. So the idea that, Can people be healed? Yes they can but God uses doctors. That's why God created doctors. Whatever, right? But... I've had to look further back into my family to be able to find some of those things, and that's in my Pentecostal relatives, right? Some of my mom's family, they still follow that path, and a lot of my family doesn't. But they're always the ones at the family gatherings I'm gravitating towards, because they're talking about prayer and things that have happened as a result of prayer. They're talking about warts falling off people. They're talking about somebody who had cancer who doesn't have cancer now. Somebody who was a drug addict one day and suddenly had an experience and they've not used drugs in 25 years. Those kinds of things. All kinds of ways of having miracles. And I don't really have an answer to your question. I have just a lot of experiences, a lot of things I believe have happened but I don't really know why that is. So thank you for asking - it's a great question! Slade: Do you believe in miracles? Scott: Yeah, of course! Now, I used to - For many years, I considered myself an atheist, okay? And so I didn't believe in anything. And it took a lot of work for me to not believe in anything, which tells me I wasn't a very good atheist. The kind of work that I'm doing now certainly was off the table because it was deeply buried. And, I think, you've heard that there are no atheists on the front lines of battle. I don't know. No atheist in the foxhole? I don't know about that, but I do know that some things that happened to me in my life forced me to really reconsider there was something out there that was bigger than me, and that wasn't me. Otherwise I would really be dead or worse... So if you can think of yourself being dead or worse, the worse part means that you're probably not an atheist. Because you tend to believe there is something going on out there that doesn't line up with your belief system, being an atheist, or at least as I understood it. For many years, I've used, I was an alcoholic. I'm a recovering alcoholic now, drug addict, those things. It's been many years since... I've been clean and sober for many years. Slade: Was that the result of anything spiritual? Or was it more of... from that atheist time period? Scott: It was probably from all that. I was a very bitter guy, a lot of bitterness against, and rebellion against religion, and those kinds of things, and with the family history, I suppose, that's always a part of it. Just poured alcohol onto it and pills and just went through a period of my life where I really wasn't there for it. As I got sober, that's sort of the beginning of my re-awakening. I believe we're all born awakened, right? Then I think, our families, our society, etc., I think we just get closed up and closed up. And in the end, we buy into that belief that we're closed up so much and we just continue to add to it, and alcohol was my way of adding to it, and not being here for my life. As I began to show up more for my life, I began to see, at least for me, there's a lot more than what I'm willing to admit is out there and in here, right? There a lot more and I don't have to be shut off from it. As I began to realize that I'm not shut off from it, I started awakening. I won't say that I'm awakenED. I will say that I'm awakenING, if that makes any sense. I've been sort of thinking that some of these things might come up over the course of us talking today, and in some ways, I think I am baffled that I'm doing this and I'm grateful that I am doing this, but... If you had met me 10 years ago, and you had told me... If I had come to you for a session 10 years ago, of course I wouldn't have come to you for a session 10 years ago because I wouldn't have dared to 10 years ago, based on where I was, and you had told me that I was going to be doing this kind of work and all of that, I would have laughed. I would have thought, Boy, he has confirmed that he is just as crazy. I went in here and paid him money, you know, that kind of thing. So yeah. Slade: I probably would have told you. Scott: Yeah, I know. And I would have been like, You're crazy! Slade: I would be that person people always tell me about. I hear this all the time, 'A psychic told me once' and I'm always in the chain of... I'm never the first one to tell them, which is probably cool. Scott: Correct. Slade: I'd rather be at the end of that line of... Just to go back to this miracle for a second, with your great-great-grandfather... Scott: Absolutely. Slade: You know what, if it's okay with you, I'll post a transcript of your Facebook post so everybody can kind of read some of that detail, because it's different every time you tell it, right? There's a different perspective. Scott: It is! Which tells me it was different every time it was told to me so who knows