Adam Torres and Scott Couchenour discuss career and life changes.
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Show Notes:
Serving Strong Enterprises is focused on helping those in their 40’s and 50’s prepare for a fantastic “4th Quarter” (60’s and 70’s). In this episode, Adam Torres interviewed Scott Couchenour, Life and Business Coach of Serving Strong Enterprises. Explore preparing for a great “4th Quarter” and Scott’s latest book, Mission Matters: World’s Leading Entrepreneurs Reveal Their Top Tips To Success (Business Leaders Vol. 9, Edition 8).
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About Scott Couchenour
Scott is a “fourth quarter” life and business coach. He helps business owners in their 40’s and 50’s who are successful yet dissatisfied with the uncertainty of where their life and business are headed. He concentrates on helping owners of small to midsize companies create clarity and design a comprehensive life and business plan. He helps not only with strategy but secure solid traction through an iterative approach. His clients are reaching new heights and accomplishing much more than they ever thought possible.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I wanna welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today is the long awaited episode, Scott, I’m so excited and thrilled to announce that our book is finally out.
It’s finally live. For those of you who are tuning in for the first time and haven’t caught maybe some of our previous work that we’ve done together, Scott Kau is a life and business coach over at serving Strong Enterprises, and as I mentioned, a new author in our Mission Matters book release. So Scott, hey, first, just welcome back to the show.
Excited to have you here today. Adam thank you so much for the opportunity and it’s a privilege to be here. Really is. All right Scott. So Scott, a k a, the fourth quarter coach for those of you that follow him on LinkedIn, and we’re gonna talk about that because you put out some great content on LinkedIn and we’re gonna get into that of course.
Today, we’ll talk about the book, we’ll talk about what you’re doing over as. Serving strong enterprises, of course. But before that, we’ll, we’ll start this episode. The way that we start them all. You already know the drill with our mission matters minute. That’s right. So, Scott, we at Mission Matters, we amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts.
That’s our mission. Scott, what mission matters to you? Well, my mission is to change the narrative around aging to provide the prospect of hope in a bright future. And I back it up with a, a mechanism of measurable action that leads to a life by design. Not by Disolve, by default. So I firmly believe that our fourth quarter, the sixties, seventies, eighties, can and will be the most exciting stage of our entire lives because we’re wise, we’re cognizant of life.
Meaning and purpose, and we have appreciation for the brevity of life. We tend to spend most of our moments doing things that really matter and, and we, many of us are starting something new, a new adventure, but we’re not starting over from scratch, but from experience, that’s why I believe heavily in the fourth quarter, and I love spending time with people primarily in their third quarter to grow up and not grow old.
Yeah. It’s great having you back on and just because again, I, I don’t wanna assume all our new, our new listeners caught some of our previous episodes. Maybe go into a little bit more about the story and really how you came up with the idea for the fourth quarter coach. Oh, sure. I come from a long.
A number of years, almost three decades in a family business that we ended up having to close because of a cash flow issue stemming from two, the 2008 financial downturn. When we closed the business, I was a 50 year old and I had no more career. The only career that I had was in the family business, and so I spent two, three years just in.
And praying and, and searching my soul came up with this idea that I have a lot of ingredients and what I needed was a recipe to put together those ingredients I had coached on the side. I was a C O O for 24 years. I was a c e O for two and a half years to reinvent a company and. All of those wrapped up together I determined to become the partner I wish I had had in July of 2015, the month after we closed our business, because I know with, with that, Outside guidance, I would’ve saved a lot of money and expense and a lot of time and stress.
And so out of that birthed a number of ideas and a actually a cycle that I now work with my clients on to take a very big picture and reverse engineer and then move forward. Yeah. And and, and, and let’s definitely dive into that, into that cycle and that process. But let’s do it from the context of the book.
Cause I know that you do put quite a bit in the book as well of the, let’s just say the abbreviated version of, of your process. Mm-hmm. So first off the, the title of the chapter vision for a Great Fourth Quarter. Where do you wanna start with this? Cuz there’s a lot to unpack. Well, I’m telling you the first thing is to get everything outta your head.
