Stride to Freedom with Russell Benaroya: Unlocking Your Money Story with Emily Scott

Episode 36:
Unlocking Your Money Story with Emily Scott, Financial Guide, Navigator, Thought Partner, Emily Scott AND

In this chat…In this episode of Stride 2 Freedom, I had the pleasure of learning from Emily Scott about the role that our money story has to play in how we make decisions. Emily works with many business owners and executives to shine a light on how our views about money shape how we lead.  Emily brings all heart to this conversation and even turned the tables on me at the end a little bit. You will enjoy this conversation. Tune in!

“For all of us, part of our foundation is our money story which influences our beliefs and the choices we make. Do you know yours and its impact on your life?” –Emily Scott

Emily doesn’t like archetypes.  Trust me, I tried to go there.  But it’s hard to categorize people into buckets when it comes to their money story.  When it comes to our relationship with money, it is a complicated fabric going way way back.  So rather than try and classify people, Emily’s approach is to know them deeply and by knowing them deeply, she can begin a process of awareness. Yes, awareness.  As business owners, how we make decisions and why we make decisions around our resources is very much influenced by our relationship with money.  It’s not good or bad. But it’s awareness that matters.   When we are aware, we can work with that to influence change.  

Emily Scott created Emily Scott AND to help clients open up about their emotional relationship with money and how that manifests in their lives. After a storied career on Wall Street and building an enduring legacy in philanthropy, Emily saw a purpose worth pursuing.  Scott has the ability to bring financial advice to a more personal level of net worth vs self-worth, allowing her clients to uncover their own personal truths.  Often, Emily will be brought in by financial advisors (Emily is upfront about sharing she does not have assets under management)  as a guide or ally for individuals and couples.  

We also dive deeper into Emily’s TED Talk on the Evolution of a Passionholic. Passionholics live at the intersection of their principles, passion, and knowledge.  The relationship to the money story here is clear.  When you can spend more time living your worth vs. proving your worth (a common money story scenario), the possibility opens to live in a state of curiosity.  And therein lies the potential for a Passionholic to emerge.  Emily Scott provides a wonderful understanding of the topic, you definitely won’t want to miss this one.

Who should I interview next? Please let me know by clicking here.                                 

 In this Freedom Speaker Series episode with Emily, you will learn:

• Your personal relationship with money and how you think about it

• Fundamentals of Revisit, Rethink, Reframe

• Net Worth vs Self Worth

Coming to the Conversation with Russell Benaroya

Coming to the Conversation Curious...1 question with a 2-minute answer. Today's question: "As a lifelong learner and guru in transformational thinking, what sources have you found to be most effective?" Russell Benaroya shares 3 books and his key takeaway from each. (1st Note: I bought the first one later that day and it is a phenomenal read). Listen and satisfy your moment of curiosity…

Russell is an author and entrepreneur whose 20+ year career in investment banking, private equity, technology, and healthcare venture-backed startups led him to create Stride Services, a business process outsourcing company. He knows the difficult journey of entrepreneurship and works with entrepreneurs and business owner's to help them achieve their goals.
(2nd Note: During my interview prep work, I learned so many fascinating aspects of Russell's philosophy, perspective, personal, and professional life, that I had a difficult choosing 1 question out of the 300 or so I wanted to ask...)

Russell Benaroya:
https://lnkd.in/gfUyQqB
https://stride.services/

Emily Scott:
https://lnkd.in/gPTr-Tt
https://emilyscottand.com/

Russell Interviews Emily:
https://lnkd.in/gXjSysa



#transformationalchange #entrepreneur #powerofand #curiosity #emilyscottand #russellbenaroya

Creating a Family Mission Statement

Ashley and I talk about creating your own personal or family mission statements, and how you can use that to live your values more fully. We all have those values and beliefs that are most important to us. How much time have you spent thinking about them? Incorporating them in your life? With your partner? With your family? Are they the same as those of others in your family? Join us as we talk about the why, how, what, when, and how to continue to monitor and review your mission to keep it as a Northstar in your life.

Source: https://youtu.be/h3vLG0DHP1o

The Master Communicator Podcast: Stacey McKibbin with Emily Scott

What is your money story and how does it affect your business decisions? What is your employees’ money mindset? What is the Power of AND? What is Coming to the Conversation Curious? Listen and learn as Stacey McKibbin and Emily Scott discuss all of this and more.

What Energizes You: Emily Scott and Josh Patrick Revisit The Passion Topic

220 – WHAT ENERGIZES YOU? – EMILY SCOTT

Listen Here: https://www.sustainablebusiness.co/podcast?p=220-what-energizes-you-emily-scott

October 14, 2019 by JoshPatrick

Business Sustainability Radio Show

Episode 220: What Energizes You?