exactly. There have also been members of my family who've worked really hard at debunking the story too. We'll talk about that in a minute if you like, but yeah... Slade: Well tell me, did you ever speak to anyone who actually witnessed this? Scott: Okay. The first family reunion, and it's interesting that all this is coming up, because in two weeks, I will be at the site of all this again. Okay? In two weeks, my family is having a reunion in Jellico. Because I'm the person who knows the stories, and knows where all the people are buried. I'm probably the last person alive, at least in this branch of my family who could take you to the graves of everyone who has come before us. Anyway, I don't know where I was going with that, but the first thing at every reunion, I take my tape player and I, because when I was a kid, my parents for my 5th birthday, my parents bought me a tape recorder, okay? So I was always just recording things and I knew that some of my older family members were going to be there, and I knew I wanted to get some things on tape. I also knew that my grandmother was toward the younger end of the family. So my grandmother, and even her mother who passed away, who died really young, she probably wasn't there for what happened either. But I was there. My grandmother's best friend, Helen Seal, who she grew up with, came down from Michigan to be part of the reunion because: She and my grandmother were like sisters and, The coal-mining camp where everybody was originated there in Tennessee and Kentucky. Everybody was very much like family so Helen came down. Helen was still part of, she's passed now, but she was part of the Church of God of the Mountain Assembly in Michigan. So she still attended the church but in Michigan. You know I said a lot of people went to Michigan to work in the automobile factories when the coal mines dried up. Slade: Right. Scott: So Helen was also just a great storyteller. She had long grey hair that she wrapped up in a bun. She was just a spitfire of a woman so I knew I wanted to talk to her about it. And I wish I could find the tape. It's going to be that mythical tape that's lost, that I can't find now. Sort of like Nixon's tape that's missing from Watergate. Yeah, but she's telling me, and it starts out, she says, 'I know you want to talk about the time Brother Parks was lifted to the ceiling church, and many years ago, I asked Sister Parks what she thought about it.' So she goes into this story, okay, and she wasn't there, but she was getting it, she was telling me her version of Sister, of my great-great-grandmother telling her the story. Okay? Slade: Okay. Scott: Then Helen's husband, Oble, he, I don't know how he knew this, because he didn't live there, but he said that there was an old lady living in the community, Granny Mobely was her name, Granny Mobely (sounds like a Lee Smith novel)... Slade: It does. Scott: It does! Granny Mobely, who was there at the time, right, and I said, Where does she live? And he said, Well I don't know. It's , I don't know, or I didn't know to just go down to the grocery store and ask people where Granny Mobely lived, but I never investigated that any further. I was into college and changing schools and all of that. So I never got any first hand account. I do know that the church has some official records and there have been two books that they have put out, two little books, where they tell the story. Also, he kept a journal as well that one of his other descendants has. I was thinking, How many descendants must he have? My great-great-grandparents had like, 8 children. And so, if you think about probably... There are probably thousands of people now who are descended from them, living today. But one of my cousins' distant relatives, probably what I would call a 5th cousin, in Michigan, who's the pastor of one of the churches there, oddly enough, has his journal, where he wrote some things down. I've never been able to get ahold of that. I've wanted it. I've sent requests. I've asked for copies of it. I've tried to communicate with people about it and that's never been... No one's ever been able... No one's ever been willing to communicate with me about that, which just adds to the mystery and tells me that one day I will see it. You know how that goes. He used to prophesize well too, about great birds with people in them flying through the air. That one day, people would be, one day, this is Oble Seal told me this, that one day he was out preaching, he said, One day, there'll be people on the moon. And this was in the 30s, right? And I don't know what we were talking about in the 30s. I don't know about... I mean, I'm sure there were, certainly there were aircrafts in the 30s. I don't know how many he would have had access to, but there certainly had not been astronauts in the 30s yet. Slade: We had Jules Verne and we had, I