Yeah. To, to, to download everything and get it out so that you can look at it, because everything we face, whether it’s a good thing you know, a windfall, a major life disruption, whatever it is, has context. And if we can step back far enough, we begin to see options which give us choice. And to me, op options plus choice equals agency.
Hmm. So we first have to get it out of our brains. We have to, we have to get everything down so that we can look at it and, and. Even the, the direction of get it down on paper. When you get something down, then you are above it and there’s no worse way of living than to be under it. Right? Yeah. Under circumstances.
But to be on top, to be able to look at it and until we do that, then we’re just fighting a losing battle. Hmm. So I’m guessing when somebody’s going through this this download period, like that, that can be pretty that’s gotta be enlightening. Like, cuz I don’t, I don’t feel like many of us do that often.
So what are some of the things that maybe came a to light when you were maybe going through your original download period? Well, my original download was when I was reinventing our family business. You know, the, the board of directors elected me as CEO to reinvent our, our 40 year old business. And I had no idea where to start, but I had a three foot by five foot whiteboard in my office.
And so I just started writing. I just, you know, formulas, quotes, yeah. All kinds of things. And and I would fill up that whiteboard, stand back and take a picture of it, and then wipe it off and fill it again, just constantly thinking. And I must have filled dozens of these whiteboards. But what I noticed happening was, first of all, I felt better.
I may not have solved anything yet, but I felt better. Right. I felt like I was in control. But over time, download. By download, I began to identify some trends and some reoccurring thoughts and patterns. Mm-hmm. And I was able to, Identify some of those and that became the birth of a new way of doing business, which was actually starting to work in our business.
So because of cash flow closing the business after a couple years of lamenting and, you know, self-pity and all that sort of stuff I began to say, wait a minute. There’s something to this whiteboarding that I did. And if I could just learn to do that myself on a regular basis, when I feel stuck, when I feel overwhelmed, then.
I would be better off because out of those downloads come ideas, thoughts, reoccurring themes, and, and so that’s where it starts. And just to maybe to jump around a little here, I I, I think, correct me if I’m wrong, do I remember seeing a picture on LinkedIn of you and someone’s office with probably one of your clients and you had a whiteboard that you were both writing on?
Is that whiteboarding still part of the process? Am I remembering this right? Yeah, well there was a client where we actually worked with a business and had a number of staff in a conference room. And, and I remember they had no whiteboard and so I thought, you know, it’d be good to get a whiteboard.
And they were all kind of saying, why. But once we put it up, and it was a huge whiteboard. Yeah. Yeah. It was like 10 feet wide and five feet tall. They loved it because when they get an idea, it’s so much easier to explain it in drawing. Mm-hmm. Or we made lists and it just, it facilitated progress. Yeah.
And now what a lot of what I do is virtual. And so what we will do is we’ll do a whiteboard or a spider diagram. You know, how you, you just kind of draw it out and just kind of get everything out and start to make connections. Mm-hmm. Which actually begins to get into the second step of the process.
And that’s, you got a jumbled mess of thoughts and emotions all over the place for all the different topics, but then you start to make sense of it and they, they fit into certain buckets that I’ve identified. Hmm. So now you have the the and yeah, you inspired me. By the way, I don’t think I ever told you this, so I did hang up a whiteboard after our conversations.
I do have a whiteboard now that I just, I, I doodle on. I put other things. I don’t know if I’m doing the process right, but I do feel better when I do put stuff down there. I don’t know why. And I did start taking pictures, by the way, like you mentioned. I haven’t quite gone back and re. You know, read everything and things like that, that I took the pictures of.
But I do feel better. I don’t know if that, if that counts for anything. It, it absolutely does. And that’s the number one thing. You’ve got to have the right mindset mm-hmm. In order to identify what’s going on in your life. And a lot of people that I work with, they’re. They’re either facing a disruption that has been externally imposed on them or some, something has happened in the life of their family.
