Episode 124 – Scott McCarthy

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Scott McCarthy 0:00
One of the things that I find interesting about entrepreneurs, and the difficulties that I find with them is they have a really hard time delegating — a force multiplier that enables you to take care of other things. And especially when there are a lot going on. You can’t worry about nitty gritty day to day stuff. As a leader, you have to be thick and strategic. You need to be thinking about the vision. You need to be thinking ahead. And right now it’s like, “Okay, how do we get out of this crisis?” And understanding that if the cash flow suddenly starts drying up, you go into crisis mode because you’re trying to do more with the day to day just to stay afloat. But that’s only going to last so long. You need to figure out a way, you need to have that time and space to look at where you are in your business. What’s going on? Do you have that vision of “Okay, we’re here right now. How do we get there so that we’re back to a sustainable future?” If you’re the leader, if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re running a business and you don’t have that time or space, to do that vision then think about it. Do the analysis. Look at it. We are here, but we want to go there. What is that path? How does it work? What do we need to do? What do we need in order to get from point A to B?

Richard Matthews 1:15
Heroes are an inspiring group of people. Every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see on the big silver screen, to the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do. Every hero has a story to tell — from the doctor saving lives at your local hospital, to the war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedoms, to the police officers and the firefighters who risked their safety to ensure ours. Every hero is special and every story is worth telling. But there is one class of heroes that I think is often ignored: the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer — the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, “You know what? I can fix that. I can help people. I can make a difference!” And they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service. Some go on to change the world. Others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to The HERO Show! Join us as we pull back the masks of the world’s finest heropreneurs and learn the secrets to their powers, their success, and their influence. So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money, and experience more freedom in your business. I’m your host, Richard Matthews, and we are on in 3, 2, 1.

The Welcome back to The HERO Show! My name is Richard Matthews. And I’m live on the line today with Scott McCarthy. Scott, are you there?

Scott McCarthy 2:18
Yes, sir.

Richard Matthews 2:20
Awesome. Glad to have you here. We were just talking before we turned the recording on. You’re coming to us from Ontario, Canada. Is that right?

Scott McCarthy 2:26
That’s right. Kingston, Ontario. It’s a beautiful place here right at the base of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. So it’s a great place to live.

Richard Matthews 2:36
Nice. Nice. Is it starting to cool down there yet? I know your summer is coming to an end, right?

Scott McCarthy
Yeah, it’s starting to be a little bit noticeable now that the days have gotten shorter. The temperatures dip just a few degrees Celsius. Humidity is broken. So, as a guy who thoroughly enjoys summer, this is where my—you know, my sadness starts to come in.

Richard Matthews
The sad seasonal affective disorder starts right now.

Scott McCarthy 3:05
Yeah.

Richard Matthews 3:05
It starts early.

Scott McCarthy 3:06
Yeah.

Richard Matthews 3:07
So for those of you who’ve been following along with our travel journey, we are still stuck in Kissimmee, Florida for our travels. But we did finally get an update, we’re going to start moving around Florida a little bit. Some of the parks have started to open up. We’re going to the Keys next for my wife and I’s anniversary, which should be pretty cool. And we’re going to try and get back on the road a little bit for our travels. So that should be fun.

Okay, I’m gonna do a quick introduction for Scott and then we will dive in and start talking about your story. So, I have here Scott McCarthy, a leadership expert. Right? So your leadership journey started when you were young and ripe — taking control of everything that needed to be planned. Transferring these skills to the Canadian Army. (He) Just got enrolled as a logistics officer in 2001, when he was selected to attend the prestigious Royal Military College in Canada. At age 24, Scott commanded an army transport platoon compromising about 80 soldiers. At 33, he was selected to command a logistics squadron of 200 members.

Over the years, Scott’s experience goes beyond commanding. In 2009, Scott deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan where he was selected to help, train, mentor, and coach members of the Afghan National Army. Scott believes that everyone needs leadership skills.

As a leader, you believe that delegation is a force multiplier — that teamwork is the centerpiece of all organizations, and that leaders have an obligation to leave a legacy that outbursts them.

So with that introduction, Scott, what I want you to do for us — to start with — is tell us a little bit about your business now. What is it that you do and offer to the world? Like, what do people actually pay you for? And what does your business look like?

Scott McCarthy 4:44
That’s a great spot to start. So I guess I need to preface it by stating that I’m still actually serving so it’s, it’s a business and a side hustle at the same time. So by day I still, I still serve the army but the business… So, with that, the business has a couple core components. So right now I offer my podcast. And that’s probably my biggest platform per se. Moving for a leadership podcast and I do two shows weekly. One is what I refer to as the “Monday Leadership Minute” where it’s just 45 minutes of me talking about a topic that’s either been requested, or off the top of my head or something that’s bugging me, like the other day, I went on a bit of a rant about what leadership is not and that is, you know, not taglines and quotes. Got a little worked up by someone online and just need to express myself. And then in the big interview show, where I interview rural class guests from all around the globe, different topics of leadership get released Wednesday. So that’s the podcast.

Now what people pay me for, there’s two different avenues right now. One right now is I do have an online course referred to as the power goals program. So it’s a goal setting program enables leaders to look deeper in themselves on a personal level, see what’s important to them. So see what goals they may have, breakout what actions need to be taken to achieve those goals, how to stay on track, execute, and you know, start knocking those targets down. And then finally, of course, there’s always coaching, presentations, those things that most, most coaches, consultants do, right. So I am providing coaching and a direct one on one to a number of clients as well. I’m actually doing coaching inside of a men’s membership community. I had a call last night with a group of seven men. And we talked about various leadership aspects and stuff like that. So that’s kind of how my business is structured and runs right now.

Richard Matthews 6:44
Awesome. And do you know how much longer you have on your term for serving with the army?

Scott McCarthy 6:49
Yes, so for us, we hit our first pension point at 25 years of service. So I’m looking at the five and a half years left to go. And the goal is to flip moving for leadership into from side hustle to full time employment post life in the army.

Richard Matthews 7:06
Are you going to? Are you on track to hit those revenue numbers for—in the next five years? Or maybe better?

Scott McCarthy 7:12
Yeah, that’s good. That’s a really good question.

The one thing I have is that I need to always maintain is basically throttle my expectations, because there’s only so much that you can do as a side hustle, especially when the quality—young—two young boys, and only having so much time during the day to work on the business, so I only take on a handful clients right now. But what I’m doing, the goal is to build my credibility so that when I do go full, fully in, I do have the following. I do have the credibility. I’m a known entity by starting off completely fresh, unknown to the world. And ultimately, that is my (goal) right there.