don't remember if that... What was it that Hans Fritz movie, Metropolis, or... There's some really, really old creepy black-and-white movie I think that might portray people travelling on rockets to the moon, right? Scott: Yeah, so maybe that's... I don't... Who knows if he had access to seeing those... Slade: Umhmm... Oh yeah! Scott: You know, probably not. So I don't know. And I wish that I could find that tape. I know it was in the attic where I used to live, and then I've moved since then. I don't know where that box of tapes went. You know how that kind of thing goes. Slade: It's a great set up for a novel. Scott: Yeah, I know. It is! Slade: Someone finds the box of tapes in the attic and then, you know. Of course, in the story, you're both your 40-year old self and your 95-year old self so we can switch back and forth between time periods. I can see the whole thing right now. Scott: Absolutely. Yeah, that's very good. Thank you very much! That's good inspiration for that. Slade: Yes! Scott: Reverend Parks also is part of my work that I do here today too. He's one of what I call my 'assistants' and my 'guides'. Slade: So he's like an ancestor guide? Scott: He's an ancestor guide and when I'm working with someone specifically in a healing type session, he very strongly appears. Slade: Interesting! Scott: A lot of really tuned-in people say, Who is the bearded man here who is not you? Slade: Ooo! Scott: That's Grandpa. Pay him no mind. He's very much who I call in to help when, you know, need a space cleaned out, he's very helpful with those kinds of things. He's very good at removing what I call, reptilian type energies from folks as well. Slade: You know, I have to say, it just occurred to me as I was asking you that question about the whole connection with Christianity versus this kind of supernatural stuff, one of the things that became really apparent to me, because I always thought of myself as very much sort of against fundamentalism, still do... Scott: Same here. Slade: Very anti-Christian, all that kind of stuff. But one of the things that I have observed, kind of begrudgingly in the beginning, was that the people who are more open to talking about mysticism are by nature people of faith. And so, if you go to an older generation of people and you want to talk about supernatural stuff, there's a lot more little old church ladies that want to talk about spirits and healing and communication from the dead and all that kind of stuff, and are a lot more open to it than, certainly than an atheist is going to be, or an intellectual from our generation is going to shut that down much more quickly too. And so I learned very quickly to kind of have this universal translator running in my mind and to realize that that was the language they were given to speak with, you know, was the language of the Bible in the culture that they grew up in and so, that's what they had to work with. But some of the things that they will tell you and some of the things that they will describe are just straight up like, Well this is total paranormal investigation! Scott: This is straight up like off Sylvia Browne. Slade: Totally, totally! Scott: Yeah. Slade: So it's made me a little bit more open-minded in myself. I have had to be more open-minded about the fact that when you strip away the vocabulary and you strip away whatever theology's comfortable and whatever symbolism is used, in both camps, or in any camp and all the camps, you'll find that there are people who are extremely plugged in and sensitive and aware and awakening and all that kind of stuff. And then you will find people who are going through the motions and claiming to get it when they don't and then you have people who are just completely tuned out. But that idea of who that someone is who is plugged in transcends everything else. And so when I recognize another person who's 'plugged-in', I don't care. All that other stuff is transparent. You see through it. And so I had these experiences where I have talked to these little old ladies who use the Jesus vocabulary through the whole thing, but meanwhile, they're the most likely to get what it is that I do and to be accepting of it. Scott: I had an aunt who was, she always used to like to renounce the spirit of fear. That was one of her big things that she liked to do. Slade: Ooo I like that. Scott: Renounce the spirit of fear, you know. Here, 25 years later, I start into A Course in Miracles and talking about love and fear and all of those things, and I'm like, Good grief Rita, you were onto it all along. Slade: It reminds me of the Bene Gesserit Litany against fear from doom. Do you know it? Scott: No, I don't. Slade: Okay. I'll put it in the show notes. Fear is the mind killer. Anyway. It's a little litany that the nun-like witch organization in that world.. It's a chant that they do when facing fear. It's