In this episode Josh talks with Emily Scott, a legacy and philanthropic guide, author and passion-holic. They discuss how instead of asking “What is your passion?” a better question would be “What energizes you?”.

Emily started Emily Scott AND to fill the void of merging the technical side of money with the human side of money, especially during transition. As a thought partner for her clients in the issues and challenges of legacy planning, financial prioritization, and philanthropic choices, she collaborates with other professionals to align core competencies for a robust client offering.

Ms. Scott’s earlier professional career includes years on Wall Street, the retail industry, and marketing consulting. With her 30+ years of personal experience in investing, philanthropy, managing a family office, and legacy discussions, Emily fully appreciates the nuances and pressures that having a high net worth can bring.

In today’s episode you will learn:

• How instead of asking “What is your passion?” a better question would be “What energizes you?”

• How do you fail at passion?

• Should you seek for passion, or let your passion find you?

• Once you build high interest or passion for something, how do you keep it there?

• If you find your passion waning, what can you do to rekindle that?

Transcript

Narrator:         Welcome to The Sustainable Business Radio Show podcast where you’ll learn not only how to create a sustainable business but you’ll also learn the secrets of creating extraordinary value within your business and your life. In The Sustainable Business, we focus on what it’s going to take for you to take your successful business and make it economically and personally successful. Your host, Josh Patrick, is going to help us through finding great thought leaders as well as providing insights he’s learned through his 40 years of owning, running, planning and thinking about what it takes to make a successful business sustainable.

Josh:                 Hey, how are you today? This is Josh Patrick, and you’re at The Sustainable Business. Today my guest is a repeat offender her name is Emily Scott. Emily is one of our top listened episodes from almost a year ago. She was on where we talked about the topic of passion and we’re going to talk about passion again today. Emily told me that she has some new thoughts about that they were different than last time. So let’s bring her on and find out what those new thoughts are.

Hey, Emily, how are you today?

Emily:               Good, Josh, how are you?

Josh:                 I’m doing great. I’m doing great.

Emily:               I love the fact that I’m a repeat offender for this. This is a good thing to repeat. And I think anybody who listened to us, that’s fantastic. That’s nice to hear.

Josh:                 It is. It was nice that someone to actually pays attention to what you’re doing.

Emily:               Yeah. I actually would be very curious to see based off of what people heard, if it affected change for them either an action or a thought that would be interesting feedback, and whatever came up for them and they’re more than welcome to contact me directly. My website is emilyscottand.com. I’m a firm believer in Jim Collins, The brilliance of the AND versus the Tyranny of the OR. So I use the word and whenever possible, and I will always do credit, Jim. And my email is emily@emilyscottand.com. I would be very curious to see what people think. Then part of the reason why is one as you know, I’m naturally curious. I live by the motto come to the conversation curious. And I would also say there’s been a lot of conversation around the word passion. So I’m glad that we are revisiting the topic.

Josh:                 So what’s different about your thoughts now around passion versus what it used to be?

Emily:               It’s probably knowing you, Josh, you’re going to go, “Okay, that’s a nuance” so, but I’ll bring it up anyway. So I still do believe in what I said. But on April 21 of this year, Stephanie Lee wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times, basically asking somebody, what’s their passion is the wrong question and you shouldn’t ask them. And her premise was that and I will quote her, “People often assume that their interest or passion just needs to be found or revealed. Once revealed, it will be a fully formed state. By that logic, pursuing one’s passion should come with boundless motivation and should be relatively easy. And what the essay went on to say was that humans tend to give up the minute that we start failing. And so therefore, if we found our passion that if we failed at it, we wouldn’t continue in there for is it really passionate.

Josh:                 I need to stop you there because I have a question.

Emily:               Okay.

Josh:                 To me, passion is not the same thing as a goal.

Emily:               I agree.

Josh:                 So how do you fail at passion?

Emily:               I agree and this is why we’re having the conversation because I completely agree with you. It’s not the same at all. I think asking an 18 year old what his passion is putting pressure on that person who was still performing. I think some 18 year olds will have it, some 10 year old— there are people who knew at six years old that they wanted to be a nurse or doctor or policeman or whatever it be. I don’t personally think that that’s the majority. And when the question is, you need to go find your passion. I appreciate the pressure that that puts on you. I would actually offer up that the question is really stay open. And let your passion find you.

Josh:                 I would agree with that. I don’t think you go look for passion. I think your passion find you.

Emily:               Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that and one of the questions that this article brought up was, do we truly find our passion or do we develop them over time? And the researchers went on to say the people who hold a fixed theory had less interest in things outside of their current interests, were less likely to anticipate difficulties when pursuing new interests and lost interest in new things much quicker than people who hold a growth theory and that I completely agree with.

