Changing Work From The Inside Out w/ Scott Shute
As a former Linkedin Executive and founder of Changing Work and Scott is at the intersection of the workplace and ancient wisdom traditions. In his most recent role at LinkedIn, Scott was the Head of Mindfulness and Compassion programs. He has been a pioneer in creating workplace mindfulness programs and advancing the discussion around compassion in the work context. His latest venture, Changing Work, seeks to curate the best practices of conscious business and make them more widely available. He is the author of the award-winning book "The Full Body Yes".
In this episode, we explore how he is transforming the way we view work by integrating mindfulness and spiritual growth into professional responsibilities. We discuss his vision for creating conscious businesses, the importance of redefining success through small achievements, and the challenges he faced transitioning from LinkedIn to entrepreneurship. This conversation is full of practical insights for anyone looking to bring more meaning and fulfillment to their work.
Takeaways:
Understand the power of integrating spiritual growth with your career path for holistic success.
Learn how to embrace conscious business practices that support all stakeholders in your organization.
Explore the challenges and emotional experiences of transitioning from a corporate career to entrepreneurship.
Redefine what success looks like by finding joy in small wins and everyday moments.
Get details on Scott’s new community and collaborative projects that are focused on making a meaningful impact in the world.
GIFT FOR YOU
If you’re a meditation teacher or coach who wants to create unique meditations people listen to over and over again, enroll in my free course Meditation Script Mastery
Music Credit: Nova by River Roots - https://www.youtube.com/riverroots
Podcast Transcript
Lou: Hello there, friends. I am so excited for this episode of the Art and Business of Meditation podcast. We have today special guest, Scott. Shoot. Scott, am I saying your last name right? I should have checked this with you before. Shoot.
Scott: Got it. You got it.
Lou: Scott is the founder of changing work and a former LinkedIn executive. He is at the intersection of the workplace of workplace and ancient wisdom traditions. He blends his experience as a Silicon Valley executive with his lifelong practice and passion as a wisdom teacher and seeker. In his most recent role at LinkedIn, Scott was the head of mindfulness and compassion programs. Such a cool role. He has been a pioneer in creating workplace mindfulness programs and advancing discussion around compassion in the work contest context. His latest venture, changing work, seeks to curate the best practices of conscious business and make them more widely available. And he's also the author of an award winning book, the Full body. Yes, Scott, welcome to the show.
Scott: Thanks very much for having me. Hello, everybody.
Lou: So I am so excited to have this conversation. I feel like we resonate at similar frequencies, but coming from different places, you're kind of in the corporate sphere doing a lot of that work, and I'm kind of this kind of rogue, feel like a rogue spiritual renegade in some ways. In this other kind of weird community, what you care about, it seems like, at least from the outside, is really doing deeply meaningful work to bringing our hearts to the work that we do, and that just resonates so strongly with me and the things that I do. So maybe just beginning and starting with, what is your philosophy around work? Because that word can be so bashed often.
Scott: Sure.
Scott: Interesting. So, philosophy around work? Well, most of us have to work to make a living, right? And oftentimes, for many people, it doesn't feel good. And I thought a lot about that over my career and my life and making choices like, oh, man, why don't I just leave all this and go follow my spiritual bliss and backpack across Tibet or be a monk somewhere or disappear. But that doesn't feel right either for me. I mean, it's fine for some people, but for me, it felt like, okay, my path this time is to be someone who works. And I ended up doing very well at work, but there's this other part of me that has had a practice since I was 13. And so how do you blend the two things together? Well, the truth is, work is just a different context for our spiritual lessons, for our lessons of growth. And, you know, work has taught me a certain set of things. And I'm guessing I don't know this for sure. But I'm guessing that if I didn't go to work, if I went and did whatever, that those same lessons would find me. It would just be a different context. So if we spend so much time at work, most people are working, whatever, 40 or 50 hours a week and thinking about work more than that. If we're spending so much time doing that in our lives, why shouldn't it be good? Why shouldn't it be just as nurturing and feel a place where I feel at home, a place where I feel like it can be part of my spiritual growth, my personal growth, and ultimately a place of service? Right. As we grow, we often get to this place where we want to give back and be whatever you call it, a light to the world. That can happen at work, too. And so what I'm passionate about is I call it changing work, changing work from the inside out. And, yes, I want to change work for 3.5 or 3.7 billion people in the workplace. But it really starts. What I really mean by it is that it's each one of us taking responsibility and making our changes and growing in consciousness and growing in consciousness with our relationship with work. And if we all did that, then, of course, the big machinery of work would change as well.
Lou: What does it mean to grow in consciousness in the workplace?
