033: One Part Lion & One Part Lamb W/ STEPHEN SCOGGINS, Entrepreneur & Speaker

Welcome to another episode of the Fortitude Forum. I'm your host, Bill Burke, as always, and I'm super pumped to have our guest today with us. He's going to provide so much knowledge and so much really inspiration to everybody listening here today, but a little bit about his background. He is a faith-based entrepreneur. He builds companies. He's a speaker. He's an author, and maybe most importantly, he helps people now lead with strength and through strength, but also with the all-important humility as well. Stephen Scoggins, welcome to the show.

Bill, what's going on, dude? Happy to be here, man. Thanks for the invite.

No, absolutely. Like I was telling you off the air, your story, your message, your energy really stuck out. Happy to have you here. And I know this is going to be so valuable for the listeners. So I want to jump right into your story. You, you shared stories before about rising from the despair of homelessness to a point where you're building multiple companies. And now, of course, you're helping others as well. But I'm curious, what were the pivotal moments or the mindset shifts that helped you go from such a far one end of the spectrum to a completely different other end of that spectrum?

Since fortunately for us, we have a 3-hour show, so we have time to get into it. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, there's a lot, honestly. I think the easiest way to really articulate it without going, literally going down a rabbit trail and using the whole show, just to tell the beginning story. Is I've fallen in love with the term helping people become an integrated leader. And what that means to me is most of us are running around with half of ourselves. We are not fully in attunement or in alignment with what makes us unique, what makes us tick, so to speak. And I think early days, if I'm honest with you, I think so much of that was chasing worth. A lot of entrepreneurs chase worth or insecurity. They get started to prove somebody wrong or to prove themselves right, or any a number of things. And ultimately, if you fast forward from— and I will answer the question regarding the homelessness, I'll share a concept called the 5 constraints that it's rooted there. But I will tell you that in 2024, I had exited a company in 2023. The company I started from the trash piles, scaled it to just under 9 figures before I sold it in top-line revenue, 400 team members across 3 states, and had in theory had everything that a person could want. I could travel. I had resource. I was getting notability. I was gaining momentum in the speaking world, writing books, all this kind of stuff. But yet, if I'm being honest with you, I'm in my home in Utah at the time, overlooking the mountains over there, north side of Lehi. And I was completely empty, completely searching, not really being fully aware of who I was. I'd spent all my life trying to strive for these very things that I now had in my hands. And it was a very empty feeling, as much so as it was when I didn't have anything and I'm like trying to figure things out at the homeless stage. And then I got to thinking about really what is the— what's the core attribute of the transition? And it took me back to a time for my grandfather, His name was— his nickname was Silver Fox, had white flowing hair. You could sit at his feet and just listen for hours. He was so cool. He passed away in 2016, but just before he passed away, I had told him at that point, hey, look, I've been building this company for almost 25 years, but it was about 20-year mark there, 22-year mark. Um, I feel like I'm called to something more. I'm getting asked to speak. I'm getting asked to do these things. I'm getting asked to showcase different— how to build teams, how to help with delegation, how to build financial metrics. How to operate or scale a sales process. And I said, but I think I'm called to go out and do something bigger. I don't know what that is yet. And he told me, he said, if you're going to do that, he said, the first thing you need to know is you have to become one part lion and one part lamb. You're going to have to learn how to rise, lead, and last. In order to do that, you're going to have to come into the fullness of your authenticity or identity, which is pretty interesting that he said those types of words in that moment. And here it is, a decade removed from it, and now it's actually seeping into my soul. So as I began to go that journey, I began to think about, as a person of faith, there's a lot of interesting contrast biblically. And people, bar my faith, regardless of your belief system, but the most of us know the story of a guy named King David and another guy named King Saul. And what I discovered was most of us vacillate in our identity from one place to another, chasing approval of other people. For example, I say that it's one thing to be an immature lamb or immature lion. So an immature lamb is a person who's people-pleasing, gets run over easily, doesn't stand up for themselves, self-abandon, lets compassion drive the need to always be serving other people without actually making sure that themselves are okay. On the flip side of that, you take the contrast of that, the immature lion is very controlling, domineering, overly assertive, overly aggressive. And what happens is, if you look at the biblical stories, you begin to see Saul operating in both the immature lion and the immature lamb. He's very aggressive with David, trying to be controlling, early stages before David obviously becomes king. He's fearful of losing everything that he's known to be kingship. On the other side of things, he's also the immature lamb because he's making decisions in order to please the quote unquote people of Israel. Now, again, I'm sharing a story for contrast. People fully appreciate and understand it. But when you look at that, that concept, one of the things that you're noticing is you're watching Saul let his authority erode because he doesn't know who he is. Meanwhile, you have David over in a field as a shepherd person, fighting off bears and all kinds of things and playing the harp and writing the Psalms and starting their day with presents, starting his day with presents, really spending time in prayer and meditation on a consistent basis. And when he comes up through the ranks, his desire is to serve the people rather than to have the people serve them. Bring all that back to full circle to the original point of the question. I believe that I became homeless and had to go through this particular journey in order to bring out the Integrated Alignment Method, which is what I've now been sharing with people the last 12 months. It was integrated alignment, was actually— it was actually the desire to stop running from myself and actually start bringing myself into complete alignment, both the spirit side of me, the egoic side of me. And out of that, I was able to come up with 5 core constraints that I feel like every single leader struggles with on a regular basis that prevents the integration process. It prevents you maturing. It prevents you from building scalable teams. It prevents you from having predictable revenue. It predicts you from chasing or striving. I'm sorry, it doesn't prevent it. It insists that you chase and strive in order to feel worthy rather than having internal worth that all of a sudden becomes more of a magnetic principle that brings things to you. So it's a long-winded answer, and I apologize for that in advance, but it's the only way I know to communicate the transition over the last 30 years. The transition last 30 years is simply becoming the fullness of self, and out of the fullness of self, everything else radiates and magnifies.