Richard Matthews 7:55
Yeah. And it’s all about at this point in your career, it’s about building an audience, right. And if you do that consistently, especially over five years, you’ll have, you’ll have a pretty significant audience to lean on when it comes to wanting to drive enough revenue and everything when it comes—comes in the future. So I think it’s a good plan, personally. So you mentioned you had a couple of boys. How old are your boys? I got four kids myself.

Scott McCarthy 8:19
Wow, you are, yeah. Wow. Kudos to you and your wife. Not for this guy. I got a five year old and a two year old, and that’s—that’s it for Scott—Scott, Scott’s happy right there.

Richard Matthews 8:29
I have. I have a ten-year-old, a six-year-old, a three-year-old and an eighteen-month-old. So, the oldest one is a boy, the rest are girls.

Scott McCarthy 8:38
Wow. Yeah, you’re a busy man.

Richard Matthews 8:40
Yeah, busy.

Scott McCarthy 8:40
(whispers) Busy man.

Richard Matthews 8:41
Definitely a busy man. You’d probably—you may be able to hear them in the background. I’m not sure how good the audio production thing here is doing supposed to filter that stuff out. But anyways, they’re always, always making noise.

So my next question for you, Scott is about your origin story, right? We talk on the show all the time. Every good comic book hero has an origin story. It’s the thing that made them the hero they are today. And we want to hear that story. Were you born a hero? Were you bit by a radioactive spider that made you want to get into teaching leadership? Basically, how did you get from where you were to wanting to start this side hustle and eventually turn into a full time career?

Scott McCarthy 9:14
That’s a great question. I like how you say it. I’ll skip up to the part where we briefly talked about in my bio, my deployment. So, 2009, deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan, where I spent seven months embedded directly into an Afghan National Army unit. And that unit, our unit, the Canadian unit, actually suits the coalition units, because there are units across the country in Afghanistan from all the different nations conducting operations in the country. We’re called the operational mentoring and liaison teams all at once. So two big bits of that unit, the mentoring and liaison. So we’re embedded directly into the Afghan National Army and it’s to provide that mentorship. To help them learn how to plan and execute military operations, well, you know, in a war zone, and then it was that liaison bit. So, we were connecting the connector between the Afghan National Army units as well as the coalition forces. So we’re in the middle of operation, and we need either artillery support or fast air helicopters or medivac, or whatever. Were the ones that were providing doom that those calls back to the big bases to bring these assets and to either help us with the operations or get people out. So seven months is that really coaching and being patient in mentoring and helping people was an incredible experience for sure. And then when I came back home from Canada in 2010, they…

Richard Matthews 10:49
Did you have to do that across language barriers, too?

Scott McCarthy 10:52
Yeah, yeah. So I had an interpreter, whose code name was Abdul New York. So he was Abdul New York because everybody over in Afghanistan is called Abdul, but the New York part was because he spent 13 years in the Bronx. So he had that Bronx slang to him when he spoke English. Then he would speak to Pashto, or Dari. So, you know, cultural barriers, language barriers, operating in the middle of a war zone. It’s hard enough along with that last bit, right. So 2010, I came home to Canada, and they posted me—they moved me to one of our training centers in Borden, Ontario. And I was responsible for training young new officers who were coming into the forces to be transportation officers like I was. And that’s really, really where it started. It was like, I started to get that, like pride. Like, I like doing this this coaching, mentoring and really into leadership, I was reading a lot about leadership, but to the point where it just wasn’t enough out there. At that time, I couldn’t really find much more. So I was like, “Well, you know, I got to find something more.” And a couple failed attempts at various businesses and start hustles and stuff like that. I ended up putting it to the side for a couple of years. And fast forward, I was moved here to Kingston, and my wife was going through a career change. Our oldest was one at the time, I was spending a lot of time alone at home. And I was doing podcasts for a tech site that no longer exists right now. But the thing is, is that it kind of just clicked. “I want to talk about leadership. I like this podcasting thing.” So it just started doing the podcast as a hobby. But the hobby, of course, grows, right. And that’s kind of how moving for leadership started. So it started just as a simple podcast half with horrible equipment, with nothing. And then also late, I was like, “Oh, I need social media profiles, to share. Oh, I need a website for show notes.” Oh, people started reaching out and asking questions. And I was like, “Oh, an online course would be cool people.” And now suddenly, I’m coaching men’s groups, like I was last night.

Richard Matthews 13:14
That’s pretty cool. So it sort of grew organically out of something that you’re just doing on the side.

Scott McCarthy 13:20
Yeah, 100%. Just complete organic growth, through just the joy and love of doing what I’ve been doing, talking to people about leadership, helping others develop their leadership skills.

Richard Matthews 13:33
Awesome. So just out of curiosity, how many episodes are you into your show at this point?

Scott McCarthy 13:40
Ah, good question. I just released Episode 131. That’s like, of the Big Show 131 episodes of The Big Show. And there’s about another 40 “bonus episodes”, which include the Monday Leadership Minutes, that’s something that I’ve done on and off based off of what’s been going on in my life as well. So one point last year, I was super busy. Let’s do my second Master’s full time. So I didn’t have as much time to focus on the podcast, but I still ensured that one, I kept the bane interviews going. And two, I was there for my online community. So you kind of have to scale right? It was a side hustle thing.

Richard Matthews 14:22
So you’re doing it once a week? The main show?

Scott McCarthy 14:26
Yeah, the main show is once a week, as well as the Monday leadership minutes or once a week.

Richard Matthews 14:30
So you’re like two and a half, three years into the podcast, then?

Scott McCarthy 14:33
I actually am getting closer to four. So, it was really one of the problems that I had at the beginning. I was really inconsistent. And just learning how to go through that process of recording, you know, finding things to talk, content to discuss, recording, editing, publishing, got really inconsistent. But I really found my groove while they’re on episode 40… between 40 and 50. And then, like, I would say I solidified what moving for leadership is.

Richard Matthews 15:06
Nice. Yeah, so similar to, to our journey with the hero show, we’re about Episode 130 or so right now. And I remember the when, when we built ours, or when I started it, it was a, it was like I’ve recorded the first eight episodes. And then you mentioned all the stuff on the back side, right, the editing and post production and getting it up and the website and you know, social media and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, “Oh, man, I did a lot of work.” So I actually built the whole second business around that called push button podcast, and we offer that full service now and I build a whole team and, and they handle all that stuff. For us. I’m in for several other shows now, which is cool. But it was, that’s what allowed me to actually do it ’cause I was like, if I have to keep doing this myself, I’m never gonna get it done. And it was, after we got that we got the first 10 or 15 episodes out and published where I didn’t have to do all the work on the other side. It was crazy. And we started, started recording, you know, five, six episodes a week and getting them scheduled out. And then the COVID stuff hit. And we started doubling our production and putting out two, two episodes a week just because there’s more audience available to listen to get more stories we want to tell what not. So, it’s definitely been an interesting journey. It’s awesome. So yeah.

