Purpose Knocks and the Grateful Recovering Alcoholic Answers

There are some people that make their work just another thing they have to do, and there are those that make their work something that they want to do. Welcome to Working on Purpose with your host Elise Cortez. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration from those people who have found deeper meaning and personal connection to their work life. It's beyond nine to five. It's working on Purpose. Now Here is your host, Elise Cortez. Welcome back to the Working on Purpose Show. Thanks for tuning in again this week. I'm your host, Elise Cortez. John you live from Dallas, Texas, which is home based for me. If you've been tuning in for a while, you know this program is all about helping people create more meaningful and purposeful lives and equipping leaders insight organizations to cultivate meaning and purpose that elicits passion inspired contribution, innovation, and persevering performance. I talk with my guest to draw on their expertise and share my own experience consulting speaking into developing workforces across the globe. Every week. In these conversations, I hope you walk away with something you can immediately put to use, and if you do, catch fire, with anything that happens along the way, tell me about it. I want to hear reach out by via my website at a least cortes dot com and message me or send men email to alease at least cortez dot com and tell me how I might be able to help you. Whether you want to join the distribution list to stay informed of these radio show topics. You want to see about joining a cash fire online inspiration, accountability or mastermind community to nurture your own purpose or bring it out into the world. You want to look into the purpose driven leadership program for yourself or team, which are offered on site or via webcast. You're interested in the Women on Purpose Thought Leadership Summit we're hosting in Portland, Oregon in September of night twenty nineteen, or you want me to speak for your company or conference at any rate. I'm glad we're connected. Thanks for listening. Now onto this week's program with us today is Scott Wilson, who who has a long career as a business management consultan since nineteen ninety eight, and today he's navigating a fresh path to purpose, rising from confronting his own personal challenge through his journey to become a grateful recovered alcoholic through founding authentic success at business performance consultancy that helps organizations embrace the uncomfortable, the gratitude and grace to achieve authentic success. We'll be talking about what led him to his path to purpose, a bit about just what this surprising path has entailed and how he is standing in his purpose today to create a wholly different professional and personal life for himself. You'll learn the certificates of just where it is that we're doing this radio show. That's the Cupell Police Station. As the conversation unfolds, we're also broadcasting live on Facebook Live. You can interact with us there. Scott, Welcome to working on Purpose. Thank You'm glad to be here. It's awesome. This is so let's start if we can. We've got a lovely crowd of people here. Hi, Brandy, is great to have you. Love the crowd of people here joining us on Facebook as well, and so if you can just start by sharing with us the way that you're now these days normally introducing yourself. Sure, when I speak publicly, usually start with I'm on name Scott, and I'm a grateful recovery alcoholic, and part of that goes back to the story and the journey that I've been on. As you mentioned, I was very involved in management consulting. I worked for one of the top consulting firms in the world at the time going back into twenty fifteen, and had struggled with an increasing dependence upon alcohol over the last ten years of my career that led up to At the time, I was traveling all over the world, working with a couple of the largest companies in the world, but working in places like Singapore and Australia and London and down in Argentina and on the road a lot, flying two hundred three hundred thousand miles a year, and with that one a certain lifestyle that certainly didn't cause my issue, but it certainly helped escalate it. From the standpoint of I had my own internal challenges that I was struggling with with identity and anxiety and depression and looking to and fears and just looking to kind of bury those under the alcohol In twenty fifteen. November twenty thirty fifteen, I was pulled over by the Capel Police Department in front of the Ace Hardware here in town and the officer Bryce Lee would come up to the car and ask me if I know why he pulled me over, and my answer was, I can't do this anymore. I give up. And he did not know what that comment meant, but it was the culmination of a long struggle with it. I knew that I could not do this anymore, and I was at a place that I was actually killing myself. And what we would later find out is that my blood alcohol was at a point four, which for people that don't know, yes, presence out for us that can kill you and normal, the normal, what would actually get you pulled over and sent to jail is what would amounts point eight. So Ladies and John on the difference point four for him as opposed to point o eight, which is what would normally sent you into jail. And that was that The ability to drink at that level came over years. It's called conditioning or training. Not in a good way, but but it was at that point that a journey began where I had some experiences throughout the next couple of days that as I just had pulled out out of my wallet while I was sitting down to the Dallas County jail, a card that somebody had given me about six years before, which was I first knew what my problem was. But I thought, because I was smart and successful, I'll figure this out on my own. I got this yet, h Yeah, I got this, and obviously I didn't. And I just pulled it out and it had twelve steps and straty prayer on it, and I really read it for the first time and just kind of under my breath said, you know, God, I don't know how to live, but I don't want to die. I need help. And a series of events happened over the next twenty four hours of men in the Dallas County jail that would come up and share their story out of