Homeless to Unstoppable: Stephen Scoggins' Journey

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Stephen Scoggins shares his journey from homelessness to multimillion-dollar business success, revealing how personal alignment is the foundation for sustainable entrepreneurial growth. His concept of the "integrated entrepreneur mindset" challenges conventional wisdom about what makes businesses succeed or fail.

• Integration means becoming aligned with your authentic self and authentic purpose
• The five true reasons entrepreneurs fail: arrogance, ignorance, impatience, fear, and insecurity
• Entrepreneurs at all levels share the same restless ambition to reach the next financial milestone
• As businesses scale, they inevitably change team composition, keeping only about 2% of original staff by $100M
• True leadership requires being "one part lion, one part lamb" - both bold and compassionate
• Periodic disconnection from technology and distractions is essential for achieving clarity and alignment
• Personal presence is more valuable to family than financial provision
• You can't scale dysfunction - in yourself, your team, or your client base
• Alignment leads to better income, relationships, and health
• Human energy operates at different frequencies, with alignment creating a powerful presence

Take the Integrated Alignment Quiz at stephenscoggins.com/alignment to discover where you stand on the path to becoming an unstoppable entrepreneur.

#stephenscoggins #unstoppable #BuildPodcast #alignment #bradweisman #thebradweismanshow

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
from real estate affects the market as a whole,
which then sometimes will affectthe right.
You know the real life.
We all learn in different ways.
If you think about it, waynedyer might not attract everybody
and everything in between.
Mission was really to helppeople just to reach their full
potential the brad weisman showand now your host, brad weisman.

(00:26):
All right, we are back anotherthursday.
Oh, amazing, hugo, we're backthat's right that's right like
the terminator you have a nicehat on.
It's too bad, people can't seethe hat oh yes yes but some
point we'll get you a camera.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, we'll show you that, that new look I've been
working on it's a.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
It's a really nice hat.
Yeah, you have to see it's verybig brimmed hat, very nice, it
looks good.
So we've been talking to thisguy for a while and trying to
get him on the show.
Not trying, we're trying to getour schedules together to get
him on the show and we are luckyto have this guy here.
He is traveling all over theplace, he's working on a new
book.
He is just a great thinker, andone of the things that stood

(01:04):
out to me was the wordunstoppable.
So once we get done with thispodcast, I think you're going to
understand why unstoppable wasthe word that I think of when I
think of him.
So we have Steven Scoggins herein the studio with us, straight
from Charlotte.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Yes, Right, yeah, charlotte, welcome to the studio
.
Hey bro, it's good man.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Have a good time oh that's good, we've been chilling
and chapping.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Hugo, come on over here.
Just come over here just for aminute To show the hat quick.
Yeah, you got to show the hat.
Yeah, come give him a hug.
There we go, there, we go.
There it is.
Oh, look at Hugo go, awesome,and even does like a little walk
.
We had to kick the show off.
We're going to get him.
We're going to give him acamera.

(01:46):
He's going to get a camera soon.
He's got a microphone.
I mean, the guy's really takenover the show, if you think
about it.
I mean, for Christ's sakes,when we first started the show
he was silent.
Now I can't shut him up.
It's amazing.
Now he likes to chime inbecause he's the time when your
name is there.
So it's your name, unstoppable.

(02:06):
But one of the things I want toask you first is what does
integrated entrepreneur mindsetmean to you?
I know Well, it sounds like amouthful.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
It does.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Well, you know you notice I had to say it very slow
because I'm thinking I'm goingto screw it up.
But no, integrated entrepreneurmindset.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah, I'll have to.
I'll have to change that up alittle bit, all right, so the
easiest way to explain what anintegrated entrepreneur is, it's
a state of being, okay, okay,and the reason I say that is
because almost every major dumbdecision I ever made in my
relationships, in my business,in my family life and so on and
so forth, came out of somethingthat's called dysregulation.

(02:43):
It's a fancy word for saying Iwas out of control, gotcha Okay.
An easy way to understandwhether or not you're
dysregulated is how muchanxiousness.
You carry on a regular basisGotcha Right.
So integration is the processof becoming aligned with your
authentic self in conjunctionwith your authentic purpose.
So that's fully integrated.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
So authentic self, if you don't mind me, an authentic
purpose two different things.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
There are two different things.
I'm on a bit of a crusade tonot only bring awareness to both
of them, but also integratethem and bring them into one,
into one, because when you havethose two together, are you
unstoppable, unstoppable I thinkyou are yeah, yeah, all right.
So unstop.
The word unstoppable can easilybe a cliche word.
Yeah, easily be cliche.

(03:32):
Sure you know, unstoppable it'sgreat unstoppable.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
It's great.
Could write a song calledunstoppable.
I think there's a song calledunstoppable.
16 songs, is there 16?
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (03:40):
that's the song.
Yes, that's the one I wasthinking of yeah, I didn't know
he sang.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
It's just a new thing too.
That was not in the resume.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
That was not here.
That's the new tenor voice, Iguess.
Oh he does.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
And he does that too by the way, it's the first show.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
I've done that on, by the way.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
Oh, there you go.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
See there's um, yeah, no.
The word unstoppable to me isnothing more than basically
preventing yourself from notmaking progress.
So let me try that again, dothat again, go all right.
In order to be unstoppable, yousimply don't give up, gotcha,
you get knocked down.
You get back up again.
Yeah, you get knocked down, getback up again.
Yeah.
Now, it doesn't mean you're notgoing to go and suck on a
corner or cry and whatever for afew days or a day or an hour or
whatever you need.
Yeah, and by all intents andpurposes, that is a form of
grounding, believe it or not, isrelease, yep, like actually
allowing yourself to feel ityeah, feel it, yeah be present

(04:31):
with those emotions, feel it,but then you have to, at some
point in time, make a mentalswitch in your head and like,
okay, well, this is, this is notwhere I'm gonna stop.
Right and for me, I see a lotof people.
They do one or two thingseither.
When adversity comes, theyeither lean away from it, run
away from as much as they can,stick their head in the sand, or
yeah whatever, what's workedfor me is to feel it and then

(04:53):
forge ahead.
Yeah, and you know, I've beenthrough a lot of various things.
I've been through divorce.
I've been through 2008, I'vebeen through the pandemic, I've
been through exiting a company,I've been through embezzlement.
I've been through embezzlement.
I've been through.
You know a number of differentthings and you know each one of
those, to your point where wewere talking about all fair
earlier, about characterbuilding.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Oh, it builds character.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
Yeah, I mean well, and I told you, you asked me.
You asked me like well, how'dyou become homeless?
I'm like well, I was arrogantand prideful.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, you know put me in business for myself, made a
bunch of money.
That's incredible.
I mean that journey is ispretty amazing.
I mean the journey from beinghomeless and going to a trash
dump and finding things that youthat became useful, yeah, to
build a business.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
I mean and it wasn't a sexy.
It's not even a sexy businessand it's not even a sexy
business, like you know.
To be honest, I mean it's nothe did.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
He was working on siding houses, yeah, yeah, I
mean not many people go.
I guess what I did for a living, you know, and go, oh, I do
siding.
Oh, then people go, what vinylor aluminum?