Scott: Okay, I'll give you the among friends answer, and then I'll tell you how I talk about it in the workplace. So how I think about consciousness is essentially our ability or our capacity to love or our capacity to be love. Nearly every spiritual path starts with or maybe even ends with God or the divine or whatever the word for it is, is love. And so the more loving you become, the more divine you become. And then, you know, religion gets involved, then adds all these rules and whatever. But that's the root of most spiritual paths. And so consciousness is then our ability to be that thing, right? My mental model for this world is, okay, I'm Scott. I'm the personality of Scott this time, right? And that personality is the body, the mind, the emotions that Scott uses to get around. But at the root of me, my true identity, I would say, is soul. I'm a pure spark of the divine, a part of the divine itself, just kind of unrecognized, because most of the time, I'm coming at life from the consciousness of Scott and not as the consciousness of soul. So, first of all, this is kind of my definition is, the more I can live as soul, the more conscious I am. All right? So that's my own personal take. Now, what does it mean to be conscious at work? Well, the same thing it means to be conscious outside of work, right? What's my capacity to operate from soul? Well, how does that show up? All right. Well, a conscious business is one that takes care of the whole, you know, creates a balance for all of its stakeholders, not just shareholders. In other words, instead of only focusing on profit, the company or organization is focusing on creating a balance. Yes, for shareholders. They gave you the money like you owe it to them to create a good business model and give them a good return, but also create a great environment for employees, because employees are our most important resource asset. The better we treat employees, the better the company is going to do. And also creating great value for our customers. If we create great value for our customers, they return, and the company does even better. So solving for the whole is the same thing I would do outside of work. Right. If I'm being conscious, because as soul, if I'm soul, that means your soul, everybody's soul. It means we're all connected. There's no real difference. Like, we're all part of the same fabric at the root of it. So instead of just solving for myself, I want to be of service. Yes. For me too. I'm not selfless. I want to serve the whole, including me. The same thing shows up at work. So that's at the company level, you know, solve for the whole. But then as a manager, it could be, hey, create a great environment while we're doing great work for our people. But you don't have to be a leader to act like this, too. I have a friend of mine. We were talking about purpose, and I was wondering what she was going to come up with. Because her job is, she does customer service for a company that makes systems that go in other systems that go in other systems that eventually get sold to another company that maybe someday a consumer would use. So it's not the sexiest job in the world. Remember, she does customer service, so she could say, yeah, whatever. Every day I deal with 40 customers are all upset, and I. That's what I do. I have 40 cases that I turn every day. But that's not what she says. What she says is, my mission is to make every interaction I have with those customers the best thing that happened to them that day. Is that a soul mission? Yes, it is. Does that show up at work? Yes, it does. Work is just the context by which we express ourselves as soul, if we're doing it, you know, in that way.
Lou: So many places I can go with. I'll reflect on how I think important that is for anyone who is going into a work environment where maybe you wouldn't say it's like their greatest passion, maybe it's a job. And I do come from a corporate background, very short stint. And when I started getting into personal development, just the way that I was being, like, I always talk about purpose in this way. It's not necessarily one thing that you do, but it's like you can show up to work, and I was being an inspiration for so many people, and I was having an impact in a way that I wasn't having before on just my environment there and just that. Athenae, that point was the purpose and was deeply fulfilling. And my spiritual path took me in another direction, as it often does. But I think that's always just. I love hearing that because so many people think they need to get out of the thing that they're doing before they can bring their love and bring their heart to their work.
Scott: It's actually quite the opposite. So our. I believe our biggest job in this lifetime is to cultivate our own consciousness, is to do our own work, and then it's to be that person or to be that way, and then we'll radiate whatever that is or radiate that goodness. It's service by itself. And it comes with kind of a truth, I guess, which is no matter what you choose to do, do it with your whole heart. Right? If you're a meditation teacher or the president of the United States, or an astronaut, or a customer service person, or a barista or a garbage person, do it with your whole heart. And then life is beautiful. It's simple, but not easy. Let's be real.
Lou: I feel like you and I might share one of our favorite poems. Are you familiar with on work by Khalil Gibran?
Scott: Probably. Do you want to go forward?
Lou: Yeah, I would love to share it with you. I mean, it's long, but in essence, there's a piece of it where it's like the essence is, what is it? To work with love. And that if you'd rather, it'd be better if you work with love on tending the soil than rather work with distaste on singing an opera, that's who you are being and how that's serving. And to work on someone else's home if you're a carpenter, as if your beloved were to work in that home to work on. Yeah, it's a beautiful. I'll send it to you, I think. Yeah.
Scott: In a similar vein. Oh, man. I'm going to blank on the guy's name. There was a monk, I think, probably in the 14th or 15th century. Brother, fill in the blank. One of your listeners probably knows this story, but let's call him John. I don't think his name was John. Let's call him brother John. Brother John loved to peel potatoes. It was one of the jobs in the monastery that nobody liked, and so. But he would volunteer for it because he got to do it by himself. And so he would peel potatoes, totally monotonous, but he would spend his time communing with the divine right. And so he had this smile on his face, just happily peeling potatoes. Everyone else was trying to be outside or doing some different job that had a higher status or different work. So it's kind of the same thing. No matter what you choose to do, just do it with your whole heart.
Lou: Yeah. There's so much to like, the identity that people have around. And I saw this, too, when I got a promotion from a credit analyst to a marketing coordinator. And I was just so excited to have those words after my name because it meant something. You know, there's this identity that we strap on and make it better than this other thing. That's kind of a side comment from that, but I would love to hear. Do you believe that we have.