the blue, not knowing what I had prayed or why I was there. That that started me on this path to recovery. And I, with that thanksgiving, fess up to my family about the struggle I was in, and then I would lead to treatment and spend a month to treatment and spent a good nine months heavily focused on my recovery journey. So a couple of things I want to share with the audience here and again I see some new friends. Hello, Kevin Fisher, Alan Porter, great to have you with us. Thanks for joining us. So you were pulled over once before and got yourself out of that with an attorney and then got pulled over again. Yes, I had just come off probation from my first official DWI the week before I was arrested by Bryce. And because I had, I looked good and had, you know, from a professional standpoint, had a career and not a lot of run ins with the law that they sent me on my way and with a slap on the wrist and don't do it again and go to a meetings. And I would do that, and well I would pretend to do that. I didn't really go to meetings, and I didn't certainly focus on what I should have been. I literally filled the form out and faxed it in at the end of the month, thinking I'll figure this out still and that things really progressed and escalated to just daily drinking. And there was probably not an hour of the day in that last year year and a half or the majority of the year that I was not probably over the legal limit at some point for most of the day. Wow, not at the level that I was arrested at, But well, I think it's really important for our listeners to really understand the depth of what must have been happening to drive you to a place where you're literally drinking almost every hour every day. Well, and what I found out through the journey in counseling and when I was down at the treatment center down at Curvelle the Hacienda, was that I was actually practicing a form of passive suicide, which began to resonate as I came out of the fog of the alcoholism. You know that I know every day I had hoped that I would just plow into a telephone pole and kill myself and that would be the end of it, and that everybody around me's life would get better. You know, I certainly didn't have a desire to hurt anybody, but that was the journey that I was on, and I knew, you know that that's my view was my life's going to be over soon. Hopefully it will just end, and everybody's life will get better around me because of the pain that comes from being an active alcoholic and the destruction that could do. And for whatever reason, I had that moment of clarity that night when Bryce pulled me over, was I just didn't want to die. I wanted to be there for my kids, and I just had that moment of clarity that lasted between them into kind of coming through doing what's a hard detox from alcoholism, which has not recommended. And I don't remember that that I went through, though there's people that saw men tell me later what I was like that night, you know. But I was in a lot of pain at that point and just my body no longer having the substance in it, but still had that clarity of I want to live and I want to figure this out. I really want to acknowledge what has to be the most profound kind of suffering to live like that. Scott. I just to stand in your presence and know that that's the path that you bound on is profound. To be in this presence with you, Thank you it So it's not a journey I want to repeat. I understand that. But I'm grateful to have been down that road. Yes, yes, well, speaking of gratitude, one of the things that I really appreciate about your story is that part of your recovery program, there's the piece about making amends, and so you came back to the police station and asked to speak to the officer arrest. You tell us about what was going on and why you did that I did it was I guess it's about nine months into my journey. Mac Tristan, who's a former police chief for the Copell Police Department, happened to speak at the church eye ten. Just something inside you need to go talk to him. And so I had learned at that point through my cop recovery to kind of listen to those prompts. And I went and talked to him and just introduced myself and said I would like to come visit with you if you have time, And knowing how busy he is, I didn't know when that would be. He gave me his card and said call me Monday and we'll find time. And I emailed him and called and I was in his office Wednesday afternoon and met with him. And how was that? How was that conversation? Meant? It was? I walked into his office and it's it's a fairly big office. His desk is to the lefting he has a conference table to the right, and when I walked in, there was the pleasantries week change that you would when you first walked into for a meeting. And I noticed on the table there was a Manila envelope sitting there and I figured that was my exactly what that is, and he said, let's go sit down, and the pleasantries kind of changed the formality of the meeting. And what I would later learn is why most Capell residents come to meet with him is not a positive experience. It's to complain about why they were pulled over, something that happened, and you know, to gripe about the police department. And I just sat down and did like how we started this, I said the best way I noticed snirt this Mac is my name Scott Wilson, and I'm grateful recovered alcoholic and I'm here to thank you and your officers for which i'll did for me, but also to make amends to the officer arrested me. And his response was along the lines of what did you just say? Yeah? And would you say that again? It didn't quite hear it, and so I started down it just said the best thing I can do is just tell you of the journey I'd been on, and I laid it out lot on the table, and that struck up a relationship between Mac and I. He talked about a journey he had been on through his struggles. It was not related to anything related to alcoholism or addiction, but his own personal struggles and his faith journey. That's really what brought us together, was our faith journey. And from there it just struck a relationship. And he said, I'll be more than happy to arrange a meeting for you to come in and meet the officer. And he said, but I might bring a couple of more people in, and we came back in and I don't remember if that was a week