Chip Scholz

This is the Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world. Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. My guest today, Chip Schulz of Schulz and Associates. Chip, welcome to the show.

Hey, thank you, Christian. I'm so glad to be here.

Yeah, you can tell I haven't recorded an episode in a couple of weeks because I am rusty. That's awful. I mean, I have a face for radio so that I can just show up for, but you still got to go, you know, you got to go through the steps.

You definitely have the voice for radio.

I've been told that. I appreciate that. I had nothing to do with it. I have absolutely no training at all.

Do you remember what Rush Limbaugh used to say? Which is? Talent on loan from God.

That's exactly right. Anything that I have is a gift.

That's right.

100%. On my other podcast, The Profitable Creative, in homage to Rush Limbaugh. I didn't realize it when I started doing it, but then I realized that's where I got it. I will look at my stats and I'll find one listener from some small town, and I'll give them a shout-out. Because he always opened with the radio stations.

Yeah, somebody from Peabody, Arkansas or something like that.

Exactly. Okay, so give us your brief CV, your journey. We're going to find a thread and pull. But what's the synopsis?

The synopsis is I've spent most of my life in sales, and the last 30 years I've been an executive coach, which, if you can't sell, you can't coach. Having clients is kind of an important thing. But spent time as a lobbyist, been all over the country, started in Chicago. Went to Atlanta and Tampa and LA for 13 years. And the sentence was finally up in LA and we were able to move here. Been here for 27 years. You know, I'm looking back over a career rather than forward to a career. But, you know, I still, I still have some runway left in me.

So why did you get into coaching?

Pure dumb luck. So I got out of— here's the full story. In May of '98, I was working as a lobbyist in LA for a company called BFI. And BFI doesn't exist anymore, but it was a trash company. They were probably in Oklahoma City.

I remember the rather crude acronym that people said that that stood for. But I'm not going to repeat it here.

Go ahead. Well, the one that I remember is brothers, friends, and in-laws, but—

No, this is much more crass. But I remember the company.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You know, for most of us, we worked so hard, it was better forget intercourse. But yeah, so I was working for BFI. They laid me and 1,200 people off at about the same time. We were all the people that knew where the bodies were buried, but we didn't pick up the trash. So, they were getting ready to sell and cleaning up the balance sheet. And, and we were the distractions on the balance sheet. So, my wife and I decided that we didn't want to be in LA anymore. And, you know, I, looking back on it, I'm kind of glad we, we weren't. But, we packed up 5 cats, 2 dogs, 3 kids, or, you know, 3 humans, put them in a 19-foot trailer. Travel trailer, traveled all the way across to North Carolina. And, uh, um, yesterday I couldn't spell consultant, and today I are one. And so, um, you know, I, I, I opened a business, um, didn't know what I was doing, didn't know how I was selling to it, didn't know how I was selling it, didn't know anything. And, uh, um, along the way I found about this thing called coaching. You know, if you think 30 years ago, nobody knew what coaching was.

Correct. It was a— I mean, the only— you know, when I started hearing coaching, you know, probably 15, 20 years ago, I was confused because the only coaches I knew were athletic coaches, right? Like, that was the extent of it.

Well, and when you say you're a coach, and especially when you say you're an executive coach, they say, well, who do you coach for? Right. Well, I coach executives. Right. Well, I mean, I know, but I mean, like, you know, football, basketball, are you with the Panthers? You know.

Right.

Yeah, it was interesting. So, you know, I stumbled into it and I was doing other things too, like consulting, but doing assessment work and that kind of thing. And I just liked coaching. I could talk to people all over the country and they paid me and it was, it was a nice thing. Yeah.

Well, okay. Coaching means— one of the things in my observation is that coaching has become a very confusing word.

What—

when you say coach, and what you do, how do you describe it? How do you define it?

Well, and I bill myself as an executive coach, which means I'm talking to executives. I'm talking to people that are running companies and their staffs versus a personal coach or a life coach. You know, listen, I'm never going to go with anybody on their date. I'm not going to sit at the dinner table and talk about family dynamics.