Scott: In.
Lou: What people sometimes think of purpose? Like, do you believe that each of us. Ikigai is a word that's used for it sometimes, like, that we have a unique contribution that only our soul can give to the world.
Scott: It's an interesting one, and it's fraught with peril, because not everybody's purpose is going to be to be an astronaut or something sexy. Maybe the purpose is whatever it is. So I'm not sure. Like, I generally, yes, I believe that because I myself feel a very strong sense of purpose. So my sample size of one says yes, but I know that there are people that really struggle with this, and, like, what is it? Does it have to be wrapped up into everything? So, actually, let's talk about ikigai for a second. Your listeners may be familiar with ikigai, the four intersection points of what I'm good at, what I love to do, what I could get paid for, and what the world needs. I believe it doesn't have to be a singular thing. I think it can be a portfolio. So let's say that you have a job, whatever that you don't particularly enjoy, but it fills the I can get paid box. Right? Because we need to survive in this world to. To move along. And maybe it serves some of the other things, too. Like you're good at it, but maybe you don't really feel, or you haven't quite gotten there, that this is what the world needs, or that it's something you really love to do. Well, maybe you volunteer on the weekends or at nights with a local organization. You coach little league soccer or you're part of the Boy scouts, or you give back at your church or spiritual organization, whatever it is, those things, the things you're adding to it, that could be what you love to do and what the world needs. And so then you have an amalgamation. You have a portfolio of things that helps you get to the center of the bullseye with the ikigai. And maybe that's purpose. Maybe there are ten things all wrapped into one. Ultimately, I think it goes back to, did we live? Did we live with love? Right? Did we, did we. Did we learn the lessons, you know, and move past the survival instincts of just being a homo sapien into whatever you want to call it, into being more of an evolved being. Then, however we choose to show up will be just how it's supposed to be.
Lou: How did focusing on work and bringing love into your work, like, how did you get here?
Scott: Yeah, I'll go forward and then backwards. So, you know, part of my career has been in the customer service world. I culminating at LinkedIn. I was the vp of global customer operations during kind of the crazy fast growth time of LinkedIn. When I left that job, the team was over 1000 people. And so I have this experience of being a senior person at work and having a big 24 by seven type of job. But the other part of me is, since 13, I've had a contemplation practice. I've been teaching contemplation meditation practices since I was in college. I'm a member of the clergy outside of work, huge part of my life, but something I never talked about at work. But a couple years into LinkedIn, I was there for almost a decade. Our CEO was on stage at the company, all hands meeting, talking about his own meditation practice. And I thought, wow, okay. And it was just such an open place that I finally got up the courage to bring that part of me to work, something I never talked about. And so I finally led one meditation session on a Thursday afternoon at 430 in the, get this, in the heavenly conference room, which I thought was quite auspicious that first time. There was just one other guy there, and maybe he was just as terrified as I was, or whatever but I never saw him again. But the next week, there were three, and then five, and then it just kept growing. And over time, I created a program with some other volunteers. I would get invited to do bigger events. For example, the CFO, head of finance, would have a big offsite with three or 400 people and invite me to kick it off with a ten minute meditation. And that would happen over and over. And finally for me, after three or four years of that, as a volunteer, I saw an opening. Our CEO gave the commencement address at Wharton, very buttoned down Wharton, and talked about compassion. This is your singular big piece of advice. If you're going to be successful in life or work, be compassionate. And he told his own story of transformation. Shortly after that, he's on Good Morning America, and this is all they want to talk about. One softball question about LinkedIn, 20 questions about compassion. And he came home from that, and I thought, okay, well, I've been doing this operations role for six years. It was time for me to do something else. And I basically said, hey, you just told all of our employees that compassion was the most important thing that they could do. We're not really doing anything about it. I'm the ops guy. I can help operationalize compassion. We can mainstream mindfulness. And so that worked, and together we created the role. And so I was the head of mindfulness and compassion programs for the next three years.
Lou: It's such a beautiful story of, and I always talk to people who are starting to become teachers or want to. It's like, yorhey, are you at a company now? It's like, there's your there. That's where you can start, actually. Like, why not reach out to hr? Why not see how you can start? Whether it's a volunteer group, and I actually have one person I work with, she ended up starting, she was a marketing director for, like, a global education company, and ended up, similar to you, creating this, her own role as a, like, the mindfulness teacher, you know, putting together this pilot program. And it's so, it's like, always a great place to just, hey, start where you are. You don't have to build this big audience and, you know, you know, be someone out online, necessarily. Just start where you are.
Scott: I think that's great advice. People ask me all the time, how do I get a job like yours? I'm like, just start doing it. I did it for three or four years. You know, I built up credibility. I got 100 volunteers involved. I started things. I put in the work. And then when opportunity was there, it was like, of course Scott should do it. He's, in fact, he's already doing it. Why? Why wouldn't he? So just start. There's probably nobody that's going to stop you. If you just said. If you just said, hey, you know, after work today, after work today, I'm going to lead a meditation at 06:00 and just come join me if you like, nobody's going to stop you from doing that. Yeah. If they do, that's probably a good indicator that you may not be at the right place.