Yeah. Yeah. No, very well said. And there's a lot to dive into in that answer.

I'm sure.

And I wanna get to those 5 constraints here eventually, but I, going back to the, the homeless period, mm-hmm, was there a, a low moment where this really jumped out at you and you said, I, I've gotta make some sort of a change here, or was there some sort of a shift that allowed you to see what was possible even though there was maybe no proof of success immediately right in front of you?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I—

there was lots of little steps, and I'll share one that just comes up. I talk in layers, so I'm like, hey, this layer just popped up for me. Family Systems Therapy, I guess they call it. The one— the moment that I can think of is understanding that the year prior to that, I was given a chance to create a company from scratch after dropping out of high school, trying to help the family pay the bills and the whole deal. So my upbringing has been a lot— since 9 years old, I've been on— basically been in savior mode, like having to help and do things. And the story's out online, so I won't spend a great deal of time just digging into it there. But what I will share with you is I, for about a year and some change, I went and made a bunch of money really fast with this first opportunity. The guy, old man Myrick, as I call him, Stephen Scoggins, put me in business for myself, bought me everything, did everything he needed to do. All I had to do was go work, hustle. And I did, and I made money. And then I got cocky and arrogant because when you're not you're not familiar with how to steward, wealth always erodes from your hands. And as a result, I went on a bit of an identity crisis long-term, and call it God or whatever sent me a brown-eyed, brown-haired girl that took me on a ride in my life for chasing worth, right? I end up losing everything as a lot of just dumb decisions where it's where the constraints come into play. Losing everything, find— trying to find myself, and then About 6 or 7 months later, I'm in a World's Gym. So I have no idea if World's Gyms still exist, but it's like a Gold's Gym or whatever.

Yeah.