So, if we reframe it as to how do you stay open to finding your passion or having your passion find you? That’s one of the things that I have been experimenting with and asking clients and colleagues and bringing up in different presentation in what energizes you because I do believe that you can think about it about energy as opposed to passion. You’re opening more opportunity for the passion to come find you. I think that there’s certain questions that you can [inaudible 00:05:57] particularly in business to learn about the energy as well as [inaudible 00:06:03] those have to think what energizes them and then creating a culture on that to accomplish the goals at hand.

Josh:                 So, while you were talking, I was just saying you’re thinking about this for a second, which I have a bad habit of doing, which is you have passion. Passion is sort of like this Uber thing that’s way out there. Does it make sense at first, we start trying to identify what we’re interested in and see if any of that develops into a passion?

Emily:               Absolutely. I totally agree with you and you know this is the problem. I think every year there’s some words that become part of our normal day vocabulary and then they get swept away, right. And I think the word passion is, I think it’s a tough word in all of this. And I think that it becomes this Holy Grail that, “Oh, my God, if you’re not passionate about something, then you’re wasting your time and your energy.” And I just don’t believe that. I think there are lots of things that we do that can have some element of passionate. It doesn’t have to be all encompassing. Correct? And that’s why I think the word interest is absolutely true. And I keep on going back to there’s something about energy. When we look throughout your office, you think about what are the things that you can’t wait to do? What are the things that you’re trying to do? I don’t think it’s just an interest, Josh. I think there’s an energy field around it as well.

Josh:                 I think that asking somebody will they have energy around is a much, much, much better question than asking them what their passion is.

Emily:               I agree. And really, when somebody asked me this about 10 months ago, what energizes you because I’m used to people saying to me about your passion— I have like this thing, wafting. I’ve been watching Chernobyl now. I’m like, “Oh my god, I have radiation over in my room.” So every time I see a fuss ball, I’m wondering how much radiation I have. We digress. So when somebody said to me, what energizes you would stop me because I wasn’t used to the question. And I had to really think about it. And I think about it from a standpoint of personally and professionally, what energizes me and is there a crossover? Is there alignment? Does something energize me with clients versus with colleagues, where all of the— you and I, when we talked last time, I talked about the personal Venn diagram, but so how does what energizes me? How does that fit into a personal Venn diagram?

Because I do believe that when you have those intersecting pieces, that’s where I always say that’s where your passion is, that center core, but let me go through some of these questions with you. I did a bunch of research about how do you even talk about what energizes you? There were some questions that came up, which I thought were interesting. What drives me? What could I talk about for hours? What do I feel passionately about? Which, by the way, I don’t know if I would actually ask that question, but it is a question that can be asked, what do I do? For I feel less tired afterwards than I did before I started? What do I get so excited about that I want to tell everyone I know, and how do I recharge?

Josh:                 Okay, so a bunch of those questions, I think are crucially important to folks listening to this podcast, because I will tell you people have walked in my office many times. And they asked, “Well, what are we here for?” And they say, “I want to sell my business.” And I say when they say yesterday, and I say why? And they say because I’m burned out. So what I will often in fact, always do at that point is I engage him in a conversation about what energizes them. And I will tell you that 100% of the time, the reason that these folks want to get out of their business is because they’re spending zero time in their energy building areas, and 100% of their time, and energy draining areas.

Emily:               Makes total sense.

Josh:                 So the first thing that I do is I start working with them on spending more of their time, or at least some of their time in energy producing activities. And then as we work we want to expand that time into more and more and more of the majority of what they do is energy producing in the minority of their time is energy draining. And my goal is to actually get that down to zero.

Emily:               It’s great. It’s terrific.

Josh:                 Well, if I do it, the person that walks into my office is I want to sell my business yesterday. I’m successfully getting to make that switch in their life and their business. I go back and say, “Okay, we’re now ready to sell your business.” They look at me like I’m crazy.

Emily:               Right. Right.

Josh:                 Why do I want to do that? I’m having too much fun. I’m making too much money and my life is perfect.

Emily:               So obviously, especially when you’re looking at— I know so many of your clients are entrepreneurs so at some point, obviously, they were energized or they wouldn’t have started their business to begin with. So at what point do you see the move into drainage? Do your clients or other people in business—are they taking things on because they know they can do it? They may not want to do it, but they know they can do it. So they just added onto their plate and does that then become a drain feel that— where is it that it starts shifting?

Josh:                 Well, typically it’s a little bit at a time. They’re excited about what solution they’re providing for their customers, but running the business has lots of activities that that owner might not be very good at, but has to get relatively good at, even though it’s energy draining because the business needs it. Most people who, at least in my experience, who live in the world of I hate what I do, are also really bad at delegating. So they’ve never learned how to delegate those activities that they don’t like, and they’re not very good at even though they’ve gotten to be competent at because they don’t trust the people they work with.

