Creating with Curiosity and Intent with Jeff Scult

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Do you realize that you've been locked in a prison of your mind and you are the warden holding the key to a door that was never locked in the first place?

This is Reclaim in Advance, a social impact project where we host vulnerable conversations with modern day high performers exploring the lowest points of their personal or professional life, how they recovered, and their life on the other side of hardship. My hope is that you'll realize you aren't the only one who goes through tough times and there is a way out. Through these conversations, you'll find you'll gain inspiration from the grit and honesty of our guests and you'll learn practical tools and science backed frameworks that empower you to take on new challenges, regardless of how difficult they may seem at first. So if you're ready to join in, let's get started. Jeff Skolt is the founder, designer and CEO of One Golden Thread where he is on a mission to harmonize functional fashion with feeling, promoting authentic self expression and purpose driven living. Jeff also consults creators, entrepreneurs and brands, supporting them to amplify their mission through language in a soulful way. Beyond that, he's the host of the podcast Drops of Gold where he shares bite sized practical wisdom to inspire listeners to live their most raw, authentic, bold and golden life. Without any further ado, let's dive into the conversation with Jeff. Jeff, how are you?

I am so well. It's great to see you again.

It is, it is. And I want you to introduce yourself, but I want to do that in an unusual way. I would love for you to start with sharing your superpower if you feel comfortable doing so.

This was a superpower I discovered at age 8 and I used to use it as a deflection and now I use it as an honest reflection. Which is my superpower is I get to see the gold that resides inside others individuals, their ideas, their ideals, and I shine the spotlight to amplify that for others and now myself.

So I have an eight year old. She is wonderful. My daughter Lena. I love her, but I would not say she's that selfless. So I'm wondering, at 8 years old, what, what drove you to try to find and amplify the good in people?

I'm not sure I was selfless. I think I might have been very selfish, which is I wanted to hide. And so my easiest way to hide was to. Was to amplify others because then I had to share nothing of myself. Maybe that's going to be relevant, resonant for some of your listeners because, you know, when we're, when we grow up, maybe as a people pleaser or somebody who is believes that the way that you, the way the world works is you're able, only able to receive love after you give love, and only then sometimes you even push that away. So I might. I'm not sure I was being selfless. I might be the most, you know, selfish person, which is sharing nothing of myself, which I came to learn later on in life, is actually, ironically enough, selfish, not selfless.

So I want to get more into your life throughout our conversation, but I want to talk about how we met. I was at the red carpet premiere for a TV show that I appeared on, and I was adamant that I would not wear cocktail attire on the red carpet, even though that's what it said, because I know how I'm comfortable. I know how I show up as the best version of myself. And. And it's wearing your shirts from One Golden Thread. So do you mind sharing what One Golden Thread is and how you came up with the idea for it as well?

Well, you know, it's interesting. I mean, what One Golden Thread is now is it is a regenerative nature fashion brand. We clothe the kingly souls, you know, for their golden expression. And we're also designing for women as well. And it's all around a new take on clothing, which is unpolluting a polluting industry and also going deeper than clothing, because that's really the most important thing here, which is it didn't start as a clothing company. And there's a beautiful arc of a journey, which I'm sure we'll get into. But the real point here is that what we're really here to do is to elevate consciousness through. Through embodied clothes. Because the one thing we have in common when we're not naked is that we wear clothes. And clothes, you know, typically close us off from feeling. And we're going back around to, you know, the somatics of what does it feel like to be connected to nature? And we're using super nature materials. I want a material, material journey. But, you know, I mean, as crazy as it sounds, One Golden Thread started with a single golden thread with me tying it, a massive golden thread, if you will, in Bracelets and going around the world as a connection, as a social experiment. In 2016, it was part of my own journey back to myself, which is to amplify that we're all golden inside. And so I went around the world and I did a spoken word piece and tied golden threads on people's wrists. I mean, no bullshit. I don't know if I can speak French on your podcast, but that's the way it went down. And it was a no plan plan. There wasn't a business plan, There wasn't agenda. It was intent. And I think that if you really think about those brands that you really revere and respect in the world, it started with intent versus agenda. And the intent was simply to amplify what I was feeling inside, which is that we're all connected better together as a golden thread to our nature. And that includes nature itself.