So our next question for you, then is about your superpowers. Right. And you know, every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s a fancy flying suit made by a genius intellect, or the ability to call down thunder from the sky. In the real world, heroes have what I call a zone of genius, right? It’s a skill or a set of skills that you either were born with, or you developed over time, that really energize everything else, you do all your other skills. And this superpower is what sets you apart, right? It’s what allows you to help people slay their villains in their lives, right, and come on top in their own journey. So with that framing, what do you think your superpower is?

Scott McCarthy 16:58
Um, I would say that it’s the ability to break things down from big problems into little actual problems. A lot of people kind of get a hard time when—when something shows up to them, and they go, Oh, my God, I have this big problem. And if it comes in leadership, too, it’s very natural for me to go. Okay, let’s sit down. Let’s discuss this. What’s the problem? Okay, what are the sub problems of the problem? Let’s break this down. So the old saying goes, how do you eat an elephant, eat an elephant by one bite at a time. It’s kind of going back to how I created all this, it was literally just one bite at a time, it was a big problem. Once I started to realize what I was creating, it was a big problem. It was huge. It’s like a podcast, a side hustle business, and everything that goes with it. So being able to break it down, looking at all the different things that needed to get done, prioritizing those things, and then slowly adding resources, i.e. time and some money to get them done to enable me to build up. And that’s the kind of thing I help my team with when I’m working. Okay, here’s our problem. Let’s break it down. What are the different factors? What are the things that are most important? Where are our priorities now? What resources do we have? What resources do we need? etc, etc, etc. and then start lining up the plan to tackle that thing.

Richard Matthews 18:20
Absolutely. And it’s an interesting thing, too, because every project, especially, it’s not something you’ve done before. There’s always more pieces to the elephant than you realize, right? You know, it is with podcasts and stuff you probably don’t always think about, you know, I need to do if you’re like on our show, and you got to do guest research for getting people to come onto the show and booking and all that stuff. And for you know, for, for like what you’re doing going out like I want to get myself on other podcasts, you got to research other shows, and do all the research to you know, get on them and get booked onto those shows, like when you think about that, when you start you’re like, “Hey, I have a thing I want to talk about.” And you know, every problem is like that, where you start with something and you realize, oh, there’s more, there’s more to this, there’s more resources that are going to be required, you know, more people more whatever, there’s always like, I don’t know what you call that but you never see the whole picture until you actually get into the process of doing it.

Scott McCarthy 19:13
No, we—we refer to as the fog of war are the unknowns, the things you can’t see. So it’s just as a cloud, your vision. Great example, I remember when I got my first guest request, the contract was like holy cow, someone actually wants to come on my podcast. And I did an interview and I realized halfway through the interview, like, this person is just here to pitch their thing. They like this does not fit leadership or anything. And it was just like, No, I have to do a better job of vetting them and understanding that, oh, people are actually out there just for their own self interest, not because they think they’re a good fit for my show. Mm hmm.

Richard Matthews 19:51
Yeah. And you have to learn how to have your selection criteria and like what you’re going to talk about and yeah, you have to have like an interview process. You’re going through with people. And it’s an interesting thing, right? And so it comes down and especially so like in the terms of leadership as the leader of an organization or the leader of a group of people, you have to, you have to sort of help your team navigate that, would you call it the fog of war, and figure out that you know, what steps they should be taking to make things happen?

Scott McCarthy 20:23
Hundred percent. And that’s where keeping a cool clock that afflictive mind set comes in, right? Because especially when people get confused, they start getting anxious, they start getting nervous, start getting upset. As the leader, you got to be the one that basically calms everybody down and says, Okay, let’s actually look at this. Let’s take this apart. Let’s have a look. No, hopefully no one’s lives on the line. Sometimes they are. So it all depends, right? So as a leader, basically, they need to calm the team down so that people can focus because as people get anxious, they get upset, things are going crazy, you lose the ability to make rational decisions, you lose the ability to actually do the proper analysis to have an understanding of what’s going on. But the problem set is, so that’s one of the core aspects of leadership that leaders are people who calm people in times of crisis.

Richard Matthews 21:16
Yeah, I mean, you have, you know, four, so most of our audience is entrepreneurs, right? So the crisis is that they’re running into things like stuff that we’ve dealt with this year, like, “Hey, you know, covid crisis hit and half your clients are like, Hey, we can’t, we can’t continue with you. Because we have to shut down all of our operations.” And you’re like, “What do you do with your team? And how do you handle like, okay, here’s what’s going on, here’s how I was moving forward.” And so that, you know, I think a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to having to dust off leadership skills they may not have had to use in a while this year.

Scott McCarthy 21:50
All right, yes. I enjoy working entrepreneurs. You know, I’m one as well. You know, one of the things that I find interesting entrepreneurs, and one of the difficulties that I find with them is, they have a really hard time delegating. And this is something I talk about, often with my leadership podcast is power delegation, you heard it in the Bible, it’s a force multiplier enabling you to take care of other things. And especially when there’s a lot going on, you can’t worry about the nitty gritty, day to day stuff. As a leader, you gotta be thinking strategically, you need to be thinking vision, you need to be thinking ahead. And right now it’s like, Okay, how do we get out of this crisis, and understanding that, you know, cash flow suddenly starts drying up, and you go into crisis mode, because you’re trying to do with the day to day stay afloat. But that’s only going to last so long. You need to figure out a way you need to have that time and space that look at where you are in your business, and where you are right now, what’s going on in the world today, and have that vision of okay, we’re here right now. But how do we get there so that we’re sustainable in the future? If you’re the leader, if you’re an entrepreneur, and you’re running a business, and you don’t have that time or space, to do that vision work, think about a doodle analysis. And look at and go… “We are here. We want to go there. What is that path? How does it work? Like, what do we need to do? What do we need to get in order to get from A to B?” And a lot of entrepreneurs to kind of get really sucked into cash flow? Finding a client right now, it’s just sort of contrived. totally understand, totally agree. The same time you gotta make that space. Think further down the road.