Emily:               So it’s not—it’s just easier for me to do it. It’s a lack of trust.

Josh:                 Well, it’s also it’s easier for me to do it because I can do it better than anybody else. And many entrepreneurs have an idiotic belief about I can do things better than anybody else. And why would I ever want someone to do it? Because they’re just not going to do as long as I am and I’m the best thing ever walked down the street?

Emily:               Now you know, I’m going to fuss at you for using the word idiotic, you know this right?

Josh:                  You can do what you— [Laughs] I kind of like that word so, okay.

Emily:               In my business, I’m very careful about judgment. So I would call you on that if you are my client, but okay—

Josh:                 Well, I actually live in the world of judgment as many other people do.

Emily:               So if it’s a trust issue, then I would say, well, then you’ve hired the wrong people but that’s an easy end so—

Josh:                 That’s actually not why they don’t trust— there’s a long story in that, but I actually want to stay more on the topic of passion today, because I think it’s a piece that’s missing there. Over a period of time, we might have started out with high interest or you could even call it passion for what you do. But there are things that come along the way that sort of kill that. It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s sort of a slow thing. So once I build high interest or passion on something, how do I keep it there?

Emily:               I love that you asked that question, because I literally just went through this with my own small practice, because I was getting very disillusioned, I would say. And I reframed it to what energizes and I took the word passion, out of play, because at that moment in time, because my business has not grown in the way that I fully expected as to everybody else. So I’m no longer passionate about it. So it wasn’t so much a sense of failure, which is what this article in The New York Times talked about that because of failure, we stopped being passionate. It wasn’t that. It was a disconnect. I didn’t understand why this wasn’t getting traction, that’s why I was more frustrated than I was finding failure that makes sense. And so that’s really where I’ve been turned around and said, “Okay, so I wanted to do this because I had passion around helping people prioritize and get emotionally comfortable with their wealth, but I need to reframe this and I need to go back to thinking about why am I doing this and what’s the energy around it?”  Was the energy for me because I wanted to make gazillion dollars? Was the energy because I wanted to have a huge staff and I want to fly around the world helping people that I wanted to collaborate with lawyers and accountants and money managers and go speak at conferences, what was it?

And so I went back to these questions that we talked about earlier, what drives me and what can I talk about for hours? Where do I feel less tired afterwards versus more than how do I recharge? And what I kept going back to is the full on and I now say this in presentations all the time, that two things. One is I firmly believe on a cellular level and I don’t care what scientists tells me I’m wrong. I will tell them that they’re wrong. And I firmly believe three things. People want to matter. People want to feel heard and people want to be seen and that to me is how I deal in my life personally and professionally.

That is huge energy and huge past around that. I think when we have that we would probably have more just course in our country but that would be another conversation you can have on another day. The other piece of it is having been in financial world for three decades now that I know for a fact having been both [inaudible 00:16:29]. I know for a fact as well as [inaudible 00:16:31] there’s whole, whole universe and there’s this person around their money story, their money narrative, how they think about money on a daily basis, how they’re spending it, how to think about investing it. I do believe that the industry focused on [inaudible 00:16:59] be it money or the emotional side of money and that’s what drives me [inaudible 00:17:04] such a narrative— to the emotional side of the money.

This is why Susan Bradley who runs that money, and I just completely aligned, because we have that exact same feeling. And she’s created a spectacular program that’s really geared to people in transition. And that’s what drives me is that I don’t think that we have such a money story. We have such a narrative that we’re not paying attention to what we’re getting in our own way. So that’s what keeps me up, Josh.

Josh:                 So going back to the three things again, that you said everybody wants to be heard.

Emily:               Everybody wants to feel like they matter.

Josh:                 Yeah.

Emily:               People want to be heard and people want to be seen.

Josh:                 Okay so if you’re looking at those three things, you might want to be thinking that if you start noticing your passion for something goes away, which one of those three things is out of alignment? At one time, we all feel incredibly passionate about something. Well, I would say anybody who’s successful in business. They have to have enough passion to get them through the hard times. So if in fact, you do find your passion waning, what can I do to rekindle that?

Emily:               You know, this is why I like talking to you. We make these conversations infinitely more interesting than I have with anybody else. So to me right now, this is a knee jerk reaction to what you’ve just said, that this is a combination of the three things that I find important, and what you advise your clients. And I believe that somewhere along the way. Let’s talk about the business owner, something’s not happening. And is it that they don’t feel like they matter anymore? Has this business taken off without them and that they’re not being seen and heard and the company’s running along and if they came, or when it wouldn’t really matter, that they’re now sort of a ghost? I mean, is that a problem? I don’t know.

Josh:                 For some it’s a big problem.