or two later, but it was a short time after that. He arranged a meeting and Danny Barton, who's now the police chief, was there, who at the time was over the night shift of when I was arrested. And I was gonna say that the passion for the police department, that's author right word. Steve, the chaplain for the police department, was there and there had to be eight or nine other guys. They were there, and all I walked in and thought, Oh my god, how awful was I that it took this many officers? Come to find out it didn't. It was just people that Mack had invited and needed to hear. He thought needed to hear what I had to say, and then I shared the story and got to meet Bryce and thank him. Come to find out, I wasn't that a full at night. I think what Bryce told me is I've never heard a more eloquent drunk in my life. I don't know if I would like to have that as part of the inscripted and describe me the most eloquent drunk. But but what I want to also presence for the listeners is that you had said I just wasn't sure how my behavior was that night, and I wanted to come and make amends and apologize for whatever I might have said or done that could have been offensive. That was really what that was why I was there that I just I wanted whatever I had done, I wanted to try to make that right as best I could. And fairly shocking for the police officer to hear something like that, that's not common for them. And at this point I would like to ask Chief Chief Barton to come and join us for just a second and say Hi, since we are in the Capel Police station and we are filming this conversation here, I have with us now the chief of police here in Capel. Chief Danny Barton, who has also been on my show. He's such to some amazing work here in Capel And part of the reason I wanted to have this conversation it was because Chief bart sent me to Scott saying, hey, I think you've got someone for your show. I love the idea that together we have the ability in this conversation to be able to show the community that good police work changes lives for the better, and that we get to be part of that conversation, and then I get to broker that conversation is terribly interesting for me. So Danny, we've come spent around so they could see Yes, they want to see you. So this is the gentleman here who is making this conversation happen. This is Chief Barton, and he recognized the path that you have been on here, Scott, and suggested you would be a perfect fit for my show. And you are and I'm thrilled to be part of your path now. And we're going to talk more about that, but let's grab our first break. I'm your host, Elie Cortez. We've been on the air with Scott Wilson, who has a long career as a professional business management consultant since nineteen ninety eight. Today he's navigating a fresh path to purpose, arising from confronting his own personal challenges through his journey to becoming a grateful, recovered alcoholic through founding authentic success at business performance consultancy that helps organizations embrace the uncomfortable with gratitude and grace to achieve authentic success. We're conducting this conversation lie from the Coupelle Police Department, where the origins of his new life were spurred. Thanks for joining us, We'll be right back. Stay with us. Elise Cortez is a speaker and engagement and development catalyst. She designs and delivers professional development, leadership and engagement workshops and can bring her expertise to your organization. She will help ignite meaningful development within your workforce that will increase employee engagement, performance and retention. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at www dot Elise Corte dot com. She would welcome the opportunity to help get your employees working on purpose. This is working on purpose with Elise Cortez. To reach our program today, send an email to Elise Ali se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on purpose. Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on purpose if you're just joining us. My guest is Scott Wilson, the founder of Authentic Success, a business performance consultancy that helps organizations embrace the uncomfortable with gratitude and grace to achieve authentic success. To arrive at this fulfilled juncture, he navigated first a long career as a very successful business management consultant and face down his own alcoholism and service of his newfound purpose. I'm your host, Elise Cortez, So I now, since we've got your chief, just even a couple of words to add to this conversation. You brought us together. Thank you you will. Well, what is it? Why? Why is this this, this process of having Scott come forth and step into his purpose important to you and in terms of your work in the community. Well, I think from from a police officers perspective, we we never see what happens after we dropped them off at the jail. We may see them in core, but we don't know the whole story. And the important piece of Scott's story is we didn't just see a guy who got his life together. This this guy has is making impacts on people and so bringing him into the PD. The point behind that was is that the officers see the human behind the person they arrested, that this guy is not a bad person. He is just having a bad night or a few years. And so I think the importance, at least from my perspective from a police officer, is you never know when you may change someone's life. Who's going to change other people's lives, And I think that is what gets us out of bed and puts the uniform onis every day. Okay, that's fantastic, Thank you, Chief, I thank you so much. So listeners, what I'd like to weigh in on what Chief Barton just said there and for you as leaders is this is phenomenal. Take this home and take it to the bank and do it. What he's doing here is he's bringing the field of life into the officers space so they can see how their work really makes a difference. And when you can actually show your people how their work makes and changes somebody's life for the better, they're in. They're in that game. So I really really applaud the chiefs leadership to do what he's doing by bringing this back into the PD and showing the officers the difference that they are making in the work that they do. That is great leadership and I'm down for