Richard Matthews 23:39
Yeah. And I know, like, in my business, one of the things that I had a, I had a mentor of mine tell me it was like, Hey, you need it was a couple years ago. Now. He’s like, you need to hire someone like you. That’s your biggest bottleneck is you need to hire and start delegating, and thinking to myself, like I can’t, I can’t afford someone, I don’t know how to hire someone. And it was an interesting, like, mental thing in it, because he was like, trust me. Just do it, hire someone. And I was thinking to myself, can’t do it, can’t afford it. Gonna do it anyway, because my mentor told me I had to, and I was just gonna suck it up and do it. And I hired someone, and then immediately realized that when you hire someone, it’s not just an outflow of money. It’s an inflow of what you called force multiplication, right? Because now instead of 40 hours a week going into the business or however much I was time I was spending now I had another person and all of their time also coming into help with work product and help with, you know, all the things that I could delegate and get off of my plate and work on other things that we actually made more money. The first month, I had someone working for me than I did the month before. And so which more than covered their salary, right, like it’s like things that you don’t see until you’ve actually like taken that action and gotten some of the stuff delegated moved off of your own plate. And yeah, it’s been a it’s been a big win for our business to start bringing people on.

Scott McCarthy 24:56
No, it’s just that’s just one example. Right? And that gives now again, enables you to have that space. That’s the reason why you’re able to bring more money and not just because you have another set of hands helping you. But it enabled you to have the space now they realize, okay, how do we scale? How do we grow? What’s next? How do we go about planning our future products that we want to launch? What future services do we want to provide? And delegation is the way that enables business owners, entrepreneurs, to do that, and understand why a lot of entrepreneurs have a hard time delegating, you know, you build the business from the ground up, I’ve built meaning for leadership from the ground up, it’s my baby, it’s like your businesses, your baby, you know, we developed this, we have the vision of it, we’ve been intimately involved with it from day one. And it’s really nerve-wracking to bring someone else in and share that with them, that has—that haven’t been there along this journey, like, oh, they’re gonna ruin it, or they don’t know what they’re doing, or—blah, blah, blah—all these excuses, limiting beliefs. If you throw them away, bring someone in, say, “Hey, this is the vision, this is what I am doing right now. This is what I would like you to do. This is how I see you fitting in. These are your roles. These are your responsibilities. What do you think?” It’d be like? “Yeah, great.” And you know what? One of the things is, they may be better at those aspects of that of the business than you were. I’m a horrible marketer. I tell you, one of the first people that I’ll hire is going to be someone who’s marketing, because I can bring them in and give them the vision of it. And go, “Hey, this is what, you know, this is moving for leadership. This is how I envision it all, I need you to turn that vision into something that others see understand and can relate with, how’s that sound?” And they’ll be like, “Yep, got a good run.” I don’t just run. Let me worry about us…

Richard Matthews 26:51
Do what you need to do.

Scott McCarthy 26:52
Cont… yup! Content creation, future services, future products, all those things.

Richard Matthews 26:59
So just off the top of my head, one of the things that strikes me is when it comes to leadership, at least, knowing what the leader of the company should be responsible for and what they should be. Delegating is an important thing. So this is in my head, the ones that I always think about, like, “Hey, these are things I should be spending my time on,” and things I tell my clients they should be spending their time on. I’m just curious, I want to get your thoughts on this. So a couple of things. One of them is the vision, right? Like where you’re going, what you’re doing. Another one is the systems and processes like actually building those out and making sure that you have good systems and how they work and where you can increase efficiencies there. And then the other big one is culture, right? Like actually building and establishing the culture in the company and making sure that it sticks and grows and stays around, even if you’re not, they’re actively holding the culture together. And those are like the three big ones that I see. And I’m curious what your thoughts are on there, if you have anything to add, or if you think any of those are crazy.

Scott McCarthy 27:53
I love them all, actually, because the leader has the vision. Certainly this sets the company organization to have a vision. I think we’ve talked about enough systems and processes in place in small companies, absolutely. As the company grows and gets larger, though, I think that’s a time place for the leader to actually like it a little bit and allow people to bring things forward, allow people to establish systems and processes in place, and not—not necessarily involving you, as a business owner, too much. Because at the end of the day, when you have a larger team, you have people that are in charge of sales, you have people that are in charge of marketing, you have people in charge of this, ultimately, you don’t care.

So when I was a company commander, and I was in charge of 200 members, it was divided up into three main groups. There was a transportation troop, a maintenance troop, and a supply troop. And each one of those had their own leaders, and those are further divided. It’s just how military organization works. I would tell my true commanders like listen, if it’s a problem that lies within your troop, I don’t care. So if it’s a problem that resides just within transport, I don’t care. It’s not my problem. It’s yours as the transport troop commander, deal solved with, if you have issues due to resources, or authorities, then you come in, let me know. Now if it’s a problem that spans two or more of the troops, i.e., there’s a piece of equipment that’s broken, maintenance has other priorities, they just can’t get in time, but transport needs that piece of equipment fixed. So they can go out and do their tasks. Now suddenly comes my problem because I’m the one that is in charge of the participation of the squadron as a whole. Right? And now this is the type of mentality you can take back to business like I don’t care about the systems and processes necessarily deep in the organization. What I’m caring about is the results. So it was like “Hey, marketing, if you have a marketing problem, go ahead, find it, find a solution, fix it. Move on, not my problem. This is what I expect from you at the end of the year, these types of metrics, these things that you’re on hit, let me know if you need further guidance for the resources, whatever, sales here, your sales things, you know, this is what I expect from you.” Same thing, go ahead. Now, if we have a problem where marketing and sales are just not lining up, that’s where as a business owner, you need to get involved. So that’s where I think you could let go a little bit as the company grows. The final thing we talk about culture is something huge, something that I talked about a lot on the podcast with guests from across the world. And it’s something that you need to hold near and dear to your heart, because culture will make or break an organization company.

I talked to a business owner once during the 2008 financial crisis, it was a print publisher. They talk to me about how he said he told his people, not one of his people got laid off. He didn’t care, the random self into debt for that year. Yeah, they went in, they were in the red for that entire year, as you would expect. But people are out there cleaning up the building, tidying up things, they were showing up, they were just hanging out as a company, even though there was no work to be done. And as things started coming back online, they started—they actually went above previous projections. And that is establishing that culture of we’re here writing it together for basically a family. Now, look at the other end of the spectrum, okay, a company like Uber, that had a cultural, massive coach—culture problem, where they’re talking about sex, sex, sexual issues, sexual assault issues, all these other things, the CEO end up getting arrested, they got problems with their drivers, they have all these issues, and that’s resulting from culture, was the culture that you’re setting up. And that is, culture is going to be the thing that either attracts or retains your people, if people are attracted to the culture, if you show a culture that is attractive, the people that you’re going to start getting the best people will come towards you, because they’re interested in working there. Because it drives them. You bring them in, and they see that the culture is something completely different, it’s gonna be one of the reasons why they’re going to leave pretty quick, and they’re going to find something else. So all I can say is, as a leader, you have to be on top of culture, you have to establish a culture that’s inclusive, that enables people to do their jobs and motivates them that inspires them, that makes them feel safe, and ultimately allows them to grow.