Speaker 3 (05:53):
yeah, exactly, I'm like all of it, all of it.
I'm really good.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
I even do james hardy but no, but seriously, that's
incredible, yeah, and it justshows you it doesn't matter what
business you're in.
If you have the focus andyou're authentic and you have
the passion to do something, youcan do it.
It doesn't matter what businessit is.
It was siding.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
Yeah, well, think about it this way.
I'm going to come back to thesiding.
Yeah, go ahead.
So that business built a lot ofcomponents in me.
Right, I was a high schooldropout so I didn't graduate.
High school ADHD, dyslexic kidgiven a second chance.
I didn't deserve to start thiscompany.
Even other trash piles.
I didn't deserve the secondchance I got, uh, did the first

(06:34):
handful of homes completely bymyself, out in the heat and the
cold and whatnot.
Go on and build the businesspiece by piece, team, member,
team, member, pole by poll,siding by siding, whatever you
want to call it.
What was interesting about thatwhole journey was I didn't have
leadership skills, I didn'thave an MBA, I didn't have
anything but unrelentingtenacity, and tenacity can get

(06:59):
you in trouble.
So, one of the reasons I'm sopassionate about this concept of
integration is because they sayin business that businesses
fail, it doesn't matter whatprofession, it is right, but
especially entrepreneurs andbusiness owners.
Eight out of 10 businesses failfirst, five years After the
first five years.
You might get lucky if one ofthose is still standing
literally 10 years later.
Out of those you got another Idon't know 30% ever gross a

(07:22):
million dollars top line.
Out of that you got two-tenthsof a percent that ever actually
sell a company.
Right, there's, the statisticsare ridiculous, right.
But they say the top five or soreasons and I won't rattle them
all off, but I'll give you afew.
Uh, lack of sales, right.
Marketing penetration, lack ofleadership, poor team management
, product fit right.
These are the.
These things rotate year after.

(07:43):
You're like google right now.
Why do do businesses fail?
What are the top five reasons?
You know and you'll see thelist, but it'll kind of switch.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
Cause it's you know, it's it's market generated and,
you know, sometimes economiesare better than others.
I mean, right now, the economyis a little shaky for us, and
you know what I what I feel likeis interesting about that is I
discovered when I went back andlooked at my journey and then I
looked at all the entrepreneursthat I have worked with and
continue to work with even today.
One of the things that they'redealing with is isolation.

(08:11):
They're dealing with hey, Idon't even know who I can turn
to.
So I know I dealt with that aton, which is why I'm like, okay
, well, if I dealt with that,you dealt with that.
Okay, I'm going to be alistening ear Now.
Granted, we've got to find atime on my calendar to do it
right, but on top of that, whenI start thinking in terms of
integration and alignment, mostof us that's not at the

(08:34):
forefront of our mind.
Most of us aren't thinkingabout how I show up every day,
how I think about myself, how Ithink about others.
Am I a blame, shame andcondemnation person?
Am I someone who is overlyoptimistic?
Am I what I quote unquote toorealistic?
I'm a pessimistic Like there's.
There's this balancing, thisbalance beam of sorts.

(08:55):
And then I discovered that, okay, well, if I go back and I look
at my journey and I say, okay,well, journey, I'm looking at
you as a movie screen, I'm gonnastep back out as a character,
I'm gonna watch it.
I come out on the editing floor.
What do I see?
What I see out of everyemotional outburst or bad
decision-making, um, but thatcould be the money I spend.
How I show up my family, how Ium responded to a team member

(09:18):
who was trying to get a piece ofinformation that I should have
had that I didn't train themwell on.
And leadership, if I'm justhonest with myself, I find that
entrepreneur.
If I go and look at the sameentrepreneurs, after working
with countless entrepreneurs atdifferent levels seven figures,
eight figures, nine figures mybiggest client's been 10 figure
client.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
Okay, which is funny, cause I never made 10 figures
yet.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
You got to work on that, I do, but fortunately
that's not what they were comingto me for.
But, uh, but they, what theywere coming for is alignment.
Like, uh, you know, I've a lotof them.
Either they're either chasingthe brass ring and they think,
and that's going to make themwhole and fulfilled, or they've
gotten the brass ring andrealize they're empty.
Either way, you're chasingfulfillment in emptiness and you

(09:58):
can't change fulfillment.
And emptiness, right, you haveto chase alignment.
So.
And emptiness, right, you haveto chase alignment.
So there's really five realmain reasons that entrepreneurs
fail, and what are those?
Arrogance, ignorance,impatience, fear and insecurity.
Wow, so what's?

Speaker 1 (10:16):
interesting is.
What's interesting about thatreal quick is that they think
that the failures is because isoutside of them, and it's
actually inside of them.
Oh, that was my lesson too,isn't?
That great, but that's crazythough, when you think about,
everybody thinks that the reasontheir business fails is
something that's outside of them.
It's the economy, it's themarketing.
Yeah it's the largest person,yeah, I did that, so it and it,

(10:39):
and what happens is it's really,it's here, everything stems
from here well, think about Allright.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
So we'll just take one example of my journey.
One example was in around the2017 timeframe.
I had a suspected embezzlement.
I'll just call it that, becauseof legal stuff.
Suspected.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Right right.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
Alleged yeah, alleged $1.7 million is not in my
account.
Let's put it that way.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
It's a lot of alleging, a lot of alleging.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
Well, I pray for them in Jesus name.
Um, in the grand scheme ofthings, no, but that goes down
to ignorance.
Like I wasn't paying attention.
Wow, right, I, I overtrusted, Iover delegated, I didn't
inspect what I expected and, asa result, I basically walked

(11:26):
away from my leadership.
So I wasn't leading, I wasn'tholding myself or them
accountable.
Right, and human nature ishuman nature Unless there's a
structure in place to holdresponsibility and
accountability in differentareas at the same time.
Not so good things are going tohappen.
Yeah, so I don't blame Iactually don't blame them at all
.
Yeah, it's, it's part of it.
Yeah, I, you look at yourself.
Yeah, I, I mean, I didn't atfirst, of course, I'm just being

(11:48):
full of transparency, but youknow, I, I went, I had to go
back and really look at you know.
So I looked at these majorevents and then I started
looking at these entrepreneursand it's all the same thing.
It's crazy, right?
So you're arrogant.
You think, hey, no matter whathappens, we're going to figure
it out.
Yeah, right, okay, well, what'syour plan?
We're just going to figure itout.
Well, how about taking a fewmoments, sitting down and

(12:12):
figuring something out?
Yeah, like, come up with a plan.
Yeah Well, no one knows me likeI know myself.
I'm like dude.
Everybody knows you better thanyou know yourself.
Yeah, cause you're judgingyourself by your intentions.
They're judging you by youractions, exactly Right.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
Well, your reputation is different than your
character, exactly Until youreach integration Right, then it
becomes your reputation, andthen you're then you become
whole, it becomes aligned.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
Yeah that's right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
We're coming back to the same words this, this is
good man, but it's real.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
So I say that to say that, all right.
So if I meet a six-figureentrepreneur, it doesn't matter
what industry they're in.
They want to know how do Ibecome a seven-figure
entrepreneur?
Yeah, seven-figure entrepreneursays well, I want to know how
to become an eight-figureentrepreneur.
Eight-figure entrepreneur says,I want to know how to become a
nine-figure entrepreneur.
So entrepreneurs all share onething in common, actually, I

(13:06):
would say achievers, people whowant to obtain something.
It doesn't even have to bemoney.
Nine times out of ten theycan't even articulate what it is
, it could be running a marathonor achieving something.
It's this essence of, and thisgoes back to impatience of well,
I should be further along thanI am right now.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
So true.
I saw that in some of the stuff.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
I see it over and over and over again.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
I do that to myself.
Yeah, with the podcast.
I think about it all the time.
What are we not doing to get tothe next step?