And it was one of the few things that I had paid for a year in advance, right? So that's where I was going and I would go there and I would shower and get cleaned up. So the vast majority of my family and friends had no idea I was going through this. It's not, I mean, I was definitely out under the stars, but I wasn't walking around constantly with looking all raggedy and stuff like that. I was very much trying to keep up a front. I was trying to keep the mask up. Most of us are struggling right now because we're trying to keep the mask up rather than being real. And I finally had this moment. I get out of the shower, I walk over to the thing. Of course, I had the shower cranked up to hot because it was like cold outside and I was warming my bones back up a little bit. Walk over to have a shower over to the sink, and of course there's fog on it. And as the fog began to lift from the mirror, I locked eyes with myself, something out of a movie. I like locked eyes. I was like, dude, what the hell are you doing? Not even 6 months earlier, I had direct access to a 9-figure entrepreneur who was building companies. And I mean, I say access, he put me in his car and would drive me around his— these communities that he owned on a regular basis. And he would talk about, hey, alcohol destroyed your family's side, your dad's side of your family, your grandfather survived Pearl Harbor, like all these different stories. And then he would turn right around saying, this is how you flip real estate. And this is how you compound this. And a wealthy person compounds. They don't, they're not earning. And somebody who's chasing early day revenue is just all they're doing is focused on earning. They're not focused on. So he would like just pour wisdom on me. And I remember locking eyes with myself and I was like, dude, what the hell are you doing? And I think that's when the first element of humility really kicked in. That's when I first like really sat down and was like, something's got to change. Which is really interesting because if you fast forward like a year earlier, I remember my father coming to me, he had lost his business. And, and I think he was saying something out of love, but it ended up putting a bit of a limiting belief in my heart, at least early on. And I feel like a lot of people do this, by the way. I feel like a lot of limiting beliefs are not ones we actually have as insecurities until they're placed on us and we tend to believe them. And he made this comment about how Scoggins don't get ahead, they get by.

Mm. Right.

And if I thought about it, in 400-plus years that I could find via ancestry.com, I became the first Scoggins to become a person of influence and affluence.

But why?

It's a direct correlation to Steve helping me understand how to begin to see myself with clear eyes rather than see myself through my limitations.. And sure enough, I got a second chance from Steve that I didn't deserve. He put me back in business for myself without buying me anything, without— other than you get a second, you get the opportunity, but you have to show up for yourself this time. Basically, he put so much undergirding under me the first time, I didn't value the opportunity that I had in my hands. And I began building, basically pulling materials out of the trash piles of construction site with my father. Put the equipment together that became the company that I sold, but almost what, 2 years ago, 3 years ago now. And at the end of the day, it came down to learning to see myself with clear eyes. And I think that's the human, humanic journey is finally learning to see yourself, take your quote unquote failures, and rather than see them as labels that control your life and control your thinking, control your relationships, take them as lessons. Okay, what have I learned from this? You know, if I was going to fully integrate and become the holiest version of myself, what does that look like? I was on stage for the FoundryCon towards the tail end of 2025. And it was interesting. I was having this— the way in which I communicate now and speak is very different because of this journey I just came out of literally last year, towards the tail end of last year. But I remember being on stage for the first time, and out of nowhere, I put my hand on my heart, and I'm sharing this One Part Lion, One Part Lamb message in detail., but I put my hand on my heart and out of my mouth came these words, "I am whole." And I got emotional when it happened because, one, I wasn't expecting it, and two, it was true. Imagine what a leader looks like when they're whole. Imagine what an entrepreneur looks like when they're whole. Imagine what their relationships look like when they're whole. Imagine what kind of how they show up for their children when they're whole. Imagine how they show up for their community when they're whole and they're not being driven by insecurities and fear, which is one of these reasons why these constraints that I've been sharing publicly now for the better part of 6 months have been so powerful, because it is the process to wholeness through the process of integration.

A couple of things jumped out at me in what you just said. That little seemingly innocuous comment that your family member made about getting by, Man, that can really be powerful, not in a good way. And so many of us have that in our lives or have heard that somewhere and just dismissed it, but we don't know the ripple effect that it has for years and years. Nobody walks up to us and tells us, hey, remember that thing that you heard 20 years ago? That's really affecting your life right now. It's so important that we do this important work of figuring out what those constraints are on ourselves. And then the other thing was your mentor who, gave you this second chance. He just kept believing in you and said, no, I'm not going to let you fall off the tracks. Get back here. Let's try this again. And man, what an act of love that was.