I don't want to turn this into an advertisement for your shirt, but they just really are the best shirts I've ever worn. You can tell they're made with intention. Just the way they feel on your body and the way they just like help you represent yourself. Like you. You nailed it. And again, I don't want to turn it into an advertisement, but this is just how I feel. And that's why it's the only shirt I will wear on stage or the red carpet. But let's go back to 2016. Even just before that. What were you experiencing that made you want to go on this journey around the world? And what experience did you have as you were doing this?

Well, I was success ish in business. You know, I had a five time of serial entrepreneur. And the last business I was a 50% co owner of, we were a white label fashion house for bands and brands. And I was completely, you know, unfulfilled. I was really amplifying other people's visions, vibrations and missions, never my own. And that was kind of what I was experiencing in my life up until the age of 51. And I realized that there was this gnawingness inside myself of realizing that I had something more to share. And what I was experiencing was. You've heard that expression like the body knows the score. I was experiencing a lot of sickness inside myself, like a lot of dis ease. And some of that was coming from the fact that I was unexpressed. I was expressing for others, but I was unexpressed in my own inside myself as a businessman, as a. As a vision man. And I think that the beautiful thing is the person who connected us seneca he said it really well. He knows me as well as anybody on this planet and the journey I've come from. And he said, before you could create the brand, you recreated the man. And that's exactly what took place. I went on my own personal journey to realize that we were all intended to claim our voice. And that voice can look any which way. You so choose. Choose as somebody who's listening. That could be a new expression in business. That could be a spoken word poetry. That could be becoming an artist. That could be climbing a mountaintop, whatever that looks like for you. That is a gnawing feeling inside. And for me, it was the fact that I was born into an artist household, and I was always wearing the business hat, never the creator hat. And I realized we're all creators, and so what do you want to create? What's inside you to create? And there was something inside me to create. And it wasn't clothing. It was literally this expression. And after I went into social experiment, which was one of the most remarkable things, because I realized as I asked. As I tied tens of thousands of golden threads on people's wrists, and I asked everybody the exact same question, the most remarkable thing happened was every single person answered that same question in their own unique way. And that, for me, was this aha moment where like, oh, wow, it's true about the snowflake. It's true about the fingerprint. Every single one of us has our own unique fingerprint, our own unique expression of the world. And I asked every single person, what does it mean to you to live life golden? Every single person had their own take on it. And that led me to say, like, you know what? I want to design for me. As I started to unleash myself further into creativity, I wanted to design for me something that I could never find, which I was a T shirt guy, and I could never find the perfect shirt. And so I went on this material mission to find the most benevolent fabrics and fibers, and I knitted them together. Beech trees from Austria, special cotton from California. We knitted them together on our own perfect blend. That was. Felt like a somatic. I didn't know. I just know that I was born with my mother's touch. And when I felt these fabrics, I felt like, wow, that feels like. That feels like supernatural to me. And I knitted them together, and we found that right, that. That right mix. And then I won Design for me the world's perfect tee. And I'm like, why wouldn't the sleeves be longer? Why wouldn't it be Arm hugging sleeves. Why wouldn't we put a little extra recovery up here so you could pop them up and it'll stay up. Why wouldn't it be raw? Just, just like life? Why wouldn't it be elongating so a man like me down the middle, average height 5 foot 10 and a half, would stand tall. And I came to realize as one by one by one and there's agreed it was their favorite tea. I'm like, wow. Then all of a sudden tall men were saying like, I feel like you finally designed something for me. People who were of a below average site were saying like, I feel like I'm standing taller. Somebody once said, you know, one of the first people who tried it on, they said like, wow, this shirt's actually improving my posture. What's going on here? I've added people called their wizard armor and it was always just friends of friends. And that's the way it started. And I kept being, you know, it's a fascinating thing. And this is I think the most important thing for your listeners. Anybody who's going through a journey, anybody who's thinking about what they might want to create in the world. I let go of any aspect of ridicule because who am I to design? I'm not a designer, but I've been paying attention and I design for me first. Do it for yourself first. If you want to find something with passion, find something that actually resonate with you, not resonates with another first. Because others will come if it's coming from pure intent. And that's really the way One golden thread started. Pure intent in terms of going around the world and tying a golden thread. Pure intent of designing for me the world's perfect tea. And then others seemed to agree and then we went from there and you know, we're now. I wanted it to be more than a business around benevolence. So from the beginning, every single item sold corresponded to a newly planted tree in the world. Through our NGO partner, One Tree Planted and we've now planted 105,250 trees. So we're on our way. And it's a beautiful mission when we can look at business as a collective force for social good as opposed to something that's extractive.