Emily:               Right so where is it? And I think it’s a hard question to ask yourself. I don’t think that we spend a lot of time on this and I go sexist for a second, I’ve been reading a whole bunch of books by Dr. Terrence Real. And I don’t think that we have done men a great service at all by not allowing boys to be vulnerable and express emotion. And does this start playing out in this? I mean, if you’re being told as a little boy that your feelings don’t matter. Does that come to bite you when you’re a grown man and suddenly your business is going on smoothly without you? I don’t know.

Josh:                 So unfortunately, we’re going to have to leave this conversation there because we are out of time.

Emily:               No, we can’t be out of time.

Josh:                 Yeah, we are out of time. So Emily, you did mention in the beginning how to get in contact with you. Would you repeat how people could find you? It also tell people what you actually do, because I’m not sure anybody knows.

Emily:               Okay, well that you can also find on my website. So let me answer the first question. The first question is my website is emilyscottand.com. All my contact information is there. It’s very easy to find because I can’t stand websites that contact information is not easy to find. My email is emily@emilyscottand.com and what I do. I work with the professionals in your life, your lawyers, your accountants, your portfolio managers, to help you prioritize and emotionally get comfortable with your wealth in three specific areas— estate planning, legacy planning, what I call financial reconciliation, how you think and spend money and then the third piece is philanthropy. Either that’s already something that you do or it’s something that you want to think about or something that you want to include in your estate plan.

Josh:                 Cool.

Emily:               But what happens is I will say very quickly, what happens is because it will go back to the judgment thing, this is not for me to judge, and this is your life. Basically, I am giving you the space and the opportunity and encouragement to think from not just your head but from your heart and from a very personal standpoint, without any judgment, and I insist that you don’t judge yourself. And what comes out in these conversations is absolutely riveting and surprising and helpful beyond more than I ever thought possible.

Josh:                 Cool. I also have an offer for you, too. I have a program called Cracking Cash Flow Code. And for this I wrote, what is the success path where you go from having no cash to having excess cash and your business is really easy to get. Just go to www.sustainablebusiness.co/cashflow and you get my free info graphic and take a look at it and see where you are on the path to achieving cash flow, freedom in your business and your life. This is Josh Patrick. You’re at the sustainable business. We’re with Emily Scott. Thanks a lot for stopping by. I hope to see you back here really soon.

Narrator:         You’ve been listening to The Sustainable Business podcast where we ask the question, “What would it take for your business to still be around a hundred years from now?” If you like what you’ve heard and want more information, please contact Josh Patrick at 802-846-1264 ext 2, or visit us on our website at www.askjoshpatrick.com, or you can send Josh an email at jpatrick@askjoshpatrick.com.

Thanks for listening. We hope to see you at The Sustainable Business in the near future.

Filed Under: Sustainable Business Podcast Tagged With: emily scott and, emotional connection to wealth, passion, reframing, sustainable business, transition

The Importance of Passion: Emily Scott and Josh Patrick of Sustainable Business

Listen to the original podcast here.

Transcript

Narrator: Welcome to The Sustainable Business Radio Show podcast where you’ll learn not only how to create a sustainable business but you’ll also learn the secrets of creating extraordinary value within your business and your life. In The Sustainable Business, we focus on what it’s going to take for you to take your successful business and make it economically and personally successful.

Your host, Josh Patrick, is going to help us through finding great thought leaders as well as providing insights he’s learned through his 40 years of owning, running, planning and thinking about what it takes to make a successful business sustainable.

Josh: Hey, how are you today? This is Josh Patrick and you’re at The Sustainable Business.

Our guest today is Emily Scott. I met Emily at a program last summer called the Purposeful Planning Institute. We ended up spending– oh, I don’t know, three, four, or five hours talking with Emily and another Emily who I can’t remember her last name but it was like the duo Emily’s, we were having this great conversation with. And during the conversation, I found out that Emily Scott, who is our guest today, is a passion-holic. And I just found that really interesting and said, “Well, you’ve got to come on my podcast because I think passion is really important in creating a sustainable business.

So let’s bring Emily in and we’ll start talking about passion.

Hey, Emily, how are you today?

Emily: Hi, Josh. How are you?

Josh: I’m great. Thank you.

So tell me something. What is a passion-holic? Is that the term or is it passionate-holic?

Emily: Well, it could be either. You can take it and change it if you would like. It’s up to you. I didn’t copyright it so you could do whatever you want with it.

So I created passionholic because I did a project. I do, when I turn a new decade. I do this thing called the decade dare. It’s outside my comfort zone. It’s to raise a lot of money for a particular cause.

And so, that year, I did something around animal welfare. And I did a coffee table book. And I had never written a book. I had no idea. Thank God, I didn’t know what I had walked into because I would’ve never even thought to do it. And it totally engaged me, from a creative standpoint, from a strategic standpoint, a business standpoint.