Lou: Yes. Right. That might be the sign. And that's, I guess, maybe something that is tough. I think there are people that are listening that are still working at companies, still working at jobs, trying to maybe build this thing on the side. And how would you maybe just coming back to, like, bringing more fulfillment to the work. You might have already said it, but if they're feeling the pain of their day job, wanting to leave, like, how do I guess you probably have conversations with people about this all the time of, like, what do I do to set up myself to go off myself or go off myself? I sound terrible to go off on my own. Sure. And how do I maybe enjoy what I'm doing now and finding that balance? Yeah. I'll let you take that wherever.
Scott: Yeah, sure. I think there's a couple places we can go. Let's start with the enjoying yourself now, just no matter what. Right. And then you can choose what to do next. Because, look, if you're out of harmony with yourself, it's hard to help anybody else. Right. So it starts with, can you be in harmony with yourself? Can you go to whatever this job is and beverly a beacon of light, whatever that means to you? And if not, like, okay, I get some environments are harder than others, but if not like, what still needs to be developed inside of you to be that person? So that's a starting place is can you do no matter what you choose, can you do it with your full heart? Can you do it with love? Can you shape what you're doing right back to ikigai? A lot of people I ask, well, can you shape your job at all? Like, could you, if you think about the things you love to do and things you really don't like to do, is there a way to do more of the things you love and not do as much of the things you don't love? So we start with the practical, because honestly, we live in a practical world. We need to make money. And at least these days, it's a lot easier to make money as an engineer or as a nurse or as a marketing manager than it is as a meditation teacher. So then the next part is, if you. If you've tried that and you feel, you know, that's one set of growth, let's. Let's put that aside, and then you've done the work, and you say, okay, it feels right internally, like all systems go the full body. Yes. This is what I wrote my book about. It feels right for me to leave corporate America and be a teacher of some sort. Okay, then what? Well, we have to bring that same quality to this work because the same challenges follow us. Right. We may love to be a meditation teacher, but we may not like the marketing or the promotion or the other things that go along with it. It turns into a business. Do you really want your passion to be your business? Are you able to separate the two things in your mind to really love it? Because it's not easy. There are very, very few people in the world who can make a strong living doing this. Which leads me to the next part is, are you willing to live with less? Right. So if I give advice. Look, when I was. I'm a musician. When I was 18, I wanted to move to New York and be a singer. And the advice that I would give myself as an 18 year old is, look, this business is really hard. There are some people who make it, but there's 10,000 people who love it who don't make it for everyone that makes it. So it needs to be the thing that you can't live without. Right. You are so fired up about it that you will sleep on couches, you will sleep on floors, you will live on $4,000 a year for as long as you need to until it happens. If you're that person, great. This is the work you should be doing if you want to keep your marketing manager salary and be a meditation teacher and you're not willing to put in a 150 hours a week to get there. Might not be for you.
Lou: Yeah. You remind me of the concept of, like, learning to live with less. Like, can you. Are you familiar with Derek servers?
Scott: No.
Lou: He is the musician. He's a musician. He started a company called cDbaby.com, sold it for 20 million, gave it all to charities. He's a phenomenal, incredible human. He's phenomenal thinker. And he talks about that like, hey, people, instead of thinking like, you're gonna be Aerosmith, I don't know why that example came. Like, why don't you just actually make a living. People always have the idea of like, hey, I need to be the mecca of the success in this industry. Well, actually you can probably, you know, can you get a gig if you really love playing music? Like maybe you start by just making a living, like before you're, you know, and that's why I always kind of talk with people, you know, before you're impacting thousands, you know, hundreds, thousands, millions of people. Maybe just impact just one. Like just kind of starting in the micro sense and, you know, Derek would say, like he and, you know, live with five people in a, in an apartment and be, be willing to, you know, your path. I've heard it said, like, what, maybe it's a Tim Ferriss thing of like, what are you willing to suffer? What would you suffer for? Like, actually not, not just what you love to do, but when it gets hard, what would you, you know, because.
Scott: You love it so much, you're willing to.
Lou: Exactly.
Scott: Lifestyle. Yeah, I think it's much more realistic to have a both and plan right. While you're working, assuming you're working, while you're making money doing something else. Just start, start by being whatever it is, meditation teacher, yoga teacher, whatever it is, build a following. And once you've built it, because these things often takes time, unless you're lucky, once you've built it, then maybe it makes sense or once your circumstances change, then maybe it makes more sense to, to do it full time.
Lou: Yeah, I had a conversation with someone. It's more in the coaching realm and these are, you know, things, things can blend. Right? I know you do executive coaching, but someone who was in a coaching training and I think he has a job, he was making maybe one hundred eighty k a year or something and we were talking, okay, what would it take for you to, how much do you want to make your first year of coaching for you to leave? And he was like, that was his number. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait. Like, are you really? Like, I don't. All right, good luck. Like,
Lou: it takes some time, but if you really want to do it, it's like, would you, you're in love with the work then, I mean, it's so cliche in some ways what you realize after having found a little nibbles of success and yes, more would allow more freedom and be allowed to expand things, but you start realizing like, no, it's what you're doing. It's like the thing that's for its own sake. But sometimes you got to like really learn that. You got to keep going through that.