I don't dislike corporate jobs, but I dislike the fact that they can sometimes determine your identity for you. And then you wake up, you're 30, 40, 50 years old and like all you are is a job title which can be taken away at any given moment. So what I'm wondering if we can help some people. It doesn't matter if you're corporate or entrepreneur, unlock the freedom that you have, that you enjoy, that I have as well, of just being able to create and share our gifts with the world and do some formal place of giving, not necessarily, you know, just generating revenue, which it's nice if you can, but how can we unlock that if someone is stuck? If you have any kind of guidance.

On that, you know, I remembered as I started writing as well on this journey, I remember waking up from a dream one night and I wrote do you realize that you've been locked in a prison of your mind and you are the warden holding the key to a door that was never locked in the first place. That's where it starts. And realizing that there's nobody holding you back at all, ever. And it's so beautiful to realize we have this one precious life. It's so beautiful to realize like what happened yesterday is yesterday, what happens tomorrow is future casting. And frankly that can also be saddled in fear in terms of like. But it's such a beautiful thing to say, like, well what would be something I could do today just to take an inquiry, a curiosity and you know, living in a state of curiousness and openness is a powerful place to start. My dad 92 years old and vibrancy of mind like one of his life mantras is ask why not? Not why and shout out to Mort sculpt by the way, you know, within there, I mean you've got an eight year old. So track back to those first four years of your from one to four, what was the one question that your child asked more than any other question? They asked why.

Yeah, why?

Why? Why? I mean it's, it's actually if you Google it or chat GPT it, it's like 4,000 why's by the age of four, something like that. It's crazy. And that first four years, maybe even eight, maybe even, you know, if we're lucky, you know, it continues. Those first four years were asked from a place of wonderment, curiosity, openness, the desire to learn, the desire to play. And then as adults or even as young people growing into adults, we begin to ask why? From a place of cynicism, judgment, fear, boxed, what have you. And so you know what I would, what I would encourage anybody who's listening to this is to start ask why? From a place of curiosity and openness and wonderment and within there that will unlock your why not? And that why not is like well why not? Take that language lesson, well, why not pick up that guitar? Why not go deeper into this thing that I want to try and do this crazy journey which I don't even know. Maybe it's a no plan plan. I don't need to maybe put the business plan together. I need to take that first step of curiosity, of joy of play. You know, work is a four letter word and so is play. And allow play to enter into your work. And when you allow play to enter into your work, like when I was in advertising, which was the way I cut my teeth for my first eight years out of college, I remember my first boss and I was doing a lot of food, consumer packaged goods. John Favel said, play with your food, play with your food, get into your food. Play with it, just play with it, See what happens. So get curious, open up why again, from a place of wonderment leading to why not? And within that play, you know, work can all of a sudden can become a different level four letter word.