And is that a thing?

Some of the life coaches do that kind of crap. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so, you know, what I do is I help people be better at what they do. And, you know, what I'm working on primarily is leadership strategy, a lot of people issues and that kind of thing. And, and so, you know, over the years, I've developed a philosophy about leadership and that came out in a book that I just published. And so, you know, that's what I do is I help people get to be better leaders. I work with a number of business owners and talk about family businesses. We talked about that before. And I really like family businesses. I like privately held businesses, you know, mostly because there's just a different vibe, you know, different level of excitement. In working with family businesses.

So when you say leaders, that could be owner-operators or professional executives, either one?

Yeah, yeah. So most of the businesses that I work with are family-held logistics businesses, warehousing, trucking, that kind of stuff. In fact, I've got a client up in Wichita and they've got a location in Tulsa and I've I've got another one over in Kansas City. Um, and, and they run logistics businesses. Now the one in Kansas City is now owned by private equity, but I work with the CEO and, uh, um, and so it's still a lot of the same dynamics, still a lot of the same skin in the game. He was the CEO before they sold and, uh, and continued on. But, uh, um, yeah, it's, it's just, it's working with those family businesses and the family dynamics and it's usually the, the owner of the business.

Yes. So when I had a colleague 10+ years ago, I called him and I said, you know, and he's younger than I am, but I still very much respected his opinion. And so I was telling him that I, you know, I really feel like I need to build out this external board of directors. And he's asking me why. And I'm like, I was like, well, I feel like I need objective accountability, and advice. And he patiently listened to me. And he goes, well, you know, what you just described sounds like you need a coach. And because I was still in that headspace, I was like, okay. I mean, I respected him. So I had to to take what he said, but I just really— it went in one ear and out the other, right? I didn't form an external board of directors. But looking back at what the problem I was trying to solve, I absolutely did need a coach. And I've been working with the same coach now for 4 years. And it is not anything like what I thought it was. I think your statement about making people better is probably the best description. But can you give me a further description of how that happens? How do you make them a better person?

That's a great question. Here's the thing. I very rarely give advice, but I ask great questions. And I would imagine you have that kind of coach that asks great questions. So, it's not my job to tell you what to do. You've got advisors and bankers and all kinds of people that do that. It's my job to ask you questions that you probably already know the answer to, but just haven't thought about. And so it's my job to help you think in different ways about different things that, you know, that are going to surface during our time together. And so I'll give you a— I don't have a really good example because I've got so many. But, you know, it's just— it's asking good questions. And one of the questions that I ask, you know, if people— if I ask a question, I don't know. The question I ask back is, well, if you did know, what would it be? Now, that sounds like— yeah, I can see your smile. That sounds like a real jerk question. But the bottom line is most people know what they're thinking. They just haven't said it out loud yet. They haven't put it out in the world. And so, you know, it's my job to surface those kind of things.

I think that's a brilliant question. And I agree with you. I think that's the secret to great coaching. And so this would apply to leaders themselves coaching their teams, right, is asking great questions. And I think you're 100% right. It's not about telling them what to do. I think there was, for me, a long time, a real lack of understanding the distinction between leadership and management. Right. I think that it's about asking the right questions and then just holding the space. That's what I call it. But like the framework, just, just like not filling in the gaps to the answer, like let, let the person come to their own conclusion. Because in my experience, I think you're exactly right. We have an answer, right? Like, I don't know if it's the answer, but we rarely— rarely do I get asked a question by my coach— it actually happened this week— that I didn't have an answer for. And I had to jot it down and I've been thinking about it. But like, I may have to pause for 30 or 60 seconds, but I mean, like, the answer is there. And to me, the way I describe it, a great coach and a great leader draws out what is already there in, in the person. It's not like you're putting anything into them, right? So the example would be Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods, you know, swing coach. What is he going to teach Tiger Woods about how to swing a golf club? He's not. It's not about teaching him some skill. And I guess because of the athletic context, I thought it was a skills transfer thing.