Scott: Your own, you know, each of us go through it, and each of us walk our own path. All paths lead home, but each one of our paths is completely unique, and we just have to be aware of the choices we're making, not. Not saying it can't happen. It's like, let's just be realistic. The market is flooded with coaches. It's flooded with yoga and meditation teachers. It's flooded with books and speakers, even the most senior, most well known people in this world. It's not easy. It's not easy.
Lou: Yeah, they might look like they're crushing it, but, yeah, it's a practice, and it takes a lot of dedication. Are you still at LinkedIn, or are you fully doing your.
Scott: Yeah, I left three years ago. My book came out in May of 21. I ended up leaving in September of 21, and so now I'm out in the world. I started by doing speaking and coaching to support the book, and most recently in the last kind of year and change. I created this community called changing Work, which is designed to help all of us who are doing this work. Anybody who's interested in conscious business, whether you're a coach or a practitioner or a leader or just an individual contributor, we're creating community to talk about how we grow while using work as a context for the growth that's happening to us.
Lou: Yeah, I'd love to talk more about changing work. I don't know if it was a client who recommended it, and I checked it out, and I was like, hold on. I kind of recognized this guy on insight timer, and then I was like, oh, I love what this is, because there's so many similarities. I have a small group called meraki. I don't know if you're familiar with that word, but it's greek for doing something with passion, love. Putting a piece of your soul into what you're doing captures, I think, the essence of what we're talking about. And I'm gonna kind of thinking of the vision for it as this collective of people that really care about the work that they're doing, people that I can more. So I see it as people that are obviously on their own figuring out, because it is a lonely journey. And I think going through it for going through it alone, I was seeking that support, so kind of giving it to myself, but. And my vision for it is also seeing people that are at jobs just bringing more meaning and fulfillment, connection to their work. And so when I saw what you were doing, I'm like, oh, my gosh, this guy, this is like, this is like the embodiment. He's doing it, which is great, serving our people. So, yeah, I'd love to hear kind of. It sounds like you have some partners in it, so, yeah, just love to hear more about.
Scott: It's interesting. And it. We call it, we're in permanent beta, means we're always iterating, we're always changing, because we, there's three of us, myself and two other co founders. We're always changing. We're evolving how we think of it. I'll give you an example. When I first started, when I first left LinkedIn, I was still in the kind of like your friend who was leaving his job and wanted to make whatever he wanted to make. You know, I was still in the okay, let's go change the world mode of, like, making money and being a consultant and whatever. And so when we started this business, I thought, okay, well, yes, this is how I'm going to serve, but it's also like, it's a startup, it'll be fun. Like, maybe this is a way I can make some passive income and blah, blah, blah. And over time, I've adjusted my thinking to be, no, this is how I serve, period. And so we reincorporate it as a nonprofit, and I don't take a share, so there's literally no way I can get rich of it. In fact, I'm an investor in it, so I'm putting, like, so much time and so much money into it, just literally as an offering of love, which changed the energy for me on how it is. So that's. That's the first part, and I hope it changes the energy for how it shows up in the world, because it's not, hey, come join my startup. It's. Look, we, including you, we together are building this thing. We would love to have you be a part of it, and if you'd love to support it financially, that's great. If you can't, that's great, too. We will be here for you. There's a different vibe to it. We really do two things. One is we provide community. So we have, like, today, we just had our monthly, we call it our all hearts meeting. Like all hands, except, you know, all hearts. And I. And I figure if that name doesn't resonate with somebody, we're probably not the right group for them.
Lou: Yeah.
Scott: And then the second thing besides community is we share best practices. So we share that through education. We build classes. We are writing books together. Our first book. Our first book is around self awareness. It just came out a month or so ago. Amazon bestseller. Yay. Our second book is going to be about, is about compassion. It releases on Valentine's Day. And our third book is probably going to be on dealing with change. If you want to write a chapter, come join us. That's the model. Basically, everybody pays to be part of the book, pays to write a chapter. And we do it as community. It's funny, this one, when we announced this book project, one of the members reached out and he says, you know, this is just what the Quakers do. I said, but I. What? He said, well, the Quakers have this relationship with the divine that is more like a question than a knowing. And so they'll write books together as a way of deepening their own personal understanding of the divine, their collective understanding of the divine. And they'll use those books as a way to discuss it, but also within their community, but also to discuss it outside of their community as well. And I thought that's a, that's exactly what we're doing. Because if we write a book on self awareness, you know, we don't have all the answers. No one person has all the answers. But if you put us all together, we get closer and it helps us spur the conversation about things. So that's generally what we're up to. And the vibe of what we're up to. We create a safe space for conscious conversations.
Lou: And is the, pretty much like, the model is like the monthly and you just the one session a month, or do you have different tiers of like, services?
Scott: So this is always evolving. So actually the one, I love that.
Lou: You said, it's always in beta.