I love hearing that. There are people in the world that love you. He legitimately changed my life and my family tree. Like, it's really hard. I have to imagine it. So it's funny. I actually have, because I work with a lot of 7, 8, 9, 10-figure entrepreneurs at a variety of different levels in coaching and mentoring and stuff like that. But I had this one young man. He was a— we got him to about 6 figures in top line revenue, like high 6 figures over the last couple of years. But for 3 years, he would come to me and he would say, how do I do this and this? And I would say, here are your steps. Do execute on 1, 2, 3. And then 6 months later, you come out, how do I do that? How do I really do it? It's the same 3 steps. I just, I told you 6, 3, 4, my 4 months earlier and over and over again. And it got me thinking. I feel like God's messing with me a little bit because that's who I was. Like, I just go, Steve, how do I do, how do I do this and this? And he said, go do this and this. And I'm like, okay. And then I would walk and I would not execute. I wouldn't read the book. I wouldn't go have the relationship. I wouldn't go generate the prospect. I wouldn't like constantly, the running joke is, how do you build a bigger chest? You do the pushups. No, how do you build the upper part of your chest? You do the push-ups. How about the lower part right here? So I can get really chiseled. You do the push-ups, right? So the old adage is do the push-ups. But it got me thinking to that point we just mentioned about like, it was the biggest act of love and grace. He absolutely believed in me before I could believe in myself. He embodied and illustrated what it looked like to walk like somebody in integrity and in wholeness on a regular basis. So I had a physical representation of what success, if you will, could look like in the service of others. But I drove him batshit crazy, just being real, because I wouldn't go do the freaking work. So now it's just really funny to just have that little reflection moment. It's like, I don't know why it just came up for both, like the young man that I was coaching who's now doing very well. I think he might actually bust through 7 figures in 2026, which is exciting for him and stuff. But it wasn't until he started doing the pushups. But he, it was funny how we just reversed roles. I became Steve Myrick and he became me. Anyway, sorry about that little sidetrack.

No, it's great. And you can make the argument if you really want to drill down, people don't do the work or the simple steps that their mentors give them because of discipline, number one. But why not? Why not have that self-discipline? And it goes back to that feeling of self-worth or identity, not knowing who you really are, or maybe being constrained by something that somebody told you 20 years ago. So it's so subtle, but yet so powerful.

Yeah.

The lion and the lamb. Let's go back to that for a second. Both of those things, I think you would agree, that exist inside of all of us. So how do you know when to call upon which one? And how do those serve you in certain spots but also hold you back in others?