Richard Matthews 32:49
Awesome, I clearly agree. And on the, the systems thing, one of the things that I was thinking, and maybe this is just, you know, I’m still pretty young, in my career, I’ve only been doing this whole entrepreneur thing for, you know, 10 years plus or so right now I feel like I got a long way to go before I get good at this stuff. Is, is that you have to, you have to like, build your systems as you go. And then as you get bigger, and you start handing them off.

You it’s not necessarily that you’re in the systems, but you should just be aware of them. That’s sort of what I was, where I was—where I was thinking on that, on that whole system is mine is just being aware of like, “Hey, here’s what’s going on and all the areas of your company.”

Scott McCarthy 33:29
Absolutely. When I talk about delegation, essentially what you’re doing you’re delegating in that circumstance. And when I talk, when I talk about delegation is one core aspect of delegation, is those factories serve progress update briefs, or whatever, you know, just meetings. And that’s essentially a part you are inserting yourself as the leader into the system. like okay, you know, recruitment, you know, hiring, how is our hiring, you know, we have 20 positions available. How is it? Okay, we got 18 files that look like we’re going to have candidates to fill those positions. All right, great. comes back, you know, we only have two of the 20 positions, only two people accepted. Okay, well, why not? Why are people? Is it our recruiting process is too slow? Is it our culture that people aren’t attracted to? Or are we not offering the right benefit packages, etc, etc. So these progress back briefs are these back update briefs—however you want to call them—that’s where you insert yourself into the system, so that you can be aware of what’s going on, and then make adjustments as required things are not quite right there, you tweak, you find the problems for you make the adjustments and again, while this—the people who are empowered to deal with it, run with it.

Richard Matthews 34:38
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So—so you’re—you’re when you, when you get larger, you’re not actually in charge of the—you know, minutiae of the system. It’s more like hey, I just need to know how the system’s working. And you know what are, what are the metrics and stuff that are heading so that it can inform the direction of the company overall like steering of the ship, so to speak?

Scott McCarthy 34:56
Yeah, exactly. Cool. When you’re in charge of people, if you Just take the approach that my job here enables you to do your job better. That’s going to basically help you run the business much more smoothly.

Richard Matthews 35:10
Makes a lot of sense. Okay, so then the flip side of your superpower is your fatal flaw, right? So every Superman has this kryptonite, you know, every Wonder Woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad. You probably have a flaw that’s held you back in your business, right? Something that you struggled with, maybe for me, you know, a couple of things, things like perfectionism that kept me from actually shipping product, right, or lack of self-care, which means I let my clients walk all over me in the past, or maybe something like being a visionary, right, but not being really good at the actual minutiae of getting things done. Right. And so have lacking discipline to implement, so to speak. But I think more often than the flaw that you’re going to talk about is how have you worked to rectify it? Right, so that people who are listening to this podcast might learn a little bit from your experience?

Scott McCarthy 35:53
Yeah, my fatal flaw is the opposite of what we’re doing right now. And that is the, you know, writing, it’s been a problem for mine for quite some time. And you know, it’s a weakness of mine. It’s a problem. It’s a weakness of mine, and I’m not the world’s greatest writer, and people go, Okay, so why? Well, that actually is a bit of a problem. Because one night, my website doesn’t have a blog right now, there is no blog up, which I’m losing traffic. Because of that, I know I’m losing traffic because of it. Writing up contracts takes ubers amounts of time for me when I have clients because again, I’m just not the world’s greatest writer. So I have to be really deliberate, really thorough with it, get people to proofread it, etc. Use some programs to help me out in the past such as Grammarly and stuff like that. So working through it now all let’s say is, it’s great. I have built on that weakness and believe it or not, before we started recording on the show, I’m working on my first blog post for a website, I have now processes in place to help me with my contracts, and all those things. So it’s, it’s a work in progress. It’s you always go after your weaknesses, I prefer to double down on my strengths. So podcasting, hence why the podcast has been around for so long. And hence why the blog has not been around. But now I get the podcasting thing down. Where it’s almost autopilot, I can also generate a podcast episode inside of four hours now. Total from reviewing guests to production hitting, hitting schedule on my host. However, now I’m like, okay, to generate new traffic to hopefully bring in new revenue. Now I’m about to get outside my comfort zone, start reading those blog posts and putting them out there for those people who want that content.

Richard Matthews 37:43
Yeah, yeah. So one of the things that just on the whole writing thing, writing has always been a strength of mine. But because of the work that we do, in our company, I work with a lot of expert brands who have to create content a lot. And one of the things that’s been really effective for them, and since you already are really good at doing the audio stuff is I have a lot of my clients record, record their blog posts, right, as like a podcast episode, right? It’s like the topic that you talked about. And then you just get it transcribed and hand it off to an editor. And then, you know, you can get editors on Fiverr or stuff like that, where it’s like, Hey, here’s a here’s the sort of structure we’re going for, for podcasts or for blog posts. And here’s a transcription of a podcast, can you turn this into an article and that works really well unless you a to your point, leverage your strengths instead of working on the weaknesses and stuff like that, which is that it has been super, super useful. So I’m not sure if that’s helpful or not. But that’s one of the strategies we’ve used in the past for getting stuff written.

Scott McCarthy 38:44
Definitely in the back of my mind, for sure, and stuff like that. So I’m really deliberate about my cash flow and when I have a client, when I bring clients on, what do I intend to do with that cash right now actually, I’m you know, hard on my own social media coach. So back to the whole marketing thing. So I’m actually spending my client cash to that are from who are being coached and getting turned getting coaching myself. Before I upgraded all this gear that you see, this is all new, new equipment, that’s probably about less than 20 hours worth of use on it now. So I upgraded that so I’m really deliver what I do with my cash flow. And that is going to be one of those things that okay, amongst other things, okay, what can I delegate out? When can I delegate out to production of my show? When can I delegate, things like that? And it’s definitely on my list, too, for me to determine “Okay, when it’s time, which one do I? Where do I think is the greatest return on my investment?” Stuff like this. So doing the blog posts myself is kind of that trial, see, okay, I do the podcast episodes myself. I see my stats and everything there. Once I start doing my blog posts myself, let’s see what kind of traffic that generates, Okay, which one? If I go more professional with the work? Or vice versa? Which one? Can I get the best return on for my time and money?

Richard Matthews 40:09
Yeah, that’s a, that’s a good way to think through the decisions too, is like, let’s actually just do them and see what the results look like and which one, which one you want to, you know, pour gasoline on the fire, so to speak, I want to talk a little bit about your common enemy. Right? So every superhero has an arch nemesis, right? It’s a thing that they constantly have to fight against in their world, right? In the world of business, it takes on a lot of forms. But generally speaking, we put this in the context of your clients, right? The people that you’re coaching, or you’re working with on a regular basis. And it’s a mindset, or it’s a flaw that you constantly have to fight against, right. Fight to overcome so that they can get better, cheaper, faster, higher degree of results, whatever it is that you’re promising them. You know, if you had your magic wand, and every time you know, a new client came in, you could pop them on the head and remove that mindset or that flaw. What is the common enemy that you constantly have to deal with?