I think this is good advice for as I'm reflecting on my own journey. Even if you're an entrepreneur and advanced in your, in your business, just thinking, okay, why am I doing things this way? Do I actually enjoy it? Is this my highest contribution to the world? And I've been going through a lot of self reflection lately and realized some of the things I'm doing, they don't light me up anymore. And my voice is not needed in those conversations. There are other things that I've wanted to pursue and I've been like, like maybe later, so on and so forth, not the right time. But now I'm taking the why not approach and just going all in on things that I know will lead me to making my highest contribution to the world. But even when I had all the autonomy of an entrepreneur, I was still kind of stuck to your in like these prisons of our own design. And I was talking to someone else on the this podcast, his name's Mo Bunnell. And he said we, we live our life either by drift, drive or design. So initially I would say in my career when I was working a 9 to 5, it was by drift. I'm like, I don't know, get an mba, go work on Wall street, so on and so forth, right? I did all the things, but like I wasn't really enjoying it. And then my early days as an entrepreneur is by drive because I was hungry, first of all because I had a newborn daughter. And second of all, I was frustrated for getting fired from corporate and having to reinvent myself. So Drive, drive, drive. And that was beneficial. I mean, I matched my corporate salary within a year, but I paid the price in sacrificing relationships, health, and everything that came along with it. So now I'm in the design stage and just saying, why not? And just having so much fun with it and also finding success with it as well. So just for all the entrepreneurs out there listening, like, you can have this unlock whenever you want. It doesn't have to be right when you're quitting corporate. It can be today. And just say, hey, this thing I've been thinking about, like, why not pursue it? Just make it. Make messy action and see what happens.

Wow, I really love your colleague who unpacked that with drift, drive and design. Because even within, I think back to the journey and the sleepless nights when nobody was listening, and you've got that you're doing it by design and you're driving it. And sometimes that drive can feel like you're pushing. And there's something that, within the drive phase that, like, letting off the pedal and doing less and allowing it to come to you is also very empowering. Because I'll give you an example. I mean, I remember this was literally like a master class in business that I learned in a very interesting way that I forgot about for almost half a century, which is, you know, when we're driving, it's. We're pushing and we're. And we're so connected oftentimes to the problem that we can. And we're solutioning a problem, that we can focus on the problem too much, and we're selling it so hard and almost like disallowing ourselves to just hear how somebody wants to really receive it with ease and become a part of this. Because that's all people want to do, is feel like they're a part of something that speaks to who they are and what feels truth and what have you. And so, you know, when I first started this, I was so focused on the problem of the plight of fashion, what's happening to the planet, and fast fashion. And the statistics are overwhelming, overwhelming. And it is paralyzing to receive it. And I'll just give you an example, Terry. There's 80 billion articles of clothes made every year. 80 billion. 87% of those will wind up in an incinerator, a landfill, within 18 months because we're close. That are. We're taught that our clothes are disposable. Of those, only 3% are made of sustainable fibers. That means that 97% of the 87% of the 80 billion is synthetics that are leaching into our soil and ultimately will wind up in the ocean, where 38% of the microplastics in the ocean come from the clothes that we not only toss, but also even wash because of the plastics come off in the wash. And that's why plastic from the ocean is rising in condensation up into the clouds. And now it's raining plastic. And therefore, there's going to be a certain time in the future where all of a sudden we'll say, oh, fuck, what do we do? Or do we need to be wearing masks based upon the fact that it might be raining? Okay, that's all real. And yet that's so low vibration. And you just got overwhelmed and your eyes just glazed over. And now I'm going to tell you about. And yeah, we've got this great, really comfortable clothing. And you're like, I mean, I can't even go there right now. I don't even know what you're talking about. So I Fast tracked backwards 50 years to remember a lesson that I learned when I was about 6 years old. And my dog Sam, he had worms. And my dad took me towards Sam and he says, hey, Jeff, we need to give Sam a pill. How do we give Sam the pill? And I so excited, my dad's asking me for my opinion. I'm like, well, we'll hide it in his food. And my dad said, no, dogs are intelligent and they'll feel that it's not the way they want to take it and they'll spit it out. And my dad went to the cupboard and he got some peanut butter and he said, well, wrap the pill in something sweet and then watch what happens. And Sam took the pill and just swallowed it all day long. And so it reminded me like, wow, do we really need to be activists to make a change? Because activists is really like, they're problemists. Great, important call attention to the problem. But really what we get to be is proactivists. We get to be solutionists. And that's when we pivoted our language and I stopped just talking about the problem and started just talking about, listen, we design kingly clothes for golden souls for you to stand and look and feel as golden as you are. And oh, by the way, it plants a tree. And oh, by the way, it's this. It's reverse engineering the language. I had to get out of my own way. I had to get out of my own way and really listen because I was so stuck on what I what where my Passion Lies, which was to be a regenerative nature fashion, you know, catalyst, and really just make a delicious product. Like, I really genuinely believe that if we don't, let's. Maybe we shouldn't talk about consciousness anymore, just talk about deliciousness. Because that's at the end of the day, what we all want. And so how do we just create delicious, you know, like, this should all feel, this all gets to be fun. Like, we're here this one time, let's go deep, let's enjoy the journey, let's eat good food, let's be kind to each other, and let's wear threads, you know, that embody how, how beautiful it is to be alive.