Dude, that is such a good question. I would say it like this. First of all, so I already communicated what the— a little bit of what mature lamb, mature looks like or immature. I would say that in order to embody both and you— if you don't embody both, you'll swing really hard pendulum-wise to one. And as a result, you become the over-aggressor, which means you can't build teams. At the same time, if you go all the way to the other side, if you— and just embody just the lamb component, then all of a sudden you become the pushover and people push over you. And most of us vacillate in both sections. One of the things that I did was I created a leadership tool. Um, so it takes about 10 minutes to go through. It's an assessment to help you understand where you are at any given moment so you can become more aware of the decisions that you may need to be made. So how do I do it? How do I personally do it each and every day? First of all, I change how I I started my day, right? And I'll give you the— your audience can have the assessment when we're done. I'll give you the way to get there for free. But I started— I changed how I start my day. I noticed that if I started my day in anxiousness, then my day would continue in anxiousness. If I started my day in presence, then my day would be full of presence, which allowed me to ground. So to give you an idea, I start each morning with a mantra that I say 4 times and breathe in between each statement. I'm healthy. I'm wealthy. I'm wise. I'm a steward of the Most High. And the most important one is, I love you, Stephen Scoggins. And I typically will say that 4 times. Most mornings, if it's warm outside, or warm enough, I should say, I'll go outside. I'll walk out the front door of Safe Haven. I'll walk down the grass, grass, because it's a nice-sized property, so there's plenty of grass. I'll walk outside and I'll experience gratitude while grounding. Notice I haven't said anything about picking up my phone. Like I haven't said anything about looking at a TV screen or even getting a cup of coffee or whatever. I walk out and I'm still. Most of us can't hear because we can't sit still. And I'm the most guiltiest person of that. I am the action guy. Like I'm definition. I have been told I am the get stuff done guy., right? When I changed this one element of how I conducted my morning routine specifically, it changed how I acted during my day. So I'll give you an example. If I act in anxiousness and I have a team member issue, I'm more likely to pop off by accident. That's the immature lion. Okay? If I practice the day in presence and I go through my day and that same issue pops up with a team member, I'm more likely to listen because the anxiousness in my soul is gone. It's not there because I'm grounded, I'm rooted. So some of it's part practice. The other flip side of that is you're constantly watching and wading through the constraints. Let me share with those because we've talked about it a couple times with the audience. Let's just say they tell you that the businesses fail for a variety of different reasons, any kind of high achieving person. So lack of money, lack of marketing, lack of leadership, product fit, etc. Right? These are external things that people tell you in the public that basically prevent failure. It's actually far simpler than that. It's the behavior change. So arrogance, ignorance, impatience, fear, and insecurity. When you operate in any category on those sides of the line, you're by definition leaning into the most immature aspects of your ability to lead and thrive. Now, so what are the contrasts? If the contrast— if we look at arrogance, the contrast of arrogance is humility, but it's humility without self-abandoning. It's humility of saying, I don't have it all figured out necessarily, but I'm willing to learn. Right. It's the arrogance and pride and ego. While it— there's an argument saying it's trying to keep you safe. Can get in your way because you can't see clearly because of resistance, right? The second one is ignorance, right? It's not knowing what you need to know when you need to know it. And sometimes arrogance will prevent you from asking for it or looking for it. Sometimes it won't, and you'll spend all your time in anxious paralysis, analysis paralysis of sorts, trying to figure things out with actually just saying, hey, what do I really— what do I really need to know more about? I'll give you an example. One of the things I'm trying to learn more about is how to invest in other companies and businesses that are already operating with good stewardship to increase the likelihood that whatever I invest is compounded and returned versus just blindly investing money in different places and companies and stuff like that. Right. So I need to go figure out where that information is. Right. So the opposite of arrogance or ignorance is teachability. It's the willingness, the willingness and desire and fortitude to learn without blame, shame, or condemnation. The third one is impatience. And most people, when I've chit-chatted a little bit with them, one of the things I've done recently— and so if you come out to see one of the conferences, stuff like that, you have to at least follow along with everybody else, just because I'm gonna give you the secret. I'll say by show of hands, everybody, by show of hands, how many of you think you should be further along than you actually are? And every freaking hand goes up, right? We as American culture operate in impatience. We want it all right now. And as a result, it always eludes us because what we want right now is the thing that's probably a year or two out. So I would say, what's the opposite of impatience? What's the opposite of impatience? You would say it's got to be patience, right? It's presence. It's being present right now in this time and space and making a data-driven decision on how to bring the future into reality. It's like what the old adage is, be where your feet are. I'll tell you how I learned this was the big one. I learned this hard lesson the hard way. I had gotten— I was— this is about 5 years ago. I was going through a divorce that I didn't want. A lot of complications that were happening there. But the oldest son, who was not biologically mine, but I helped raise these children. So they're my kids basically, right? Tyler comes to me.

Me.

He says, hey, can you have lunch? Can you have a kind of like a brunch, dinner kind of thing with me at the Mexican restaurant at Campbell University, which is where he was attending school at the time? I said, of course. Like, I'm thinking I'm gonna go console and empower and encourage my child, right? He sits me down, he looks at me, says, I have a few things that are really important I want to share with you. I'll get some off my chest. I'm like, okay. First thing, he jokes— he jokingly said, you lasted longer than I thought you would, which I thought was cute. But the second thing was He said, if there's one thing that you can do better as a father, husband, leader, whatever, if there's just one thing, he said, it would mean the world to us if you could just be more present when you're present. Let that sink in for a second. How many of us, we have these pivotal moments that come up with our team, with our partner, our spouse, if you will, our children, or even with ourselves. Like, it was a running joke. Most of us can't even go to the bathroom without taking our phone with us. Like, we're terrified of being by ourselves with ourselves, right? And it began to dawn on me that if I was going to be more effective, I had to become more present. And if you start your day, like I was mentioning before, with presence— presentness with yourself and with the divine, all of a sudden that is going to flow like a river and a conduit through you. That will allow you to be more present throughout the day, which makes you make data-driven decisions. You're healthier and wiser and better steward. All right. So let's move on to the next one, which is fear. Fear of success, fear of failure. Most of it, believe it or not, is simply fear of not measuring up to an expectation.