Scott McCarthy 40:54
Bosses. Just—

Richard Matthews 40:56
Just bosses?

Scott McCarthy 40:58
Bosses, so why don’t when I say bosses, I want you to think about the boss, the—the horrible, horrible boss. And essentially, the tagline of moving forward leadership is “Lead don’t boss.” So what I’m trying to do is instill in my clients’ understanding that when—when we think, when how we will think when we’re in a supervisor role is that we don’t want to be necessarily the boss, the horrible boss, everybody thinks about. Instead you want to be that leader, you want to be that person that motivates you want to be that person that inspires that empowers your subordinates to take action, to do the best job that they have, you’re not wanting to be that person who just don’t give direction constantly that doesn’t listen, that doesn’t care, what everybody has to say, doesn’t care about their people, just cares about results, just cares about the bottom line. So what I’m fighting against is that whole boss mentality, the horrible lack of mentorship in various organizations ranks and I help people to see that when they are not bosses, but leaders and they develop, inspire, motivate, empower, develop, you know, their teams, not only does the organization or they do better, organization does better, output goes up. So moving for leadership, I talk with three domains of leadership as leading yourself, leading your team and leading the organization. Leading yourself is all about how you hit peak performance, how you as a leader, are able to deal with stress how you as a leader, plan and prioritize your day, how you do your your productivity, and leading your team is all about how you inspire, motivate and empower Jane, Bob, Sally, Susie p individuals within your organization. And the goal there is to do team building to achieve high performing teams. And ultimately, that goes to leading your organization so that you increase effectiveness, increase efficiency, drive organizational up, and that does not occur, if all you care about is yourself. When you start caring about others, start caring about yourself. And then you start taking care of your team and looking out for them. They’re going to be the ones that will drive the organizational outputs through the bosses and do not do that. Leaders are the ones that do that. So that’s who might and then this is…

Richard Matthews 43:37
Awesome. I like that, that juxtaposition too, right? Because everyone knows they’ve all experienced the boss or maybe they’ve been the boss. And it’s that person who’s like, you know, I’m, I’m bigger and smarter and faster and stronger than you, so you do what I say right? What is it? That, the old Matilda movie, right? And that—that’s it’s an uninspiring place to work. Prime and I remember the last corporate job that I had, I, they did a I was on the C level team for marketing. And while I was doing that, I—I was reporting directly to the president of the company, which was super cool. And he was a leader, right and he was a fantastic leader at that. And then during the course of my tenure there, they acquired another company. And because they acquired another company, the head of that company ended up being put over the marketing and I started reporting to him instead of to the previous president. And he was a boss. And I was out of the company within three months. Like, it was, it was just no longer a place I wanted to be. And it is interesting because—because of, because of that the organizational output actually dropped and they ended up having to part ways and get rid of them because that boss mentality was very detrimental to their company. Especially at a high level…

Scott McCarthy 45:05
There’s so many little offshoots there. One is that people don’t leave companies, they leave horrible bosses saying you hear all—

Richard Matthews 45:14
Yeah.

Scott McCarthy 45:14
—the time.

And the other, the other thing is, is that if, you know, let’s say, you’re that president, that leader president wasn’t a leader, but was a boss, and you stuck it out, what’s gonna happen to you? You’re gonna turn into one of them, because you think this is how it goes, this is how you get there. So you get up there, by being this way. By being a bully, by being disrespectful by not caring about your people, but only caring about the bottom line, etc, etc, etc, all these things that we talk against. But the reality is, so many somehow, somewhere, someone needs to break that cycle. If we don’t break the cycle, it’s just gonna be more and more bosses being created out there because they don’t know any better. And that’s the problem.

Richard Matthews 46:02
Yeah.

Scott McCarthy 46:03
So… that’s why I’m here.

Richard Matthews 46:05
I love it, which I think drives really well into the next question, which is your driving force, right. So if you’re comping anything, you fight against your driving forces, the thing that you fight for, right, so just like Spider Man fights to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information. I don’t know what it is that you fight for, in your leadership company.

Scott McCarthy 46:24
It’s, it’s fighting for the, for the people in my clients’ companies, essentially, right? Because they’re the ones that are gonna reap the biggest benefits. They’re the ones that are now going to get, have that cycle. I don’t want to say it in vain or Lucy, but you know, kind of like a use cycle, as they say, right? To get in there, wedge yourself in there, break it so that as more and more people develop and move up through the ranks of various organizations and companies, that they don’t, in turn become like those, quote unquote, “bosses” that they’ve had in the past that they see that there is another way that there is a better way that doesn’t result in people essentially getting destroyed, right, ripped apart, because the Boston likes something vise being empowered, inspired, motivated, and all these other things.

Richard Matthews 47:18
Now, it makes a lot of sense. And it’s one of those ripple effect style things, right, where you work with, you do work with one person and ends up impacting a lot of others going forward, which is always cool.

Scott McCarthy 47:30
I’m working with a client right now. And the impact goes to almost 4000.

Richard Matthews 47:34
Yeah, that’s really cool. And you have stuff like that, right? When you have, you can, it’s a very leveraged way to have an impact on the world. So anyways, I like that a lot. So I’m gonna talk a little bit about some practical things, right. And we call this the hero’s tool belt, right? So just like every superhero has their tool belt with awesome gadgets, like batter rings, or web slingers or laser eyes, I’m going to talk about one or two tools that you use everyday that you could live without in your business, right? It could be anything from your notepad, to your calendar, to your marketing tools, to your product delivery to something that you, you know, pneumonic you use with all your clients, right, that you you help them with something, something you think is essential to getting your job done on a daily basis. What are your top one or two tools that come to mind?

Scott McCarthy 48:16
Yes, that’s a great question. Obviously, a talk about you know, G Suite and scheduling. I think, probably one of the biggest tools I have is just a simple messenger. Good old Facebook Messenger. And I use that to communicate with a lot of my clients, whether and sometimes it’s on email, but still I talk to current clients through Facebook Messenger, and some matter of just saying, “Hey, how are things going? Hey, what’s going on? Are you achieving what you’re looking to achieve?” Or they messaged me? Like, “Oh, I got this problem, I’m not sure how to deal with it,” etc. And I’m like, “Okay, well, let’s see, when do you need this buyer? Can this wait till the next coaching call?” And they were like, “Alright, let’s put it on the agenda for next call.” And it’s just this simple communication tool, right? Being able to be in touch with someone all the time, being able to help them through the problems that they have. And in the end, that one app I could basically do my entire business wouldn’t be, wouldn’t be that pretty, but it would work.