that. Thank you, Sherry for saying hello to that comment, or saying hello, you like that comment. It looks like, all right, well, let's move on back to your story, because there's so much I want to get out of you before before we escape. So one of the things that I appreciate about your story, which I know about purposes, there's a few ways we can discover our purpose, and one is the Crucibal moment that has been part of yours. There's also the notion of being able to address our own pain to get to a place where we can start to live our purpose. And you talk about how you've been able to take something tragic and turn it into a way to serve others and grow yourself in the process. It's really part of what her says qualifies this purpose. Say more about that for us, Yeah, it's I mean it certainly it has been a journey. I look back at all I've been through. I mean, just to be sitting here now, if somebody had told me four years ago when I'm in the depths of my disease, that I would be sitting here doing this. There's no way that that was possible, or I even had a way to see that was possible as I came through the journey and the recovery, treatment and outpatient and counseling and all the things that I've worked on, all the things that I grew up with. I grew up in a home that was heavily faith based. Uh, you know, I grew up in a home and my parents were married for over fifty years. You know, my dad died a year and a half ago, and he was a tremendous man of faith. Things I didn't understand that all played together today to where I'm at. All of a sudden began to make sense of there is a purpose and there is a reason we go through the things we go through. And if I can help other people to have hope that you can get through the other side of alcoholism or addiction or recovery mental illness, that that's important to share from my perspective, And that's that's the path I chose. That's not something that's comfortable for everybody, but it was something that was just on my heart and that as these opportunities that just kind of presented themselves, I didn't really seek them out, you know, from meeting with Mac and Danny to what that has formed into too. Now I'm involved with a leadership program here in town that I'm also involved with the teen Diversion program here in town. You're saying teen Diversion, which is focused on kids in Capel that have run ins with the law or at school, with the SROs at the school, the resource officers there that are minor offenses or drug and alcohol related and sharing my story and my journey with them and their families that you know, if we could touch a life and save a life, that that's all that ever really mattered, and give people their hope and their purpose. And that's now kind of stepping off into this calling, you know, or whatever this becomes, that that's the purpose and what does that look like? Both from working in a business community and a professional standpoint, working with law and horsemen, but then also giving back in areas that are important to me from a recovery perspective. So a couple of things to drill down here so our listeners really understand the path and the journey that you've been on, because it's magnificent and it's it's the path not well traveled. You really you could at any point go back into the management consulting space and make a pile of cash and get back out on an airplane and be doing that again. You and I've talked about what that would probably look like for you. And yet now when you're hearing people like me and others say things like, well, Scott, you know there's a place for you to share this message and speak about this and write about this, and you're like, oh, that I hadn't even occurred to me, And here you are. You're starting to do that. And even just when I was out speaking a couple of weeks ago and I asked you to share your story, you were surrounded by people who wanted to hear more, who were hungry to hear more from you. It's already happening. So what I want to I want to share with our listeners and help them, help them see, is that when you do go out, as you say it, on faith, into your purpose, things start to open an opportunity to show up that weren't there, or maybe that you couldn't see before, and that's what's been happening to you. It is, and it's it's not something I thought I was ever equipped to do. But as I have a very good friend of mine I met with this week and said, whose faith is important to him, said God, God doesn't call the equip He equips those or recalled, you know, And just things started to happen that said, here's the path you need to head down. So as I start to step out on that, Yeah, I've been doing writings what I've called musing from a grateful recovered alcoholic or something along those lines for a little over two years now, off and on when it kind of the inspiration hits and I write, But it's always been focused on the journey I'm going through and what I'm seeing. And I've had a lot of people reach out and say, you should put those in a book, you know. So I'm about to start on that journey. I've actually put them in a book and just see where that goes. But a lot has happened in the past month as I've really looked at do I really want to go back into that old lifestyle or which I really just wake up and I don't have a passion for it. It's just like it's not right and it doesn't feel right, and talking to people like Danny and you and others is there's just these opportunities keep presenting themselves. And all I did was put it out to universe and trust to take that next step that you know that there's there's somebody out there looking after me as a plan, I just need to walk into it and trust it. Help us understand what it feels like to be called in that space. I have an idea because I've felt something. I'm on a path being called, but I don't want to put words into your mouth. Tell us what it feels like to be called like that. It's scary, very good first, because that is not anything that I have known or done in my life. From a professional perspective that I'm not a writer. I have never I struggled in school with the English classes. But when I sit down and write, it just kind of comes out, you know, and it's okay. I embrace that, go do it, and don't be afraid to to be authentic. That's the other part. This requires