Tell me more about that.

I won't make enough money. I won't have the right relationship. I won't be able to stand out. I won't be able to communicate.

I won't.

Or if we if ourselves to death, right? What I've discovered was, is the only way to conquer fear is to simply pursue truth. Not the truth, not your truth, not their truth, not any truth, like the truth. The truth is I have incarnated worth. The truth is I can learn anything. The truth is I can build anything. And the truth is, if I maintain a healthy standard and stewardship with myself, that whatever I'm terrified of right now will pass. Because fear comes from making something larger than it actually is. Tony Robbins, I think, said a long time ago that whatever you think the thing is, right, it's never as big or as small as you think it'll be. It's always smack down, smack dab down the middle, right? So the way to conquer fear is with intentional faith by pursuing truth. Right? The last one is insecurity. I don't know, I haven't met a single leader, high achiever, and I, again, I've worked with a lot of folks. I've worked with athletes, I've worked with entertainers, I've worked with entrepreneurs, I work with hardworking soccer moms and dads. Like, we all have some level of thing that we're telling ourselves day in and day out of why we can't measure up and why we can't stand in the gap and why we can't, why we— like we're our own worst enemy in many respects. So what if this— actually, I had a good friend of mine actually say this to one of the, one of my mentees, if you will. I just thought it was powerful. He said, what if you lived your life as— what if you lived your life moving forward as if you could never look back? Yeah, let that sink in. What if you could live your life forward as if you can't look back? In other words, what if you could live your life as if The past is completely the past. And every day, the present day is what builds the future. That's how you conquer insecurity is through compounded confidence over time. Again, I like to rattle off. I'll go off on a tangent if you let me, so I'll shut up now. But I clearly am very passionate about this. I want to see people step into actual wholeness, integration, and fulfillment.

No, thanks for taking us through that. That's 100% in alignment with how I feel and what I believe. And I'm with you on the whole thing that we don't even understand that 9 times out of 10, if not 10, we're the ones that really are holding ourselves back. It's not all that external stuff that we like to put things on. So you're working with these, these leaders, these high achievers, and on paper or from the outside world, the people around them see them as successful, but inside, as they still feel hollow. So how do you take a high achiever and help them rediscover themselves, their purpose, so that way success doesn't continue to feel empty in that future that they're working on creating right now?

I think step 1 is you actually have to introduce them to their real self.

And how do you do that?

So there's a lot of different practices and principles that are deployed based on where that person is at that moment. The easiest way to really crack it open really quickly is if, let's say, the the person's a professional athlete, okay? And they're— they had a bad run for 3 months, or they're not measuring up to the standards that were put before them on their contract, or they're not measuring up the standards that were put for them in the mirror, okay? First thing you have to do is you have to remove the perspective of striving and re-anchor them to the person of being. So until you can get better at being the doing becomes more difficult.

So say that one more time because that was awesome.

Yeah. So again, the way I look at it is until you can actually get better at being, the doing gets more difficult. The more you can be and amplify and steward being, then the more you can do. You could actually do, if you will, or doing with being exceptional at what you do. Right? So you reintroduce them to the person who is actually hungry for the fun and the love of what they were trying to accomplish. You have them actually go through visualization practices that re-encourage what it looks like to actually be fulfilled when they're pursuing the thing, not just pursuing the thing. See, most of us, we get so caught in pursuing the thing, we're not even paying attention to how we're pursuing it in the first place. What are the intentions behind it? What's the mindset behind it? What's the heartset behind it? What are you doing it for in the process? Most people, when they go to, for example, use another analogy. When you go to exit a company, did you know one of the highest suicide rates is actually entrepreneurs who exited businesses?