Yeah. Well, and so you've covered a lot of ground there. And God, my mind was all bubbling. But you're absolutely right. It's kind of like the old BASF commercials. We don't make the carpet, we make the carpet better. So I don't make the executive, I just make the executive better. But you brought up leadership versus management. And I have a really simple definition. And I'm into simple definitions. You manage resources and you lead people. And here's what happens.

Okay, I like that.

Is we spend our whole life being judged and being compensated for what we do. So, you know, say, say you're an engineer, um, you are compensated for your brilliance at engineering, and then all of a sudden somebody comes along and says, you're a great engineer, gee, you ought to be a great manager, right? Which, which makes absolutely no freaking sense at all.

No, no.

But now, now I am.

But that happens all the time. All the time.

That's the way we— that's what we promote. We don't promote based on if they're a good leader or not. We promote on if they're a good worker, you know, so super workers become supervisors. And, and all of a sudden now somebody gets promoted again, and now they're a couple steps away from the work. But if you try to hold on to the work, you're going to end up being a manager. You're going to manage resources. You're not going to see people as people. Mm-hmm. When you get to a leadership position, you're absolutely right. The, the best cultures that I've worked with are cultures that are people-oriented, performance-driven, in that order. People-oriented, performance-driven. And, and how do you get people-oriented? Well, let's, let's go back and say, um, do you know where the idea of modern management came from?

Some professor, I would assume. Drucker?

No, no, this goes way before Drucker. There's a guy named Frederick Winslow Taylor who in 1910 wrote a book called Scientific Management. And in it, he said— and he said a lot more than this— but in it, he said, do things the way I tell you to do, and we'll get along handsomely. Do them at the speed I suggest and the method I employ. Just don't think, just do. Okay? And that became the management paradigm for years because what was the manager? The manager was the guy in the corner office. The manager was supposed to be the smartest person in the room. The manager was supposed to have all the answers. Well, if the rate of human knowledge is doubling every 2 years, can anybody have all the answers?

No.

Well, and I would surmise that that was true 50 years ago.

Yes, 100%.

But it's even a lot more true today. And so, yeah, as a leader, I'm not going to have all the answers. I'm not going to be able to tell you every little detail of how to do your job, which is great, which is okay.

Yeah, I was thinking I just had this conversation with somebody on my leadership team today, referring back to a book we read together, Jocko Willink's Leadership Tactics and Strategies, I think. Could be. But he was, you know, he's a former Navy SEAL and does leadership consultancy now. But in the book, he was talking about the paradigm, the example of the LT that would come in and He was like, this is the plan, go execute it versus the LTs say, here's the objective, come back with a plan. Right. And the difference in the results, the difference in the level of accountability. And it, you know, you can tell people what to do all day long with varying degrees of success. But if you can engage them to solve their own problems, and you know, absolutely, as a leader, your job, you, you should have more experience, maybe more knowledge, to poke holes in that plan and say like, eh, you, you kind of missed this whole thing entirely. What about that? Right? But ultimately help them craft the better plan and then help them execute it because it's then their plan. It's not your plan.

Yeah. Yeah. And the best leaders that I know are the best ones at asking questions. And so, I'm designing a course for a company right now with a couple of other people called The Leader as a Coach. And it's so important to have coaching skills. I've done this thing called Leadership Series for a company for the last 17 years. And it's a 3-year leadership program. The first year focuses on leadership of self. The second year focuses on external, you know, speaking skills and that kind of thing. And the third year focuses on leader as a coach. Well, we're redesigning it and the third year is going to be an intensive, more leader as a coach. And I think that's so important.

Yeah, I had on this program earlier this year, Michael Brody Waite. Waite, Waite, Waite. No, Waite, it is Waite. Michael Brody Waite. He wrote a book called Great Leaders Live Like Drug Addicts. And I highly recommend the book.