You know, maybe an unexpected passing of a loved one. Mm-hmm. Or you know, whatever it is, there is this desire or this need to say, how do I make sense of what’s going on so that I can move on with my life? And until you start feeling like you’re in control, Yeah, the, it really doesn’t matter what you’ve put on the whiteboard initially.
Mm-hmm. It’s the therapeutic nature of doing that, getting it out, and, and I like the, the idea whether you’re writing on a wall, you know, a whiteboard that’s on a wall or writing on a piece of paper, or a remarkable tablet or electronic iPad. The, the idea that getting it down your arm and out your hand, there’s, there’s something more significant than just verbally.
Getting things out or typing. All right, so now we’ve done presumably this download, which I definitely recommend everybody watching do the download. It’s, it’s worth it. Now, now what, where do we go from there? Well, we gotta make sense of what we downloaded. Right. So because that’s, that begins to turn the wheels forward, and I’ve identified in the last few years I’ve identified what I call six hallmarks of an epic fourth quarter.
So the, you know, when we think about a fourth quarter, sixties, seventies, eighties, we think, what’s it gonna look like? Mm-hmm. How can I. How can I come to any kind of aspirational design that I wanna move toward? Well, in order to, to get the ball rolling, start looking at it from six perspectives. The first one is being spiritually grounded.
Mm-hmm. So we talk about the spiritual nature of, of who we are and life meaning and purpose, living by values and beliefs. The second is being financially or physically fit. So taking care of your body, what does it mean to be physically fit in as you as your body ages? The third is being relationally rich.
And that is having, having strong relationships with people who matter most to you, which ties into the, the fourth, and that is being emotionally healthy. So dealing with loneliness, dealing with depression, dealing with mindset and emotional intelligence. And then we go to vocationally aligned. So if I’m vocationally aligned, I am, I have a, a better experience.
And when I, when I think of vocational, I don’t mean what you do for a paycheck or a dividend. It’s whatever you do that is important to you. It could be philanthropy, it, it could be pursuing a hobby, whatever it is that is your vocation. And a lot of times I work with clients who are shifting their vocation.
They’re either exiting their business or they’re retiring from that looc, that current position they’ve held for 30, 40 years. They don’t have any intention of retiring, but they’re shifting to something and, and the, what they’re doing is they’re becoming vocationally aligned with who they are at that stage of life.
The final one is being financially free. Mm-hmm. So when I download. I begin to put things in a, either a spiritual bucket, a physical bucket, and so on. That then allows me to see, okay, the, after you’ve done a few downloads and you keep adding to your physical bucket or your, your spiritual bucket or your financial bucket, you begin to realize these are the things that are more important to me, most important to me.
And, and so that gives you a bit of direction so that you can take the third step. Which is let’s design a path forward, pick out something you have downloaded, and if it’s meaningful to you, let’s, let’s zero in on that particular. Area of your life. Mm-hmm. And let’s design a path forward. When I think of a path I pull from Brian Moran’s book the 12 week year, we look at a 12 week year.
That’s essentially, it’s a 90 day sprint. Yeah. And we determine what is the objective that we want to achieve after 12 weeks and what are the actions that we will engage in for 12 weeks to reach that objective. And this is all drawn from one or more downloads that have been Desi discerned. Mm-hmm. Right into six buckets.
Then we design a path forward and again, that is adding more and more of a sense of agency. Because you’re now taking action and, and you’re where you’re at least designing that action. So we’ve downloaded, we’ve discerned and we’ve, we’ve designed and this 90 day sprint. When I think about that and, and kind of the, I guess the packaging of that, it kind of makes sense if you think about quarters and quarters mm-hmm.
In the way that corporations run and other things like that. Like is there some significance to that, to that timeline? Th there very much is, we are, like you said, we are conditioned to quarterly thinking. Mm-hmm. And there’s another element to the 12 week sprint or the 90 day sprint, and that is a weekly check-in.