Speaker 3 (13:33):
So what is the next step?

Speaker 1 (13:34):
Let's workshop it.
Well, that's what we're workingon, and that's stuff that we do
now is we sit down and go?
Okay, what to the next level?

Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah, all right.
So let's say, you get to nextlevel B.
Yeah, you're going to be likeNow what we got to B.
Let's go to A Right.
Do we ever celebrate?
You know it's really funny.
This is going to blow your mind.
I just had this conversation.
Yeah, no-transcript, awesomeshe really is so one of the

(14:15):
things, one of the first thingsthat she asked me and we started
dating um, because you know, wewere both pursuing our own
individual other grain alignmentand whole.
So we came together.
It was like conversations wereeasy, the whole deal, but she
goes, she goes.
I just I'm curious.
I'm like, okay, well, she'svery curious by nature, so she's
.
We were always asking questions.
Yeah, she was when you soldyour company.

(14:37):
How did you celebrate?
And I was like, uh, isn't thatfine.
I tried to take three weeks offand then I got tried.
Listen to that Tried.
Well, ironically, like it'sfunny, I was already in my mind
I was already building the nextthing.
That's exactly right, right.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
See, I think, as an entrepreneur, the celebration
for us is actually while it'shappening.
It's not a peak, it's not aplace that we go to.
It's not a peak, it's not aplace that we go to.
It's, it's.
It's the journey, is thecelebration, but it's insatiable
.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
So what I'm trying to do?
She made up a good point,that's a good point.
Oh, that was a great point, andyou know what it caused me to.
I'll give you another onethat's just like this again,
those same, those same five.
I call them constraints, yep,right, and think of constraints
like someone's suffocating you,right, yeah.
So the more at play thosethings are, the more you're
getting suffocated, which is whyyour soul feels like it's
getting suffocated, likesomething strangling your soul,

(15:32):
right, yeah?
Which is why so many peoplehave a hard time putting into
words, because it's hard to say,well, my soul is getting
strangled, yeah, that is awhat's a different one.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yeah, yeah, I like that, though I might use it.

Speaker 3 (15:41):
Hey, you're welcome to you, know, but if you think
about it, like my son, uh, myoldest son, tyler, who uh was by
marriage, I I've had thefortunate pleasure of of helping
raise two boys that werebiologically mine, and you know
the the moment in time came fora divorce.
Um, where we were, they wereboth graduated from high school.
One was, I think, in Charlotte.
Ironically, my middle son justhad his first child, so the last

(16:04):
week, week before last um,which is why I'm in charlotte
now.
I'm like norman, um, but, uh,tyler the oldest, he said hey
because we had to do it on azoom call, because he was at
campbell, they were anyways.
Long story short is we had thezoom call, he's on the zoom call
.
I said hey, before, uh, before,before you go anywhere, can,
can you come have dinner with metonight, okay?

(16:24):
So I said, of course, anythingfor you kid Like you know, we
just dropped the bomb.
It's not the bomb that Iexpected to drop.
It looks like this is wherewe're heading, Okay fine.
So I go to sit down with him ina little Mexican restaurant
outside of Campbell La Casita, Ithink they call it.
Oh, sounds good.
Yeah, it's great food actuallyNachos, Homemade guacamole.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
Now he's thinking about tacos, right, tacos and
burritos.
And we are sponsored by Moe's.
No, just kidding.
Welcome to Moe's, welcome toMoe's, welcome to Moe's.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
The show took a turn.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
So we're sitting there and he says two things,
one of which I'll share and oneof which I won't, because it's
it ends up being a dig, and Idon't.
I'm not digging digging atpeople anymore.
He says uh, if there's onething you could do to be a
better husband and father, justone thing.
He said you were so good at somany ways.
He said just one thing.
I'm like, so I lean in, likeI'm like I actually want to hear

(17:22):
this, because normally I wouldhave been more stuck, I wouldn't
want to hear it.
Right, and this is going out toevery single parent listening
yeah, pay close attention.
He says if you could learn tobe more present when you're
present, that would mean theworld to us.
Oh, I keep in mind these, these,these children had traveled.
Yeah, uh, we were very blessedto have some nice things and do

(17:44):
nice things and not really haveto struggle a lot yeah, you know
, financially I mean, we didweather, we weathered pandemic
and some other things like thatthat were tense, but nothing,
yeah nothing, that squashed oursouls.
And and you think, as a provider, right.
So, father and mother and thisis mothers too, especially
single parents that if you cangive your child a better life,

(18:07):
they'll know how much you lovethem.
That's not true.
No, if you give your child yourattention, they will know how
much you love them.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
Yeah, I'm guilty, as can be.
My kids and my wife arelistening to this right now, I
know it, and they are saying oh,I hope you're listening.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
Well, look it's, it's , we're all achievers
specifically Right, and I and Iuse the word achievers because,
you know, entrepreneurs havethis mindset of create something
out of thin air, like they're,they're very they, that's kind
of their creative yeah,achievers may be a great number
two and number three, a C-suiteprofessional, but they're still
working a lot.
They're still probably notpaying attention to everything

(18:44):
that really matters in theirlife and, as someone who has
been very fortunate exited acompany, did did well enough
that I can do some fun stuff inlife and like kind of pursue
this now and try to help people.
It was interesting to me because, like that was one of my most
unhappiest.
Yeah, I had all the stuff.
All the things could travel,could do whatever, and I wasn't

(19:06):
happy yeah.
I was in a big ass house bymyself, overlooking the
mountains.
Yeah, right, and something wasmissing.
Yeah, something was missing,and what was missing was
alignment Right, alignment, al,something was missing and what
was missing was alignment right,alignment.
Alignment will bring connection, misalignment will resist
connection.
So for those of us who outthere who, like her, are on our

(19:28):
85, 85th relationship and wethink it's the other person, and
we're just dating the sameperson in the same denominator,
in the same skin?
yeah, it's, you know I I foundmyself dating the same type of
person over and over and overand over again, which is a me
problem, not a then problem.
Yeah, I was misaligned, sotherefore I was calling, quote
unquote, calling in someone whoelse was misaligned.