constantly looking at myself and growing and that's not always easy. But I have found that it is free, that I can step into being who it was I was created to be and trust that. For me, it feels like literally a pulling sensation. It feels like, you know, somebody's like pulling me along, and of course we all know who that somebody is, but to me, I have that sensation of you being by the scruff of your neck. You are doing this, Cortez, get with it, and it feels it's it's very it's it is scary because you're being led into a space that you haven't seen before. You don't recognize it. It's new territory, and you don't really necessarily know what you're doing at the time, and so you're you're fumbling through the dark. So I think that's where a lot of the unsurety comes from. It is but as I take those steps and trust that, then I found the opportunities that presented themselves. You know, when when we first talked, I had no idea that it would become this or you know, that this was what this would look like much less. Another friend would say post on Facebook, Hey there's this conference speakers conference, and I thought, well, I'll go check it out. Come to find out you're the keynote speaker, and I didn't know I had to be standing up and sharing in front of the conference. You know, it's just things that happened. Well, and here's what I want to make sure our listeners understand. That happened in the space of a few weeks, not a several years or months, a few weeks. This has happened to you. Okay, So let's talk about this important thing that's happening next that you we presenced when you share it. I had you share at the conference, which was great. There's this big, audacious goal emanating from you starting to emerge for you share with us what that is. It's relative to your purpose. Yeah, so there's a couple of things associated with that that it has all just in the span of a couple of weeks been unfolding. Some of it started over a year ago with a close friend here in town that we've kind of always had thought we should do something together, and we've been on our own different journeys. His related to grief with the loss of one of his children in a tragic accident, and kind of the journey that spurred for him in men and grief, and we've come together and looked at how our journeys are different but similar, and that we've both been pushed or pulled. However, we want to look at that into We've had things that we've looked at pursuing that we're more traditional and what our backgrounds are, both separately and together that have come back around full circle now to saying, no, there's something we need to go do that's related around this whole message of embracing the uncomfortable with gratitude and grace right and finding authentic success and that can you know, that can be different depending on if it's business success or it's personal success, you know, or you know in this case, you know, one of the things we've been talking with Danny about is is what that looks like from a law enforcement working with law enforcement and the things that they experience both from dealing with people like me and my past, but also in the things that they face daily and from the perspective of grief. And we're starting to unfold that, you know, and we'll in the next month or so be launching a whole consulting firm around that. That's amazing and I and there's so much need for that. And as I said, to you before we we got on air. I think the whole notion about embracing the discomfort that you're talking about is such a great message, great vehicle that you're working from. It's so important. It is an avenue to growth, and that is a way that you can go into organizations and really spur that growth. You guide it, you nurture it well. And you know we've seen it from and I don't know you've seen it too. You can see it in a business perspective of embracing change or not embracing change, and what's the attitude going into that and how do you do that? The difficulties or the difficulties around project teams are high performing teams, you know, it's not always just change out the players. You know, sometimes it's the players looking at themselves and going, what do I need to change about me that's causing the negative and the project or the team or whatever that effort is you're trying to launch. Is is there something I need to focus on to move away from the negative to the positive and embracing the positive that everybody brings to the team. And are you really putting your company or your organization setting it up for success or failure because you don't want to embrace that. I just want it to go away, So I'll change everything out to get the comfortable. Right well, that may be the wrong answer, right well, And along those lines changes change is hard. As my friend Sherry Ellit Youury who's on now says, she says, change is hard, you go first. I love that. But there's a couple of comments here on the Facebook Live that I just want to acknowledge. On one that people are saying, really, your your story encourages them, Scott, And that's one thing that part of the reason I wanted to have you on the show is I do want people to be encouraged to go looking for their purpose, to go and embrace the discomfort. It is uncomfortable to look into your purpose or to let it use you and take you. And so you've got people here who are saying, thank you for showing me that this is possible and encouraging me in your path. Well, you know it's people did it for me in different ways and I have just kind of learned from that and started to embrace that that. You know, we were created from my perspective, we were created for relationship, you know, This is not an eye world. It's a wee world. And it takes all of us together to do this and to do it right. And the reality is is life is going to happen and come at us. And there's a lot of things that we don't control. In fact, there's very little we control in our lives. Richard Rore has a book about breathing underwater and that I'm reading right now. One of the things I really love about that is, you know, I can I can stand at the edge of the ocean and look at it and admire it, but it's eventually going to overtake me. So I can either learn to breathe underwater or I can drown. Right. Yeah, and life is going to happen. So