Why is that?

Their entire identity, and I've experienced part of this, their entire identity is the creation of that thing. So they sell the thing that their identity is tied to. So they have a complete shattering of identity because the identity is not actually built from the inside out. So the easiest way to help someone transition from someone who's a high achiever to an embodied high achiever is to help them figure out what is the process of actually self-discovery. You stop pursuing things for self and start pursuing things for service because now you have a meaning attached to it. Now that same person can take everything they learn, whether it's the athlete or the business owner, they can take everything that they've ever accomplished and learn the successes, the failures, the transitions, the, the parts that they don't even like to look at sometimes. And now you look for the lessons. Now the lesson has meaning and the meaning has value to other people who have to learn the same lesson. So basically you're able to serve the person you used to be by simply being the best person you can be now, but identifying the elements of what got you there. So that's why a lot of entrepreneurs that do make it through this scenario go into legacy building. Most of us think the legacy is what we leave behind. The legacy is actually what you actually leave behind in someone else. See, people have never met Steve Myrick, Old Man Myrick, but here I am traveling as much as I am, trying to encourage and help people as much as I can because that man believed in me. He left something inside of me that can't be stolen from me. So when you give someone, achiever or an athlete or an entertainer, a deeper meaning of their actual being that you can only discover by actually doing in work, like inside work, like now that person has meaning because now that meaning has value. The value is what you can create, not who you are necessarily. When I say who you are, like what, say a business owner gets wrapped up in I am my business. I've heard that a thousand bazillion times. I am my business. No, your business is what you do. It's not who you are. Who you are is a great mentor, a great leader, a great teacher, someone who's gifted with analytics, someone gifted with performance, someone who can push out re— You look at somebody out of, I think the fastest place in the world for runners actually comes from the northern part of Africa. Like, that's a skill set, right? But that runner is not the runner. That runner still has a name, still has a mother, still has a father, still has more to do, can go out and encourage and teach and mentor. So you have to— basically, the truth is you teach someone to go inside and build from the way out, which takes time. It takes embodiment. It takes practice and reps. As we said earlier, do the push-ups. But you start them by helping them see themselves clearly by doing the internal work.

You just said hits home deeply because I actually wrote my book about that exact issue. I was a former athlete, high-level college athlete, and then lights out after my last game and my life completely got turned upside down for that exact reason. I didn't know who I was, so I felt like I needed to write that book to give these other athletes who are going to struggle in the dark with this issue— you know, a little bit of hope because it's such a huge thing. And I see the correlation between business owners as well all the time. You identify with that being who you are as a human, and it's just not true.

Yeah. Let's workshop for a couple of minutes. All right. What did you learn about yourself post-athletic career that you didn't know about yourself during your athletic career?

Number one, I didn't know myself at all. I thought who I was, the football player, because that was reinforced to me for years and years.

Yeah. People kept telling you that's how you have value. You have value.

That's where I got all my value from when I was playing football in front of 100,000 there were 100,000 people in the stadium and millions on TV, family members that I had never seen for years came out of the woodwork. They wanted to be around that. And then when my career ended, they all left. So I was like, wow, that's my only value in the world. And now that I can't do that anymore. So a lot of people feel that same exact way. So that was number one. And number two, it's taken me a long time and I'm still in that process because I think it never ends. I'm trying to figure out, you know, who I am as a person. What, how can I give value to the world? Based on what I learned from those very unique experiences that nobody else will ever experience, I can take those things and now serve and give value. And step one for that, or for that, was to write the book and put pen to paper. What is—

all right, so let's— I love work. I'm going to workshop a little bit, if that's all right with you. Sure. So you wrote the book, right? And you went back through your story. And what did you learn about your story? What truths did you learn and what lies did you learn?