Scott: The one meeting a month is free. Like, anybody can come to that. That's open to the public. We're on circle, which is a platform. If somebody has used like mighty networks or circle, it's a, it's a, it's an online platform that people can communicate with on. We have regular, you know, inside the community, webinars and classes and things that we've built for educational purposes. And so that's all included. Look, we charge $39 a month, and if somebody can't afford it, we give it to them like this. This is truly not about making money. It's just we. But we do need to keep the lights on, right. There are, there are people that need to pay their bills that are working on this. And then in the future, probably starting in January, we're going to start offering kind of that next level of support, which will include like, I'm going to kick off a group, a group coaching program in January. So where we'll, you know, refresh the year and get started, and we'll be on the journey together. And that will come with, we'll call them inner circles or cohorts, you know, groups of twelve or 15 people that you bond with, like a class, and you go, go on this journey together. Anyway, we're experimenting with exactly what that will be, and all of it will be defined by what the community's needs are.
Lou: Beautiful. And I'm inspired by that. I was going to ask you about it being, becoming or being a nonprofit, because when I think of how I see Meraki, which currently I just promote it through a word doc. Like, it's very grassroots right now, but I'm thinking of the website. But for me, it's, you know, I've always had this, I have this kind of Lou Redmond brand, and I do everything, like, on my name, and there's like this, you know, ego and, you know, inflation in that way or, you know, whatever it is. And when I think of what I really see Meraki as is, it's actually not about me. And it's actually really a service. Like, it's similar to what you're saying. It's like, it's actually, for me right now, it is a, it is a nice stream of income. And I think of, like, how, how is this not about how can I really serve? What does it want? It's like, it's almost like its own baby. Like, instead of being, what do I want? What does it want? Like, what does it need together?
Scott: What does, how can you be a co worker with a divine, instead of, yes, yes. There's one of my favorite things on the Internet this past year, and it was early in 2024, the CEO of Insight Timer, Christopher Plowman, was introducing their new CMO, their head of marketing. And it was something like, sorry, I forget what the woman's name was. She's great. It was something like, hey, I want to welcome Stephanie. You know, we've just promoted her to be the CMO, and here's her credentials, blah, blah, blah. Oh, by the way, I think I may have given her the hardest job in the world because I told her at Insight timer, we don't do promotion, we only do attraction. And I kind of straightened up and I went, that's awesome. And how do you do that? What does that mean? Like, in a world where I feel like, to be seen, right. This, this idea, like, if each of us are going to go be a meditation teacher, it feels like, man, I need to do content marketing on LinkedIn. I need to be on whatever, go, go, go. I need to be on Instagram and do all these things. I need to promote myself, but all of that to me, for myself, not for anybody else, but to me, it feels gross, like, I don't want to do that. And yes, there's a way to do it without it feeling gross. And I'm still fine tuning what that looks like, but I know what it feels like. I know what it feels like to put something out there that is of pure service. And then maybe at the end, I'm saying, hey, if you like this, come join. I also know what it feels like to put something out there just because I want people to come join. And they, structurally, they may look exactly the same, but energetically, they feel wildly different. And I want to stay in the attraction part, not the promotion part.
Lou: Yeah, that's brilliant. And insight timer has its difference in that it doesn't like, oh, my gosh, this is one of the most popular. I think it may be the most used meditation app as far as users go without ever doing marketing. And no disrespect to any of the other apps, but headspace was pumping so much, you would see a headspace ad everywhere, just how much money these companies would pump into marketing. And insight timer has never done that. It's a totally different thing, but it's served me incredibly and served so many people I know that are also listening to this. So I want to go to. I want to talk about insight timer for a moment. But just one last question on the nonprofit aspect of it. I'm just genuinely curious, how does that work as far as the share? And I'm sure I can look this up as probably general information around nonprofits, I'll apologize. But, like, how are you working it as, like, do you not take any revenue from it? You're just letting it grow, and your revenue is coming from other aspects.
Scott: So, first of all, I am very fortunate to have done well at LinkedIn, and for me, I don't need it. And I also have kept a business of doing speaking and consulting and coaching outside of changing work as Scott shoot LLC as my own gig, and my other two founders have things that they can make a little bit more money on themselves, coaching, business, and, you know, other things. So the way a nonprofit works is you can make money. Like, the three of us are directors in the company, and you, and over time, you can. You can pay people. You can. But what you can't do is do profit sharing. There's no such thing. Right. Because we haven't taken investors like VC money or just investors, and they get a share back. It doesn't work that way with a nonprofit. You trade your investors for basically funders, and we haven't done funding yet. We wanted to get to a place where we felt really good about it. But funders, they don't get their money back. They're just giving you money. It's a nonprofit, so they're giving you money because they say, I want this to be alive in the world. So, yes, you can pay yourself. It needs to be within a range of what a normal, whatever that job is would get paid. But typically, it's not a way to make yourself rich, right?
Lou: Yeah, yeah. And I knew part of that, but, yeah, hearing just you doing something so, like, oh, yeah, how would that be? Because that is something that, whether it's around this or in some future sort of foundation, like, is something I'm thinking about earlier. But I'm also in a different. This has been my only. You know, I quit a corporate job when I was 25 years old. So, like, I've had to figure this out in this way. And so there's. Yeah, different. Different stages, I'm sure.