(19:49):
Yeah, the same holds true inbusiness and profession.
Right, it's, it's attraction.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
It is a law of attraction there and that really
happens is, you know they?
They always say that if, if, ifyou're in line with yourself,
aligned with yourself and you'reauthentic, you will attract a
completely different person thanif you're not a thousand
percent.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
Yeah, cause you're going to attract somebody that's
not authentic, yeah, well, andyou're also going to have what's
called the counterfeit justbefore you have the breakthrough
.
So what's that?
Oh, it's, it's simple.
It's the temptation to fallback into the same pattern.
Yeah, you know, in my case itit.
You know, might've beensomebody super attractive and

(20:28):
look like we had alignment, andthen you figure out you don't
have alignment, and you know.
Then you're kind of like, well,what did?
it like so I missed this againfor like an 89th time.
Yeah Right, what the heck wasgoing on, right?
So it was like okay, well, youknow, one of the things that I
do upon any major life shiftupward or downward, or, if you
want to call it downward, Ithink everything's a lesson is I

(20:49):
do what's called a sabbatical.
So I recommend this for anybodyand everybody, especially if
you're walking around withanxiousness right now.
I invite you to disconnect fromthe world for the for the
longest amount you can humanlymake it right.
So it used to be a weekend,then it became a week, then it
became two weeks making menervous, and then I was in new

(21:09):
zealand for a month.
Oh, god last february oh god byyourself, yeah, by myself.
No agenda, wow, yeah, becauseyou can't get radical to learn
about yourself if you do thatthere's no getting away from it.
Yeah well, you can't getradical alignment until you have
radical clarity.
You can't get clarity with allthe noise Like, and noise comes
in many forms.

(21:29):
Noise comes when text messagesgo off, when emails fire off,
when a TV show program owns,when you want to play video
games, like.
All these different things aredistractions, and what we don't
realize as people and as humanbeings is that the distraction
itself is a telltale sign ofmisalignment.
You are trying to escapeyourself.
Yeah, most of us.

(21:49):
Uh, it was funny.
I had a.
I had.
It was on a podcast recentlyand, um, awesome dude, I was
interviewing him ironically andhe was saying that one of his
big epiphanies was when hisgirlfriend said can you go to
the toilet without your, withoutyour phone?

Speaker 1 (22:00):
oh, that's hard to do , though, dude have you tried
that I am.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
I am now because I got convicted so hard to do that
right, rather than scrolling,he's like, yeah, he's like most
of us can't be alone withourself long as the poop that's,
isn't that?

Speaker 1 (22:13):
crazy it's, but I always say, like, what the hell
did I do before?
Yeah, what do I do?
I do?
Well, there's because we don'thave newspapers.
We don't have a newspaperanymore.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
There's no magazine.
There's a basket of magazineson the bottom.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
We've replaced that.
Yeah, yeah, you know, but wecouldn't.
I'm bringing magazines back.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
You know what's really funny?
The big statue of the guy onhis chin like this.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Like you know where he it actually was.
I think it was.
We should make our own.
Yeah Right, but now that'sinteresting and everybody it's
funny.
Um, when you talk about that itis really hard.
Like you going into to dropyour car off to get work done, I
can't imagine not having myphone, seriously like in the
waiting room.
What do you do in a waitingroom If you don't have your
phone?

Speaker 3 (22:57):
it's really're so afraid to have like just me time
well, think about it this waymost of us are lost in either
the past or the future.
Yeah, it's so true, right sotrue I am working and have been
working on this number but ayear and a half, like
consistently I could.
My daily practices havedrastically changed, where I try
to be present in every momentyeah and I'm present with you

(23:18):
right now.
You know, I think you know it'sfunny, you and I were going to
try to have lunch beforehand.
I got to get this thing done.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
And I knew that, I knew how I knew, I kind of knew.
I said you don't worry about itif you can but, I, didn't want
to be rude and not ask yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:29):
You know what I mean.
You also have to realize thatyou would mention something I
actually trained entrepreneurson achievers on.
All the time when we do aprograms and stuff is like I
call it the brain dump,ironically, and you called it

(23:49):
the phone call but either wayyou're in your driveway you
don't go into your house untilyou let go of everything you got
, like I used to have a pen anda pad and now I have a chat and
I'll just talk to my chat orwhatever I'm like.
You know, this is all thethings that's in my head before
I go inside.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
Right, and once I've got it out now, it's there for
tomorrow.
I don't have to worry about it.
I don't have to wake up at 3 amand go, oh my God, I forgot to
do this.
Yeah Right, and everybody thatis listening and watching just
now has had that experience.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
We're talking about Matt Lachanko's.
We were talking about Hugo.
Remember the story with Mattwith his daughter.
We were talking about thatbefore, before you got here, and
, if you get a chance, listen tothe Matt Lachanko podcast too.
It was really, really good.
And he talks about coming inand we were saying one of the
things that I do and you'resaying you write it down.
Yeah, I, when I'm on the waythe house with the phone on my

(24:39):
ear, I just don't do that,because that is not the way I
want to come in the house.

Speaker 3 (24:45):
That's not presentness.

Speaker 1 (24:48):
Yeah, you know who would really be ticked off?
My dog.
He demands attention when Icome in the door and the phone
would be flying.
But yeah, so it's interestinghow we all have a ways to try to
be more present, and I thinkit's a work in progress.
I mean, none of us are perfectand you can sit there and say
all the we can all say all thesethings.
Everybody that we listen to andeverybody that we know says

(25:09):
this is what we're going topractice, and you're just
constantly practicing it.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
Yeah Well, let's talk about this for a second.
So this has been nowscientifically proven, peer
reviewed, the whole deal.
Human this has been nowscientifically proven,
peer-reviewed, the whole deal.
Human beings have an energeticfrequency.
Some say it's because of themagnetic field on the earth.
Obviously we have mostly water,like with the ocean water

(25:33):
rolling in time, rolling out,all this kind of stuff.
People of faith know it's mysoul.
My soul is living a consciousexperience in a human body, blah
, blah, blah.
Either way, we know that if youare dealing with overwhelm,
anxiousness, fear and avoidanceconsistently, you're operating
what's called a low vibration iswhat they call it.
All that means is that youremotional regulation is so far
out of whack that you don't havea moment of peace and you

(25:58):
cannot get perspectiveperspective like accurate
perspective without peace.
Conversely and they've shown,been able to show this that that
field radiates off your skin atthat level, about a quarter
inch off your skin, when you'reoperating in what's called a low
vibration.
Right, if you take the sametechnology and you are your
authentic self, you'reintegrated, you're aligned.

(26:18):
You, you know who you are.
You're not wearing masksanymore.
You know you don't take onother people's thoughts of you
as your actual identity.
Right, if you're working onyourself, you know you're
working on yourself.
They're used to you for thelast 10 years.
It's going to take them aminute to catch up, right?
Yeah, so if you go through thatprocess and you're and you

(26:45):
literally love yourself and thisis, I know that sounds, yeah,
it sounds woo-woo, but it's not.
I get it right.
You're not like you're.
I'm not talking about ego andarrogance.
I'm talking about I have apurpose.
Yeah, my life has value andit's intrinsic.
It's.
It's not something you have toearn or perform for, and
achievers and entrepreneurs andbusiness owners.
We're constantly taught thatwe're supposed to achieve and
perform to get our worth right.
If, if you're chasing yourworth, you're going to end up
automatically in the lowervibration fields, which is going
to get you in trouble.
However, conversely, if youbecome authentic, you become

(27:07):
aligned, you become grounded andregulated and consistent and
you maintain a level of peacethat does surpass all
understanding, which faith canplay a huge role in that and
basically does in my life Thenthat same magnetic field and
that's how they describe it as amagnetic field radiates off
your body upwards of a foot.
That's crazy, right?
So you may?

(27:28):
I'll ask you, and you can justbe honest when you met me, did
you feel a presence?

Speaker 1 (27:32):
Yeah, absolutely, it's almost everybody.
It's funny that you say that,because you do and a lot of the
guests do, but I don't get tosee every guest in person
sometimes it's through throughstreaming.