I want to go back to what you said. Kingly clothes for golden souls. I think when people hear that, they immediately get it. What I'm wondering is, where were you when you came up with that description? Like, what were you doing? Who were you with? What was that moment where you're like, you know what? This is it. This is how I present it to the world.

As a lover of words. My father was very precise with his words. My mother was the punniest person I knew. So she was always taking words apart and putting them back together. So the phraseology of putting words together. I believe words cast spells and we get to choose our spellings wisely. And as an ad guy, it's always coming through, so it's always running inside me. I probably have 108 different ways to describe one golden thread, you know, as being. It's a love style, not a lifestyle. You know, it's. And everything's always true. There's nothing that ever comes that's channeled. It's me just being in witness to another. I'm sure the first time I saw that, I saw somebody look in the mirror, not myself, but I saw somebody look in the mirror wearing the shirt or the pants or the duster or what have you. And they looked in the mirror and they said, wow, I see myself like, this looks like me. This doesn't look like a facsimile of me. So, you know, I guess this is an expression which means a lot to me, which is you put me in four white walls and myself. And I don't really think that there's going to be a lot of magic that's going to come from that. But put me in the world. And I'm constantly being, you know, I'm devoted and therefore I'm devouring the world. And so I'm sure that came to me when Somebody looked in the mirror and they, well, and they stood taller, almost like they had a crown on their head. And then they looked in the mirror and they got chills. And that's maybe what came through in that moment, which was kingly clothes for golden souls because they were seeing themselves in a very hierarch way.

I love it. Let's talk about the Drops of Gold podcast. So when our listeners tune into that, what can they expect to hear from you?

Yeah, it goes back as much to the original expression of one golden thread as what it's become. Because One golden thread was intended to share soul storing wisdom and then have it be backed by sensuous living clothing and life goods product. That's the first mission I wrote in 2016. So drops of Gold is what I believe, which is we all carry incredible wisdom inside ourselves. And so it's a podcast that's housed right here in back of me and I sit with individuals and we go on a journey until we unpack the golden mic drop and then we distill those down in bite sized nuggets. So even though the podcast is oftentimes might be an hour long, what we're doing is we're extracting the golden nuggets, those things that you can take with you on your journey and you can apply them that are universal truths if it's true for you. And so I'm just so blessed that I get to wake up and create things that bring people joy and interview titans of transformation who have beautiful things to say whether they're known or whether they're not known, whether they're known in a certain way. Like, I just had my favorite DJ music producer on, his name is Goldcap and he came on and just, absolutely just dropped so much golden wisdom on us about the metaphor of music, how we can move it through our bodies and our voices and see the somatics of the frequency and the vibration of living life. Golden. So every single individual has something powerful to say and it's available on all podcasts and it's just a blessing to bring it in. And it's something to apply to everything. You can apply it to business relationships, your own inner well being, your outer expression of who you are. It's really designed for those who choose a life of expansion, curiosity, joy and kindness.