Scott: And as you get into it, if anybody chooses to do this, there's things that you can and can't do from a nonprofit. And many organizations will end up splitting off their for profit business and their nonprofit business just to keep everything clean. So, as an example, probably many of your listeners are familiar with search inside yourself, which originally started at Google 15 ish years ago and then spun out to be the search inside yourself Leadership Institute. Well, there's. Or silly. So there's. I forget the exact names of the organizations, but they've since split into one that is for profit and one that is nonprofit for exactly this reason. They're just things that you have to do structurally for the types of activities that you want to do.
Lou: And so someone might hear you're for an aspiring mindfulness or meditation teacher. They might hear that you're the head of mindfulness and compassion at LinkedIn and feel like, wow, that's a mecca role. How cool of a job could you get? Someone might be like, well, why would you leave that position?
Scott: Yeah. Like everything else, this world is fluid. So I was at LinkedIn for nine years. I had written my book. I had taken two or three months off to promote the book and do my own thing. So I had two or three months as a free range chicken and so I was out in the world. And when it was my first day back after my leave, I spent 5 hours in a staff meeting that had nothing to do with me, and I did not have the full body. Yes, about being at work. I was having another conversation with somebody else, and I was with one of my trusted friends, and I was having this conversation like, well, you know, maybe, maybe I can keep my title. Like, maybe I could be 50 50 or 1090, you know, 10% of my job at LinkedIn and 90% going to be an independent, because I wanted to bring this work beyond LinkedIn, but to the outside world. And in the middle of this conversation, she was hearing me. She says, you know, I think LinkedIn is just holding you back. And I will say, I had never, ever once had that thought before. I had this mental model like, oh, the title of LinkedIn is what is serving me, it's what's propping me up. And here she's telling me, like, is actually holding me back. But when she said it, it reverberated through my body. I had the full body. I was like, oh, she's right. I never, I never even considered that before. Well, in the same time as I was changing, right, I was, I was getting ready to leave LinkedIn because it was the right thing to do, but I just couldn't quite do it. LinkedIn was changing, new CEO, new head of HR, new head of learning and development, which way they had, I had been placed, and it was in the middle of COVID times, and they were all focused on this other stuff and kind of forgot, like, why my role existed in the first place, you know, and it became pretty clear it just wasn't a fit. So it was time to move on.
Lou: How did you. Now, obviously, you said you had a nice maybe savings from your LinkedIn position. I did it without a nice savings, which I don't recommend people do. But how has it been, I guess being on your own, like, just navigating that kind of entrepreneurial journey?
Scott: It's fascinating. I love it, and it also has all the challenges. So I love the freedom of it. I've had some success. I've also had some challenges, like, during the last couple of years, has been really hard, actually. Things are kind of turning back now. But there was twelve or 15 months where everybody I talked to, first of all, I was doing business development, and then later I decided I don't like doing business development. So essentially, I'm calling all my fancy friends from LinkedIn, like, people who were also senior leaders there who had gone on to other places. I was having conversations, hey, how can I best serve you? And they were saying things like, oh, yeah, I would love to do this, but, you know, two months ago, my team was 150 people, and now I have 25 because we laid everybody else off, so we don't have any money for this and we're not going to for a long time. And that was a similar story in tech. I came from tech, and most of my network is from tech, so that was very challenging. And had I not, had I just been you at 25 or me at 25 and trying to make a living or trying to support my family, that would have been disastrous. It's still hard as, even if I have resources, it's still hard to go through emotionally sometimes. But generally what I would say is, I've learned a ton. Every single thing I've done has been the first time I've done it in some ways, and then also using my 30 years of experience in other ways. So every time is a new thing. It's definitely been a challenge to stay in. Um, what do you want to call it? Stay in the flow or stay in that place of love instead of fear? Right? So like Christopher Plowman saying, attraction versus promotion, that's kind of the difference between love and fear, or living as soul and living as an animal. That's a challenge, man, every day. So a lot of the same challenges that we have when we're at work follow us to being an entrepreneur, and then we get more to deal with it. So it's, it's. I love it. And it's also not nirvana.
Lou: Sure. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for sharing that. It's constantly because, you know, you could look at what you're doing, you look at your website, you know, people might have a nice website, like, oh, yeah, Scott's crushing, and he's probably, you know, on stages every month, and, you know, he's getting. I probably paid, like, you know, ten, fifteen k to do these, you know, these speeches at these companies and, yeah, just crushing it. And, you know, you know, that might be true sometimes, but there also might be, you know, dry seasons or other things show up. And I think that's the nature of this. And also building. Yeah, building the foundation. Like, even though you have the experience having on your own and just building, trusting that unfolding, I think for people that wanted. Would you have any insight for people listening? Obviously, if you come from a corporate background, you have some connections that you can do, but as far as speaking as inviting in, getting opportunities for speaking, because I know that that can be a nice, I think in this work we need to find streams and it can be a nice stream to get what you want to share out and also some revenue. Has your speaking business been from the connections you built?