Richard Matthews 49:24
So, yeah.

Scott McCarthy 49:24
Good old, Facebook Messenger.

Richard Matthews 49:26
It’s interesting to me how, how big of an impact asynchronous communication, I think it’s the fancy term for it, where you don’t have to both be live on the line at the same time. Like, you know, you know, radio would be like the opposite of that when you were in the military. Right? If you push a little button to talk to someone, the other person has to be there and listening in order for the communication to happen. Otherwise, you just spoke to the ether, right? Yeah, and so like the things like SMS and messenger and you know, I messages and all that kind of stuff, I think if they’ve had a huge impact culturally all around the world, but you know, just in business particular, the you know, I was like, just since I’ve been sitting here I’ve noticed several notifications coming through of like my clients dropping things to me that like, it’s still there like the communication it doesn’t I like I don’t have to be actively there you can talk back and forth. And you know, I run most of my business the same way, right? Most of my clients, we chat on facebook messenger or on imessages. And it’s interesting how that has changed so dramatically over the last 10 years or so…

Scott McCarthy 50:29
Yeah.

Richard Matthews 50:29
Where we’re, you know, communication used to be phone calls. And now it’s all, you know, asynchronous communication and Zoom calls.

Scott McCarthy 50:39
No, you’re totally right. And my guess was, as it started getting more digital, to start with BBM. And now moved into picking a platform, from Facebook, to iMessage, to WhatsApp and everything else that’s out there, the ability to do so much more is now there…

Richard Matthews 50:58
Yeah, yeah.

Scott McCarthy 50:58
It’s not just simple text messaging anymore. But just the simple being able to, for me, that be here in Canada, of my clients in the US summer abroad. And not having those worries about increased costs of doing business and having to pass them on to my clients and stuff like this enables us just to communicate such an effective manner that we’re able to, you know, prioritize what we’re going to discuss in our coaching calls where sometimes I provide coaching, even through just messages like that, we’re helping them work through their problems just through good old Facebook Messenger. So that’s a huge tool in the toolbox. And maybe sometimes it gets a little bit of this credit. And again, it all depends on what kind of business that people you know, your audience that’s listening right now, ones as well.

Richard Matthews 51:42
Yeah, yeah. What’s interesting to me too, is I’m starting to see even bigger companies take up messaging as support platforms and stuff like that I was, I use that T Mobile for my cell phone. And they’re they—they released, like a business chat on iMessage. And you can like we tap the little thing, you talk to someone and like, it pulls up your account information, and everything all in the message thing. And I got a whole thing like situated and fixed. All in the chat thing, never had to call anyone. It was super quick. And the representative on the other side was super easy to do those things. And I think that’s only going to get better and better with time.

Scott McCarthy 52:19
My website is a WordPress website, and I get a plug in there so that as soon as someone pops on the website, they get a little Facebook Messenger bubble saying, “Hey, doing shoot me a message, feel free to do it right here right now.”

Richard Matthews 52:29
Yeah. And then it just shows up on your phone. So you can talk with people live, which is fascinating. And you know, one of the things that we actually do, we do a lot of online sales for our clients. And we found that if you put those chat bubble things on checkout pages, you actually increase conversion rates. So chat systems like Facebook or iMessage and whatnot, actually help you make more sales too. So it’s a—it’s interesting, just because they know the person who’s looking to shop that, “Hey, there’s a real person here. And if I have a problem, I can get it taken care of like right here right now.” It’s powerful stuff.

Scott McCarthy 53:00
Awesome.

Richard Matthews 53:01
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Next question for you then is about your own personal heroes. Right? Every hero has their mentors, right? Frodo had Gandalf, Luke had Obi Wan, Robert Kiyosaki had his rich dad, SpiderMan had his Uncle Ben, right? Who were some of your heroes? Were they real life mentors, speakers, authors, peers who may be a couple of years ahead of you, and how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far in your business journey?

Scott McCarthy 54:59
Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. Great question I, you know, I could talk about how Batman’s my favorite superhero, even though he’s not a superhero. But ultimately, you know, it’s my dad, right? My dad growing up, he was super hard working. There were times when we didn’t have a whole lot, but he still kept up, went back to school, I could improve his education. And it’s funny because I’ve ever been young and kind of making fun of them, like, because I’m in grade school and dad’s back at school. But ultimately, what he did, he ended up instilling in me, basically, a mentality that don’t be afraid to make mistakes, don’t be afraid to try something and fail at it, as long as you’ve learned something from it, and to continuously improve ourselves. And that’s actually the moving forward part of moving for leadership. I can say that continuous improvement, continuous education, continuous development, along the lines of the Japanese word Kaizen, which basically literally means, like, continuous improvement, and that’s what he instilled in me from a young age. And I attribute all that to growing up with him, and essentially, just being around him and him, you know, doing so much to take care of us, me, my brother, my sister, and as well my mom, and the family and do what he needs to do to get things done when times weren’t necessarily best.

So yeah, that’s, that’s who I would say it was my superhero.

Richard Matthews 56:25
Awesome. Yeah, I love that. My dad was the same way. And I remember listening to his stories, growing up, like his, his dad died when he was eight, right. And he ended up doing a lot of, you know, taking care of the family and his—his life and had a job at like, 14, and, you know, you know, helped put his older brothers through college and those kinds of things. And it’s amazing, because, like, I look back at my childhood and realize it, like he put so much work into getting to where he was that we have the lives that we did growing up, right, because, you know, he didn’t start with a silver spoon in his mouth. And anyway, and he had like, less than nothing. And, you know, build up to a nice life, a nice career and, you know, allowed me to stand on the shoulder of giants, so to speak, and really kickstart my life and my career in a place that I never would have done if it wasn’t for the work that you put in. Which is, which is really cool.

So I want to talk. Last couple of questions here are your guiding principles, right? So one of the things that makes heroes heroic, is that they live by a code, right? So for instance, your favorite superhero, Batman never kills his enemies, he only ever brings them to Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up this interview is talk about top one or two principles that you regularly use in your life, maybe something that you wish you knew when he first started out on this whole leadership journey.