But it was constantly going through the 12 steps or something like that. Is that not—

well, no. What he did was He was an addict, went to Betty Ford, got his life cleaned up, eventually ended up in a startup as a co-founder. And it's about how he applied what he had learned in recovery to leadership. And it's, it's really a fascinating paradigm that we've been implementing in our leadership team over the last couple of months. And what it basically boils down to is not acting out of fear. You know, the thing, the masks that we wear to conceal our fears, and the mask is not obviously a literal mask, but it's behavioral mask, like these are the things we say and do to cope with the fact that we have this fear, right, without ever addressing the fear. And it's been a, it's been a very fascinating journey watching my team and myself work through this. But like, I've kind of come to this conclusion that— and I wrote a Substack post on it last week about it— like, I think we're all addicts in this definition. We construct very elaborate systems to avoid dealing with pain. And that might be real pain, that might be emotional pain. It could be a fear. And we're, you know, we're really good at it. I mean, I built a whole business as a coping mechanism, right? And the only difference between us and the guy that's in the 12-step program is that he got to a point where his life was on the line, right? And it was a life-or-death decision. Most of us never get to that point. And so we say, oh, well, look at that poor sap. He's an addict. I'm not. But the more I go through this and I observe and I'm like, it's wild to me, first with myself and then with others, like the elaborate lengths our brains go consciously and subconsciously to protect us from feeling those negative things. Thoughts?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, it's interesting you talk about addiction. In that way, because we are all addicted to something. And, you know, one of the things that we talked about before we got on the air was talking about Succession. And, you know, what I find is that people are really addicted to their identity. 100%. I hadn't— yeah, I hadn't put it in that terms before. But their identity is so wrapped up in the business. 100%. That they can't even imagine. Like, I know a lot of people that are second, third, or fourth generation, and they started working in the business when they were tots. You know, they were out there in the warehouse when they were 10 years old and doing stuff out in the warehouse. And they have worked in the warehouse. Now they've worked in the warehouse for 50 or 60 years. And all of a sudden they're 70 years old and their identity is all wrapped up and they can't figure out how they're going to let it go.

Yes. And I say—

go ahead. But I'm not, I'm not talking about letting it go, like, you know, quitting. I'm talking about, like, how are they going to step back? You know, how are they, how are they going to, how are they going to let the next generation take over? Because the next generation obviously isn't as smart as they are.

Right, right. Yeah. No, no, that's— you, you nailed it. I mean, and, and that's why a lot of entrepreneurs, uh, you know, the vast majority of entrepreneurs never sell the business, right? They die in their chair and then somebody picks up the pieces. There isn't any succession, right? Uh, I mean, in my experience, it's, it's a small percentage that get properly planned and, and succeeded. And it's, it's 'Cause of just what you said, it's like, I don't know what I would do without the business. Like, what, what, I mean, I'm not going to go play golf. I'm not going to go fish all day. Like, this is who I am, right? Pish Patel, Dr. Patel, has been on the show a couple of times and he was talking about research that had been done MRI scans on entrepreneurs' brains that they showed them pictures, various pictures, and they recorded, you know, their, their brain activity. And the part of their brain that lit up when they saw images of their business was the same part of their brain that lit up when they saw pictures of their kids. And so, and this is male entrepreneurs, they didn't do any females. I'm assuming their brains are wired differently because that's my experience and observation that for a male entrepreneur, when they say, "That's my baby," they literally mean it. They don't understand it, but they literally mean it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty crazy. And it doesn't even take being an entrepreneur. I worked with a guy. He was head of the local rescue mission here in Charlotte. He'd been for 30 years. He was the face. He preached in pulpits all over the area on the weekends. He wrote quite a bit and all that kind of stuff. And he was getting ready to retire. I worked with him for about 10 years and the last 5 were figuring out how he's going to retire, how he got into the mindset of just letting it go. Because first of all, I think that was pretty interesting that he wanted that help. I think that's a great amount of self-awareness to say that he wanted that help. But it was great that he had it.. And he is doing a really good job of living that in retirement.