Speaker 3 (27:45):
I insist in a person I loved it.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
I loved it, loved it that you're here in person.
It's just.
It makes it so much better foreverybody the audience, for you,
for me, for hugo maybe not forhugo, who knows, I don't know.
He's like I'm not sure, butthere's other ones that have
come in here.
Sylvie DiGiusto yeah, Amazingpresence when she comes in.
She just I don't know what itis.
There's something, and that'sthe thing.
You can't put your finger on it.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
The presence is the field.
Yeah, so that presence eitherattracts or repels, right?
Okay.
So if you find yourself blaming, shaming, victimizing yourself
it's all their fault, it's notmy fault, I have no
responsibility, noaccountability, it's always
outside of me Then you're, bydefinition, operating at a lower

(28:33):
field, which means you're goingto repel the very opportunities
and the things that youactually want.
So, ironically, alignment leadsto income.
Alignment leads to qualityrelationship.
Alignment leads to income.
Alignment leads to qualityrelationship.
Alignment leads to health.
Like, my body is energeticallyhealthier than most males my age
, yes, because I'm operating ina different field.
Sure, right, so that field wassomething I discovered, not by

(28:54):
accident, not by intentionality,but by crushing my ego.
Has died at least 10 ego deathsin my lifetime to date.
I pray to God that I'm donewith the last one.
At least we haven't seen anydead egos yet while you're here,
just so you know we're good.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
But that's human, it's human, it's human.
I mean ego, but that's part ofthe human experience it is.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
So here's the thing about ego, and this is where
people like I know we're going,we're not, we're not going.
Woo, I promise I'll probably noI.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
I don't mind wherever this goes, it's fine with me,
this is good, this is all good,I promise we'll go, but we'll.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
I'll tie it all back to business and it doesn't have
to be you're good, you're goodbut your ego has one job, and I
learned this from a good friendof mine named henry amar, and
then then my energetic lifecoach, paul Willis, who's out of
California, in Palm Springs Ithink it is.
Is it Palm Springs?
Yeah, it's Palm something.
It's a desert.
One of the palms.
It's a desert, yeah, inCalifornia.
There's another palm in Florida.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
He's not in that one.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
That's humid there, it's a desert in the other place
, different humidity Totally.
And then when I did the soulsearching, I found it to be true
, which is ego is doing onething Its sole job is to keep
you safe, and it will lie to youto keep you safe, or it's the

(30:08):
perception of keeping you safe.
So, for example, let's say thatyou grew up in an environment
that was very chaotic, chaotic.
At some point in time yournervous system said you know
what that chaos?

Speaker 2 (30:25):
actually feels safe, and then lo and behold, you go
through your life.

Speaker 3 (30:29):
You go through a transition, call it a you know
breakup, a business failure orwhatever.
And the next phase of your life, you go through a time of what
I call dark night of the souldeath.
Whatever you want to call it,it's, it's, it's a rebirth of
sorts.
You're getting reborn in manyways.
When you go through thisexperience, you come out the
other side of that and yourealize that like and I had to

(30:51):
do this, like I had.
It was funny.
I was telling you about when Iwas, um, the dating my
girlfriend.
It took me a solid three weeksto, oh, wow, like calm being
like normal.
Wow, like cause her energy isso steady, she is so steady, she
is so steadfast.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
She's very consistent .
She's a party, was like what'swrong?

Speaker 3 (31:13):
This is.
This feels really bizarre.
We should be fighting, weshould.
We should be yelling at eachother.
How come we're not?

Speaker 1 (31:19):
Because you're you, you actually kick that actually
to you, your ego, saying that'ssafe Well think about it this
way.

Speaker 3 (31:26):
So we're leaning into relationships a little bit, but
how many people do you know orknow of stories of that will go
back to someone who deeply hurtthem or wounded them?

Speaker 1 (31:36):
or abused them.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
Oh, many times it's because, technically, if you
look at their track record oftheir life to date, you would go
back and you would see thatthat's what they've experienced.
And that is like so that whatmakes them, that's what makes
them feel comfortable, yeah,yeah.
So that's where your ego canlie to you Say well, you know
what, this is too easy, thisshouldn't be happening.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Oh, wow this is this?

Speaker 3 (31:59):
is this?
It's the bottom.
The bottom is about to fall out.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
Yeah out.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
Yeah, the shoes, all the shoes about to drop, you're
about to get about tsunami andand then you will go and create
chaos to feel safe again.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
That's pretty wild, that's interesting.
But that's how that's, that'sinteresting that's how the ego
works.

Speaker 3 (32:14):
So the reason I say that is because part of
integration is figuring out away to and I dealt with this, uh
, as someone who who forcedtheir way into quote, unquote
what the world would callsuccess.
Like I built my first businessby sheer will, yeah, and I did a
lot of things.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Did you do it out of survival?

Speaker 3 (32:32):
It was, in the beginning, survival and rescue
programs.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
So you were not, you were not, you were not.
You didn't set out to go.
I'm going to be.
Oh no, you had no idea you'd bedoing this.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
No.
And we got on the other side ofthe 2008 downturn and I
realized I built a runaway train.
I couldn't stop it, oh wow.
So I had one choice Up Eithergrow or die or stop.
And my ego said we're going togrow, we're going to grow,
that's right, because we need tobe safe.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
No, that's crazy.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
It's amazing, when you think about that, that you
started out more survival andthen it becomes survival changes
.
Then, yeah, what's funny, we'regoing to be launching a.
I'm hoping to do it later thisfall.
I shared with you before wejumped on the show that a desire
in my heart has been a propertycalled Safe Haven.
Yes yes, so about two years well, about a year and a half ago,
right before I went to NewZealand, but originally a year
now I went through anothersignificant change I didn't
expect.
Yeah, kind of um, I wentthrough another significant

(33:31):
change I didn't expect.
Yeah, kind of felt like it cameout of nowhere, went through in
a deep, deep, um, what they callsomatic work, somatic spiritual
stuff.
Yeah, you know, energy work,but in the grand scheme of
things, I had this, this wordcome up.
Safe haven was like I want to,I, I want to save haven, yeah,
and then I was like, okay, well,what are the different?
What are the differentexperiences that happen along
the way that that turned me intoa more whole person, that
allowed me to pursue alignment,that allowed me to get, you know
, like inner, fully integrated,those kind of stuff and this
property, um, you know, and whenI made the decision to move

(33:54):
back to north carolina, it waslike lakefront, okay, I'm, I
feel amazing around water.

Speaker 1 (33:59):
Yeah, it's so funny we are humans are attracted to
water.