And it occurred to me that the phrase workaholic isn’t correct. And that’s why I coined passionholic. And the definition is “a person whose passion engages one’s being so completely that other pursuits pale in comparison.” And so, it’s not that I don’t want to do anything else. It’s that nothing else makes me as energized, and as open, and as curious as what I was doing right then and there.

Josh: So tell us a story about doing your book, and passion, and how that helped you get through there.

Emily: It’s interesting because I just met with Dave Evans who, in the Standford D-school, he and Bill Burnett have a Design Your Life course and they wrote a book. And we were talking about passion. And it’s actually not singular. It’s passions. And I think that’s the big piece of it that when somebody says, “So what is your passion?” It’s the same thing as saying, “What’s your favorite movie?” to me. It’s sort of like well, “it depends what,” you know.

And so, now you start saying, “Okay, so what are your favorite movies? What are your passions?” Big difference and much more open to a conversation. And I think that’s what came out with the book – that I was learning. I was raising funds for a cause I really cared about. I was engaging with others. I was solving problems as being strategic, sort of, take the list of things that I have passion around, from a self-engagement, involvement, what you want to do with your life and time. And that just happened. And the whole exploration of that and learning, I hadn’t raised my level of consciousness around that and how important it was to me as well as engaging with really smart people, Josh, and learning a lot.

And this was a biggie for me, learning how much I loved not just learning but learning about people and their narratives because we all have an interesting story. And how people got to where they are is fascinating to me. And now, at the ripe old age of 61, as I do Emily 6.0, that’s a very big piece of my business.

Josh: So it sounds to me like it’s not passion, it’s actually stacking passions that makes life interesting.

Emily: So talk to me about stacking. I agree on the other part. I’m not quite sure about the stacking word.

Josh: Well, an interesting life might have several passions and you’ll stack them on top of each other as you move through things. As I’m seeing you think about what you said is that, a passion is pretty narrow and pretty limiting. But when you start working on several passions and your passions might actually work in consort with each other. That’s sort of like stacking on top of each other.

Emily: So I see what you’re saying and I think that’s an option. And I would and that – instead of or that, I would and it. You know, Josh, from our conversations that I’m a big believer in Jim Collins’ the brilliance of the and versus the tyranny of the or. That I’m thinking of passions as side by side acting in concert. To me, it’s more horizontal than vertical. But again, it can be either way, right?

One of the things that we talk about a lot is how are we aligning everything. And I think of alignment as something that– to me, stacking gives it almost a hierarchy. Whereas, alignment is “how does everything integrate on a similar level?”

Josh: Okay, that’s probably a better way of saying it, I would think.

Emily: A different way, Josh. A different way.

Josh: It’s okay to be better. I’m fine with that. I tend to be incorrect way more than I’m correct about things that come out of my mouth.

Emily: I don’t know. I don’t agree with you. You and I have had a lot of conversations. That I beg to differ.

Josh: At any rate, the whole thing with passion, where do you think that fits in with values? Does passion come from values? Or do values come from passion?

Emily: So that’s a really great question. And it’s one that I think about a lot, given what I do for a living. I would offer up the following: I think if we spend time to think about our inner life – and our inner life, for me is “Who are we?” And that would be, “What are your values? What are your priorities? How do you think about things? What resonates with you?” And that’s a big exploration. There’s no easy answer there. And it takes time and thought. And if you can take your inner life and manifest it to your outer life, I think that manifests passion. Because I think that what happens is your attention then manifests your passion. So you think about what you do for a living and how did that evolve.

And, to me, given our conversations, what came out – and you and I haven’t spent a huge amount of time around all of this but from what I hear from you is that you recognized the pieces of your skill set, of your mindset, of your values and how they acted in your businesses and it brought you to the place in your journey where you are now. And I also would say that I believe that passions change and evolve over time. So I think this is a constant evolution.

I don’t necessarily know if your values change. I think maybe your values are enhanced. I think they can take different paths. So, in a business setting at some point, your passion may have been to create. And then you start a company. You create a product. You create a service. And that was your passion. X amount of years later that has happened, the business or the service has been created. And now what? Do you stop being passionate or have you found that you really love the sales process. Or you really love the management process. Or you love the people process. Or you love engaging your community. And how does that keep on coming back to your values so that there’s this self-reflection opportunity that you give yourself at saying, “How do I get my inner life into my outer life?” I think you can keep being passionate. It just may look different.

Josh: So you just came up with something which I find sort of interesting–

Emily: Just sort of?

Josh: Well– okay. It was actually my thought that was sort of interesting, not what you said. At least, to me, it was sort of interesting. And that is that passion is around journey not goals.