Mm-hmm. So we are conditioned to think in terms of weeks. So rather than live by default, Where you are living week after week after week. Yeah. The same old thing. You’re kind of like on a hamster wheel just going over the same stuff. This time you are taking action and every week that you check in, Then you are gaining more and more attention to what you’re trying to accomplish and that constant attention over 12 weeks, there’s something that goes on inside your non-conscious because you’re training your brain to think a certain thing.
I, I think of when my wife was pregnant, I noticed all the diaper commercials Now, And I noticed the babies crying in restaurants. It’s, it’s not because we got pregnant that all of a sudden babies came out to the restaurants. Right? Yeah. In these commercials. It was what happened within me. I became aware.
Of the whole baby world. Mm-hmm. And I think the same thing happens when you are pursuing something by design. Mm-hmm. Over 12 weeks, something magical happens within your brain and you actually start to move faster, further, and go further. Mm-hmm. Because you start noticing things about what you’re trying to accomplish and it, it just propels you.
Yeah. Yeah. I, I’m a big fan and I know, and I’ve seen that in the, in the coaching world and there’s, there’s different types of sprints. There’s shorter sprints. There’s longer sprints. But I like, I like this 12 week concept. I wanna circle back to something you said a moment or two ago and specifically about, Retirement and how individuals are, maybe they, they may not be quitting their jobs or maybe they’re shifting careers or doing different things, but they’re thinking about like really that next chapter in their life.
I know we had some interactions on LinkedIn recently about some content we put out where it’s kind of thinking about. You know, retirement and redefining retirement, what that looks like. Mm-hmm. If it’s resonating with society like it once did, and for everybody watch this. I keep referring back to LinkedIn because me and Scott are always conversing and they’re highly recommend following Scott on LinkedIn cuz he puts out some great, really thoughtful content.
So Premiere, I meant to compliment you on that by the way, Scott. And I mean that cool. You, you keep it up because I definitely enjoy the content. I’m sure others do as well. Thank you. But circling back to that question I asked, You on LinkedIn about your thoughts really on kind of retirement and what that next phase looks like.
This you’re working with people entering their third and fourth quarter all the time. Like from your view, what do you see there? Well, I, I constantly hear, I have no intention of retiring. Yeah. That’s, that’s just the common theme among everybody whenever the, the concept of retirement comes up. Mm-hmm.
And what I’ve determined is those of us in the Gen X generation, And younger. We are pretty much done with the concept of retirement. Yeah. That it, it’s run its course, it it had its heyday. Yeah. In most cases, and I’m speaking in generalities, that’s not always the case for everybody, but if you work in a factory for 30 years and you do the same thing, why wouldn’t you retire?
Yeah. I mean, how boring. That would be, you know mm-hmm. You’re doing the same thing over and over again, and yet we live on the shoulders of those people. They worked hard. Yeah. And I don’t mean to diminish the, the work that they did, it was a different type of work. You know, you go to the factory, you, you sit at the same spot and you do the same repetitive action for 30 years.
You look for that pension and, and you pull that pension and it became a, It became a threshold, a rite of passage. You were now retired? Yeah. Unfortunately, many of those had no idea what they were gonna do after they retired. And there’s been a statistic that many people died within two, three years of retirement because they had no purpose.
That’s different. Now we’re in a service industry. A lot of people have done a lot of good work in a different kind of age, and retirement has kind of carried over when it’s a label to a fund. Hmm. And that’s really where it ends. People. And that’s why I love the concept of vocational alignment because we go through seasons and stages of life.
Seasons come and go. I break my arm, I gotta adjust the arm, heels, I’m back to normal. But stages. Like I ran a marathon in my mid thirties. Yeah. I would not be able to do the same kind of training and run another marathon as a 58 year old that I did when I was a 30. That’s a different stage of life. And we go through these changes and to do the same thing at a different stage.
Sometimes that creates friction. And sometimes we just sense there’s a need to move, there’s a need to shift or pivot or whatever. You use it. I mean, I’ve even heard rewire instead of retirement. But it’s a, it’s an, it’s a vocationally vocational alignment to where you’re at now and. I, ironically, a lot of us have no intention of retiring.