I think I'd rather learn how to breathe underwater. I think it's a good, good, good path too. And with that, let's take our last break. I'm Alice Corte as your host. We are on the air with Scott Wilson, who has had a long career as a professional business management consultant since nineteen ninety eight. Today, he is navigating a fresh path to purpose, arising from confronting his own personal challenges through his journey to becoming a grateful, recovered alcoholic through founding Authentic Success, a business performance consultancy that helps organizations embrace the uncomfortable with gratitude and grace to achieve authentic success. We're conducting this conversation live from the Capelle Police Department, where the origins of his new life were spurred. After the break, we're going to finish his conversation about really where his journey is taking him. Next, stay with us, We'll be right back. Elise Cortez is a speaker and engagement and development catalyst. She designs and delivers professional development, leadership and engagement workshops and can bring her expertise to your organization. She will help ignite meaningful development within your workforce that will increase employee engagement, performance and retention. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at www dot Elise Cortez dot com. She would welcome the opportunity to help get your employees working on purpose. This is working on purpose with Elise Cortez. To reach our program today, send an email to Elise ali Se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose if you're just tuning in. My guest to Scott Wilson, the founder of Authentic Success, a business performance consultancy that helps organizations embrace the uncomfortable with gratitude and grace to achieve authentic success. To arrive at this fulfilled juncture, he navigated first a long career as a very successful business management consultant and face down his own alcoholism in service of his new found purpose. I'm your host, Alice Cortez. So we were talking at the break Scott that one of the You've got something that's emerging here for you and I'd love for you to share it. You refer to it as as a big audacious goal that you want to take on standing in your purpose. Tell us how where the idea came from and kind of where it is and distermination. So it's still in it's very early stages, but it's it's something I have started to kind of talk about publicly when I was in treatment at Lahasi and they have a place up there called Serenity Hill where if faith was important to you you could go up for meditation and each morning and watch the sunrise and it has an incredible view. And my family's had some land it's been in the family going back for quite some time, and it has an incredible view from a hill as well. And there's always this little thought of I wonder if we could ever do anything like that around helping people get a second chance in life through recovery. So this concept of sober living environment, sustainable sober living ranch has been germinating kind of setting out there. Where that's going to go, I don't know, because it certainly involves my family being a part of that discussion. And I know with the person I'm looking at it doing this consulting firm with and what that might look like, he has a vision and passion around a retreat center. So there's a lot of things that are very similar stewing around, but we've just kind of started to throw those ideas out to see what doors open and what that would look like. You know. My Ultimately, I would love to be able to help support men who didn't have a place to return to is easy, or the means to return to is easy, to help give them a second chance in life, you know, but that takes not just something that sounds good, that takes a community support, that takes a faith based community support, it takes a recovery community support. So there's a lot of pieces that go to that and it takes a while for that to come to fruition. But that's the big goal of is there something we could do to help really give men a second shot of life? And that might come from a different flavors of both recovery and grief recovery, and we'll just see where that takes us. But that's kind of the big goal that's out there. Seeing what doors got opens well. So again, standing in your place a purpose, it's amazing how things start to show up and your creativity comes forward and you just start to see the world through that unique lens that is your purpose, and it's just the vista is enormous. You've already had a conversation with your mom, You've asked people in town about how you might be able to handle labor and such. I have, and my mom and sister have visited about it, and there's certainly more conversations to be had around that. But you know, as I've talked to some key members of the community, it's in they're like, yes, we could embrace that, and it's a need that they see. You know, we'll just see how that door opens and where it goes. But certainly, anything that I do from a professional perspective, I want there to be that side of it that's giving back to me. They go hand in hand. It's not just about career and job anymore. It's about purpose. And that purpose is both helping organizations and people embrace that uncomfortable and that change and growth and what real authentic success looks like, which is different depending on the situation, but it's also in giving back to the community and what I know, which is addiction and recovery and the support that's needed for people coming through that journey. So to acknowledge a couple of things that you're saying, and this is something that I addressed in the talk that you were in, but for our listeners who haven't heard me say this before, I do an awful lot of reading around the space of meaning, inspiration, passion, purpose. I'm writing my own book about this. And Aaron Hurst is somebody that I've had on my radio show and I really respect his thought leadership and his view is that in order for something to count as a purpose. Us have three ingredients, three essential ingredients. One is we need to be serving others beyond ourselves, which is what you're talking about. In the process of being in service of the purpose, that we are personally growing. You are certainly growing, You are