a way of, kind of like... Scott: Fair enough. Slade: ...allowing the fear to pass over and through you. I can't recite it off the top of my head right now but I'll put it in the show notes for your sake if no one else's. Scott: For my ADD's sake, I'm trying to sit here not get on my phone and look it up while we're talking. Slade: I know! Don't do that in the middle of an interview! Scott: Yeah, I'm not. I'm definitely not doing that. I'm thinking, he'd never know. This is audio, but you'd know, because you're you! Slade: The litany against fear. It's really good. It's up there with the Serendipity prayer, and, you know, it's one of those tools for me. It's a mantra for sure. So I gotta ask you this. Scott: Please. Slade: Given your perspective and where you are in everything, I see you as someone who is kind of an archivist in a way, of all this old knowledge and old wisdom. You've got pieces of it, more so than others might. And so, as you think about how you are breaking that all down, sort of processing it and then putting it back together and give it new life and new form, what do you most hope to contribute to the conversation about spirituality? Scott: You know, it's to really... There's so many trappings that folks put on it. And just let go. That's one thing that I'm always telling folks. Just let go and stop trying to control absolutely everything. Just allow. Seek the truth for yourself and allow it to come. You can study whatever you want to study, but be open to the sources that the truth might come to you. Be open to what speak to you. Be open to what doesn't speak to you. Sometimes what doesn't speak to you speaks to you more than... because it doesn't speak to you, if that makes sense. In the 12-steps circles, people talk about 'let go and let God', you know, let go and let Spirit do Spirit's work, and realizing that a lot of that happens in a very subtle way in that it often times doesn't happen very instantly. It's a process and also that just because we're spiritual, just because we studied the Law of Attraction, which is great, you know, it's fine. It's not the only law there is though. Just because we've read this and watched the latest YouTube video, just because we've done this or this or this, it doesn't absolve us from doing the work on ourselves. And from taking, you know, sometimes I tell the folks that I'm working with, if nothing else, I'm gonna be able to, hopefully, with some assistance here, provide you at least some kind of mirror so that you can see yourself honestly, and see your path in a way that you've not seen it before. At least as honest as I can convey it to you, as honest as you're able to see it, but to look very closely inside for the answers and not externally. Because the answers for me are not the answers for you, and there's certainly some universal truths, but the path for everybody is slightly different. And each person has his or her own expression. And I just feel like I'm babbling, Slade. I love that question. Slade: It's meant to be a stumper but it's also meant to be a prompt to... Well, I used to ask people what really bugs the shit out of them in all this crap. And then I realized, Heather O'Shea I think was the person who was like, 'I'm going to reframe that, make it more positive'. And I was like, 'Okay, that's a good idea'. And so, going forward, I try to re-frame that as a more positive thing. Scott: One thing I would say is, this is not a cake mix. Okay? This is not... You realize there are certain... We don't have as much control over things in our world as we do over baking a cake. It's a good analogy, but again, it's not the best analogy. Okay? I do believe that the new thought community talks about planting seeds and watering seeds and all that, but the idea is that you've got to plant the appropriate seeds for the thing that you want. Right? And... Slade: And you have to do it. You have to tend it. Scott: YOU have to tend your garden. Remember, from Candide, and he goes through all that and Candide at the end: All of this is well and good. All of this is well and good. I've encountered the woman who had her ass eaten because of steak or something, but I still had to cultivate my own garden. You know? I still had to cultivate my own garden. And Pangloss is saying, 'All is well and good in this best of all possible worlds.' And Candide's saying, 'Yes, thank you, but I still have to cultivate my own garden', and that is me planting the appropriate seeds and doing the literal work of putting the thing together. Keep seeing things. If you can think it, you can be it. If you can dream it, you can be it. On one level, that's certainly true. You know? I know that there's a lot of hope for people in that as well. But if it were that simple, we wouldn't have any problems. If it were that simple... I hear a lot of talk about... Everything's