We just don’t know what we’re gonna do. Yeah. Which is what I do with clients. I create clarity. Okay. What are your ingredients? You’ve got 50 some years of experience, successes, failures, skills, proficiencies. What’s, let’s work on the recipe to determine what it is you do next after giving your life to two or three corporations.
Yeah. And it sounds to me like, and like this is, there’s a lot of hope in this process of, of vocational alignment and, and what I’ve seen just from my vantage point, is people, you know, aren’t necessarily retiring it. And regardless of if. They have to work you know, obviously for, for the day to day to cover expenses or maybe their retirement’s not all set, but even, even people that are, you know, let’s just say financially secure, I’ve seen that even they don’t wanna retire because they’re thinking about, no, I Steph so much more to offer, so much more I wanna do.
There’s just a different, I feel, you know, passion for life cuz we have a, we have more options than we once did. Would am I kinda off on that or? No, you’re, you’re right on. And that’s the beautiful thing about what I love about what I get to do. Hmm. When we start to reach closer and closer to the magical age of 60.
Yeah. Mileage varies. Some people reach this sooner, some later, but there’s this, it’s, it’s an incredible mindset to give back, to invest in others somehow. And, and that’s seems to be a reoccurring theme. It’s like, I, I have more to give, you know? Yeah. What I, what I’ve also seen are people who are so afraid of aging and decline, that they start to give up way, way too soon, like 30 years too soon, and they begin to complain about everything that’s going on in, in the world.
And there’s no. There’s no hope. Hmm. So mindset is huge. Fortunately, there are a lot of people, as you begin to come toward that, the realization that you’ve got more boxes checked behind you than you have in front of you. Mm-hmm. Something begins to happen as it relates to meaning and purpose. And and man, that is, that is a spark that you can really fan into flame.
Fantastic. Well, Scott, I do wanna spend some time here today and for everybody watching we’ll, just to let you know we’ll have a link to the book. So there, there’s more in the book, there’s definitely more content. But I do wanna spend some time talking a little bit more about your, about your business and also to get some updates.
It’s been a little bit since we’ve talked. Mm-hmm. So last I remember, you were building a community, you’re bringing people together. There was an online platform. Form in the works serve strong enterprises. What, what’s going on today? Gimme some updates. I need ’em. Well, sure. Got probably too many irons in the fire for my age, but yeah, we’re working, I’m working with another outfit.
We are partnering together to create an online platform for 40 and 50 year olds. We plan to roll that out in the fall of this year, fall of 2023. Hmm. And it’ll be a place for people to gather and to do life together and learn together. Content will be related to the six hallmarks. We will have subject matter experts available and we’re really excited about that.
In addition to that, I have, of course, I’m doing private coaching and group coaching as well, mastermind coaching doing the podcast, as you know, which I’m having a, a ball doing. I’ve been able to interview some of the most amazing people and I’ve just recently added a tool in the toolkit to help business owners whose vocational alignment will require exit.
From their business and creating greater value in their business so that when they go to sell, they will get a greater multiple of their business. And so I’m excited about that, that that is that’s just one of the greatest additions that I have been able to add. I’ve been following this organization for about two years and finally pulled the trigger on that.
And so that’s, and I’m also writing a book. Outside of this one, I’m writing a book that is a little more in depth as to my story. I, I go into a little bit more of the gory details and that sort of thing, but yeah, a lot going on. Oh man, I can’t wait to read this next book cuz I, every time, every time we talk I unpack just a little bit more.
So I’m ready for the, I’m ready for the book as well. Like, this is great and I’m, I’m happy to hear about this and I can’t wait to to see it. You did mention the podcast. We got, we got a lot of new listeners here, so I wanna make sure we get a, we get a plugin for that. Cause I want people to definitely go check it out.
So yeah, tell us a little bit more about the show. Well, the show generally follows the six hallmarks. I will have a, a guest talking about physical fitness. I’ll, there’ll be a guest on financial freedom and that sort of thing, or the whole idea of the process of coming into yourself in the fourth quarter.