stretching way out of your comfort zone and getting into all kinds of things. And then the third requirement is that we are building a community and service of our purpose. All of those qualify for you, yes, And really that's what I've learned through my recovery prok I mean part of my sobriety and being able to maintain that sobriety right. It's a twenty four hour, one day at a time thing. But that comes from constantly looking in the mirror and growing and acknowledging what my weaknesses are and trying to improve those and strengthen them. But it's also on giving back and helping others that I can't do this alone. I've you know, I've got to be I've got to give what's been given to me and to help open that door for other people to point them down the path. Some people choose to do that privately, some choose to do it publicly. You know this. To me, it's just the calling that I've been on for a long time. I just finally found the purpose what that looks like. And hallelujah, as we like to say, right, hallelujah. So for our listeners who didn't didn't get to hear what we talked about when you and I were in the conference together on the twelfth of April, I'd love for you to contrast for us, what did it feel like for you as a human being walking the planet as a very successful business consultant, suffering in the alcoholic place that you were living and where you're living today. Contrast those two states for us. They well, it's night and day difference. Well, I certainly had success and you know, prestige, you know whatever. You know, my ego was a way out of check. There was things and stuff. There was no happiness, you know, relationships weren't good in any aspect of my life. And we're just you know, being decimated by my alcoholism. There was no peace. I did not get a peaceful night dress for years, just from the torment of what I was doing, the guilt and chain, the disease and just trying to keep all that at bay and you just get to a point you can anymore. You know, everybody's bottom looks different. That happened to be mine today. It's recognizing that I'm not in control and I don't have to have all the answers, and that I'm not perfect and that's okay, but it's progress not perfection. And that that's something that I learned in recovery that really sticks with me as I constantly need to be making progress and trusting God has a plan for me. I don't have to have all the answers for that. I just need to step forward and and what's in front of me and try to do the best I can. He'll meet me and take care of the rest. And it's very nerve wracking because it's not a space I'm used to at all. But every step I take, he manages to reveal a little bit more in the door opens and the other doors open and I just kind of keep walking through them. I'm glad that you have been able to find peace in this some people. I find peace in it too. I also find a lot of energy and joy. I mean, it's just it's it's a it's a beautiful place to be. Yes, you're vulnerable, as we talked about before, because you're really putting out who you really are out there into the world, and you know, it's as if you're not wearing any clothing at all, and so there's all of that in the package. But on balance, for me, I wouldn't go back to not knowing this. In fact, you can't undo it on once you know it. You can choose not to live your purpose, but you can't undo it once you know it. I think that's and it's been a journey, you know, I'll go back to progress, not perfection. I started with doing writings. I started with meeting with Matt Tristan, and then you know, and then certainly carrying that on with Danny and again those are the people from here from police department, and then stepping out and getting involved in some of the community organizations. And you know, the year ago I was asked to speak at our church as part of a resurrection series telling resurrection stories, and mine was this whole journey. It has just constantly evolved into this thing that's driving me. And you know, when you wake up with with purpose and it's not knowing what how this is going to unfold and what I've figured out is just go do it. Quit trying to figure out how it's going to unfold. Because very good as I've done that, and doors have just opened and here we sit today. That is such a great pearl of wisdom right there, Scott, for our listeners and so and try to figure it out. Just trust the process, step into the space and see what opens. Look and see what opens, and be willing to get a hand when somebody gives you a hand. Well, as a friend tell me this weekend, he's like, Scott, don't don't overthink it, just go do it. My background is is I could overthink it, and I need the perfect power point presentation, and I need the perfect plan, and what's the project plan? And how are we going to go execute this? And it's like, you know, I really don't. I just need to go take each day as it comes and certainly to work hard at it. You know, which has started doing and putting that and have a plan. But as you kind of put it out there to the universe, things just kind of tend to happen. They do. And a couple of things that I really want to iterate a little bit of time that we have left here is the path that you're on in terms of really standing, being willing to be called into your purpose and accept it, accept the assignment, basically accept the role. One of the things that we know about well being is that we need a healthy tension between who we are today and who we aspire to be in the future. That helps us, That gives something to be pulled toward, to grow toward, and it keeps us in a place that is a positive sort of tension. Absent that, we get to be a little we get ampathetic. And you know, you and I have met many people in our lives, and so have you listeners who are going through lives desperate for some kind of change, but they just don't know what it is. You have had the courage, as our people on Facebook have said, to step into this space. And it does take courage to do this. Can you say more about that? Yeah? And it's you know, and I'll go back to I would not have envisioned four or five years ago being able to do this. It took little steps at a time, but having the faith to trust that there is a plan, I just need to go take one step at a time, and that journey has been one step at