Scott McCarthy 57:40
Yeah, so I kind of hinted at them throughout this podcast, one just now, continuous improvement, right, not being afraid to fail. That’s one of the things that kind of guides me, I’m willing to try anything, as long as I’ve learned from my mistakes, as long as, as long as I along the way. That served me kind of, kind of, well, not so well, the beginning, my army career ended up having to do what we refer to as a lot of extra duties. i.e., that’s usually not a good thing. But the one thing that earned me a good solid reputation was that I own the mistakes that I made. And I took it on the chin. I didn’t fight back. It was like “No, okay, roger that. I did that week’s worth of extra duties, no problem.” And essentially, that means just being on call, which ultimately is not a big deal. So is that one. Continuous improvement learning, I still read every day, Cracow chapter of my book I’m currently reading right now, continuously improving, I remember when I was first in university, and I can’t wait to get out of university. Once I get this degree, I’m done. And I’m out of here. If I could go back and strangle the crap, like Homer Simpson on Bart, on 20 year old Scott, I would love to do so. And then the final, the final thing is essentially serving others, right. And that’s the whole goal, when it comes to being a great leader is empowering those others serving them, because ultimately, they do the job on your behalf. So if you get sales people that are ones out there doing the cold calls, they’re the ones out there discussing the claws are the ones that are working for you on your behalf to get those sales. so empowering them taking care of them to best their ability, so that they do the best job that they can do.

Richard Matthews 59:28
Yeah, I love those. I like the—the continuous improvement is such an interesting thing, right? Because you—one of my favorite metaphors for that is the ripening fruit, right? Once a fruit has ripened all the way then it starts to rot and fall off the tree. Right? So if you’re not, if you’re not growing, right, if you’re not getting better than the only other option is to be rotting and falling apart. So, continuous improvement is like a requirement for continuing to grow and, and survive and thrive especially in your business. That kind of stuff. And I think it’s probably even more important if you’re the one leading the organization doesn’t really matter how big it is. If you’re not continually improving, you can’t help your organization grow with those things.

Scott McCarthy 1:00:12
I say that’s the day you stop learning is the day you come use the day you stop being useful to your organization. And that applies for everybody. You know, even as a, as a business owner, the day you stop learning because things change every day, and things change constantly. Looking back 10 years, how much has changed along our journeys as business owners in just a short amount of time, we haven’t learned how to do new things, how to do new ways of getting clients and serving our clients. We are on the street right now.

Richard Matthews 1:00:47
Yeah, I feel like the same thing holds true for your family too, right now, if you’re not continually improving and growing as a, you know, in our case, fathers and husbands is the same thing. You stop being useful to your family, right? And it’s like, as my kids grew up, you realize like, I’m, I’m constantly learning new ways of talking and dealing with and teaching and educating my kids, especially, it’s like my older son, I’m starting to get older and more. He’s getting more intellectual, if that makes sense, right? You start to have a higher understanding of the world. And it’s like, it’s that, that’s having a big impact on me. And like, the things that I’m realizing I have to get better at, in helping him like learn and navigate this world. Right. So it’s a, it applies to everything, not just your work or your career, your business, but also your family as a continuous improvement.

Scott McCarthy 1:01:32
Absolutely. Doesn’t matter. Like you, as a father, you’re still you’re automatically a leader, as a husband, your leaders just how you how you frame it and view it, overlay that you have.

Richard Matthews 1:01:42
Yeah.

Scott McCarthy 1:01:42
For it. So totally agree with you.

Richard Matthews 1:01:42
Yeah. Awesome. So that’s basically a wrap on our interview, Scott. But I do finish every interview with a simple challenge. I call it the hero’s challenge. Hero’s challenge is basically a selfish little thing I do at the end of all of my podcasts, that helps me get access to stories I might not otherwise get access to on my own. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? First names are fine, and why should they come on our show and share their story?

Scott McCarthy 1:02:12
Oh, that’s a neat one. Yeah, the first person that comes online is my buddy Chris. He’s a fellow podcaster as well, but he’s into the Agile space. And he runs a really awesome podcast, short to the point. However, he’s inspiring people to be more agile in their work area. But he doesn’t focus on how agile is to be—sorry—what agile is but how to run it. He really focused on that leadership aspect within the Agile community. Super great show, I’ll throw it. I’ve given them a shameless plug. It’s called “Badass Agile”. So, if you—if you’re in that space, especially in the tech space, or you’re looking at running an agile type of business, definitely look at Chris, I can’t give them enough kudos, because he’s a great guy we’ve actually met last year, got together had a, had dinner and had a beer in. Super nice guy. So, Chris is the man.

Richard Matthews 1:03:06
Cool. Yeah. Well, we’ll reach out afterwards and see if we can get an introduction to Chris came on the show and share his story. So for our send off, right, in comic books, there’s always the crowd who is there to thank the hero for their acts of heroism and claps. Right. So as we close, I want to find out where can people find you? If they want your help in the future? Where can they light up the best signal so to speak, and say, “Hey, you know what, Scott, I’d really like your help to become a better leader in my organization.” And I think more importantly, than where they can find you is, who are the right types of people to reach out, raise their hands and say, “Hey, you know what, I would like to talk to you.”

Scott McCarthy 1:03:38
Yeah, no, great, so the right type of people. Um, I could say anybody really, however, just be more specific business owners, when you’re, when you’re starting to even think about hiring your first employees. And you have no leadership experience, you really want to reach out to me, right? Why don’t you want to start following me, because the last thing you want is to bring someone into your company, your organization, and realize that you don’t have the skills for those that are necessarily, you know, maybe you’re in a big corporate gig, and you realize you’re not getting the mentorship that you need, and you’re looking at a promotion that is going to take you into leading people come follow me. Please. Like, really. And those who are realizing now that third ones that are like, “Oh, my God, I’ve been led astray this whole time yet, YouTube come along.” As I always say, it doesn’t matter who you are. Everybody needs some leadership skills in their life. It’s just a matter of how we look at it, and how you take the lessons that come out of my show, and what I talk about and apply to your life, but those three groups for sure. So with that you can follow me at movingforwardleadership.com that’s my headquarters. All my show notes are hosted there. I can follow the social links throughout the bottom you can subscribe to the show by going to movingforwardleadership.com forward slash subscribe, and check out my 131, 170 odd total episodes. They’re on the internet now.

Richard Matthews 1:05:02
Awesome. Thank you so much Scott for coming on. And if you haven’t listened to this and you want help with your leadership skills, definitely reach out to Scott and maybe pick up and subscribe to his podcast as well. I know that’s a huge thing that all of us podcasters are always looking for — to find more people to get our message out to. And again, Scott, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. It’s been a fascinating conversation to have with you today. And last thing before I hit this, uh, this stop record button here any final words of wisdom for our audience?

Scott McCarthy 1:05:34
I’ll just say you know, “Lead, don’t boss.” Whatever you do, just lead, please don’t boss.

Richard Matthews 1:05:40
Please don’t boss. Love it. Thank you very much for coming out today.

Scott McCarthy 1:05:42
Hey, thanks for having me.