Yeah. And specifically in terms of succession, you've probably had more experience than I, but the clients that I've helped through the years that had generational businesses, that dynamic of, uh, I built this, you don't really understand it. As well as I do. And then the younger generation has lots of ideas that they want to try and implement, and like, they get squashed. And it's like, you know, what I've tried to convey to them is that like, this can't persist healthy. I mean, I guess it could persist very dysfunctionally, But like, you have to address this. Like, you've got to have a conversation around this and come up with a plan, or it's going to be a disaster. What's been your experience?

Absolutely. And there's a lot of families that don't get together at Thanksgiving anymore because of the disasters that happen. Yeah. I've got one So, one particular one, and this happens over and over again, so it's not out of place. But one son wanted to take the business in a lot of different areas. The father who was getting into his 70s did not want to go there, did not want to put any of the stuff that he had built at risk. So, the son sold a portion of the company to private equity just to get his father out. So, he gave up control of a part of the company to, you know, it was kind of crazy that that happened. I had another one where the father, during the recession, the business had shrunk considerably. His stepson had stepped in and had rebuilt the business. But had no equity in it and just wanted the father to give him some equity. And the father said, okay, I'll give you some equity. And I was involved very heavily in the conversations. But his father said, I'll give you some equity. 2 days later, he reneged. 3 days later, he fired his stepson. Mm-hmm. And that started lawsuits that went on for probably 3 or 4 years until the father finally sold the business and there was nothing left to sue over. Um, you know, it's, you, you see these, these situations and your heart breaks, you know, because, because it's just like, you know, I, and, and that, and, and that's, that's why I wrote the book. Um, because, because I've seen so many of those situations. And, and so the book is called Handoffs, coming out in October. And it's the story of a family business. Who the 80-year-old father is holding on with a tight grip and has a 54-year-old son that is trying to run the company. And I've shown it— there are a number of people that have endorsed the book. And out of the 14, 15 people that I had endorse the book, just about every one of them said, did you write that about our family?

Yeah, it was probably an anecdotal story like Lynchiona.

Oh, it is?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, uh, but yes, because I, I think the way it presents in the business is that there's a business problem, right? But it's not a business problem, it's a people problem. Yeah.

Oh yeah, yeah.

I, I know of one, I know of one, uh He was an oil and gas magnate here in Oklahoma City who passed. And this family was so dysfunctional that he had told nobody. He died intestate. I mean, he was worth 9 figures easy. And that was 20 years ago. He died intestate, no will. 10 years on, the brothers, there's 3 brothers, they were still fighting with each other because they couldn't even find everything. Like, he had stuff buried in coffee cans, not literally, but that kind of—

The metaphorical coffee cans.

Yeah. Yeah, because he didn't want anybody, even his family, he didn't want to know what— and it's like, wow, wow, wow. And of course, yeah, they don't— the brothers hate each other. And it's just ugly.

It's just ugly. Yeah, I've seen where it's done well.

Sure.

You know, there's a fourth Well, and it's now a 5th generation business, but there's one in Pittsburgh. There are 3 brothers that run the company and they run it really well. The father has an advisory role and he doesn't stick his nose into the day-to-day. And it'll be interesting to see how the 4th generation passes along to the 5th generation. They now have 5th generation people that are working in the business. But those, those stories are pretty rare.

Well, I was surprised. Another example that was, was a success, at least on the surface from what I can see, was Love's Travel Stops here in Oklahoma City. The, the matriarch and the patriarch both died within the last couple of years. And watching it go, come up to that point, I'm like, I feel really certain that this, the next generation is going to go ahead and sell to one of their competitors or maybe private equity because because, you know, the industry was in consolidation. And, uh, but the second generation is, is actively engaged. They, they have, uh, professional management, right? They're, they're not— they, they at least had the humility to say, we're probably not the best people to run this company, and let the people that were there to do it. But, you know, it's actually started to expand into different verticals and the company is growing. So, yeah, absolutely. It can happen. But you have to address the people issue.