Speaker 3 (34:02):
Yeah, because, right, because of what we're made of
what will really blow your mindis lake water has a different
frequency than ocean water andyou can measure it.
Get out of here.
It's ridiculous, but it's true.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
Well, that's interesting because I like lake
water better than ocean water.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
Yeah, so ocean water has higher ions than lake water
because lake water tends to be alittle more stagnant.
You can get some, but ocean isconstantly crashing.
Right right, right, right.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
So anyway, that's a whole other scientific episode.
My goodness, that's anotherpodcast.
We're just going to talk aboutwater.
It's going to be all.
That's all.
It's going to be.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
Oh, you should interview Tracy Dews man.
She can show you something, too.
You can talk to stuff thatactually works, yeah, but I
guess what I'm getting at isthis for any entrepreneur,
achiever, business owner thatdoubts what I'm saying.
Yeah Right, I'm going to inviteyou to do two things.
First of all, I want you to goto my website,

(34:54):
stephenscottkinscom backslashalignment, and I want you to
take a quiz.
It's called the integratedalignment quiz assessment.
It's like seven, seven or eightquestions.
It will break you down exactlywhere you are.
It'll tell you exactly what youneed to know.
There's there's nothing for youto buy Good.
It's just, it's just for you tokind of get self-awareness
because self-awareness is thestarting point, right, you can't

(35:14):
be sleepwalking through, wife,and expect your life to change,
right?
The second thing is if and notif, but when I haven't with us
the last quarter of this year,the first quarter of next year,
if you don't believe thatalignment can radically change
the game for you, then come asmy guest and just go through the
three and a half day processwith us.
I will teach you how to scaleyour company.

(35:35):
Yeah, that's cool.
I can teach you the systems andprocesses and strategies.
But here's the thing You're theperson that has to operate it.
So to you change that doesn'tchange.
So what's the difference?
Going from six figures to sevenfigure?
you person seven figures, eightfigures you.
Eight figures to nine figuresyou.
Which means I'm trying tofigure out how to change it to
10.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
I'm just kidding yeah , right, no, but that's.
That's funny, because if youtalk about the 10xing stuff, you
know um what's the book.
Let's talk about 10xing, Iforgot yeah it's a great.
It's a good one.
I knew grant, yeah, but so whenyou talk about the 10 X thing,
you know a lot of it has to dowith that that you're not going
to who you are now at the sixfigures or seven figures is not
who you need to be in order tobe the eight figures, or

(36:15):
whatever.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Right.
So then that's a step one.
There's a step two, and this isstatistically proven as well.
Um, cause, obviously I've donea lot of research and a lot of
growing to kind of do this.
Your team, okay, let's sayyou're a, you start your
business year one, right, andyou're one through five, you,
you become one of the rareunicorns.
You make half a million dollars, top on revenue, six, 700,000.

(36:36):
You're well on your way, right,you've got a business that's
working.
You're probably still anoverwhelmed.
You're probably still burnedout on a regular basis.
Ask me how I know?
Yeah, right, right, right,right.
So.
But when you go through thatprocess, you inherently think
the team that you have from yearone to five to that first
million call it that firstmillion dollars, we'll use
million dollar markers You'llkeep about 90% of your team from

(37:00):
one to 10 million.
You'll lose about another 25%.
From 10 million to 50 million.
You'll lose another 30%.
From 50 million to 75, you'lllose another 20%.
Lo and behold, when you get toa company and you've scaled it
to a hundred million plus orjust shy of that, you'll have
changed out literally all but 2%of your team.
Yeah, if you're lucky, Right.
So the same reason thatprevents you from growing your

(37:23):
business also prevents your teamfrom growing themselves to grow
your business, cause they comeat some point in time that
either the team itself won'tgrow with the business and they
fall away, or you have to firethem, and it doesn't make them
bad people.
They were great from one to $10million but, dude, you got over
$10 million and you're like, ohmy God, I'm just, I need your
skill sets change yeah,absolutely so.

(37:44):
I need your skill sets changeyeah, absolutely so.
If you got those two piecesthat are true, like you have to
change to scale your company,you have to be aware that your
people have to change to scaleyour company, you're going to
discover what I discoveredaround my business even though
it was a siding company, that wescaled to just under nine
figures that one company.
One of the things that wediscovered was we were never a
siding company.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
Isn't that funny.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
We were a personal development company masquerading
as a siding company.
That sounds familiar.
It's called Keller Williams.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
Yeah, and also Newcastle lawn and landscaping.
He does all their, their othermarket like marketing video.
I'd say the first place.
I found it and we'll see, butyeah, keller Williams is
definitely.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
Newcastle is.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
Is is with this as well, but I first heard that
from dave ramsey dave ramseyyeah, absolutely yeah, and it's
funny that is that that is moreof what we're hearing today.
It's, it's you're in the people, you're people in uh,
development business, because ifyou're not developing them,
then you can't grow.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Yeah, every business has three types of people yeah,
right, you got your team, yougot your clients, you got your
community.
Yeah, and if your business isnot performing at high levels in
all three of them, you can'tscale a company.
In fact, this fell out, it wason the radio show, probably
three weeks ago, and one of theshows that we were on.
It's like what's preventing theentrepreneurs from scaling

(38:57):
their businesses?
I'm like it's easy, becauseI've tried this, by the way,
many times you can't scaledysfunction.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
Right, oh, that's so true, you can't scale a
dysfunctional you.

Speaker 3 (39:08):
You can't scale a dysfunctional team.
You can't even just scale adysfunctional client base.
Some of the best decisions Imade were firing my clients,
absolutely.
Yep, they were always the onethat, always the ones that paid
the least.
They needed the, the, the mostbabysitting.
Meanwhile you've got otherpeople that are paying you a
whole lot more.
They actually value your input,actually their, their business
operations merge with yourreferrals.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
Yeah, it's yeah it's, just it's it's.
Yeah, absolutely it's good tofire customers every once in a
while.
Yeah, now, just you know, don'tget crazy out there about that,
but no, but it's good, it'sgood to you, you should, you
should do.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
I'm a big believer in doing 360 surveys to a degree
like like, like.
Survey your team.
Yeah, who's our most different?
Who's our most difficultcustomer?

Speaker 1 (39:50):
That's a good.
That's a good one, because ifthey're also not treating your
team right, then that thataffects the team.

Speaker 3 (39:53):
Well, and see, and that's the other thing is your.
If you won't stand up for yourteam, why should they stand up
for you?
Yeah, so, true, so, true, yeahso.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
I want to make sure we cover everything.
What else?

Speaker 3 (40:04):
I'm here all day.
This has been great.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
I'm here.
This has been great.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
Just let you know this is going to be a longer one
than normal, just because it'sjust the way it is.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
This is good stuff and we're rolling here this one
just hit me.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
You had a popular keynote.
Was called one part line, onepart yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:28):
What can you?
Can you tell it?
It hit me.
I'm like what is this?
I don't want to give the allthis.
No, I know, Cause you haveother stuff that you want to do
with that.
Yeah Well, we've got a lot ofreally cool things happening.
That's actually under um.
We're almost done withtrademarking everything, but
there's a whole.
We're caught where I'm buildingsomething called the LLS
entrepreneur system.
It's an operating system whichis the integrated entrepreneur
meets business strategy andtactical implication.
That framework is basicallydone.
Um.
I'm going to launch it with ourunstoppable entrepreneur
community, probably next month,month after, and then we're

(40:50):
going to track them for the next18 months to to show that this
works.
Oh, that's awesome, becauseI've helped, I think.
Results 18 entrepreneurs breakto the million dollar ceiling.
They were stuck at half amillion for that's great five or
six years and we work togetherfor nine months and we get them
over the ceiling.
What?

Speaker 1 (41:05):
business when you talk about that, what?
What business do you find is um?

Speaker 3 (41:10):
there's only one business that my, my stuff
doesn't work on, and that's thethe technically, the technology
business, because I don't, Idon't those businesses deal with
raising debt?
Yeah, and all that and I'm andI invest in businesses from time
to time now, but you, butthat's not my skill set.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
No, you're looking to make profitable.