Emily: Absolutely. It’s all about the journey, not the destination.

Josh: Right. So I am basically not a big fan of goals for a whole host of reasons. I actually find goals are limiting factors. They’re not un-limiting factors. They’re not freeing. They’re constraining.

Emily: I agree.

Josh: And my experience is not that it does happen all the time but by not having goals– like I have gotten results that are much bigger than I ever would have had if I did have goals.

Emily: Yeah.

Josh: So, again, if you’re going to live a passion-filled life, you’re probably going to have a life that’s filled with overarching goals but they’re not numeric goals. They’re not something that’s easily measured. It might be, “I want to have a good life” might be a goal. And then you get to fill in, “What does it mean to have a good life with a whole bunch of passions that help fulfill that?” Does that make sense?

Emily: I think it makes a lot of sense. I think one of the things that we do have incorrectly – and, again, this is I think why Dave Evans and Bill Burnett’s Designing Your Life really resonated for me is, “Can we really be sure that we’ve framed our questions or our thoughts correctly?” And one of the things that they talk about is that designers constantly know about re-framing.

So let’s talk about a business. So I started my acting as a guiding the thought partner for my business, The Power of And, a year ago. Now, I could’ve said, “Okay, so in one year, I want to have X amount of clients and I want to make X amount of money.”

So let’s just say, I want a dozen clients in a year. So I now get 10 clients at the end of the year. Does that mean that my business is not successful and I should shut it down? So I think we get so attached to the executive summary of “This is what it has to look like.” Maybe it’s because we all have learned to color in the lines. And those artists and designers and architects, for whatever reason, decided not to pay attention to that and said, “I’m coloring outside the lines because it makes infinitely more sense. And it’s going to be something more interesting, or beautiful, or well thought out.” And I think as long as you take that step back and say like, “What’s really the point here?” And what’s really the question?”

And, Josh, one of the things you and I talked about a lot is coming to the conversation curious and I would say, “Turn that same thought to your own inner dialogue.” If you can have that curious conversation, say, “So what is this really about?” You know, little kids do this all the time, right? Why? Why? Why? You know, to the point that we want to sit down and we stop. Well, why would we stop? Let’s keep asking ourselves the question. And let’s keep figuring out how to re-frame it.

Josh: I’m glad you brought up the word “why” because I think it’s a word that should be used– and again, we need to get rid of the word “should” completely.

Emily:  Yes.

Josh: It’s a word that needs to be used a little bit less often. And we need to be more creative  in our why questions. For example, “What would happen if?” is a why question. “What would be different if this happened?” is a why question. “How will this make your life better?” is a why question.

And when you ask why questions in that way, my experience is you’re engaging your entire brain. And the research shows that the word “why” is actually you get linear answers, you don’t get holistic answers. So anybody that’s listening, I would encourage you to think about not using the word “why”, if at all possible, and instead be a little bit more creative and come up with a phrase that helps you ask why but engages you in a much deeper thought process.

Emily: I would also offer to have that process with others. And with others who are outside your skill set because we all come at it from a different perspective. You ask just open-ended questions and you’re sitting in a room of marketing people, with technology people, with ops people, you know, whatever it be – engineers that having these open-ended– many people call it a brainstorming session which is fine. I like to think of it as more of an open dialogue.

Sometimes, I think brainstorming puts you on the hook for like, “Oh my God, I have to be really creative and come up with wild ideas.” But it’s so interesting to me and I would say that I wish this country did more of it, is to have these kinds of open dialogues where you are really just sharing different perspectives. And it’s fascinating to me. Again, we’re going to go back to this mantra that I have of coming to the conversation curious. It’s fascinating to me how often, when these conversations happen, and these open-ended – what I call, high-gain questions occur, what people say and how they look at it. And that helps train you how to re-frame questions so when you’re by yourself, there’s a little bit of muscle memory, maybe, that’s created by this that you can start figuring out how to re-frame your own questions without having the group around you. Does that make sense?

Josh: It makes a lot of sense.

So the thing that I found interesting is that your comment about talking to people outside your expertise. And I agree with that by the way 100%. And the reason is inside every expert’s mind are rules about what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable within that particular world. Like in the financial planning world, there are rules. In the accounting world, there are rules. But if an accountant ends up talking to an engineer who is curious, the engineer will likely ask questions that are outside of the realm of the rules that a particular profession has.

And then you start getting to say, “Well, what would happen if this was allowed? Or what would happen if if you decide to do it this way instead of that way?” And if your answer is, “Well, that’s the way it’s done.” I’m going to encourage you to consider the options that it doesn’t mean that’s the way it has to be done.

Emily: That’s right. That’s right.

Josh: Like my example in the financial planning world, financial plans generally take six to eight weeks to get done. It’s back and forth. The planner is the expert. The client is going to the expert to get the answer.