And you know, some of it’s technique, a lot of it’s stories of people who’ve actually made shifts in their life and the amazing. Stuff that goes through your mind as you’re, as you’re either responding to a major life disruption or you are, you’re just intentionally stepping out. Mm-hmm. You know, a recent podcast that that is coming live this week as we record this live session, is about a person who just voluntarily left the corporate world.
Mm-hmm. And we talk about how did she know? When it was time. Right? Yeah. How do you, and, and what’s it like to actually pull the trigger on leaving something that is stable? And so I, I like to enlighten the audience with what is really going on in other people’s lives so that they can bounce that against their particular situation and say, Hmm, I haven’t really thought of that before.
Hmm. And of course, I, I just love stories. What’s been one of your favorite things about hosting a podcast or hosting a show, like for you? You know, for an introvert who loves systems and processes it’s unusual. But what I love is when I get into a conversation with somebody, with the set questions that we have set up together and having it take on a life of its own.
And we dig deep into something that we hadn’t anticipated. Mm-hmm. That is the most exciting thing about doing the podcast. Yeah. I, I agree with that. It’s that connection. It’s like every time I, I think about doing a show or something, like you’re creating something with somebody, a piece of content that didn’t exist in the past, that somebody’s gonna be able to hopefully benefit from and hopefully learn from.
And really just like learning from the stories of others. That’s my favorite way to learn. So by hosting this show, I learned quite a bit. And then from listening to other podcasts like yours and others I, I also learn a lot as well. So big, obviously everybody listens to this show for a long time. They know I’m a huge fan of podcasting and I’ll talk about it anytime somebody will let me.
Yep, that’s right, that’s right. Awesome. Well, I wanna, how, how do you, how do people, so there’ll be people watching this and listening to this, and we talk kind of high level, but how do people like, engage and how do they work with you and your team overall? Well, the best, the best thing to do is to go to serving strong.com.
Mm-hmm. And in particular slash about serving strong.com/about. That tells my story that, that, that kind of gives you the, the background as to why I do what I do and the spark that caused me to do that. You can, you can email [email protected]. I, I look at all my email. But there’s an interesting, I started doing a thing called Office Hours.
Mm-hmm. And if you can get there, serving strong.com/office on that page is a calendar. And I will set these times when I’m already working anyway. Mm-hmm. I just pull up a Zoom and you can go to that serving strong.com/office and see when I’m. When I’m holding office hours, and if it’s the time, then you can click to enter and if you enter, I’ll stop what I’m doing and we’ll have a conversation.
It’s just, just wow, free and free flowing. It’s like, I’m like, I have an office and the door’s open and whoever just pops their head in. We just kind of have a chat. So I started doing that. Oh, that’s a great idea. We might have to do some mission matters. Office hours, see what happens. Yeah. And so people just pop in, they can connect with you and that that’s, I mean, it’s just a great service.
Yeah. Yeah. We just, and there’s no pressure, there’s no sales going on. We just talk about life, talk about what they might be going through or whatever. Wow. Well, Scott first off, it’s been great having you back on the show. We’re just getting started. I’m thrilled to promote this this new book with you and of course to promote your show and all the work you’re doing really over there and all, all the content you’re putting on, on LinkedIn.
So just one more time, if people want to follow up and connect the website again, please. It’s serving strong.com. Yep. And you’ll find me on LinkedIn if, you know, I spend a lot of, like you said, that’s we’re kind of where I live. Yeah. Fantastic. And we’ll put links by the way to that. And of course the book and everything else in the show notes for the audience.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time engaging with or listening to a Mission Matters episode, we’re all about bringing on business owners, entrepreneurs and executives, and having them share their mission, the reason behind their mission, really what gets them fired up to go out there and to make a difference in the world.
If that’s the type of content that sounds interesting or fun or exciting to you, we welcome you hit. That subscribe button because we have many more mission-based individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing. And Scott, really, it has been a pleasure Until the next time, looking forward to our next conversation.
Thank you, Adam. I appreciate it.