all the Law of Attraction this, and the Law of Attraction that, and that is certainly all well and good and there's so much truth there, right? But it's not simply just thinking happy thoughts all the time and everything will be okay. It's about embodying a new way to be, and truly, not just sprouting affirmations (hehe, 'sprouting'), not just spouting affirmations at yourself. Sprouting - I'm using that seed metaphor. Slade: Right. Taking it all the way through Scott: Yeah, taking it all the way through. Thank you! It's... You can't just say, 'I am at peace with myself' and 'today's going to be better' and everything just work out. You have to go a little bit deeper than that. You have to do what affirmations really do. You have to... The nice thing that I love, because I deal with a lot of affirmations with folks that I work with is to say, 'Use this as an affirmation.' And 'You'll know it's working if, after you've done this for a couple of days, you feel worse.' Because that means it's lodged itself in those deep recesses of the things that you don't want to have to deal with and it's bringing it all to the surface. It's going in there and it's sort of destroying the energy of the thing you no longer want, and it's just all bubbling up like stomach acid, right? In that way, you know you're on the right track. Slade: Interesting... Scott: There's always that thing is, I want to feel better and I want to feel better NOW. And I'm always like, we can all feel better, but we still have to do something. You know? We still have to take a look at our ourselves. Slade: Well, you know, and you don't just do it once either. I think the... If I was answering your question with the way that you're answering it, I would say that, the thing that really kicks you in the gut when you realize that you have to get up and re-do it every day. You have to start over and over and over again and every day. I mean, some things might carry you through longer arcs of time, but really, it's not A decision. It's thousands of decisions. It's thousands of times making the same decision over and over again. Scott: It's a whole spiritual practice. It's not just a set of isolated things. It's a whole spiritual practice, you know? Like yoga is a spiritual practice. It's a whole thing. It's not just going to a class now and then. Although I love going to yoga classes, but it's a whole spiritual practice that I have to embody. And I have to figure out a new way to BE, not just a new way to think, not just a new way to act, but a whole new way to BE if I want some results in that way. But certainly I know inside of me, given, left to my own devices, I'll always usually pick the easy way out. Slade: Scott, it's so good to capture one or maybe a handful of your stories. I know that we still have so many others that we could do, but I'm glad that we finally got one in the can. I really want to appreciate you for coming on and telling your story. Tell everyone where they can go find you online. Scott: Yeah! It's sort of the entrepreneur phase of my life right now but ScottDouglasVaughn.com is the website for my spiritual work. Also I'm a photographer! I take pictures of abandoned buildings and things like that. And all of this grew out of that same summer, summer of 2012 that I was talking about a little bit earlier. That's ScottVaughnphotography.com My website, ScottDouglasVaughn.com is pretty good insight into what I'm doing right now.

Flyover States Podcast Ep. # 37—Stephanie Feld Recorded 01/16/2018 FSP Studio My guest for this episode was Stephanie Feld. She is the founder of Be The Change. An organization that uses volunteer efforts to help clean trash and litter from our community. Old Milwaukee was consumed and laughs were had. Thanks for listening. Scott For all info on Be The Change go to facebook.com/bethechangefreeport Instagram —@grimefighta To email the show for questions or booking contact Flyoverstatespod@gmail.com Soundcloud @flyoverstatespod Itunes itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/flyov…d1205811786?mt=2 Intro Song- Superman—Goldfinger Outro song- Man In The Mirror—Michael Jackson

Flyover States Podcast Ep. # 36—Ethan Fiene Recorded 01/10/2018 FSP Studio My guest for this episode was Ethan Fiene. He is the owner of Stateline Solar. A local green energy company specializing in the installation of solar panels. We talked about work stuff, HS football, Platteville, hunting, and some fun stories. Old Milwaukee was consumed and laughs were had. Thanks for listening. Scott For all info on Stateline Solar go to: www.StatelineSolar.net To email the show for questions or booking contact Flyoverstatespod@gmail.com Soundcloud @flyoverstatespod Itunes itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/flyov…d1205811786?mt=2 Intro Song- Hard Working’ Man—Brooks and Dunn Outro song- Bloody Sunrise—Wayland