Speaker 3 (41:29):
My skill set is taking a hardworking,
hard-charging, impact-drivenentrepreneur and giving them the
tools and the assets they needto win.
And when I say win, winning tome for entrepreneurs that we
work with is they have betterfamilies, they have strong
cultures and they're profitcenters that drive community
impact.
Yeah, that's it.
Yeah, that's why, when you saidto Keller Williams and let's do

(41:51):
this and you mentioned thatyou've been one of their top
affiliates for a while orfranchises.
I'm like yes.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yeah, we're doing very well here locally, but it's
because of the culture and it'sbecause of how they care about
people, it's it's, um, it's been, but it's because of the
culture and it's because of howthey care about people.

Speaker 3 (42:08):
It were yes, it does work, so back to yeah, let's go
back to lions and lambs, yeah,lines and all right.
So let's, let's think aboutsome of the characteristics of a
lion, and I'm gonna, I'm gonnakeep it 30 000 foot for you,
because it would take a while todig deep.
But, uh, lions are typicallybold.
I mean, they have zero problemtrying to take down an elephant,
right, okay, tiny lion, yep,taking down an elephant.
Ironically, it's normally thefemale line going after the
hunting for the word.

(42:29):
Of course, they are normallycourageous.
They protect their cubs, likeit's going on, they doesn't
matter what's coming at theircubs, or protect their cubs, um,
they will sit in presence inbetween hunts.
So true, so they'll be stillnever thought of that before.
And they, they're proud.
Yeah, yeah, um, they carrythemselves with presence.
Yeah, so you can be near a lineIf you move into the zoom zoo

(42:52):
and you were like you get, youknow, within three feet of a
line and you'll hopefully notfeel fear Cause being giant
glass wall in front of you.
But you know, but if, if, if,presence to pretty much
everything living, but, yeah,they're.
The presence is one ofstability and strength.
Yes, okay, they're very strongfor their size.
Okay, conversely, a lamb is notknown necessarily for being

(43:15):
very bold and courageous, butit's known for being peaceful,
loving and compassionate, likeit's next to it next to its
thing so like.
So does sheep does sheep?

Speaker 1 (43:25):
yeah, I just, I just sheathed it, I just so it's
water.
Does sheep?
Yeah, I just I just sheaped it,I just so it's water and sheep.

Speaker 3 (43:28):
Next, I just sheaped all over the place but, um, dad,
joke, I'm got full of them.
I'm now a granddad, believe itor not.
So no, but if you take the two,if you take these basic,
characteristic, characteristictraits when you think about
authentic leadership, yeah, okay, and you start thinking about
the leaders that you want tofollow, almost in every case,

(43:50):
they're bold, they're courageous, they're humble and, if you're
honest with yourself, they carrythemselves with presence that's
compassionate and loving andpeaceful, like my.
I'll tell you how I discoveredthis.
This whole premise came out ofmy grandfather, who passed away
in 2016.
He was my spiritual mentor,living my entire life.
I spent, I think, five years asa very convicted, faith-based

(44:13):
atheist.
Oh, you did.
Oh, yeah, wow, I hated some God.
Well, you might remember, mychildhood was a little whack.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:23):
Unfortunately, everybody that was involved in
my childhood is now great peopleand yeah, they've been through
reinventions and stuff.
But yeah, um, this was, uh,maybe four years before I was
about to sell the company.
I'd realized that I was runningon fumes, meaning the company
could absolutely break 150million.
200 million can get therebecause we have.
We have the systems andprocesses in place.

(44:44):
We just need the team and therefinement, whatever.
But I'd ask myself, do I reallywant to do it?
Yeah, right, because I've.
I'd work my entire life andthis is the framework I used to
use.
I don't use it now.
But to fight uphill my entirelife, right, like, literally
fight uphill.
Give me.
And I started the company with anail and a hammer yeah, right,
and wood from a trash pile andbuilt it step by step, actually

(45:06):
lumber by lumbers, or ratherthan brick by brick.
But I was, I was confiding inhim.
And yet at that time and thisis before all the embezzlement
stuff happened I found myselfgetting more notable publicly on
social media.
At the time, algorithmsdrastically changed and I, I've,
I've drastically changed.

(45:26):
So I started getting requeststo speak more, more.
I'd stumbled my way intospeaking by accident and found
out that I that I did, I wasn'tafraid, like a lot of folks I
got, I got excited, yeah, youknow.
So I started something.
So I had these, these other uhelements of of steven that were
evolving and changing, andreally wanted to pour into
people and really wanted to helppeople and and knew I had

(45:48):
insights and knew that mystruggle was could.
Could my struggle could havemore meaning if I could use it
to help more people, right?
So all that's happening in thebackground, meanwhile the
business is still doing, isstill doing pretty well overall.
I'm still growing all that kindof stuff.
So we had, you know, I kind ofhad like the best best of both
worlds, but I was going throughyet another bit of an identity
shift.
So I go to my grandfather, I'msitting down with him, granddad,

(46:12):
his nickname his nickname wassilver fox.
Ironically, he was really goodwith ladies I was gonna say he
sounds like leo with white hair.
Yeah, sean, calgary.
Oh yeah, sean, hello, granddad.
Um, so, anyway, so we're doingthe uh, you know, so we're,
we're chatting, and I was like,hey, I'm just this is what I'm
working on.
He goes son, can I be honestwith you?

(46:35):
I said, yeah, of course you can.
He says, uh, I actually thinkyou can do really well speaking.
I've watched you speak.
I see tears on people when youspeak.
I I've watched you speak.
I see tears on people's whenyou speak.
I see smiles and you speak.
I see lines that come up to thelines of people that come up to
you to talk to you.
After you speak, he says, sothere's something there.

(46:55):
He goes, but there's also thisother business guy and he goes.
If you think about it, you couldbecome pretty impactful in a
lot of different ways.
What do you want to do?
What lights you up?
Not not.
What do you feel like you needto do?
Yeah, right, like what lightsyou up?
And I was like man, I just Ilike seeing these awakening

(47:17):
moments and people like they'renever the same afterwards.
And you know my I've.
I've benefited from live eventsand speakers Same here and, and
especially now, I'm indifferent circles of folks now
that are in the thoughtleadership world and you know,
there's some things that reallytouched my heart in a beautiful
way and other things that reallychallenged my heart in a few
ways, but in the grand scheme ofthings, he was like all right,

(47:37):
he goes.
Well, I'm going to give you themost honest you ever want to be
successful as a leader, as aspeaker, as an author, as a
business owner pretty much anyarea of your life then you need
to start reshaping some ofyourself.
You're gonna have to become onepart lion and one part lamb.
Oh, wow, and I was like itstunned me.
I started crying, yeah, and Iwas like cause I felt the weight

(48:00):
of it.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:01):
Right, and that weight was unique.
It was different.
It's a mantle.
In fact, I began using the wordmantle right.
It was something that when Ipromoted one of my COOs, it
ended up becoming one of theequity partners in the company I
sold and I actually did thisexperience with him.
Kind of loosely off of this, wehad the entire team come in the

(48:23):
room.
At the time we were probably 60team members.
I guess that could get get tothe building because we do a lot
of stuff in, zoom and out ofmarkets and broadcasting.
And when he comes up to me Isaid, okay, well, we're gonna,
we're gonna plan this event.
I'm gonna acknowledge the factI'm promoting you to this level,
but I'm gonna do it my way.
He had no idea what that wasgonna be.
So I went out to dick sportinggoods and this is not I'm not

(48:45):
being paid by dicks, by the way,I'm not sponsored by dicks, um,
but uh, no.
So he, we, we go to, I go todicks, I buy a weighted vest.
All right, I come back to thebuilding.
We have the we call it a fridaymorning production meeting,
which is like our, like ourweighted vest, a weighted vest.
I grab, I take all the weightsout of the vest.
I lay all the way.
I lay one weight on each seat.