I’d rather do it in a collaborative manner. I mean, our financial plans don’t take eight weeks. They take two hours. Literally. I mean, I get together with a client. We put something up on the screen. The client sees what the numbers say and I say, “Well, what do you want to change?” And they start taking and moving priorities around. It’s interactive. They get to control the situation. And frankly, our customers, in every business, is the expert at what they want. And in my experience, too often, we let the “expert adviser” tell us what we should be doing instead of us asking, “How can you get me to where I want to go.” I mean, I’m not sure that has a lot to do with passion but–

Emily: Well, you know, this is interesting because there can be passion for the sake of passion. But let’s talk about what you and I do day and day and that is trying to help. You’re in business. I’m dealing with people in their personal lives around having their world reflect who they are as human beings. We’re trying to determine how you incorporate passion into your life and how, going back to your inner life becoming your outer life. And so, all of this I think takes that.

So if you want to be passionate around your business, yes, of course, there’s also the reality of “What does the financial situation look like? And how do we get– there are practical pieces of passion. To me, it’s not passion for passion’s sakes. You can go, “Oh, wow. I really love it.” You’re not going to really love it if your business goes under. Or as a human being, you suddenly lose all of your wealth. And so, there is the practical side of it.

Josh: I do have to interrupt you there. If you don’t have passion, your business is going to go south. If you do have passion, you’re going to likely have the energy to do what it takes to save your business.

Emily: Perfect. Perfect. There you go. Bravo! Exactly.

Josh: Because that actually has happened to me a couple of times where I was right on the brink of bankruptcy but without passion I would’ve never had the energy to get the business through where it needed to get through and make the changes to make the business work.

Emily: Yeah, there you have it.

Josh: So the truth is, without passion you’re not likely to have a very successful business.

Emily: Yeah. And I think, also, one of the things that I talk to people about, either in their philanthropy or in their estate legacy planning, is that they were passionate one point and now they’re not. And what we’ve spent time in, and I’m sure I will bet. And I usually only bet when I know I’m going to win, that you have have this with your clients. And you had this in your own business that– again, we talked about this earlier, that your passions evolve.

And so, suddenly, you’re not happy anymore in your business. And I would say, “Before you jump ship”– so often, you don’t have the luxury of jumping ship, to take a step back and say, “So what pieces of my day make me happy? What pieces do I feel alive by? What pieces do I look for to doing so I don’t do the other pieces?”

One could say I’m procrastinating. And I would say, “Maybe it’s not procrastination. Maybe those are are the pieces that you just don’t like doing everyday and you like doing what you’re doing.” And so, if you can, again, re-frame and start focusing on the pieces that you like and try to see, “Are those other pieces, can they be delegated? Can they be sent away? Can they be outsourced? Does it have to be on my daily activity log?” I think you can get re-energized.

Josh: I think that makes perfectly good sense.

Emily, unfortunately, for the podcast, we are out of time. I would love to have people find a way for them to get a hold of you. So if someone wanted to contact you, how would they go about doing so?

Emily: There are several ways. I have a website. It’s emilyscottand.com because, again, I’m all about the and and not about the or. And that’s probably the easiest way. And there’s contact information there.

I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on Facebook. Facebook is The Power of AND – again, A-N-D. The Power of AND. And so, I look forward to it. And I look forward talking to anybody asking. And actually, as much as I like answering questions, I really like asking the question. So I look forward to having those dialogues.

Josh: Cool.

And I have an offer for folks who are listening. I have a one-hour free audio CD. It’s called Success to Sustainability: The Five Things You Need to Do to Create a Personally and Economically Sustainable Business. It’s really easy to get. You take out your smartphone. And you don’t take out your smartphone when you’re driving, especially when I’m riding my bike. But you take out your smartphone and you text the word SUSTAINABLE to 44222. That’s the word SUSTAINABLE to 44222. And you will get a link. You click on the link. You give me your name and your address and we mail the CD to you. If you happen to be a person who doesn’t own a CD player anymore and I’m told that there are more and more of us out there. I happen to own about 12 but I’m the exception to this. All you have to do is email me at jpatrick@askjoshpatrick.com. Let me know that you don’t have a CD player and I’ll send you the audio file.

This is Josh Patrick. You’re at the Sustainable Business. I hope to see you back here really soon.

Narrator: You’ve been listening to The Sustainable Business podcast where we ask the question, “What would it take for your business to still be around 100 years from now?” If you like what you’ve heard and want more information, please contact Josh Patrick at 802‑846‑1264 ext 2, or visit us on our website at www.askjoshpatrick.com, or you can send Josh an e-mail at jpatrick@askjoshpatrick.com.

Thanks for listening. We hope to see you at The Sustainable Business in the near future.

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