Scott: It's from all of it. I've done it all. So the book came out. What I would say is about books is the author has to sell every single one of them. There's no world that somebody else does your marketing. You have to sell every single one of them yourself. So I do podcasts. Like, I probably like this one. I've done 150 or so podcasts in the last three years. I've done 100 or 150 speaking events in the last three years. It comes from my network. And what I would say is, the more you're out there, the more chance somebody has to hear you. Sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes everything happens. My biggest gig came, a woman saw me doing a free event, right? So when people ask, oh, how do I get these gigs? I'm like, you just start. You just start. You do it for free, right? You, you talk to somebody who's willing to host it, or you say, I'm just doing it. I'm doing this online thing and it's the repetition, right? Because I've done so many of these, I'm more comfortable with it. I could, I could go give my keynote five minutes from now. I wouldn't have to do any prep and that, that makes life a lot easier, right? I can go do podcasts without any prep, just start doing it. But one thing that's really, I think that's a really important, one thing that's also really important is how we think about success, right? If you say, I will only be successful if I'm making 3000 or 5000 or 10,000 or 50,000 for your speaking events, you're going to feel this strain of not feeling like you're successful. As part of our book writing project, one of our book coaches is a famous multi millionaire, multi millions of books sold. And she was talking about success and I truly believe that she lives it. She says, success, it's not when you get the thing, you start by feeling successful. She said, you know, she started by writing poetry and she put together a book and bound it herself, you know, and built this book. And then she was somewhere and she's talking to this guy about poetry and he's like, well, can you show me something? And, you know, she had the book with her and he says, well, can I buy it? And she was so excited. She sold one book, and she's like, I'm a success. She said, first, I already felt like a success because I wrote the book, I put it together, and now I have sold it. I'm a professional author now, one book. So if we can have that sense of wonder, that sense of success, that's like, oh, I led a meditation at work, and one person came there. That's a success. I did it or no, people came. I got over my fear and I did it. I did it. I'm a success. That energy will serve us well. And with that energy, maybe we'll get to the point where we're growing and growing and growing, but no matter what, if you live in that place, you'll be right where you're supposed to be.
Lou: That's a mic drop, Scott. I think, yeah, there's so much gold in that. And it speaks to what you were saying before around the love versus fear, like the abundance versus scarcity, in some ways, the abundant feeling of, wow, I did it. One person showed up, or one sale, that fullness, feeling the same as if one person bought it, as if a million people bought it. And that's, that's like the energetics around it that I think you're, you're speaking.
Scott: To so well, I'll give you some insight. My, my book. Okay, so here was my view on what success meant before the book came out. My first degree network on LinkedIn includes Jeff Weiner and Reid Hoffman and a lot of fancy people from LinkedIn, which means my second degree network. In other words, the people they know includes Oprah Winfrey as a personal friend, includes the pope, includes the king of named 25 countries, literally is my second degree network. You know, on LinkedIn, Jeff has 15 million followers, or whatever the number is. So I assumed that when my book would come out, it would explode.
Lou: I've been there.
Scott: So the short answer is, it didn't. It has sold maybe 4000 copies over the course of three years. It won an award like, it's a well written book. It won a real award. Not the kind of awards you pay for, but the kind of award that you have to submit. And it's 4000 copies. And to be honest, for a long time, I was pissed off about it. I was like, I had negative energy. It's like, this is not supposed to happen to me.
Scott: And somewhere along the line, I had to let that go and go, actually, for a first time author, 4000 copies is pretty huge. The average number of copies across every book sold is about 250 copies. So I blew away the average. So it all goes back to, why are we doing it? Are we doing it for ego? Are we doing it for service? And I'm. I still have ego, man. I'm trying. I'm trying to make it just be about service. I'll probably always still have an ego, but that's the constant opportunity for learning is, you know, oh, here's the other thing. I believe. I believe that if I can finally get it to just be about service, then it probably will be commercially successful.
Lou: Amen to that. That's so true. We don't need it.
Scott: And when we don't care about it.
Lou: Anymore, it's like, oh, that's what things happen. Amazing. Well, Scott, thank you so much for taking your time. Are there any last places you want to point people to changing work? Absolutely, yeah.
Scott: If you'd like to join us at changing work, it's changingwork.org dot. If you want to reach out to me for any reason, you can find me on LinkedIn as the easiest place or my email is scottangingwork.org dot. Feel free to reach out. Say hi. What else? We're writing a book together. If you want to write a book together, find us there. You can email me. We'll kick that off in the next month or so. It will release in Mayenne. Probably be about change in the world. And if you want to hire me as a speaker, first of all, God bless you.
Lou: Please do all the event organizers listening to the up and coming event organizers listening to this, please go hire Scott. I know you're looking for it, but maybe we don't ever know how these things find each people. God bless. Into the almighty. So that's what it is. So, yes. Awesome. Scott, thank you so, so much for taking the time. I truly enjoyed the conversation.
Scott: My pleasure.
Lou: All right, take care, friends.