(49:06):
Yeah Right, and then I was my.
My facility is the place we didEd's event and stuff like that.
Even to this day there's theystill.
Uh, the company I sold stilloccupies part of the building.
Um, so we, you know, we had abit of a small auditorium.
It was like seats like 380people and that's that kind of
stuff.
And uh, so we, you know teamssitting on the front row and
they're like.

(49:27):
And then I proceeded to get onstage with, you know, with this,
uh, with this leader.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:33):
And I wanted him to understand the weight that I
carried every day.
Oh, wow, Right, Um, when COVID,not when COVID happened when,
uh, 2008 downturn happened, Iwent two months without pay.
Yeah, I paid my team.
I tried to keep the lights on,I tried to just lean in and and
um, when I made decisions likeimportant ones, sometimes I
would not talk to anybody aboutit.

(49:54):
I would spend weeks ponderingwhat the right decision might be
.
Right, I now know to givemyself a little bit more, less
lead time to do that.
Like, sure, Give yourself aweek to get all your due
diligence in place.
But any who, uh, we're, we'resitting there and I'm, I'm just
saying, hey, look, you know,this is what leadership is.
This is what it means to me.
This is my grandfather wouldcall this the mantle, all this
kind of stuff.
And, um, I said, are you sureyou want this?

(50:16):
And he looked at me.
I said okay.
So I said, okay, we'll sitaround here for a second.
We're both on stage.
And I said, okay, guys, youguys are probably wondering what
that weight is in your seat.
And he's like yeah, I was likewell, that weight represents

(50:37):
every one of your families.
Oh, wow, Every one of yourfamilies.
So for those of you who aremarried and have kids, for those
of you who are engaged, don'thave kids.
For those of you who aremarried and have kids, for those
of you who are engaged, don'thave kids.
For those of you who havegrandkids, like it's yeah, and
you know, I I said when you comeup to him, you have the choice
of choosing to put the weight onhim or Walker, Cause he had, I

(50:58):
hadn't put on the weight thebest the best right.
Towards the end and, sure enough, like you know, I was like and
it's up to you guys.
So, unfortunately, all the teammembers went to him, which is
good, um that could have gonewrong.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
I could have gone way wrong, but hey, you're bad I
went with, I trusted my instinct, yeah and um.

Speaker 3 (51:17):
So it was really funny.
So everybody, I said, if you,if you believe this, I want you
to grab your weight, I want youto come up to him and, just
before you put the weight in thevest, I just, you know, tell me
if you're, if you really meanit, I trust you with my life and
my family.
Wow, that's cool, right?
So, lo and behold, it takes 15minutes, believe it or not.
We had some team members thatwere tearing up.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
He teared up a couple times I teared up like it was a
school.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
It's a meaningful thing because at the end I
remember that, the very end thiswas kind of like the joke part
or the not joke part of it, butlike the relief he's wearing all
the weights.
Yeah, he gets up off the chair.
He has a hard time getting offthe chair.
He was, holy crap, this thingweighs a lot.
I said exactly.
So I say that felt it.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Yeah, exactly, Well, it's it's.

Speaker 3 (52:00):
It's easy to talk about leadership, it's easy to
talk about weight, it's easy toit's easy to talk about these
things, but when you put it intothat, but when you put it into
actual perspective, that youknow we at the time, I think at
the height, we had like 416people working for CHE, which is
the acronym for the longer nameof the company, and by that
time we had come, we'd be called, we became the CHE companies,

(52:21):
because I had four companiesthat I rolled up into one and
that became the CH commercialdivision, renovation division,
residential, and then a millworkthing that we were trying to
launch correctly.
We get all the way to the endof it and whatever.
And I think everybody felt theweight.
Yeah, so contrast that twoyears, almost three, four years
go by and I'm now decidingwhether or not I want to sell my
company.

(52:41):
Yeah, and I was getting courtedby private equity, I got courted
by family office and either themoney was great and the people
were terrible, or the peoplewere great and the money was
terrible and I was like this isnot what I'm going to do.
It wasn't aligned with my soul.
Again, alignment, I wanted tomake sure that whatever I had
built stood a really good chanceof actually being a true legacy
.
Yeah sure, um, and I say that tosay that that same gentleman

(53:05):
was at the table, yeah, and eventhough he had worn the weight
of the roles that he had, I toldyou.
I said, once you make thisdecision, everything changes,
because now you're going fromteam member to owner or part
owner, and it was funny, it wasprobably three months after the
exit.
I see the guys for the firsttime in a quarterly board
meeting because I'm the boardchair and still, yeah, so you're

(53:26):
still involved.
Yeah, I still own 20% of thecompany.
Oh, cool, um, cause I believein them.
Yeah, absolutely, I believethey can execute.
But when I, when I saw him anda couple of the other guys, yeah
, I remember, uh, he and one ofthe other guys says he goes, I
had no idea.
So I want to say that toleaders.

Speaker 1 (53:43):
It's funny how nobody does.

Speaker 3 (53:44):
Yeah, so stop expecting your team to
understand.
They're never going tounderstand until they're in that
position.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
So a servant leader is not going to expect them to
understand you.
You're going to learn tounderstand them, yeah, and then
you strategically align themlike dominoes to serve the best
interest of the business and thecommunity, and your benefit of
that is a byproduct of doingthat.
Well, yeah, exactly, alignment.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
Yeah, there it is Back to alignment.
My gosh, it all comes back toalignment.
So you are working on otherthings.
You're working on maybe someother books coming out in the
future, so we're going to stayin touch with that whole thing,
absolutely.
We're also going to stay intouch with everything, actually,
because we covered so muchmaterial.
How much of it was stuff youhighlighted?

(54:35):
None, none, but that's okay.
It's okay.
He's now the record for thelongest podcast we've had.
Let's go so, which I am veryhappy about because it's great
material, it's great information.
I don't know if there's anybodythat can listen to this and say
they can't get something out ofit, uh, but you're very
authentic.
You seem very aligned.
Thank you, and I wish you thevery best in all the things that
you're doing and we'll stay intouch.

Speaker 3 (54:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
I get to see you sing .
Yeah, you do get to see me sing, that's right.
Hopefully he likes it.
What if he doesn't?
What if he's like oh, um,unstoppable is what he is.
And your um, build is thepodcast.
Right, he's got a podcastcalled build and, uh, you want

(55:13):
to check that out too.
It's really good.
He's got all kinds of goodpeople in there.
But, uh, you're gonna, you'regonna love it.
So that's about it.
See us every thursday at 7 pm.
That's about it.
All, right, see you.