Yeah. One of the best examples I've seen of this is there was a company that I do some business with and the founder of the company ended up when he turned 60, he hired an outside CEO. And, and yes, he was still very active and involved in the business and, and still is. That, you know, he's in his late 80s, he still hangs around like, uh, you know, and, and dispenses wisdom every once in a while. But, uh, um, they took— they, they don't let him drive anymore, but, uh, um, he rides his bike to, uh, to the office.

Um, that sounds much safer.

Yes, it is. For, for everybody around him, it's much safer. And for himself too. But he— the company ended up becoming an ESOP, and they are doing excellent now, and it's all professional management. He didn't have family that— even though he had a couple, I think a couple of sons, I think he had two sons, they weren't involved in the business. And, you know, that was That was okay. So, you know, it's the difference between seeing your business as an asset or a legacy.

Yes. Yes. And I think you alluded to it earlier. It's, you know, and it probably has a lot of origins in that identity. It's the fear of turning loose. It's the fear of passing it on, of the unknown, because you don't know. And losing control control, even though a lot of control is actually an illusion, that's the fear that they won't address.

Well, and I learned that from family therapy. The more in control you think you are, the less in control you actually are. But I guess that was a bad joke.

No, it's absolute truth. I mean, I think—

It is.

Being a parent absolutely teaches you that you don't have control. I had a colleague that his daughter just turned 18. And as soon as she turned 18, she moved out and went incommunicado. And his heart was broken. Like, it was broke. And I, I, I, I very lovingly and gently said, like, you— what, what you believed was not reality, right? Like, you, you thought you were protecting her and, and, you know, controlling her environment and all this other stuff, but the way she perceived it was she was being smothered. And so, like, Right, exactly. And so it has since worked out, they have reconciled and it wasn't nearly as traumatic as he thought it was, but it felt that way because like, his illusion was shattered. And that's what it was. It was an illusion.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was listening to a podcast the other day and they were talking about assisted suicide. And so they're talking about death, and our relationship with mortality. You know, listen, nobody wants to admit that they're going to die.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that that fear of losing control, you know, especially if there's some kind of an illness or something, that fear of losing control drives us to do a lot of different things. Like, they talked about the assisted suicide as being a— a factor of wanting to regain control over something we have no control of.

Yes.

And in fact, in fact, they even— there was a lady who was on the podcast who is a death doula. So you've heard of a birth doula, but—

Interesting moniker to carry.

Well, and it's helping people come to terms with their own death. Well, so you alluded to that with entrepreneurship. That the death of a business or the transition of a business is like the death of a child. Well, it's coming to terms with being okay with death and understanding that it's a normal part of the process. And, you know, I've been thinking about that an awful lot since I heard it. You know, as I get closer— health. My parents died really early. My dad was 51, my mom was 56 when they passed, and so I was an orphan at 30. And so I never thought I'd outlive them, and I have, and it still blows my mind that I've outlived them. But, you know, as you get closer, you start to think about that, you know, how am I going to be able I'm going to lose control? Or how am I going to be able to, you know, how am I going to be able to handle all that?

And yeah, I never thought about assisted suicide as in those terms, but that makes perfect sense. And before I was introduced to Michael Brodie-Waite, and I was thinking about addiction, you know, like, why do people become addicts? This is before my realization that everybody's an addict. But it was about control. That's what I said, like, they can control that one thing, they can control whether they take a drink. And, you know, and that's it. I think— I'm not a professional, I don't know. But I think there is an element of addiction that is control. It's like, I can control this one thing, I can't control anything else out there. But I can control this one thing. And one of the things Brody Waite talks about in his book is the, the discipline, the daily discipline of really acknowledging what you can and can't control. And, you know, like putting it on separate sides of the ledger. And, you know, when you're honest with yourself, you realize that that ledger of what you can control is very small. Like, but there's this fascinating dynamic I've seen, is that we spend most of our time as humans worrying about the things that we can't control, and ignoring doing anything about the things that we can.

Yeah, yeah. Do you know what the whole Serenity Prayer is?

Well, I know the Serenity Prayer, but I don't know if it's the same one.