Again, the lie was that I was a football player. I wasn't a football player at all. That was just a vehicle through how I was impacting the world. And what I've discovered now is that I enjoyed having an impact on people. That's what I was doing. I was playing a game that I love, but I was also performing and I was impacting all these people that I would never ever meet because they showed up to the stadium and they paid the money for the ticket and they cheered and they did all that stuff with their family. So that was one of the things, but number two, I'm extremely equipped to handle adversity. I learned that through the fire. I was fortunate to play for the greatest college football coach that ever lived. He taught me a lot of these lessons, but I am much more resilient than the common person for those reasons. And I take for granted sometimes that just everybody in the world has those skills, but the truth is that they don't. And that's why I now can help them through those things.

How much added additional meaning and significance have you learned by way of wanting to serve other people?

It's not able to be measured. And I write a lot about meaning in my book because when something ends like that that you think was really important to you, and it was, and it gave you your identity, you've got to find the meaning in that. And of course, the meaning is the lessons that I've learned, but again, not hoarding them for myself, giving them out to the world.

Yeah. So it's interesting because I, the, what you described is That was just like a super, like uber quick, like going inside, work your way out. So one of the things that is really important for people to understand is a lot of times their unique gifting is actually how they show up around other people. And so many times when you take the gifting of showing up around other people, like how you show up, I'm the encourager, I'm the person who sees what that person's potential could be if they were to be more resilient, the Lean In Resilient. I'm the person that has a really good listening ear. I'm the— you start looking at these different intangibles that are actually gifts that were created at the time of— call it, you can call it incarnation. I don't know what you call it, but insemination, incarnation, all the same thing. When you were born, basically, right? These are the things that before the— before your identity, if you will, took root were already present inside of you. And so much of the truth is just simply reconnecting you back to that.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, dude. So anyway, I love workshop and thanks for going there with me for just a couple of minutes.

No, that's awesome. One thing I'll just add to what you say, the tough part, the reason why we have this mission is because there's so many things that get in the way of that. It sounds easy to just to say reconnect with that, but man, it's everything is fighting against us, I believe, in that respect. Stephen, this has been awesome. I can talk to you all day and I can tell you're passionate about these topics as well. But I just want to ask you, what are you excited about in your immediate future in terms of what you're building, who you're going to impact, what's on the horizon for you?

You know what, 2026 is going to be a really special year. I just feel that in my soul. I took a year and a half off of stage post-exit, went through a bit of a, not an identity crisis per se, but an identity shift.. And as a result, I feel like I said before, I'm the wholest version of myself, if you will. And as a result out of that, good things are happening. We have a lot of really cool stuff, things happening for essentially leaders who are tired of operating in burnout, overwhelm, and anxiousness, and just want to get centered and grounded and actually realize the beautiful pieces of their life and really lean into that. So as a result, we're actually launching a lot of really cool things. We've got the Integrated Leaders Lion Den coming out this year. I'll be traveling and speaking more. I speak again at the Create Conference here in Atlanta, Georgia on January, the weekend of January 27th, for those that are around and want to go check it out. But I think what I'm excited about is getting back out and just serving people.

I am certainly interested in following your next moves, and I know a lot of the listeners who hear this will be as well. Where can people connect with you, figure out exactly where they can say hello or see what your next move actually is?

I appreciate that. Yeah, I think the, what I would encourage everybody to do is, because they need to become aware of where you're at. Before you can change anything. Just go to stephenscoggins.com, that's with a P-H, S-C-O-G-G-I-N-S.com/leader. Take the 10-minute assessment for free. There's no sale. You're not buying anything. I'm not asking you to buy anything at the end of it. This is simply an awareness tool. It also comes with a good 30 to 40 page PDF, if you will, that you can workshop and work your way backwards a little bit. I want to encourage everybody to take that, take advantage of that right now. I'm always active on Instagram, Stephen_Scoggins. Pretty much everywhere else I'm there too, but that's the place I'm like most active. I think that's even how we connected a little bit too.

Absolutely. 100%. I want to thank you for taking the time, not just to spend time with me, but also to give such thoughtful, deep, insightful answers. And I know this episode is going to be one of our top performers. So best of luck to you in 2026. And let's keep the conversation going, Stephen.

Let's do it. Appreciate you so much. God bless.

All right. Thank you.