a time. If you told me I was going to write a book a year ago, I would have told you you were crazy. That I've had enough stuff, and people feedback of hey, you really need to put this and publish it, you know, And there's even somebody my Mom's shirts every sentence, and when Scott's ready that they'll tell him to call. So it's just when you start and you start to get comfortable with that, you grow to a point at whatever that journey may look like for you, you'll look back and go, wow, I never saw that coming how I If I had, I probably would have run the other way. This is hard, I don't want to do. Yeah, this is uncomfortable. But what I see now is to keep the positives in and outweigh the uncomfortable nous. And it's not about it's not about me. It's about giving people hope that somebody has a plan for you. And it looks different for everybody, and everybody's journey's different. But it's okay, you know, it's okay to stand up and say here I am, and to want to move forward and to get help, because that's that's another You know, for a long time, I didn't get help. And it was the guilt and shame that was holding me back along with the disease, you know, and I did not. I had to get pushed to that breaking point, and it was a breaking point, you know. I could have chosen to pass. And I'm grateful for the path I pick because if I had chosen the other one, you would have had to come visit me over the Capel Cemetery right now. I wouldn't be here today. Well, I wanted to talk about that really quick because, as you may remember, the way that I opened the presentation when I opened for the International Association Business Communicators was what will you do with your one precious life? Yes, and think about that. You could have literally finished your life in the in the whirlwind wreck that you were twirling in, and that would have been that would have been a summer toll of your life. That's it. That's what you have to show for it. Now, you know you have this ability to be able to create a whole different space and to utilize those beautiful precious moments that we get in a wholly different way. And it does take that intentional place to step into that world to say I will I accept this I'll do this. It's hard. It's the hard right over the easy wrong, as Nick Craig likes to say. And it takes something. And I applaud that you were doing it. Thank you well it. You know. It's I'm grateful for the people that God has put in my path like you and Danny and others that have encouraged me and what I needed when I needed it. We're there and that's part of what has been Keep taking the next step in the journey, you know. It's God meets me where I'm at and gets me ready for what's next. I'll never be ready to have to do it. I love that, and that's so great for our listeners. Were so closer. There's a couple of things that I want to ask you really quick. So what has been the most precious, prized moment for you along this journey? If there if there is just one that you can isolate, and there's there's several. What I think the biggest thing is that I am able to be present for my kids and to be a dad. Wow. And the gift of presence, yep, because I didn't have that for a long time. Beautiful. Okay. The other thing that I want to talk about really quick what you just which you just service is so important for our listeners, those of you listeners who are starting to get this idea that maybe you should listen to your purpose. Maybe that little sniggling feeling that you're feeling inside, maybe you want to listen to do something about it. When you do, and I do want you to get help. You can't do it by yourself probably and get around people who are going to or who are going that you can surround yourself with who can give you help for us telling you that you can't do it. There'll be a lot of people that tell you you're crazy. But to be able to be around people who are looking for ways to help you for telling you all the ways that you can't do it, is the crowd that you want, right And I found once I reached out, there were a lot of people that wanted to help, but it took me speaking speaking out, you know. So one of the things I wanted to mention today, you know, if there are people out there that are struggling with addiction issues or suicide is don't be afraid to reach out to the best places you can reach out are the National Addiction Hotline. The number to that is one eight hundred six six two four three five seven, or the National Suicide Hotline, which is one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five. Because there are people that want to help, and you don't have to hide in that guilt and shame. It's okay, and you can't have hope and have a future beyond what you're struggling with. That's so beautiful, Scott. And with that, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. We're having the courage to step into your purpose, coming on the show, having the courage to call me at Chief Barton's request, not even knowing who the heck I was or what I wanted, and here you are on the radio show. So thank you for sharing your gift, your purpose and stepping into your light. Thank you for having me. So you want to learn more about Scott in his journey and the work he's up to today, you can go and check out his new website. It's the w scott dot Com. One more time, the w scott dot Com. Last week, if you missed the live show, you can always catch to be recorded podcast We were on the Year with Diane McClay She is a personal transformation coach from Portland, Oregon. We talked about how our observations on what is needed in women's thought leadership today have prompted us to create that Women on Purpose Thought Leadership Summit in Portland, Oregon in September twenty nineteen. Next week, we'll be on the air with Rabbi Daniel Cohen, who is the author of What Will They Say About You When You're Gone? Creating a Life of Legacy will be zero in on his concept of reverse engineering the lives we Really want. Promises to be a compelling conversation. See you there, Remember that work is at least one third alive, so let's work on curvise. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune in to Working on Purpose featuring your host, Alice Cortez, each week on the Voice America Empowerment Channel. This week, find your life's purpose at work