This is the same one. Most people remember, "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." Mm-hmm. Here's the rest of the original poem by Reinhold Niebuhr. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as the pathway to peace, taking as he did the sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, trusting that he will make all things right if I surrender to his will, that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with him forever in the next. Amen.

I have heard that, but I'm very glad you shared it. And I'm glad you went—

Isn't that about control?

Oh, 100%. And I think that what we've been talking about as an intellectual exercise is really a spiritual exercise. Right? And I'll very briefly share this with you. I'm still in the middle of it. So I'm not prepared to go over the whole thing. But my wife and I, last fall, felt called to be foster parents. And We spent a very long time getting approved, to the point where I was so frustrated with the process that I almost quit. I mean, like, we were 6 months into it. And I'm like, this is ridiculous. I mean, like, what, why are we not approved yet?

Right?

And through the whole thing, we kept acknowledging, like, these delays are God's timing. He has somebody specifically in mind that He wants us to take. And a week and a half ago, this child showed up in our house. And it was absolute worst-case situation for this child. Like, I can't go into detail, but like, Like, it was awful. And this kid comes into our home, and Stacy and I are just like, wait a second, this is not what we expected, right?

It wasn't a Betty Crocker moment, was it?

No, no, no, no, no. Like, we wanted someone that, you know, just hadn't been fed and taken to the doctor or wasn't, you know, like neglect, right? Because we'd been told 80% of the kids that are in the foster system are there because of neglect, not abuse. And we were both really struggling with it. And it was a temporary placement. Like, we— it was never a permanent placement. But then it looked like the temporary might turn into a permanent, right? And we were both like, what is happening? Like, and I had this— I said to my wife, well, look, we can't say on one hand that it's God's timing, and accepting the providence of God. And then when he gives this child, say, "Well, wait a second, it's not the providence of God because it's not what I wanted or what I expected." Right? And I had this complete reframe of Gethsemane. And when Christ is praying, 'If it's possible, let this cup pass from Me.' He 100% did not want it. And it wasn't just the physical torture. It was the separation from His Father. 'But Your will, not Mine, be done.' I had a complete reframe because it's— this wasn't— this was not, uh, oh, my wife got cancer and there's this, this thing that's happened to us that we, uh, had to deal with. This was what we had been called to do, and we got that cup and we're like, I don't want to drink this cup. And I just— but each of us separately got to the point where we could say, "Your will, but not mine." Now, the rest of the story is that this child is going back to her original foster home, who wants to adopt her Monday. And so We didn't have to drink from the cup, but to me, what we've all been— what we've been talking about here with the whole control is, is, are you willing to really say, "Your will, not mine"? And for most of my walk that was not the case. I mean, I said the words, but I didn't really understand what it meant.

That is, that is so cool.

Oh yeah, like, when I get through with it and I can put it into writing, I will, because I mean, the hand of God and the love of God is so amazing. It's indescribable. And the only response that I have been able to have through this experience is simply praise. Like, I don't know what the response could be, but there's more to come on that. I can't wait to share the story with everybody.

God, we have to, we have to stay in touch. That's definitely true.

Yeah. Chip, how do people find you if they want to learn more about your coaching?

Can go to scholzandassociates.com. I'm sure you'll put it in the show notes. And the website, if you go to the website, there's an Easter egg there. If you go to What's Chip Reading, there's about 140 books that I've read that have a review. And some of the books I like, some of them I didn't. But I say that you may disagree with me, and several people have, but You know, a lot of my favorite books are in there. Um, got 3 books, or I got 2 books out, one coming out in October. Um, got, uh, Small Decisions, Big Shifts, which is about coaching philosophy. Um, Every Dog Has Its Day, which is more of a personal, uh, you know, hey, here's, here's what is the underpinning of that philosophy. And then, uh, Handoffs is coming out in October, available on Amazon and a number of different, uh, um, audiobook platforms as well. So Brilliant.

Listeners, we will have that link in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. And until next time, remember, you are not alone.