Well, I don't want to play favorites, but if I had to recommend one, it would be your episode with Sandyka street. So everyone please do tune into that one. Jeff, now I'm going to ask you a tough question and I Teed you up for this before we got started. But my question is this. If your life was a book, what would the name of this chapter be? I'm going to go first because I know it's a tough question, but on my end, I think it's. I shouldn't say. I think it's Clarity, because I'm so clear, as I was saying before, on the contribution I want to make to the world and how that is definitely my highest contribution. And it took me. I mean, I'm 46, right, so it took me years to get here. But I just feel so fully locked in on my identity and how I can help others around me based on this clarity. So that's where I'm at. And it's funny, I don't know exactly how I'm going to do everything, but I'm super clear on what I want to do and the impact I want to have. So my life was a book. This would be chapter 46, clarity.

And this is chapter 59. And the chapter is the River. What I love about that body of water is the river's in flow, and the river find its way not always in the most linear way. It may hit into, you know, a. A rock pool. And all of a sudden it becomes like a. It. It becomes a centrifuge. And then it goes and. And the center sound is rhythmic and beautiful and ever flowing and there's stillness within it. And the interesting thing about the river isn't just being in the river, but it's also the banks of the river. The banks of the river. There's an expression which means a lot to me, first shared to me by really beautiful solo friend and business advisor. Her name is Stariel Hope, and she talked about create containers for things to thrive. And so the bank is. The banks of the river provide that. And so sometimes while I'm on the bank, actually witnessing the river and river's flowing, and that's an important point for where we are as entrepreneurs, is that sometimes when you're in the Class 5 river, you can't even see the banks. You can't even see what's happening around you. So it's also important within that river and is to get over the bank and have those moments of stillness, have those moments of introspection and reflection. And so, yeah, this chapter is called the River.

Well, Jeff, I'm glad to have met you during this chapter and thanks for sharing all that proceeded through that. And just before we part ways, if there's any parting words of wisdom, you want to pass along or any, any guidance for our audience would love to hear it.

You know, I just so appreciate you Terry and appreciate what you're putting in the world and your listeners are on a beautiful, powerful journey. I would just offer wherever you are on that journey as your entrepreneurial spirit within your well being journey. Realizing that. I'll share this by way of a quote. That was the last full sentence that my mother said to me as she entered deeper into her Alzheimer journey and she no longer could use her full sentences. And she said treat today as a once in a lifetime opportunity.

I love it. Jeff, thank you and thank your mom for passing along that wisdom as well. But I appreciate you. You're inspiring without being intimidating and nurturing with genuine empathy. So I appreciate you and thank you for your time.

My pleasure. Thank you so much Derek.

And that's our show for today. And if you're looking for more tools and tactics to help you level up and overcome setbacks, head over to Terryrice co Reclaim, where you'll gain access to two free resources. The first is the High Performance Playbook where I share my top performance techniques. You'll also gain access to the Forge system, a program that gives you the framework to create a powerful vision for your life and the daily habits needed to make it happen. And if you're interested in joining the Reclaim and Advance movement, here are a few ways to get involved. First, subscribe and leave a review. This is the best way for us to spread the word to new people. Second, if you have a favorite takeaway from this episode, please take a screenshot and share your takeaway on social media. Tag me at Terryrice so I can see it and share as well. And lastly, this one's pretty simple. Just do one random act of kindness. It doesn't matter how big or small, but this is your chance to start a ripple effect that can have a positive impact on those around you, including yourself. And remember, success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It's the courage to continue that counts. I hope you'll continue on this journey with me and I'll see you next time. Reclaim in advance is hosted by me, Terry Rice. Megan Dom is our managing director and our editor is Dan Lardy. Thanks for listening.